| At State of the Union, Trump declines to shake hands with Pelosi Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:35 PM PST  President Trump declined to shake hands with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at Tuesday night's State of the Union Address, which came less than two months before Democrats in the same House chamber voted to impeach him.
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| Data suggests virus infections under-reported, exaggerating fatality rate Posted: 05 Feb 2020 02:13 AM PST  Fatalities from the coronavirus epidemic are overwhelmingly concentrated in central China's Wuhan city, which accounts for over 73% of deaths despite having only one-third the number of confirmed infections. In Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease, one person has died for every 23 infections reported. Experts say the discrepancy is mainly due to under-reporting of milder virus cases in Wuhan and other parts of Hubei province that are grappling with shortages in testing equipment and beds.
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| Wuhan is scrambling to fill 11 sports centers, exhibition halls, and other local venues with over 10,000 beds to create makeshift coronavirus hospitals Posted: 04 Feb 2020 05:42 PM PST  The epicenter of the viral outbreak is converting local facilities into hospitals with over 10,000 beds. See what these makeshift hospitals look like.
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| Pete Buttigieg Wakes Up in New Hampshire With a Fresh Dig at Sanders and Talk of ‘Transparency’ Posted: 04 Feb 2020 08:04 AM PST  MANCHESTER, New Hampshire—Echoing through the Rex Theatre's amplified sound system, Demi Lovato asked, loudly, "What's wrong with being confident?" the morning after Pete Buttigieg declared victory in the Iowa caucuses before any official results were known.The song fit the moment. Kicking off his first event of five here on Tuesday, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor was nothing if not confident. Just hours after Iowa's results, still uncertain, devolved into a stunning mass of confusion among Democratic voters and candidates, Buttigieg delivered a speech denouncing "my way or the highway" politics—an implicit dig at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the state he swept by a double-digit margin four years ago—and promising "openness" and "transparency" in 2020. "Now here we are at decision time," the 38-year-old Democrat said to a full audience, acknowledging attendees who are still "thinking it through" a week before voting starts here. He did not mention the word "Iowa" in his opening remarks, instead opting to turn the page swiftly. "I'm so glad to be here with you this morning," he said, to laughs. "I think it's morning." New Hampshire voters began lining up nearly two hours before the kickoff. While Buttigieg didn't mention the caucus results, Rep. Annie Kuster, one of his most prominent state supporters, gave a lighthearted nod to the wildness that unfolded Monday night half the country away."I'm sure when the results are all in, we are going to have a fantastic result!" Kuster said. Speaking on stage, Buttigieg, who plans on camping out here in the Granite State every day before Feb. 11 primary, added, "if there's one thing I've learned from being on the ground from these early states… it's just how seriously you all take that."Hours earlier, Buttigieg suggested a win in New Hampshire was integral to sweeping the nomination. "We're on our way to New Hampshire, on to the nomination, and on to chart a bold new course for our country. But only if you're with me," he wrote on Twitter at 2 a.m., pinning the tweet with a link to his fundraising page. The Dirty Little Secret Behind Iowa's Amateur HourRead 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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| Iowa caucus: Former Hillary Clinton staff revealed to be behind ‘Shadow’ app that caused chaos Posted: 04 Feb 2020 09:35 AM PST  The team behind the disastrous app used in the Iowa election app has been revealed.The app, created by a startup named Shadow, was supposed to be used to co-ordinate information from the caucuses and allow organisers to send results back to the party. But it crashed repeatedly through the night, and has led to a failure to declare any kind of result.
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| Doomsday author Chad Daybell claims his deceased wife helped him 'reconnect' with new wife Lori Vallow Posted: 04 Feb 2020 01:39 PM PST  Weeks after his first wife died, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow were married. He credits his deceased wife for helping him find a new one.
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| White Wisconsin lawmaker drops Black History Month proposal Posted: 04 Feb 2020 11:49 AM PST ![White Wisconsin lawmaker drops Black History Month proposal]( "White Wisconsin lawmaker drops Black History Month proposal") State Rep. Scott Allen, a Waukesha Republican, said in a statement that "it is possible that I made incorrect assumptions." He said he would instead like to co-sponsor a separate resolution that black lawmakers authored. "The proposed resolution concentrated on the character of individuals involved in an important effort in American and Black history, the operation of the Underground Railroad," Allen said. The Wisconsin Legislature has traditionally recognized Black History Month, which runs through February, with a resolution in both the Assembly and Senate.
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| China declines Cambodia PM's request to visit virus epicentre Posted: 05 Feb 2020 05:33 AM PST  China turned down a request from Cambodia's leader Hun Sen to visit the epicentre of the deadly coronavirus outbreak to comfort stranded Cambodian students as it could not "properly arrange" a trip to locked-down Wuhan city, state media said Wednesday. Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province have reported hundreds of deaths and thousands of infections, and more than 53 million people are living under tough restrictions. "Considering the fact that Wuhan is doing all it can to fight the outbreak, and given the tight schedule, a visit... cannot be properly arranged at this moment," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Wednesday.
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| Watch: Pelosi tears Trump State of the Union speech in half Posted: 04 Feb 2020 07:59 PM PST  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacted to Donald Trump's combative State of the Union Speech Tuesday by tearing her copy of it in half after the president concluded his remarks.
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| Russia says alarmed by U.S. deployment of low-yield nuclear missiles Posted: 05 Feb 2020 07:47 AM PST  Russia is alarmed by the U.S. Navy's decision to deploy low-yield nuclear missiles on submarines since they heighten the risk of a limited nuclear war, a Russian official said on Wednesday. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the deployment of the W76-2 warhead in the name of strengthening deterrence had caused Russia great concern over U.S. nuclear strategy, Russian news agencies reported. The U.S. Defense Department said on Tuesday the Navy had fielded a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, something the Pentagon says is needed to deter adversaries like Russia.
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| A county in China is offering people $140 to tell on neighbors who have visited Wuhan, and another is threatening the death penalty to anyone deliberately spreading the coronavirus Posted: 04 Feb 2020 04:33 AM PST  China has been struggling to contain the coronavirus epidemic, which initially broke out in the central province of Hubei.
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| DA Says Couple Accused of Drugging and Raping Up to 1,000 Women Did No Such Thing—Ex-DA Made it All Up Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:51 PM PST  A California prosecutor is dropping all charges against a doctor and his girlfriend, alleging that his predecessor "manufactured" allegations that the couple drugged and sexually assaulted up to 1,000 women.The stunning turn of events comes a year and a half after the case against Grant Robicheaux, an orthopedic surgeon who appeared on the TV show The Online Dating Rituals of the American Male, and substitute teacher Cerissa Riley exploded into the headlines.At the time, Orange County's then-district attorney, Tony Rackauckas, claimed the pair lured women to their Newport Beach home, knocked them unconscious, and raped them.At a press conference in September 2018, he said investigators had seized "hundreds" of incriminating videos from the couple's phones. Asked whether the number could be as a high as a thousand, Rackauckas said, "I think so."A few months later, though, Rackauckas was out of office, replaced by current DA Todd Spitzer, who eventually ordered a review of the evidence. He says he was appalled by what he found."The prior District Attorney and his chief of staff manufactured this case and repeatedly misstated the evidence to lead the public and vulnerable women to believe that these two individuals plied up to 1,000 women with drugs and alcohol in order to sexually assault them—and videotape the assaults," Spitzer said in a blistering statement."As a result of the complete case review I ordered beginning in July, we now know that there was not a single video or photograph depicting an unconscious or incapacitated woman being sexually assaulted."Rackauckas has not responded to his former rival's allegations. But Robicheaux's attorney praised the reversal."I don't want to be overly dramatic or hyperbolic, but the mere filing of this case has destroyed irreparably two lives," defense lawyer Philip Cohen told reporters."He has become persona non grata with an entire city, an entire state—and I don't want to be exaggerating—but probably an entire country."Robicheaux, 39, and Riley, 32, insisted from the start that all their liaisons were consensual. They were swingers, their attorneys argued, and the so-called victims were willing participants.They claimed Rackauckas inflated the allegations, hoping that media attention would buoy his re-election effort. And last June, unsealed transcripts of a deposition showed the ex-prosecutor thought the publicity would help him.Spitzer said that's when he assembled a team to re-evaluate the case. "A team of prosecutors with a combined 175 years of experience determined there is no provable evidence that Robicheaux and Riley committed any sexual offense," he said in a press release.The charges that will be dropped include kidnapping and rape; Robicheaux and Riley would have faced up to life in prison if convicted.At least some of the women who accused Robicheaux and Riley maintain they were assaulted.Michael Fell, an attorney for one of them, told the Los Angeles Times the decision is a betrayal of his client."For somebody to report, for them to go through what she had to go through with the police, for the district attorney's office to file criminal charges, for her to have to be patient the last two years while the case is being prosecuted, only for it to be dropped—she's going to be devastated," Fell said.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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| A plane had to turn around and fly 1,000 miles back home because a man on board claimed to have caught the Wuhan coronavirus Posted: 05 Feb 2020 09:10 AM PST  James Potok, 28, announced mid-flight on Monday that he had contracted the deadly virus. A medical team determined he had made it up.
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| A Catholic Polish midwife who delivered 3,000 babies at Auschwitz remembered 75 years after camp's liberation Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:11 AM PST  An estimated 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz. That included newborns who were killed by drowning or lethal injection.
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| Mexican farmers take over dams to stop water payments to US Posted: 05 Feb 2020 11:08 AM PST ![Mexican farmers take over dams to stop water payments to US]( "Mexican farmers take over dams to stop water payments to US") A dispute over water payments to the United States widened in Mexico Wednesday, after President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico has to pay its debts but angry farmers pushed back National Guard troops guarding a dam. Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico and the United States are supposed to allow cross-border flows of water to each other, but Mexico has fallen badly behind and now has to quickly catch up on payments.
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| Modi vows 'grand' Hindu temple at flashpoint site Posted: 04 Feb 2020 04:18 PM PST  The construction of a grand Hindu temple at holy site bitterly contested with Muslims moved a step closer Wednesday when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said a trust had been finalised to oversee the project. The razing of a mosque at Ayodhya by a huge crowd of Hindu zealots almost 30 years ago unleashed some of the country's worst sectarian violence since independence, with more than 2,000 people killed. After a decades-long legal battle, India's highest court ruled in November that the land in northern India should be managed by a trust to oversee the construction of a temple.
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| Donald Trump celebrates impeachment acquittal by taunting Democrats with video Posted: 05 Feb 2020 04:58 PM PST  President Donald Trump celebrated his acquittal on two articles of impeachment by taunting Democrats with a video on Twitter.
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| The Kurdish Tragedy: What America Can Learn From Its Foreign Policy Fumbles in Iraq Posted: 05 Feb 2020 10:12 AM PST  As bitter of a pill it is to swallow in watching a good and reliable partner fall under the thumb of hostile actors, policymakers and foreign policy experts can avoid future calamities by developing realistic and deliberative long-term strategies that support America's diplomats and armed forces serving as the instruments of that policy.
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| China virus toll jumps past 500 as more cases found on cruise ship off Japan Posted: 05 Feb 2020 05:14 PM PST |
| Quarantined Wuhan residents shout words of support out of their high-rise apartment windows Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:19 PM PST  Last week, a video emerged on Reddit showing residents in Wuhan shouting words of support to each other out of their apartment windows.
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| 4 children — one only 2 years old — were lost in an Alaskan blizzard for more than 27 hours but were miraculously found alive Posted: 05 Feb 2020 07:02 AM PST  The children were found alive 18 miles from their home in Alaska. They had gone on a snowmobile ride, but got stuck in a blizzard.
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| Kansas no longer fighting claims of wrongly convicted man Posted: 04 Feb 2020 02:32 PM PST  Kansas is dropping its fight against the compensation claim from a man who spent 23 years in prison for a double homicide before a judge vacated convictions that were secured even though no physical evidence or motive tied him to the crimes, the state's attorney general said Tuesday. Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in an Associated Press interview that his office made the decision after reviewing 900 pages of documents from Lamonte McIntyre's attorney that had not been provided to it previously. Schmidt said his office will work with McIntyre's attorney on a settlement to present to a Shawnee County District Court judge.
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| Wuhan Doctor Who Was Punished for Warning of Coronavirus Outbreak Has Been Infected Posted: 04 Feb 2020 11:51 AM PST  A doctor from Wuhan, China, who was punished by authorities for warning medical school classmates of the outbreak of the then-unknown coronavirus, is himself now infected with the virus.Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist, told CNN from his intensive-care hospital bed that he had contracted the virus after coming into contact with an infected patient at Wuhan Central Hospital on January 10. Li developed a fever and coughing, and could only communicate with CNN via text message due to severe breathing problems.On December 30, Li texted his classmates that the Wuhan hospital had seen several cases of a SARS-like illness in patients that had visited a seafood market in the city. While he told his friends to warn family privately, screenshots of his texts went viral in China hours later.While Wuhan authorities announced the outbreak on December 31, Li was reprimanded by police on January 3 for "spreading rumors online" and "severely disrupting social order.""My family would worry sick about me, if I lose my freedom for a few days," Li said. "There was nothing I could do. [Everything] has to adhere to the official line."There are now 20,438 cases of the Wuhan coronavirus in mainland China, with close to 200 confirmed cases in other nations. China has reported 425 deaths from the virus, while one death was reported in the Philippines.China has accused the U.S. of "spreading fear" in the wake of the outbreak, which has surpassed the 2003 SARS outbreak in scope. The Trump administration on Friday announced a series of measures to prevent foreign citizens who have recently visited China from entering the U.S.
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| Hundreds of Salvadorans deported by US were killed or abused, report reveals Posted: 04 Feb 2020 11:30 PM PST  Human Rights Watch says 138 Salvadorans were murdered from 2013 to 2019 and 70 others were abused or sexually assaulted * Fleeing a hell the US helped createAt least 200 Salvadoran migrants and asylum seekers have been killed, raped or tortured after being deported back to El Salvador by the United States government which is turning a blind eye to widely known dangers, a new investigation reveals.Human Rights Watch has documented 138 deported Salvadorans murdered by gang members, police, soldiers, death squads and ex-partners between 2013 and 2019. The majority were killed within two years of deportation by the same perpetrators they had tried to escape by seeking safety in the US.The report, Deported to Danger: United States deportation policies expose Salvadorans to death and abuse, also identifies more than 70 others who were subjected to beatings, sexual assault and extortion – usually at the hand of gangs – or who went missing after being returned.El Salvador, the most densely populated country in Central America with just over 6 million citizens, has one of the world's highest rates of homicide and sexual violence. In addition, almost 11,000 people were registered missing during the last decade - more than the number of people who disappeared during the 1979-1992 civil war.Authorities are largely ineffective in protecting the population from this violence, which is often perpetrated by street gangs which have 60,000 or so members across the country.Extrajudicial executions, sexual assaults, enforced disappearances and torture have also been perpetrated by state security forces with almost total impunity.Amid widespread terror and impunity, the number of Salvadorans fleeing has soared, with asylum applicants in the US increasing by almost 1,000% in five years to 60,000 in 2017, according to UN figures.The dire security situation is well documented, but despite this, the US continues to deport Salvadorans to face abuse and even death, according to HRW.For instance, 17-year-old Javier escaped gang recruitment in 2010 and sought asylum in the US where his mother Jennifer had already fled. His asylum application was rejected, and Javier was deported in early 2017, aged 23. Four months later he was killed by members of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 gang."The United States has to have known this was happening because the cases were publicly reported and more importantly because Salvadorans make it clear in asylum applications that this is their reality. But this reality is ignored or not believed by US authorities," said Elizabeth Kennedy, co-author of the report.International law prohibits the US from returning anyone to a country where they face serious risks to their lives or safety.About three-quarters of the 1.2 million Salvadorans living in the US without citizenship lack papers or hold a temporary legal status making them vulnerable to deportation. Between 2014 and 2018, the US deported 111,000 Salvadorans, and granted asylum to just 18.2% of applicants – the lowest rate in the region.Deportations – and violence against deportees – is not a new phenomenon. But the approval of asylum claims plummeted since the Trump administration rolled out a series of hostile policies including Remain in Mexico – officially known as Migration Protection Protocols – and imposed tight restrictions on gender-based and gang-related grounds for asylum."The attack on asylum is unique in the Trump administration, which has put even more Salvadorans – and others – at risk of deportation, and made it much less likely that they are able to even present their case to get effective protection," said Kennedy.HRW researchers tracked and verified hundreds of press reports, and conducted 150 interviews with deportees, surviving family members, government and security officials, and US immigration attorneys.The actual number of killings and attacks is probably significantly higher than reported as most crimes in El Salvador go unreported, state violence are covered up, and it's too dangerous for journalists to enter some neighbourhoods.Alison Parker, managing director of HRW's US programme and co-author of the report, said: "Salvadorans are facing murder, rape and other violence after deportation in shockingly high numbers, while the US government narrows Salvadorans' access to asylum and turns a blind eye to the deadly results of its callous policies."
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| Trump's done with impeachment. Here are his next legal challenges. Posted: 05 Feb 2020 04:42 PM PST  Election year is packed with landmines that can cause embarrassing headlines, adverse legal rulings and other politically risky decisions for Trump.
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| The Surprising Threat to America (No, Not Russia, China or Iran) Posted: 03 Feb 2020 09:00 PM PST  It comes from within.
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| CNN’s Van Jones worries Trump’s address will win over black voters Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:24 PM PST  CNN analyst Van Jones warned fellow Democrats on Tuesday that Trump's criminal justice reform policies and prioritization of funding for historically black colleges could win over black voters.
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| 'He cannot speak or look after himself': A 17-year-old with cerebral palsy died after being left alone for 6 days while Chinese authorities quarantined his father over coronavirus fears Posted: 04 Feb 2020 09:39 AM PST  Chinese authorities say they are investigating Yan Cheng's death. So far, two local officials have lost their jobs.
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| Baby tests positive for China virus just 30 hours after birth Posted: 05 Feb 2020 03:46 AM PST  A baby in China's epidemic-hit Wuhan city has been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus just 30 hours after being born, Chinese state media reported Wednesday. The official Xinhua news agency reported Monday that a baby born last week to an infected mother had tested negative. The disease is believed to have emerged in December in a Wuhan market that sold wild animals, and spread rapidly as people travelled for the Lunar New Year holiday in January.
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| Man charged with breaking into nursing home, killing patient Posted: 04 Feb 2020 12:55 PM PST  William Hawkins, 47, is charged with first-degree murder for the Jan. 5 slaying of Robert Morell, who was suffocated with a pillow as he slept by an intruder at the Tiffany Hall Nursing & Rehab Center in Port St. Lucie. According to a redacted police arrest report, Hawkins quickly became the prime suspect because he was on Morell's visitor list and matched the description of the man employees saw fleeing the room after being spotted on top of Morell shortly after midnight. Detectives learned that Morell's 57-year-old girlfriend of 15 years had called the nursing home hours before the slaying, telling employees to not let Hawkins into the home because she feared he would hurt Morell.
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| The controversial YouTuber who faked his girlfriend's death has been arrested on a charge of assault with a weapon Posted: 04 Feb 2020 03:10 PM PST  Jason Ethier, also known as ImJayStation, is expected to appear in court next month. He recently gained attention for faking his girlfriend's death.
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| Joe Biden flopped in Iowa. And so did the Democratic party's reputation Posted: 04 Feb 2020 12:00 AM PST  The apparent malfunctioning of a new app, meant to transmit vote totals, threw the Iowa caucus in disarray. And this benefited some more than others If you're the type of person who thinks the Democratic party is a creaking, incompetent entity whose leadership needs overthrowing, the Iowa caucuses certainly validated your point of view. None of us knew who would win, but we had at least expected a result. We didn't get one, at least not on caucus night. State Democratic party officials announced that due to "quality control" issues, release of the result would be indefinitely delayed. On a conference call with representatives of the candidates, party officials hung up the phone when asked when the totals would be released.So what do we know? Well, one thing we can say confidently is that "frontrunner" Joe Biden flopped. There were places where Biden didn't even meet the 15% threshold needed to maintain viability from the first round to the second round – at one caucus site, the attorney general of Iowa had to switch from Biden to Buttigieg when Biden was disqualified. It explains why Biden's surrogate John Kerry was heard on the phone the other day asking whether it would be possible for him to enter the race at the last minute to save the Democratic party from being conquered by Sanders.Internal numbers released by the Sanders campaign, showing results from 40% of caucus sites, showed Sanders winning with approximately 30% of the vote, Pete Buttigieg coming in second with 25%, Elizabeth Warren third with 21%, and Joe Biden a very distant fourth with 12%. If those numbers match the ultimate totals, they are great for Sanders and absolutely horrific for Biden. Sanders will have kicked the crap out of the frontrunner, Barack Obama's former vice-president and the man most favored to win the nomination. It would be a stunning upset.But Biden caught a lucky break. With the party not releasing the actual result, his campaign sent a letter demanding that the result be suppressed until such time as the "quality control issues" were resolved. If it takes long enough to get the official count, Biden may hope that Iowa is old news, or that the issues surrounding the caucus are discussed far more than the actual result. (That's one reason we need to make sure we don't get bogged down too much in talking about the procedural issues rather than the actual outcome.)So what went wrong? It's still not quite clear, though there were reports that a special app used to transmit vote totals had malfunctioned. Questions were immediately raised about who built the app and how it had been deployed. Ironically, it was introduced in order to "get results out to the public quicker" and had been "hastily put together" over the last two months. There had been security concerns from the start, and when NPR questioned the state party chairman, he "declined to provide more details about which company or companies designed the app, or about what specific measures have been put in place to guarantee the system's security". Ironically, it was apparently developed by a firm literally called "Shadow", partly funded by the Pete Buttigieg campaign.If you're a Sanders supporter, you have reason to be suspicious. We had already seen the Des Moines Register suppress the results of its "gold standard" poll on the eve of the election, after a complaint from Buttigieg. And with 0% of caucus results in, Buttigieg declared himself "victorious", praising the "incredible result" and saying Iowa had "shocked the nation". The only thing that had shocked the nation at this point was Iowa's total inability to perform the relatively simple task of counting people's votes. But Buttigieg, good McKinseyite that he is, was getting a head start on deploying the PR spin.For Sanders supporters, being denied a rightful victory in Iowa gives feelings of déjà vu. In 2016, Sanders may well have won Iowa, possibly by a lot, but the state party did not release the vote totals. Instead, it only released delegate numbers, which showed Bernie narrowly losing the state "701-697" to Hillary Clinton. The delegate numbers are calculated strangely (this time around, in one precinct, Sanders beat Buttigieg 111 votes to 47 votes in the "first alignment" but both ended up with two delegates). If the vote totals had been known in 2016, it might have been clear Bernie had won. With his New Hampshire victory shortly after, Clinton would have been seen as losing the race, and the whole election might have turned out differently. That's why, this time around, the Sanders campaign ensured that the vote totals would be released (and took a count of its own for good measure). This time, if he wins, everyone will know … eventually.Despite the chaos, certain aspects of the Iowa caucus were inspiring. For the first time, a caucus was held in a mosque, and hundreds of Muslims and non-Muslims came together to vote for Bernie. In the first caucus of the day, immigrant pork plant workers, whose evening shifts prevented them from joining the main event, came out early to line up for Bernie. Internationally based Iowans caucused around the world, including in Scotland and Tblisi, Georgia. The Iowa caucus might seem like a good illustration of the dysfunction in American democracy, but some of its participatory elements are beautiful. It would be a shame if the lively, communal caucus system disappeared entirely in favor of secret ballots in voting booths, as some were already recommending as the vote-counting mess unfolded.If the Sanders team's count is close to accurate (bear in mind, it was only 40% of caucus sites), he had the night he needed to have. The progressive vote is still being split between Sanders and Warren, but at least Biden hasn't managed to capitalize on that so far. The good news for Sanders is that, even if Buttigieg does unexpectedly well, Mayor Pete is destined to struggle as the campaign moves toward more racially diverse states. But all of the results remain speculative, since the Iowa Democratic party seemed determined to prove that we need a political revolution that overthrows the party establishment. * Nathan Robinson is a Guardian US columnist. He is the editor of Current Affairs
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| Republicans Hate Surveillance on Trump but Sound Like They’ll Renew the PATRIOT Act Posted: 05 Feb 2020 11:43 AM PST  If Republicans have any appetite for reining in domestic surveillance that they describe as a massive violation of the civil liberties of Donald Trump's associates, it wasn't on display when FBI Director Christopher Wray made his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the damning Justice Department inspector general's report into the Trump-Russia investigation. That's a real issue in light of next month's expiration of several intrusive surveillance measures contained in the 2001 PATRIOT Act's Section 215. One of those measures, the business records provision, permits broad FBI collection of records from service providers about an investigative target without that target ever knowing about it. But few Republicans at Wednesday's hearing who pronounced themselves offended by FBI surveillance abuses in the Trump-Russia probe, known as Crossfire Hurricane, told Wray that they will cost him Section 215. It was reminiscent of how Trump and House intelligence committee Republicans spent 2017 railing against surveillance on Trump's allies before reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's single most expansive provision in January 2018.Wray, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, was in for rough treatment from the panel's Republican members. Hanging over his head was Inspector General Michael Horowitz's findings that the FBI misrepresented information to the secret surveillance court relevant to continuing its surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But Wray had a script and he stuck to it. He refused to characterize any aspect of Horowitz's investigation when legislators of both parties attempted soliciting a soundbite that could help or hurt Trump. Instead, he reiterated variations on a theme: Horowitz's report "described conduct that is unacceptable and unrepresentative of the FBI as an institution." Several of the panel's Republicans, having read Horowitz describe FBI officials misrepresenting their basis for continuing surveillance before a court that almost always hears exclusively from the government, found that frustrating. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) decried the FBI's "systemic issues." Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) referenced the FISA Court's Judge Rosemary Collyer, who said the Horowitz report "calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable." More bluntly, California's Tom McClintock told Wray, "I don't trust your agency anymore."But that lack of trust ends where the PATRIOT Act begins. The committee's ranking Republican, Rep. Doug Collins (GA), said "we must reauthorize" the expiring PATRIOT provisions, even as Collins was a rare Republican who contextualized the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as a congressional response to the intelligence agencies' unconstitutional surveillance of peaceful protesters and others. Wray took Collins' opening to agree that the PATRIOT provisions were "not related" to the Carter Page case. That's true. But it overlooks Judge Collyer's broader point about how the Page case indicts the FBI's trustworthiness in its other, voluminous surveillance applications to her court. And FISA court-authorized surveillance isn't the outer limit of the FBI's surveillance powers. In October, it was revealed that the court found the FBI's warrantless searches for Americans' data captured in National Security Agency dragnets were so massively overbroad as to threaten constitutional freedoms.Collins, to his credit, persisted in asking Wray if there needed to be a "macro-level" examination of FISA. But Wray brushed that off. The director said he was "leery of any kind of change that would have any unintended consequences."That was about it for most Republicans on the committee. They wanted instead for Wray to commit to firing FBI officials, often denounced by Trump, involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, most of whom have already departed the bureau. "I hope you've considered there might be criminal culpability," Biggs told Wray. "A lot of people in my district have totally lost confidence" in the FBI, said Arizona's Debbie Lesko, who further suggested that that "maybe you [could] make it public" when agents involved in the Russia investigation get disciplined.A partial exception came from Armstrong, who noted that "FISA reauthorization" was coming up, as did Jim Jordan (R-OH), but Jordan quickly veered away from endorsing PATRIOT Act expirations. A more substantial exception came from Virginia Republican Ben Cline, who pointed to the March PATRIOT expirations and said, "It is paramount that we ensure American civil liberties and due process are in no way inhibited."Wray told Cline that returning to the higher, pre-PATRIOT Act standards, which demanded that the FBI possess specific, articulable facts that domestic surveillance targets were agents of a foreign power, "would be a sad day for America."Civil libertarians expressed their own frustration that legislators focused their ire on the small cohort of Americans tied to Trump whose liberties were jeopardized while ignoring the untold millions of Americans who for a generation have lived with their privacy at risk from their own security apparatus."Ranking Member Collins asked FBI Director Wray whether people's civil liberties are now protected under FISA. As any civil liberties advocate will tell you, the answer is an emphatic 'no,'" said Sean Vitka, counsel for digital-rights group Demand Progress. "The DOJ's Inspector General report did reveal disturbing issues that need to be resolved, but Congress, and in particular the House Judiciary Committee, is wrong to remember Carter Page but forget the millions of innocent people who have been wrongfully spied on under this and previous administrations."Vitka backs a bipartisan bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) that puts substantial restrictions on information the FBI can collect and use under Section 215 and expands safeguards on related surveillance authorities. "In fact, the House Judiciary Committee should make it clear to surveillance hawks that nothing weaker than the Safeguarding Americans' Private Records Act will advance to the floor under its watch," he said. Jake Laperruque, of the Project on Government Oversight, said "concerns about the Carter Page FISA warrants" aided momentum for surveillance reform like the Wyden bill. "If the members talking about Crossfire Hurricane now want their complaints to be taken seriously," Laperruque said, "this is the type of reform legislation they'll need to support."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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| Moscow's Su-35 Fighter Turned Out Better Than Russia's Military Ever Expected Posted: 04 Feb 2020 10:00 PM PST  And that has implications for the Su-57.
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| What is causing the mysterious giant 'ice rings' in Siberia? Posted: 05 Feb 2020 11:05 AM PST  Strange ice rings in Siberia's Lake Baikal have puzzled scientists for decades, but now the mystery apparently has been solved.
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| 'Grey death': Louisiana police say powerful opiod can kill on contact Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:54 PM PST  Police in Louisiana have issued a warning over 'grey death' - a powerful drug combination that can reportedly cause severe illness and even death through skin contact alone.David Spencer, a spokesperson for St Mary Parish Sheriff's Office near New Orleans, said: "The public recognises a lot of the drugs that we deal with. This is a new one."
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| More than 3,700 people are trapped on a cruise ship near Japan after 10 of them tested positive for the coronavirus. These are the steps Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Line are taking to protect passengers from it. Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:25 AM PST  Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International, and Norwegian Cruise Line have taken a number of steps in response to the Wuhan coronavirus.
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| Why This Week Could Be Critical for Understanding How Bad the Coronavirus Outbreak Will Get Posted: 04 Feb 2020 02:34 AM PST  There are around 50 million people on lockdown in China, and experts say that the impact of containment may be visible this week
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| Tennessee inmate indicted in death of prisons administrator Posted: 04 Feb 2020 10:02 AM PST  A Tennessee inmate accused of killing a corrections administrator and escaping prison on a tractor has been indicted on charges including premeditated murder and rape. Watson, 44, was on regular lawn care duties at West Tennessee State Penitentiary near Henning when he sexually assaulted and killed corrections administrator Debra Johnson, 64, at her home on the prison grounds that morning, authorities said.
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| Thais spike China-led plan to dredge Mekong river Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:41 AM PST  Thailand has spiked Chinese-led plans to open up a key stretch of the Mekong river, in a rare victory for activists fighting to preserve Southeast Asia's most important waterway. Beijing has long wanted to blast 97 kilometres (60 miles) of rocks and dredge the riverbed in northern Thailand to open up a passage for massive cargo ships. The vision is to create a river trade link from China's Yunnan province thousands of kilometres south through the Mekong countries -- Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
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| Biden Warns Party that Their Eventual Nominee ‘Will Have to Carry the Label’ of Bernie’s Socialism Posted: 05 Feb 2020 10:57 AM PST  Former vice president Joe Biden slammed his primary opponent Bernie Sanders on Wednesday, saying that the nominee "will have to carry the label" of democratic socialism if Sanders remains in contention.Biden, who walked back criticism of Sanders last week for not being "a registered Democrat," warned supporters that Republicans will tar the party with the socialist label due to Sanders's influence."Donald Trump is desperate to pin the socialist label of socialist, socialist, socialist, on our party," Biden said. "We can't let him do that."News broke Tuesday that South Carolina Republicans planned to boost Sanders — who trails Biden by five points — in the upcoming state primary because they view him as the weakest opponent to face Donald Trump.Biden also admitted to voters in New Hampshire Wednesday that "we took a gut punch in Iowa," with results showing that the former vice president likely finished outside the top-three in the caucuses."I am not going to sugarcoat it," Biden told the crowd. "We took a gut punch in Iowa. The whole process took a gut punch. But, look, this isn't the first time in my life I've been knocked down."But Biden defended himself against those trying to "write off this campaign," saying "I'm not going anywhere.""I'm counting on New Hampshire," he added. "We're going to come back." On Tuesday, Biden told voters at a separate event "I need your help."As of Wednesday afternoon, with 71 percent of results reported, Biden sat in fourth place with 15.4 percent of the vote and no delegates.The Biden campaign sent a letter to the Iowa Democratic Party late Monday night asking that they be detailed on the failure to collect caucus results "before any results are released."
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| State of the Union: Trump asks nation for second term amid impeachment trial Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:28 PM PST  Trump uses annual speech to brag about 'the great American comeback' on a number of fronts, domestic and foreignAn emboldened Donald Trump bragged about the "great American comeback" in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, in a speech resembling a prolonged televised election advert that skirted around the inconvenient truth that he remained in the final throes of his impeachment trial.Only the third president to be impeached in US history, Trump addressed a joint chamber of Congress with still a day to go before he is almost certainly acquitted by Republican loyalists in the US Senate. Despite the ignominy of that position, he sounded remarkably upbeat, at times euphoric, in contrast with the "American carnage" he invoked at his inauguration three years ago."In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline and we have rejected the downsizing of America's destiny," Trump began. "We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never going back!"This is not the first time a president has delivered a State of the Union speech in the midst of impeachment. Bill Clinton was still three weeks away from acquittal for lying in the Monica Lewinsky scandal when he gave his State of the Union in 1999.But it was historically unique in that an impeached president, still locked in a trial, also faces a bid for re-election now only nine months away. As such it was no surprise that the theme of the speech – the "great American comeback" – bore all the qualities of an election jingle.He delivered his speech just feet away from the Democratic leaders who inflicted on him the trial that he has tried so hard to dismiss as a "witch-hunt".His nemesis, Nancy Pelosi, sat uncomfortably close at his back. For a second year running she and all her Democratic women peers dressed all in white in homage to the suffragettes in part as an understated dig at a president who has evaded multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.As Trump came up to the podium, Pelosi reached out to shake his hand. In a moment that will go down in the annals of history, the president declined to return the speaker's gesture.Some of the women present at that coordinated display last year were notably missing on Tuesday night. Among seven Democrats who boycotted the proceedings were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said she didn't want to "normalize Trump's lawless conduct & subversion of the Constitution".Her fellow member of the four-woman "Squad" of liberal Democrats, Ayanna Pressley, also skipped what she called a "sham" State of the Union given by a president who is "not legitimate".Trump's advisers and senior Republicans have been pleading with him to take the high ground and focus on positives rather than unloading on his Democratic rivals in the joint chamber of Congress before him. As the White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway, put it: "Success is the best revenge.".No matter how on-message Trump manages to remain, he was unable to resist taking a poke at his Democratic rivals vying to challenge him in November. With an eye to Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who narrowly came second to Pete Buttigieg in the early results out of Iowa, Trump lambasted his proposal to introduce universal healthcare through Medicare for All."We will never let socialism destroy American healthcare," Trump pronounced, adding that "we will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions". In fact, Trump has backed numerous Republican attempts to pass legislation that would scrap protection for pre-existing conditions.Among the positives that Trump highlighted is the economy with unemployment standing at 3.5% – the lowest in more than 50 years. Trump will be buoyed by the latest Gallup poll that puts his approval rating at its highest yet – 49%. Against that, there is the 51% who expressed disapproval, the economic dark clouds of the coronavirus crisis, widespread censure of his handling of the Middle East, and the disdain he showed for the constitutional limits of his power in seeking to coerce Ukraine to dish dirt on a political rival that led to impeachment.There is also the matter of the wall on the Mexican border, Trump's personal obsession that dominated his State of the Union last year. This year he might be less inclined to focus on the subject, given its halting progress and the fact that a section of it blew over last month in high winds.
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| The Soviet Union Loved These Secret Weapons (And So Did The CIA) Posted: 04 Feb 2020 09:30 PM PST  But getting their hands on them was not so easy.
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| Ocean currents are speeding up faster than scientists predicted Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:01 PM PST  Global ocean currents are speeding up more rapidly than scientists had anticipated — in part due to climate change, per a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances.The trend is "much greater than the natural variability," the paper states. Due largely to faster surface winds, 76 percent of the top 2,000 meters of Earth's oceans show an increase in intensity of circulation, based on data from the past two decades.Surging winds are a predicted symptom of climate change, but such an increase wasn't expected to happen until closer to the end of the century, reports The Washington Post. "This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show," Michael McPhaden, an author of the paper and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher, told the Post.Accelerated ocean currents may affect jet streams, weather patterns, and the amount of heat stored in the ocean's depths, reports Science magazine.While the paper presents a "really huge increase" in acceleration, more research is needed to be certain the quickening is due to climate change, Susan Wijffels, oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told Science magazine. "This paper does highlight how ill prepared we are to truly diagnose what's going on."The paper calls for a more thorough monitoring of global ocean circulation to bring more clarity.More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think
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| Republicans slam president while defending their expected acquittal of Trump at his Senate trial Posted: 04 Feb 2020 09:26 AM PST  Leading Republicans took to the talk show circuit Sunday to defend their expected acquittal of President Trump at his Senate trial this week — despite offering sharp criticism of his role in the Ukraine scandal.
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