| Trump storms New Hampshire on eve of primary looking to 'shake up the Dems' Posted: 10 Feb 2020 05:21 PM PST  President Trump held a campaign rally Monday in Manchester, where he encouraged his supporters to cast votes for the "weakest candidate" in the Democratic field in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
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| 'Sanctuary' battle heats up as Trump kicks New Yorkers from program for expedited entry Posted: 10 Feb 2020 05:33 PM PST  The Trump administration's war on so-called sanctuary cities and states is being taken to a new level, with a court battle looming in New York over a rule that may keep hundreds of thousands of residents from enrolling in a program meant to speed reentry in the country from abroad.
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| Jury being chosen for trial of man charged with killing 8 Posted: 10 Feb 2020 06:00 AM PST  Jury selection continues Tuesday in north Mississippi for the death penalty trial of a man accused of killing eight people on the other end of the state in May 2017. Willie Cory Godbolt, now 37, said "I'm sorry" while a reporter was recording him after the shootings in south Mississippi's Lincoln County. Jury selection started Monday at the DeSoto County Courthouse in Hernando, which is near Memphis, Tennessee.
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| More than two-thirds of migrants fleeing Central American region had family taken or killed Posted: 11 Feb 2020 09:06 AM PST  Study finds 42.5% interviewees leaving Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador reported the violent death of a relativeMore than two-thirds of the migrants fleeing Central America's northern triangle countries – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – experienced the murder, disappearance or kidnapping of a relative before their departure, according to a new study by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).The MSF study said 42.5% of interviewees reported the violent death of a relative over the previous two years, while 16.2% had a relative forcibly disappeared and 9.2% had a loved one kidnapped.The study – based on interviews with migrants and refugees at MSF medical facilities in Central America and Mexico – once again showed the despair driving migrants to abandon some the hemisphere's poorest, most violent and most corrupt countries."We're speaking of human beings, not numbers," Sergio Martín, MSF general coordinator in Mexico, said at the study's presentation on Tuesday. "In many cases, it's clear that migration is the only possible way out. Staying put is not an option."In 45.8% of the interviews, migrants said that "exposure to violent situations" was a key reason for leaving their home country. Of those fleeing due to violence, 36.4% had become internally displaced in their countries of origin, but were eventually forced to flee.The research was published at a time when the US border is becoming increasingly difficult to reach.Mexico has been launched a crackdown against people trying to cross its southern frontier and deployed its newly created national guard to dismantle large groups of migrants, while the Trump administration has made the asylum process practically impossible for most applicants.US officials are returning asylum seekers to dangerous Mexican border cities – where MSF has found many are kidnapped and preyed upon by drug cartels – under scheme known as migrant protection protocols to await their court cases. Some migrants are now being flown to Guatemala to apply for asylum in the impoverished Central American country."The aggressive migration policies adopted by the US and Mexico mean that more and more people are trapped in a vicious circle," the MSF report stated. "Patients describe an increase in the predatory violence perpetuated by criminal organisations operating along the migrant route."Meanwhile, violence against migrants transit Mexico is escalating, the study found: 39.2% of interviewees were assaulted in the country, while 27.3% were threatened or extorted – with the actual figures likely higher than the official statistics as victims tend not to report crimes committed against them.Nearly 6% of migrants reported witnessing a death during their time in Mexico, according to MSF. In 17.9% of those cases, it was a murder.Members of MSF teams have themselves witnessed kidnappings outside migrant shelters."The physical obstacles to entering the United States are taken for granted. But what surprises [migrants] … is the violence that they experience in Mexico," the report said."Coming from a country where violence is endemic, they decide to make the journey because they have no other option."Violence is just of a range of factors driving migration, and motives vary from region to region and country to country.A 2019 survey from Creative Associates International found violence was the main driver of migration for 38% of Salvadorans, 18% of Hondurans and 14% of Guatemalans. In Guatemala – the main source of migrants detained at the US border with Mexico – 71% of respondents cited "economic concerns" as their main motive.Climate change is increasingly being recognized as a driver of migration – especially from areas in Central America's "Dry Corridor" – as is political corruption."Over the last 20 years in Honduras, the poverty rate hasn't fallen beneath 60%," said Father Germán Calix, Honduras director of the Catholic Church's charitable arm Caritas."The lack of policies and actions in favor of the poor has been such that people have lost confidence that this situation can ever be reversed from Honduras."
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| WHO warns of 'very grave' global virus threat Posted: 11 Feb 2020 03:42 AM PST  The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that the novel coronavirus was a "very grave threat" for the planet as it hosted the first major conference on fighting the epidemic. "With 99 percent of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world," WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the start of the meeting. The virus, first identified in the city of Wuhan in central China on December 31, has killed more than 1,000 people, infected over 42,000 and reached some 25 countries.
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| 'I was scared to death': Patients jailed over unpaid medical debt in rural Kansas Posted: 10 Feb 2020 11:42 AM PST  At a time when healthcare policy dominates national debate, a county in Kansas is jailing individuals with medical debt.Judge David Casement is a magistrate judge in Coffeyville, Kansas, where the poverty rate is twice the national average. He presides over cases in which individuals with medical debt are brought to court to face the medical companies they owe. During the hearings, the debtors must make a case for their own poverty during what is known as a "debtors exam."
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| Manchin to Trump: I'm no Munchkin, and by the way, you're 'much heavier than me' Posted: 10 Feb 2020 12:35 PM PST  Sen. Joe Manchin and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg respond to taunts by President Trump in a similar way.
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| Airbus unveils 'blended wing body' plane design after secret flight tests Posted: 10 Feb 2020 07:13 PM PST |
| Police: Driver traveling 79 mph when Oklahoma students hit Posted: 11 Feb 2020 09:47 AM PST  A pickup truck was traveling 79 mph (127 kph) in a 25 mph (40 kph) zone when it struck members of a high school cross-country team on a sidewalk in suburban Oklahoma City, killing two and injuring the others, a police sergeant said Tuesday. A police report said the driver, Max Leroy Townsend, 57, was traveling at about 24 mph (39 kph) in Moore on Feb. 2 before accelerating, crossing two lanes of traffic onto the sidewalk, striking several parked vehicles and slamming into the students.
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| These 10 Women Are Changing the Way We Talk About Science Posted: 11 Feb 2020 02:39 PM PST |
| China's Communist Party is purging local officials as public anger mounts at coronavirus epidemic that has killed more than 1,000 Posted: 10 Feb 2020 10:53 PM PST  China has removed high-ranking officials in the Hubei province amid public outcry over the mounting death toll of the coronavirus outbreak.
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| Joe Biden continues to slip, while Bloomberg climbs to 2nd among black Democrats: poll Posted: 11 Feb 2020 08:38 AM PST  A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday had universally bad news for former Vice President Joe Biden, right as he heads into the New Hampshire primary. Nationally, the poll found, Biden dropped into second place at 17 percent, the new frontrunner being Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 25 percent.
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| Michelle Malkin Endorses Racist CPAC Rival Posted: 11 Feb 2020 02:14 AM PST  This week: * CPAC gets a racist rival, with help from Michelle Malkin * Fox News leak questions Sean Hannity's guest list * Check out this book! * Seth Rich conspiracy theorists get a big boostCPAC, but for white nationalists: Later this month, conservative operatives from all over the country will head to a hotel outside Washington for the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual mega-confab for all things Trump. But this time, CPAC will face a racist rival conference at an undisclosed location nearby: the "America First Political Action Conference," featuring two speakers who marched in the white supremacist Charlottesville rally in 2017. Ordinarily, a gathering this fringe wouldn't mean much for the right—except for the fact that Michelle Malkin, one of the most prominent conservative columnists in the country, is also speaking. Malkin's headlining role raises questions about how far racist ideas are infiltrating the mainstream right. The backstory here is that a particularly online section of the right has been riven for the past few months between "groypers"—the white nationalist activists and their fellow travelers—and more establishment conservative elements like Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA and the organizers of CPAC. Organized around white nationalist Nick Fuentes, the "groypers"—who take their name from an obese toad version of Pepe the Frog—started showing up at Turning Point events and shouting down speakers like Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). They claimed that Crenshaw and his allies aren't conservative enough, and many of their questions were aimed at questioning the United States' support for Israel, in an attempt to "red-pill" campus conservatives toward more extreme views.Malkin has gone all-in on the groypers, apparently because of her hardline stance on immigration. She joined the encrypted messaging app Telegram—their preferred social media platform—and even lost her speaker's bureau contract over it. Now Malkin, who had a headlining speech at CPAC just last year, is positioning the racist AFPAC variation as the real conservative conference. She'll appear at the event alongside Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, and Patrick Casey, the leader of a white nationalist group that rebranded after its internal chat logs leaked. Malkin's appearance at AFPAC raises the embarrassing possibility that plenty of CPAC attendees will head over to AFPAC on Friday night, linking the conservative movement's leading conference with white nationalists.Malkin has promoted AFPAC on Twitter and declared that, unlike CPAC, it would have no "swamp lobbyists lurking backstage." Malkin didn't respond to a request for comment. But her appearance at the white nationalist event suggests that the far-right, racist "groyper" ethos is getting more entrenched with conservatives. Want this in your inbox? sign up now!* * *Fox critiques its own Ukraine coverage: Even some of Fox News' own researchers do not believe the claims made by a number of Sean Hannity's most frequent guests, according to an internal Fox document I reported on last week. In a report from Fox's in-house research unit, a researcher blasted guests like John Solomon and Rudy Giuliani, accusing them of pushing a Ukrainian disinformation campaign.* * *Right Richter Reading Corner: If you like Right Richter and its coverage of marginal, bizarre Trumpland characters, you're going to love the new book Sinking in the Swamp. It's the latest from my colleagues Asawin Suebsaeng and Lachlan Markay, it's coming out on Tuesday, and it's filled with bizarre stories about what the Trump era means for our country. Check it out!* * *Seth Rich conspiracy theories flare anew: It's been a lean couple of years for Seth Rich conspiracy theorists. The people fixated on the 2016 murder of the Democratic National Committee staffer had their high point in 2017, when Hannity and a Fox reporter pushed the baseless idea that Hillary Clinton had Rich killed for leaking hacked Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. Hannity started losing advertisers, Rich's family sued Fox, and the channel ditched the story. Since then, the most prominent Rich conspiracy theorist has been vlogger Matt Couch—a guy with a sizable fringe following but not exactly a household name on the right. That all might be about to change now, though, after redacted emails obtained from the Department of Justice with the subject line "Seth Rich" were released earlier this month.While the emails are all brief and are just about people dismissing the idea that Rich was involved in the WikiLeaks email hack, they've been seized on by Rich conspiracy theorists. And they've made their way over to OAN, the cable network that Trump increasingly praises in an attempt to push Fox rightward. Last week, OAN ran an entire segment about the emails, with the headline proclaiming: "Attorney: FBI Had Been Lying About The Murder Of Seth Rich." The blast of cable news attention has reinvigorated Seth Rich conspiracy theorists, suggesting that the saga the Rich family has long asked speculators to end won't be stopping anytime soon. 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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| Nikola announces Badger electric pickup set to compete with Rivian and Tesla Posted: 11 Feb 2020 03:16 AM PST  On Monday, Nikola announced the launch of its Badger electric pickup truck, a model said to generate over 900hp and have a range of 600 miles on a single charge. Joining the ranks of Rivian, Tesla, and now GMC with the revival of the Hummer, Nikola will be launching its own rendition of the electric pickup truck. The Badger is a model "designed to target and exceed every electric or petrol pickup in its class" and handle whatever needs a construction company could have for it.
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| Coronavirus: More than 20 Americans test positive for deadly virus on cruise ship Posted: 10 Feb 2020 10:39 AM PST  Twenty four American passengers have been diagnosed with the coronavirus on-board a quarantined cruise ship in Japan.Nearly 3,700 passengers on the Diamond Princess luxury cruise liner have been held at the port of Yokohama after the first cases of the illness were reported on the ship earlier this month.
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| Israel ex-PM Olmert defiantly rallies behind Palestinian leader Posted: 11 Feb 2020 02:17 PM PST  Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday called Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas a partner for peace, defiantly rejecting efforts by Benjamin Netanyahu's government to sideline the veteran leader. Olmert, Netanyahu's centrist predecessor who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, met with Abbas in New York hours after the Palestinian leader went before the UN Security Council to denounce US President Donald Trump's Middle East plan.
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| Why Is America Still Storing Dozens Of Nuclear Weapons In Turkey? Posted: 11 Feb 2020 03:15 AM PST  Isn't it time to bring them home?
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| Man charged with 'unspeakable abuse' of Sarah Lawrence students for nearly 10 years Posted: 11 Feb 2020 11:04 AM PST  Lawrence Ray "subjected his victims to almost unspeakable abuse," the U.S. attorney said. At the core of his conduct "was his ability to psychologically control his victims."
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| Arkansas lawmaker calls for changes after police encounter Posted: 11 Feb 2020 01:50 PM PST  A black Arkansas lawmaker plans to introduce legislation next year aimed at changing police tactics after officers drew guns on her and another black politician who had called 911 to report that they were being harassed. Democratic state Rep. Vivian Flowers, from Pine Bluff, said the planned legislation would address the use of police body-cameras; police increasingly collecting data; penalties for filing false police reports; and creating limits to police use of force. At a news conference Monday, Flowers recalled the Feb. 3 incident outside of a Little Rock fundraiser for state House candidate Ryan Davis, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
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| 2 Russian spacecraft are trailing a US spy satellite and could create a 'dangerous situation in space' Posted: 10 Feb 2020 10:50 AM PST  A US satellite used to capture images of Earth is being followed by a pair of Russian satellites, the commander of the Space Force said.
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| Bloomberg jumps to 2nd among black Democrats, Biden falls, in new poll Posted: 11 Feb 2020 04:53 AM PST  A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday had universally bad news for former Vice President Joe Biden, right as he heads into the New Hampshire primaries. Nationally, the poll found, Biden dropped into second place at 17 percent, the new frontrunner being Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with 25 percent. Relative newcomer Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor who is significantly outspending everyone in the race, comes in third at 15 percent, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 14 percent.But losing his national lead isn't the worst news for Biden. After New Hampshire, where Biden has low exceptions, comes South Carolina, where Biden's strong support among African American voters was expected to keep him on top. According to the Quinnipiac poll, as Axios noted Tuesday, his black firewall is burning. Biden's support among black Democrats dropped to 27 percent in the new poll, from 51 percent in December. And it appears that much of that support shifted to Bloomberg, who jumped to 22 percent support among black voters, followed by Sanders (19 percent), Warren (8 percent), and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg (4 percent). All the Democrats beat President Trump in head-to-head matchups, but Bloomberg's 51-42 percent margin of victory was the largest.Oddsmakers now have Bloomberg in second place for the Democratic nomination, after Sanders, Axios reports.The sample size of black voters in the poll probably wasn't very large, though. Quinnipiac conducted its poll Feb. 5-9 among 1,519 registered voters, 665 of whom are Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. It has an overall margin of error of ±2.5 percentage points and a ±3.8 point margin of error for the Democrats and Democratic leaners.More stories from theweek.com WHO proposes new name for coronavirus Amy Klobuchar looks to Nevada caucuses with TV ad buy President Bloomberg?
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| China reports the most coronavirus deaths in one day as total surpasses 1,000; US confirms 13th case Posted: 11 Feb 2020 12:54 PM PST  The one-day death toll of 103 pushed the total past 1,000 and provided an ominous warning that the coronavirus epidemic was accelerating.
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| Texas Attorney General asks Supreme Court to repeal a California travel ban Posted: 11 Feb 2020 01:04 PM PST  The Texas attorney general has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a California law prohibiting state employees from using taxpayer-funded business trips to expos or conferences in Texas.
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| EU Won’t Budge on Open Borders, Switzerland’s Government Warns Posted: 11 Feb 2020 05:49 AM PST |
| Migrants raped and trafficked as U.S. and Mexico tighten borders, charity says Posted: 11 Feb 2020 09:45 AM PST  Central American migrants are being kidnapped, raped and trafficked in Mexico as they seek to enter the United States amid a migration crackdown, a medical charity said on Tuesday. In Mexico's Nuevo Laredo city - separated from the United States by the Rio Grande - almost 80% of migrants treated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the first nine months of 2019 said they had been victims of violence, including kidnapping. "They're treated as if they aren't really people," Sergio Martin, Mexico coordinator for MSF, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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| Trump’s Iran Man Met With a Former Terror Group’s Rep After Soleimani Strike Posted: 11 Feb 2020 04:12 PM PST  The Trump administration's top official overseeing Iran policy met with a representative of a controversial Iranian dissident group weeks after a U.S. strike killed Iran's top military leader.Brian Hook, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. Special Representative for Iran, met on January 31 with Robert G. Joseph, a former senior State official who now represents the National Council of Resistance of Iran, according to a foreign agent filing that Joseph submitted to the Justice Department this week. The NCRI is the political arm of the People's Mujahedin of Iran—commonly known by Farsi acronym, MEK—a group that seeks regime change in Iran and was on the U.S. government's official list of foreign terrorist organizations until 2012.Joseph's meeting with Hook came just a few weeks after a U.S. airstrike killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top military commander. The MEK had long seen Soleimani as one of Iran's foremost villains. In a blog post hailing his death, the NCRI described him as "an infamous symbol of the regime's intimidation and murder." Rudy Giuliani Calls Former Iranian Terrorists 'My People'Soleimani was "directly responsible for killing some of my MEK people," Rudy Giuliani, a long-time ally of the group, told The Daily Beast in January. "We don't like him very much."Yet, in the wake of that strike, Pompeo circulated a memo barring American officials from meeting with representatives of the MEK, citing its controversial history—it allegedly played a role in the assassination of three U.S. Army officers and three more civilian contractors—and poor public standing in Iran.Neither Hook nor the State Department press office responded to requests for additional information on the meeting. Joseph also did not respond to a request for comment.The meeting with Hook was one of three of U.S. government contacts reported in Joseph's semi-annual filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, but the only one that took place after the Soleimani strike. Joseph also reported meeting with Hook in September, and the following month with Tim Morrison, a former White House National Security Council official who oversaw policy in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Morrison declined to comment on the meeting.Joseph's FARA filing does not include any details on what was discussed at each of those meetings. In general, he told the Justice Department, he worked to "provide advice to NCRI officials on a range of issues, including: how best to counter false narratives about NCRI; how to improve the reach and effectiveness of the NCRI work on Iran's sponsorship ofterrorism, regional aggression and its nuclear program; and how to advance the cause of building a free and democratic Iran."'OK, Now What?': Inside Team Trump's Scramble to Sell the Soleimani Hit to AmericaJoseph also "provid[ed] advice to strengthen the protection and security of former Iranian refugee residents from the former U.S. military camp at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, Iraq, who are now residing outside Tirana, Albania," according to his Justice Department filing.The NCRI is headquartered in Paris and staffed by Iranian expatriates and exiles, many of whom have faced brutal treatment by the Iranian regime. The group's website describes it as the MEK's "umbrella coalition."The MEK has long worked to ingratiate itself with key U.S. policymakers, chiefly foreign policy hawks who share a distrust of the Iranian regime. It has forged ties with a number of officials who have served in or advised the Trump administration, including Giuliani and former National Security Advisor John Bolton.Pompeo himself spoke at an event that included MEK representatives last year. But in January, after Soleimani was killed, he cautioned diplomats against engaging with either the MEK or the NCRI. "Direct U.S. government engagement with these groups could prove counterproductive to our policy goal of seeking a comprehensive deal with the Iranian regime that addresses its destabilizing behavior," Pompeo wrote in a memo sent to every U.S. embassy.Days later, State appeared to walk back those comments. It sent a cable to U.S. diplomats, as reported by The Daily Beast at the time, that did not mention the MEK or the NCRI by name, but left the door open to engagement with the groups. It simply advised U.S. officials to "use good judgement" in taking such meetings."Posts should welcome opportunities to meet with and learn from members of the Iranian diaspora community," advised the cable, which explicitly superseded Pompeo's memo. "After 40 years of repression and violence at the hands of the Ayatollahs, the Iranian people's pride in their history has not diminished nor has their resolve to celebrate it in the face of the Islamic republic's abuses."Meet the General Who Ran Soleimani's Spies, Guns and AssassinsJoseph is a longtime NCRI ally, and signed up to lobby directly for the group in January 2019. He told DOJ at the time that he planned to "interact with Albanian officials, U.S. Embassy, State Department staff, White House, and any other U.S. personnel as required, as well as UN officials." He's being paid $15,000 per month for his services.Prior to his private sector work, Joseph oversaw nuclear nonproliferation and arms control policies as a senior official in George W. Bush's State Department. He took a hard line on Iran in that position, according to contemporaneous reports.More recently, at an NCRI event in March 2019, Joseph expressed his hope that Tehran's government would soon fall. "The efforts that are being made by...many in this room, I am confident, will result in the rebirth of the great Persian nation and light replacing the darkness," he said. "The darkness that is brought to us by the brutal, repressive dictatorship of the Mullahs."—with additional reporting by Erin BancoRead 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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| New York man who posted photos of dead teen online pleads guilty to her murder Posted: 10 Feb 2020 04:30 PM PST  "I've thought about Bianca and how she didn't deserve what happened to her," Brandon Clark said in court.
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| Ginsburg: Equal Rights Amendment backers should start over Posted: 10 Feb 2020 05:30 PM PST  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Monday that those like her who support an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution should start over in trying to get it passed rather than counting on breathing life into the failed attempt from the 1970s. "I would like to see a new beginning," Ginsburg said during an event at Georgetown's law school in Washington. Congress sent the amendment, which guarantees men and women equal rights under the law, to the states in 1972.
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| 'Soon we will all be infected': Indian crew on quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship pleads for help as coronavirus cases spike Posted: 10 Feb 2020 11:33 AM PST  Indian crew members shared a video on Facebook, begging their government to rescue all 160 of them. They are afraid of "who will be next."
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| Women of color say they were unwittingly used in Warren and Biden campaign ads Posted: 11 Feb 2020 09:31 AM PST  Both of the women are climate activists and support the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.
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| China removes two Hubei leaders as virus crisis deepens Posted: 10 Feb 2020 09:06 PM PST  The two most senior health officials at the epicentre of China's deadly virus outbreak have been sacked, state media said Tuesday, as pressure mounts over the way local authorities have handled the epidemic. Zhang Jin, the Communist Party boss of the provincial health commission in Hubei, and its director Liu Yingzi have been removed from their positions, reported state broadcaster CCTV, after a decision by the province's party committee Monday. The area has found itself at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people and infected over 42,000 across China since December.
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| The Army's New Interceptor Missiles Are The Swiss Army Knives Of Anti-Air Fire Posted: 10 Feb 2020 04:53 PM PST  The Multi-Mission Launcher has already performed well in tests.
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| A supervolcano in Utah? It's 30 times larger than Yellowstone's Posted: 10 Feb 2020 10:59 AM PST  A supervolcano discovered in southern Utah erupted 30 million years ago in an explosion 5,000 times larger than the Mount St. Helens disaster.
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| Parkland father not invited to Trump meeting with victim families after shouting at State of the Union Posted: 10 Feb 2020 10:10 AM PST  The father of a student killed during a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida was not invited to Donald Trump's meeting with families of victims after he shouted down the president at the State of the Union address.Fred Guttenburg's 14-year-old daughter Jamie was among the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on 14 February 2018.
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| Tulsi Tells Hannity She Supports Trump Axing Vindman and Sondland Posted: 10 Feb 2020 08:19 PM PST  Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) appeared on Trump-boosting Fox News host Sean Hannity's show on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and defended President Donald Trump's ouster of two key impeachment witnesses just two days after his acquittal.Last Friday, after celebrating being acquitted of abuse of power charges, the president fired National Security Council official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and U.S Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Vindman, specifically, was marched out of the White House by security, along with his twin brother, who was also terminated from his NSC position.Gabbard, who has become a frequent Fox News guest in recent months, defended the firings to Fox News' Neil Cavuto over the weekend, telling him that while she disagrees with many of Trump's decisions "as it relates to foreign policy," the public needs to realize that "there are consequences to elections.""The president has, within his purview, to make the decisions about who he'd like serving in his Cabinet," she added.Appearing on Hannity on Monday night, the Hawaii congresswoman first called for Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez to resign over the chaotic Iowa caucuses, saying "he's had a failure of leadership" and has been unable to "uphold that faith and trust."After telling Gabbard that she's "been treated horribly" by the Democratic Party and that he supports her outspoken criticism of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (Gabbard is suing Clinton for defamation), Hannity applauded her defense of Trump's retaliatory firings."I thought that was courageous," he stated. "Just acknowledging a simple truth that a president gets to hire and fire the people he wants, not people that disagree with his policy."Gabbard said the "deeper issue" is that her defense of Trump isn't based on opinion but "on the Constitution," noting at the same time that she's still an active soldier in the National Guard."Thank you for your service," Hannity interjected."Thank you, thank you very much, but as a member of Congress, I took an oath to the Constitution as does every member of Congress," she continued. "And it is the Constitution that provides that our foreign policy is set by the president of the United States as well as, in some significant ways, by Congress, not by unelected bureaucrats and not by the military.""And the reason why our founders had the wisdom to do this, they knew if voters were unhappy with the foreign policy decisions being made, they could make that decision at the ballot box to hire or fire where they can't do that with unelected bureaucrats or others," the Democratic lawmaker concluded.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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| Germany Is One of the Biggest Brexit Losers Posted: 10 Feb 2020 10:00 PM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- A somber feeling is spreading among Germany's elites, as the long-term implications of Brexit sink in. Of the European Union's 27 member states, Ireland obviously has the most to fear from the U.K.'s departure. But Germany may be second. That's because Brexit changes not only the remaining EU but also Germany's role within it — and in ways the Germans have for half a century been trying to avoid.European integration, starting in the 1950s, was for West Germany a way of atoning for its own nationalist and belligerent past. Its citizens were eager to subsume part of their identity in a "post-nationalist," rules-based, non-militarist and largely mercantile entity, in return for being accepted again by their neighbors. Occupied by three of the Allied Powers, they didn't have full national sovereignty, so they didn't worry about ceding more of it to Brussels.To move this European project forward, the Germans relied on different kinds of support from the Allies. To build the structures that later became the EU, they needed France. The French, however, especially under President Charles de Gaulle, saw "Europe" differently: as reconciliation with Germany, yes, but also as a new vector to project French power, the better to keep the mightier "Anglo-Saxons" at bay.Those Anglo-Saxons were of course the U.S. and the U.K., the other two powers the West Germans needed. The U.S. protected them against the Soviets, and kept international order generally. And the Brits were basically a smaller, more familiar — and European — version of the Americans, and thus a welcome counterweight against the French.In fact, German Francophilia was always less a phenomenon than a policy, imposed top-down; by contrast, German Anglophilia spread from the bottom up (even if it wasn't often reciprocated). It helped that the Brits after the war competently ran and rebuilt northwestern Germany — the ancestral homelands, as Germans noted tongue-in-cheek, of the Anglo-Saxons and the Hanoverian kings of England. Once the Beatles showed up in Hamburg, it was basically love all the way.The West Germans also had political motivations for wanting to hug the U.K. inside the European club, against the stubborn resistance of de Gaulle. Germany and France have always had clashing economic traditions. The French one, called dirigisme, is based on state intervention and looks askance at free markets and free trade. The German one, called ordoliberalism, is based on restricting the state to narrow functions (such as antitrust) and otherwise leaving markets and trade pretty free.The Germans thus saw the Brits, like the Dutch, as more naturally aligned in values than the French. Having the U.K. in the club meant that the "north" could gang up in the Council of Ministers (the body in Brussels where member states decide policy). And it did. A fluid "Nordic" bloc has usually had enough votes to veto "southern" ideas it didn't like, even as the European club expanded its membership. Projects driven primarily by the Brits and Germans include the single market, rigorous competition policy and liberal trade deals. Projects they successfully prevented (at least until now) include a European "industrial policy," which tends to be French code for coddling national champions.Brexit means that the center of gravity in the EU has now shifted southeast, in the European Parliament but above all in the Council. With the U.K., the north (defined as Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands) had a blocking minority of 36.8%. Without the U.K., that share has dropped to 27.8%, too small for a veto. Even when Austria and the Baltics are included, the north can now be overruled.Other fault lines crisscross this political geography that are just as treacherous for Germany. They run not only between north and south but also between west and east. For example, the Visegrad four (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) have joined to reject the EU's migrant policy, which they see as dictated by Germany after the refugee crisis of 2015, and they've rallied support from Germany's traditional partners, such as Austria. Depending on the issue, other alliances are constantly taking shape, often aimed against the largest member state, Germany.Geographically and politically, Germany thus finds itself, once again, squeezed in the uncomfortable middle. Historically, this tension is known the German Question and has repeatedly led to troubles. Owing to its "awkward scale," as one former West German chancellor put it, Germany was always either too weak (in the 17th and 18th centuries) or too strong (in the late 19th and early 20th) for the continent to be stable. Other powers either ganged up against it or were dominated by it. As the writer Thomas Mann memorably put it, the continent is forever condemned to choosing between "a German Europe" or "a European Germany."Having the U.K. in the EU mitigated that dilemma. Britain was weighty enough — economically, demographically, militarily — to balance Germany, France and the continent. And nobody was happier about being balanced than the Germans, for the last thing they want is to be forced to lead, knowing that this will invariably rekindle old resentments against them. Brexit means that balance is gone again. The German Question is back.The Brits shouldn't have been surprised that Germany wasn't more forthcoming during Brexit negotiations; for Germans, the cohesion of the EU, and the relationship with France, simply takes precedence. Nonetheless, many Germans have regrets. Some are pushing for a German-British Friendship Treaty to complement whatever deal the EU and the U.K. come up with. Unspoken is an almost primal plea: Dear Brits, please don't leave us continentals to ourselves. To contact the author of this story: Andreas Kluth at akluth1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andreas Kluth is a member of Bloomberg's editorial board. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Man killed in Tesla crash had complained about Autopilot Posted: 11 Feb 2020 11:03 AM PST  An Apple engineer who died when his Tesla Model X hit a concrete barrier on a Silicon Valley freeway had complained before his death that the SUV's Autopilot system would malfunction in the area where the crash happened. The complaints were detailed in a trove of documents released Tuesday by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the March, 2018 crash that killed engineer Walter Huang. The documents say Huang told his wife that Autopilot had previously veered his SUV toward the same barrier on U.S. 101 near Mountain View, California where he later crashed.
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| Air Force One may soon get its first new paint job since the Kennedy years — here's what it was like on JFK's version of the presidential airliner Posted: 10 Feb 2020 02:20 PM PST  The SAM 26000 arrived in 1962 and would carry eight presidents, numerous dignitaries, and countless diplomats during its 36 years in service.
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| New Hampshire exit polls: Defeating Trump tops issues for Democratic voters Posted: 11 Feb 2020 04:08 PM PST  By nearly 2-to-1, respondents put November prospects at the top of their wish list, according to early exit poll data.
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| Mystery $844B pot in Trump budget signals possible Medicaid cuts Posted: 10 Feb 2020 02:52 PM PST  President Trump's budget contains an $844 billion mystery pot for his still undefined health care plan, signaling steep cuts to Medicaid and "Obamacare."
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| Russia's Tsar Bomba Nuke Is So Destructive That It Was Only Tested Once Posted: 11 Feb 2020 12:45 AM PST  And never used.
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| Wisconsin kindergarten student, 6, killed while waiting for bus; family member injured Posted: 10 Feb 2020 12:22 PM PST |
| Trump news: President mocks rival's golf ability, amid fury over demands that Roger Stone get shorter sentence Posted: 11 Feb 2020 12:16 PM PST  Donald Trump hinted at pardoning his former campaign aide and longtime Republican operative Roger Stone after he called sentencing guidelines following his conviction on witness tampering and lying to Congress a "miscarriage of justice". Hours later, federal prosecutors backed off their initial guidelines, and two prosecutors resigned from the case, stirring fears that the White House had intervenedMr Trump also sparred with Democratic rival Mike Bloomberg, calling the billionaire former New York mayor a "total racist" and mocking his golfing, as Democrats prepare for the results of New Hampshire's primary contest.
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| The FBI Makes a Bizarre Claim About Pro-Choice Terrorism Posted: 10 Feb 2020 05:55 PM PST  The FBI is expanding its focus on domestic terrorism, and that includes pro-choice violence—even though such violence is so vanishingly rare, it's all but nonexistent. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that the bureau has recently "changed our terminology as part of a broader reorganization of the way in which we categorize our domestic terrorism efforts." It's part of a much-heralded reinvigoration of the bureau's domestic terrorism focus after a rising tide of mostly white-supremacist terrorism.Among four broad categories of domestic terrorism that the FBI confronts, Wray said, is "abortion violent extremism." But Wray wasn't only talking about the pro-life extremism that murders abortion providers in their churches, he hastened to add, but "people on either side of that issue who commit violence on behalf of different views on that topic."His questioner, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), was puzzled at Wray's seeming equivalence: "People on either side of that issue don't commit violence." In fact, the FBI pointed The Daily Beast to just one episode of pro-choice-inspired terrorism—one that did not involve an actual act of violence, but rather a threat in an online comments section.But Wray persisted: "Well, we've actually had a variety of kinds of violence under that, believe it or not. But at the end of the day." Bass asked, "Really, that blow up buildings and threaten doctors?" Rather than responding, Wray moved on to detailing the FBI's next domestic-terrorism category, one about "animal rights and environmental extremism."Wray's comments weren't the first instance of the bureau promoting the idea of pro-choice violence as a real threat. In 2017, the FBI distributed a brief "Abortion Extremism Reference Guide" at a counterterrorism training for local law enforcement, listing "pro-choice extremists" as a group of domestic terrorists. The document, first reported by Jezebel, claimed that these extremists "believe it is their moral duty to protect those who provide or receive abortion services"—though even this document noted that only one "pro-choice extremist" had ever been prosecuted. Additionally, an earlier FBI training document obtained by the ACLU in 2012 referenced pro-choice violence but did not "provide a single example of violence against abortion opponents," the ACLU wrote. "Abortion violent extremism" of any sort accounts for a only small percentage of FBI domestic terrorism cases. Wray on Wednesday that the "top threat" of domestic terrorism comes from what he called "racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists." Out of approximately 850 current cases that a senior FBI official cited in congressional testimony last May, about half concern anti-government extremism and another 40 percent concern racist terrorism. That leaves around 85 cases of violence motivated by animal rights, ecological degradation, abortion and miscellaneous cases. An FBI spokesperson confirmed the total caseload and the breakdown are still current.But abortion extremism doesn't have an "either side." The primary case of pro-choice violent extremism that the FBI pointed The Daily Beast toward—the same one cited in the 2017 FBI document—is the 2012 conviction of Theodore Schulman, who had a long history of threatening anti-abortion activists. Schulman's ultimate downfall was the result of posting a threat in the comments section of religious conservative outlet First Things: "if Roeder is acquitted, someone will respond by killing" Princeton's Robert George and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, he wrote. That itself spoke to the discrepancy in violence between the two sides. "Roeder" was a reference to Scott Roeder, who murdered abortion provider George Tiller in the foyer of a Wichita church in 2009. Other instances of anti-abortion violence include a trio of bombings at Florida abortion clinics in 1985, a string of arson attacks on a Washington clinic in 1983, and a 2015 shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood that killed three. Between 1993 and today, anti-abortion activists murdered 11 people and attempted to kill another 26, according to the National Abortion Federation."Anti-choice violence as we know it is constant, pervasive, and escalating dramatically, and it threatens the civil liberties as well as the lives of our patents, our members, our society," NAF President Katherine Ragsdale told The Daily Beast. Wray's comments, she added, are a "danger to public perception.""It tars everyone with the same brush when in fact pro-choice folks simply are not doing this," she said.The Daily Beast has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI to document the extent of its focus on alleged pro-choice violent extremism.Mila Johns, a domestic terrorism researcher affiliated with the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, said violence was "very much lopsided in the other direction," the anti-abortion side, and called Wray's equivalence "a very political statement." The database, which tracks terrorist attacks across the world since 1970, records about 300 incidents related to anti-abortion violence and none for pro-choice violence. However, an Austin woman in 2016 was charged with throwing a crude Molotov cocktail at anti-abortion protesters. And last year, an 85-year old anti-abortion protester in San Francisco was knocked to the ground after he attempted jamming the bicycle spokes of a man who appears to have stolen a pro-life group's banner. Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue—a radical anti-abortion group that moved its headquarters to Wichita, Kansas, specifically to target Dr. Tiller—said his movement has been on the receiving end of threats. He estimated he had made between 20 and 50 complaints to federal law enforcement over the last two decades, for everything from anthrax scares to online intimidation. Wichita resident Christopher Thompson, he noted, was sentenced to 12 months in jail last year for making menacing calls to Operation Rescue's office and employees.But when asked about specific instances of pro-choice violence, Newman cited only the murder of James Pouillon, an Operation Save America activist who was shot while protesting abortion outside a high school in 2009. (The judge in that case said the killer's motivations were not tied to abortion.) Newman declined to give examples of abortion-rights violence of the scale and magnitude of that enacted by the anti-abortion movement. "You got your scorecard and I got mine," he said. "All of them are terrible."The FBI's position is that pro-choice activists and groups not concerned with violence don't need to worry about the new domestic terrorism categorization. "We don't investigate ideology or rhetoric or anything of that sort," Wray testified. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment, but pointed to comments from the bureau's former assistant director for counterterrorism, Mike McGarrity, from last June. "It is important to remember that in line with our mission to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States, no FBI investigation can be opened solely on the basis of First Amendment-protected activity," McGarrity testified to a House panel in June. "Rather, domestic terrorism investigations on individuals are opened on the basis of information concerning the occurrence or threat of violent criminal actions by the individual in furtherance of an ideology."However, prior episodes during the 18-year-old war on terror show the FBI does not always hold a rigid distinction between ideology that isn't to be investigated and violence that is. In 2011, its counterterrorism training at Quantico included instructional material that held Islam was an ideology, rather than a religion, with violence baked into its doctrines. The point of the training was to portray Islam itself as a threat to national security—which, for an investigative entity with broad domestic powers, was ominous enough for the Obama administration to order the training materials removed. Michael German, a former FBI special agent who investigated domestic terrorism, said the FBI was not only engaging in a false equivalence but "the manufacturing of an imaginary violent movement," reminiscent of its now-discarded "black identity extremism" category. Anti-Abortion Violence at All-Time HighThe bureau "seems to be grasping a tiny number of unrelated incidents that are not part of any organized effort to falsely imply that such a 'domestic terrorist' movement exists," said German, now with the Brennan Center for Justice. "This is a misleading analysis of dubious purpose, apparently to satisfy some political constituency, which is not what an objective law enforcement agency should be doing." But for some in the reproductive rights space, the threat posed by anti-abortion violence is enough that they are willing to accept dubious FBI categorization to ensure it gets investigated."Those of us in this movement have lost friends and family," Ragsdale said. "By all means, investigate the escalating violence.""And if politics requires you to have a category that says pro-choice violence, go right ahead," she added. "I'd be interested to see if anything ever pops up."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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| US open jobs fall sharply for 2nd straight month Posted: 11 Feb 2020 07:38 AM PST  U.S. businesses sharply cut the number of jobs they advertised in December for the second straight month, an unusual sign of weakness in an otherwise healthy job market. The number of available positions dropped 5.4% to 6.4 million, a historically solid number, the Labor Department said Tuesday. There are still more open jobs than there are unemployed people, an unusual situation that has persisted for nearly two years.
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| Elizabeth Holmes is pushing to get the Theranos fraud case thrown out Posted: 11 Feb 2020 01:24 AM PST  Elizabeth Holmes' attorney said the government's case against Holmes was too vague and full of "fudging language."
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