| Sanders Campaign Manager Slams MSNBC, Says Fox News Is ‘More Fair’ Posted: 18 Feb 2020 02:32 PM PST  Bernie Sanders's campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, has accused MSNBC of employing "double standard" in its coverage of the Vermont senator, claiming in an interview published Tuesday that Fox News is "more fair" in critiquing Sanders's progressive platform."That's saying something," Shakir told Vanity Fair. "Fox is often yelling about Bernie Sanders's socialism, but they're still giving our campaign the opportunity to make our case in a fair manner, unlike MSNBC, which has credibility with the left and is constantly undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign."He added that MSNBC regularly criticizes Sanders's base with "disdain.""It's a condescending attitude: 'Oh, they must not be that intelligent. They're being deluded. They're being conned. They're all crazy Twitter bots,'" Shakir said. "My view is that there's a bit of detachment from MSNBC and the people who this campaign gets support from. It feels like they're covering progressives from an elitist perspective."Following the Iowa caucuses earlier this month, MSNBC contributor James Carville warned that Sanders, if nominated, would fare no better than the U.K.'s Labour Party's Jeremy Corbyn, who was crushed in a December election by Boris Johnson."We're talking about people voting from jail cells, we're talking about not having a border. . . . I don't want the Democratic Party in the United States to be the Labour Party of the United Kingdom. And I think there's some danger of that happening," the former Bill Clinton strategist said. He later argued to Vox that Sanders has "never been a Democrat," and is instead "an ideologue."
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| Federal judges association holding emergency meeting over DOJ interference in Stone case Posted: 17 Feb 2020 09:47 PM PST  The Federal Judges Association will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss concerns members have over President Trump and top Justice Department officials intervening in the case of longtime Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone.The association has more than 1,000 members, and says it supports a "fair, impartial, and independent judiciary." The group's president, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, told USA Today that members decided they "could not wait" until the organization's spring conference to address the matter. "There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about," added Rufe, a George W. Bush appointee. "We'll talk all of this through."Stone was found guilty of lying to Congress and witness tampering, and last week, Trump complained about federal prosecutors recommending Stone receive a sentence of seven to nine years. Attorney General William Barr and other DOJ leaders quickly reversed course on the recommendation, which resulted in the four Stone prosecutors quitting the case. On Friday, it was reported that Barr has also appointed an outside prosecutor to review the criminal case of Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but has since backtracked, claiming he was coerced.Since an open letter was released on Sunday night, more than 2,000 former Justice Department officials have signed on, calling on Barr to resign. The letter says it is "unheard of for the department's top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the president, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case."More stories from theweek.com Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils The first poll of Susan Collins' 2020 senate race shows her tied with Democratic challenger The Democratic Party is weak. Mike Bloomberg could break it.
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| Grandparents, uncle charged in beating death, torture of Montana boy Posted: 18 Feb 2020 12:48 PM PST  During the investigation into the boy's death, police seized cellphones belonging to the suspects that showed the family torturing him, the affidavit says.
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| REVEALED: China's Secret Reasons for Imprisoning Uyghurs Posted: 18 Feb 2020 07:39 AM PST  Yet another leak from inside the communist state.
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| Virginia lawmakers reject assault weapons ban Posted: 17 Feb 2020 08:51 AM PST  Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's push to ban the sale of assault weapons failed on Monday after some of his fellow Democrats balked at the proposal.
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| Cuba burning tires to power factory as US oil sanctions bite Posted: 17 Feb 2020 12:10 PM PST  The Cuban government has ordered a cement factory to burn old tires to power its operations and save on oil, amid a worsening fuel shortage brought on by US sanctions on the Communist island. On orders of President Miguel Diaz-Canel, the firm Cementos Cienfuegos, located in the center of the country, will receive an increasing supply of used tires to burn, the official daily Granma said Monday. Cuba has been suffering oil shortages since last September, when the administration of President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on ships carrying petroleum to the island from its main fuel supplier Venezuela.
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| 14 Americans who got the coronavirus from the quarantined cruise ship in Japan were flown home in an 'isolation box' at the back of the plane Posted: 17 Feb 2020 03:12 AM PST  Thousands were quarantined on the Diamond Princess for more than a week over coronavirus fears. Americans coming home will be quarantined again.
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| Huge locust outbreak in East Africa reaches South Sudan Posted: 18 Feb 2020 08:39 AM PST  The worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years has reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war, officials announced Tuesday. Around 2,000 locusts were spotted inside the country, Agriculture Minister Onyoti Adigo told reporters. The locusts have been seen in Eastern Equatoria state near the borders with Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.
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| 'It’s reunion porn': Military wives say Trump’s SOTU stunt disrespected families of servicemen Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:44 AM PST  The State of the Union served as President Donald Trump's moment to grandstand his administration's achievements to Congress while also introducing guests he brought in from across the US.Among them that evening was army spouse Amy Williams and her two children. Mr Trump introduced them to the room towards the end of his speech by commending her for carrying on while her husband, Sergeant Townsend Williams, was deployed in Afghanistan over the past seven months.
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| Missing Milwaukee woman, two daughters found dead in garage Posted: 17 Feb 2020 09:04 AM PST  Amarah Banks, 26, Zaniya Ivery, 5, and Camaria Banks, 4, were discovered after the arrest of Banks' boyfriend, Arzel J. Ivery, in Memphis, Tennessee, authorities said.
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| 'Now We Are Refugees': A Family in Limbo Amid the Coronavirus Outbreak Posted: 17 Feb 2020 11:54 AM PST  These days, Chloe Chang, a Taiwanese woman stranded at the center of China's coronavirus outbreak, says she wakes up every half-hour during the night. Sometimes she breaks down in tears.She and her family are effectively trapped in her grandmother's apartment building, where a man recently died from the virus. Workers in hazmat suits haunt the surrounding streets, and the neighborhood has a strong police presence. There are shortages of food and other essentials throughout Yichang, the Hubei province city of more than 4 million where they have been in limbo for weeks."No household can go out at this time," said Chang, a 26-year-old industrial artist. She said she feared that even a trip for groceries would increase her chances of contracting the virus."My child has eaten nine meals of plain noodles in the past three days," she said of her 2-year-old son.Chang and her family thought they were on the verge of escaping Yichang earlier this month, but the bus taking them to the airport was abruptly turned around.All she can do now is wait -- and hope."The government of Taiwan surely will come to our rescue," her husband, Calvin Fan, who is from Beijing, has reassured her. But the chartered flight they have eagerly awaited to evacuate them has yet to materialize."Neither side wants us," Chang said. "We've given up. Now we are refugees."Taiwan and China each say the other is the reason that she and other Taiwan citizens are unable to leave Hubei, a province under lockdown, where hundreds have died from the coronavirus and tens of thousands have been infected.Chang and hundreds of other Taiwanese people in Hubei had hoped to go home via chartered jet. But last month, after the first plane carrying evacuees landed in Taiwan with an infected passenger onboard, a backlash ensued on the self-governing island, which China claims as part of its territory.Some said Taiwan would not be able to handle an outbreak if more infected people arrived. Others said Taiwan should not help to evacuate mainland Chinese spouses of Taiwan residents.Decades of tensions between the two governments have come to a head over the outbreak, and people like Chang and her husband -- both of who arrived in China last month to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday with family -- have become pawns in a complicated and dangerous game of political chess.Chang said she was told by Chinese officials that she could return to Taiwan on a second chartered flight, scheduled for Feb. 5. That day, her family boarded a bus bound for the airport in Wuhan, the provincial capital, where the coronavirus first emerged.But just as the bus was about to leave, she said, a Chinese official hopped on and announced that the flight would not take off, saying: "Taiwan won't let you go back.""I was really devastated," Chang said.Taiwan had a different explanation. According to officials there, reports in Chinese state media that said a flight was scheduled to leave were untrue -- the two sides had never discussed it.Both governments, and their proxies, have continued to point fingers while Chang and her compatriots languish in Hubei."Taiwan authorities have repeatedly delayed the schedule," Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, said last week. "Let the Taiwan compatriots return home as soon as possible, and stop making up all manner of excuses and rationale to block them from returning."Chen Shih-Chung, Taiwan's minister of health and welfare, said Friday that "China still uses all excuses to delay the evacuation, and refuses our plans and suggestions."Fears of the virus -- and, perhaps, anti-China sentiment -- have led Taiwan to escalate preventive measures in recent days.On Wednesday, Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center announced that children who have mainland citizenship but a Taiwanese parent would not be allowed to enter Taiwan for the time being if they were arriving from mainland China, Hong Kong or Macao.Confined to her grandmother's home for so long, Chang has turned to her art as an outlet for the helplessness and resentment she feels.In a satirical cartoon she recently sketched, she portrayed the administration of Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's president, as deliberately delaying the evacuation.She depicted the Taiwanese in Hubei as pawns.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| The Turkish Trap: How Erdogan Made New Enemies and Enraged the Arab Community Posted: 18 Feb 2020 11:48 AM PST  As Recep Erdogan sends Turkish troops and Syrian rebel fighters into Libya, it has become clear that the Syrian forces Turkey-backed were never meant to fight for Assad but instead do Turkey's bidding.
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| Former mayoral candidate drugged woman with cupcake to steal newborn, officials say Posted: 17 Feb 2020 12:50 PM PST  Juliette Parker, 38, was arrested Friday on suspicion of attempted kidnapping and assault, per the Pierce County Sheriff's Office.
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| Hunter Biden Served on Board of Trade Group That Lobbied Obama Admin for Increased Ukraine Aid: Report Posted: 18 Feb 2020 08:28 AM PST  Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden, was on the board of a trade group that lobbied the Obama administration for increased U.S. aid to Ukraine, according to a report Tuesday.From 2012 through 2018, the younger Biden served as a director for the Center for U.S. Global Leadership and was connected as well with its affiliate, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, The Daily Caller reported. The two groups, which include about 400 larger corporations and non-government organizations, lobbied for increased spending abroad by the State Department's International Affairs Budget, including a special focus on Ukraine.At the time, Joe Biden was also advocating for increased U.S. spending in Ukraine.Hunter Biden's small private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca, featured other well-connected politicos as well, including his partner Devon Archer, who was a former adviser on Obama Secretary of State John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and another partner, Kerry's son-in-law Christopher Heinz."Hunter Biden works for [Archer]. So we've got the top level politicos with us. All of my guys, is as top tier as it gets," a businessman named Bevan Cooney wrote in text messages released in connection with an unrelated criminal case against Archer. "You don't get more politically connected and make people more comfortable than that."In 2013, the groups held an event honoring Joe Biden for his work supporting increased spending abroad, an event Hunter Biden was also introduced as having a "very special relationship with our honoree."Biden's separate lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while his father was vice president and in charge of addressing corruption in Ukraine has also drawn scrutiny and featured prominently in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump. That position earned Biden at least $50,000 a month for his advice on "transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities."During a July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky to help his administration investigate allegations that Joe Biden used his position as vice president to help the Ukrainian gas company avoid a corruption probe soon after Hunter Biden was appointed to its board of directors. That phone call led to an Intelligence Community whistleblower complaint that ultimately sparked a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump's actions.Biden has said that in the spring of 2016, during his tenure as vice president, he called on Ukraine to fire the top prosecutor investigating the energy company paying his son. Biden suggested he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if the country did not fire the prosecutor, who was accused by the State Department and U.S. allies in Europe of being soft on corruption.
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| Warren: Bernie 'has a lot of questions to answer' about attacks from online supporters Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:37 AM PST  After Sanders supporters allegedly doxxed the leadership of a Nevada hospitality union, Warren called on Sanders to address the online attacks.
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| Tennessee inmate moved to death watch; attorneys seek stay Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:09 AM PST  Tennessee inmate Nicholas Sutton was placed on a death watch early Tuesday ahead of his scheduled execution later this week for the decades-old killing of a fellow inmate. Meanwhile, Sutton's attorneys made two last ditch appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. Inmates on death watch are kept under 24-hour surveillance in a cell beside the execution chamber, the Tennessee Department of Correction said.
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| Michael Bloomberg has already spent more on campaign ads than Obama did in his entire 2012 race Posted: 18 Feb 2020 12:32 PM PST  While Michael Bloomberg has spent $338.7 million on TV, radio, and digital-media ads, Sen. Bernie Sanders has spent just about $18 million.
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| Group of more than 1,000 judges calls emergency meeting amid Trump concerns Posted: 18 Feb 2020 07:50 AM PST  Judges will meet to address alarm over the president intervening in politically sensitive casesA national association of federal judges has called an emergency meeting to address growing concerns about the intervention of Donald Trump and justice department officials in politically sensitive cases, according to US media reports.Cynthia Rufe, a Philadelphia US district judge who heads the independent Federal Judges Association, which has more than 1,100 members, told USA Today the group "could not wait" until its spring conference to discuss the matter."There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about," Rufe told USA Today. "We'll talk all of this through."The meeting comes after more than 2,000 former US justice department officials, including some of the top government lawyers in the country, called on the attorney general, William Barr, to resign in the wake of the Roger Stone scandal.Alumni of the Department of Justice posted to Medium on Sunday a group letter that tore into Barr for "doing the president's personal bidding" in imposing on prosecutors the recommendation of a reduced sentence for Stone, a longtime friend of Trump who was convicted of lying to and obstructing Congress and threatening a witness in the Russia investigation.Barr, the officials said, had damaged the reputation of the department for "integrity and the rule of law".The spiralling constitutional crisis began last week when Barr imposed his new sentencing memo, slashing a seven- to nine-year proposed prison term suggested by career prosecutors. In the fallout, the four prosecutors who had handled the case resigned in disgust.US district Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over the Stone's case, has ordered both sides to participate in a conference call on Tuesday to discuss the status of the case. Following the call, it was confirmed that Stone's sentencing would go ahead on Thursday.Rufe voiced her strong support for Jackson, according to USA Today."I am not concerned with how a particular judge will rule," Rufe said. "We are supportive of any federal judge who does what is required."It was not clear whether the FJA would issue a statement after the emergency meeting. The Guardian contacted the FJA for comment.
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| New Mexico woman who was pregnant with third child still missing three years later Posted: 17 Feb 2020 11:20 AM PST  Elizabeth Brooks Hernandez, 29, was last seen by her boyfriend, Miguel Martinez, who told police he dropped her off at a welfare office in Albuquerque, New Mexico on November 16, 2017. Police suspect foul play, but no arrests have been made. The Albuquerque Police Department is investigating.
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| Watch Russia Test A New Weapon That Can Kill Missiles Posted: 17 Feb 2020 02:00 AM PST  We've got the video.
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| 'Tiger widows' shunned as bad luck in rural Bangladesh Posted: 17 Feb 2020 11:31 PM PST  Abandoned by her sons, shunned by her neighbours and branded a witch. Women like her are ostracised in many rural villages in Bangladesh, where they are viewed as the cause of their partner's misfortune. "My sons have told me that I am an unlucky witch," she told AFP in her flimsy plank home, in the honey-hunters' village of Gabura at the edge of the Sundarbans -- a 10,000-square-kilometre (3,860-square-mile) mangrove forest that straddles Bangladesh and India.
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| China-led $280 million Kyrgyzstan project abandoned after protests Posted: 18 Feb 2020 03:56 AM PST |
| Trouble in the Workers’ Paradise Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:18 AM PST  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is precisely the sort of campaign surrogate you want, especially if you are Bernie Sanders: She is young, energetic, charismatic, popular (with the people she needs to be popular with, anyway), and, happily, currently ineligible to run for the presidency herself.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is precisely the sort of campaign surrogate you don't want, especially if you are Bernie Sanders: She is callow, flippant, vain, shallow, and prone to making policy pronouncements that are even battier than your own, and she forgets to mention you at all in the course of making appearances that are in theory on your behalf.Senator Sanders is, in his bizarre way, the conservative in the Democratic presidential primary: Republicans are accused of "wanting to turn the clock back" to the 1950s, but Sanders, the confessing socialist, wants to turn the clock back to the 1930s. (The senator himself is culturally a product of the 1970s, which is what his weird little rape-fantasy literary œuvre is all about.) In the New York Times, former economist Paul Krugman poo-poos the idea that Senator Sanders means that he is a socialist when he says he is a socialist, but Sanders's prescriptions do have a certain dustily familiar aspect to them: Health care? Nationalize it by making Medicare an effective public monopoly. Banking? Nationalize it by having the government operate its own banks, i.e. by having the state literally own the means of production.This is not new stuff for the gentleman from Vermont from Brooklyn. He ran for governor of Vermont on a program that included, as those naughty ring-wing radicals over at CNN put it, "nationalization of the energy industry, public ownership of banks, telephone, electric, and drug companies and of the major means of production such as factories and capital, as well as other proposals such as a 100 percent income tax on the highest income earners in America." Then, as now, he talked like a dorm-room radical, speaking of his desire to "create a situation in which the ordinary working people take what rightfully belongs to them." The usual socialist prattle: "If workers do not take power in a reasonably short time this country will not have a future." He now says he no longer supports nationalization of industries, but that is really not quite true: Along with health care and banking, he proposes to effectively nationalize the energy industry (through a so-called Green New Deal) and much else. Like Senator Elizabeth Warren, he favors changes in corporate governance that would allow government to proceed as though it owned the country's largest firms even if they remained technically private. The point, according to the Sanders campaign, is to "shift the wealth of the economy back into the hands of the workers" because "corporate greed is destroying the social and economic fabric of our society and rapidly moving our nation into an oligarchy."Senator Sanders is a politically and intellectually unserious man — which is nothing new to American presidential politics, of course. But he has been a radical left-wing Froot Loop long enough to know that there are practical limits to public Froot-Loopery. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has not been around long enough to appreciate that fact. Which is why, among Democrats who believe that American law-enforcement agencies are Enemies of the People and that our immigration and border-patrol authorities should be liquidated in order to facilitate the uncontrolled flow of people across open borders, she actually says that American law-enforcement agencies are Enemies of the People and that our immigration and border-patrol authorities should be liquidated in order to facilitate the uncontrolled flow of people across open borders.Senator Sanders knows better than to say that. He also knows better than to believe it. In the long-ago days of . . . 2016, Senator Sanders riled up the gentlemen in Iowa's union halls giving frankly nationalist anti-immigration speeches that could have been delivered by Donald Trump. "Open borders," he insisted, were a billionaires' scheme, a "Koch brothers proposal" to flood the United States with cheap Latin American labor and thereby undermine the power of the workers and their efforts to "take power." Somebody has given him the intersectionality talk since then, and he no longer sounds quite so much like Pat Buchanan when he talks about immigration.But Representative Ocasio-Cortez is one step beyond, dismaying the Sanders campaign by using her campaign appearances to, among other things, encourage law-breaking by and for illegal immigrants: "Organizing is about tipping people off if you start to see that ICE and CBP are in communities to try and keep people safe," she says. Organizing to keep law-enforcement agencies from enforcing the law in order to abet illegal behavior isn't politics — it is criminal conspiracy. Senator Sanders may not care much about that, but he does not want to spend 2020 explaining it away, either.That is because Senator Sanders's appeal is a nationalist appeal, and the senator himself is, at heart, a nationalist, as indeed were the Democratic giants of American progressivism who preceded him spiritually: Franklin Roosevelt, above all, but also Woodrow Wilson. Representative Ocasio-Cortez is an anti-nationalist, one whose sensibility (it would be too much to describe her posturing as "ideas") is more oriented toward trans-national class solidarity. Which is to say, her socialism is more of the international variety, whereas Sanders's socialism is more of the nationalist variety, one that is in tune with familiar Democratic appeals to "economic patriotism" and denunciations of "economic traitors," which is what Democrats called Mitt Romney when he ran for president in 2012. As my friend Jonah Goldberg argues, on economic questions, "nationalism" and "socialism" end up meaning the same thing: An industry that is nationalized is one that is socialized, and one that is socialized is one that is nationalized.(Somebody really should think up a handy abbreviation for the combination of nationalism and socialism that characterizes our bipartisan consensus today.)Senator Sanders's camp may not like the way Representative Ocasio-Cortez talks about illegal immigration, but the fact is that the senator has moved her way on the issue rather than moving the Democratic Party his. "Breaking up ICE and CBP" is right there in his campaign literature . . . followed by the words "and redistributing their functions to their proper authorities." Not exactly open borders. Senator Sanders makes the usual noises about the evils of for-profit detention centers, but he despises for-profit activity at scale categorically. So, what to do? "Convene a hemispheric summit with the leaders of Latin American countries who are experiencing migration crises and develop actionable steps to stabilize the region," says the Sanders campaign. Actionable steps? Oh!Compare Senator Sanders's actionable steps to Representative Ocasio-Cortez's stop snitchin' and you have a pretty good indicator of the range of Democratic politics today. Poor old Joe Biden must be wondering what the heck happened. (But he has been doing that for a decade or two.) The question for 2020 is whether the path of least resistance leads Biden-style Democrats to Ocasio-Cortez's ascendant movement or to Donald Trump's — or to a purgatorial apathy, which Republicans would not reject as a consolation prize.
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| The cruise industry has been rocked by the coronavirus. Here's you how can find out if your ship has been impacted. Posted: 18 Feb 2020 11:53 AM PST  Cruise companies like Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Cruises have been affected by the Wuhan coronavirus.
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| Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy Posted: 17 Feb 2020 10:04 PM PST  The venerable non-profit is following the lead of the scandal-wracked Roman Catholic Church.
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| Murdered Mexico City girl buried amid grief, outrage Posted: 18 Feb 2020 12:02 PM PST  A 7-year-old Mexico City girl whose brutal murder has generated national outrage was buried Tuesday as capital officials pledged to tighten rules for children leaving government schools on their own. Fatima, who was seen on video leaving her school on Feb. 11 with an unidentified woman and found days later dead and wrapped in a plastic bag, was laid to rest in front of grieving relatives and neighbors on Mexico City's south side. In Mexico City, even grade-school students often simply walk out of school after classes to meet parents waiting on the sidewalks, but there have been few controls to ensure someone is there to meet them.
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| Bloomberg campaign: There are only three viable presidential candidates Posted: 18 Feb 2020 02:51 PM PST  Only three candidates out of the more than half dozen vying for the White House have a viable path to the nomination, a senior official for the Mike Bloomberg campaign told reporters Tuesday.
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| DOJ: Two federal prosecutors are coordinating Ukraine-related matters, including information supplied by Rudy Giuliani Posted: 18 Feb 2020 02:13 PM PST  The Justice Department says anyone, not just Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, can pass on allegations and information related to Ukraine.
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| Coronavirus Means the Federal Reserve Must Cut Interest Rates Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:37 AM PST  History, and SARS, give us a guide of what could happen. A
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| Kidnappers prey with ‘total impunity’ on migrants waiting for hearings in Mexico Posted: 18 Feb 2020 07:37 AM PST  Report finds 80% of migrants waiting have been abducted by the mafia and 45% have suffered violence or violationA score or so migrants crouch in the dark corridor of the safe house where they have been waiting for a month. Today, their turn has come to go back on the road again – not across the US border, however, but deeper into Mexico, to save their skins.Outside, a minivan pulls up, driven by Baptist pastor Lorenzo Ortiz to take the migrants to relative safety, and away from kidnap, extortion and violation.This is Nuevo Laredo, in the north-west corner of Tamaulipas state, opposite Laredo, Texas, the world's busiest commercial trans-border hub. The people waiting to board the van have already crossed into the USA, but have been sent back under the Trump administration's so-called Migrant Protection Protocols - known as "Remain in Mexico" – whereby would be asylum seekers must await their appointed hearing south of the border.MPP was rolled out in January last year, since when an estimated 57,000 people now wait south of the border for their asylum hearing date. Tens of thousands more are waiting just for the initial application for asylum.These are the faces behind statistics in a shocking report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which found 80% of migrants waiting in Nuevo Laredo under MPP to have been abducted by the mafia, and 45% to have suffered violence or violation. The door of the safe house opens and blinding sunlight beckons those awaiting, as does Pastor Ortiz, who arrives across the border from Laredo each morning to take a vanload to the larger city of Monterrey, Nuevo León.There can be no tarrying, explains another local pastor, Diego Robles, from the First Baptist church. "If they walk to the corner of the block," he says, "they're likely to be kidnapped."Robles knows the risk he runs. Last August, criminals approached Aarón Méndez, a Seventh Day Adventist managing another shelter nearby, demanding he hand over Cubans in his care, whose relatives in the USA might pay high ransoms for their release.He refused – and has not been seen since, joining the 50,000 disappeared in Mexico's undeclared war since 2006. The safe house – its gate kept closed with padlock and chain – is crammed with some 180 people, mostly indoors, some in a back yard enclosed by breeze blocks.Their stories are terrifying and consistent.Moy Eduardo fled his home in El Salvador after members of the MS-13 gang abducted and killed his brother after the family failed to pay sufficient extortion money. He eventually arrived at Nuevo Laredo bus station, only to be forced into a car and taken to a farm some distance from town. There, he was pistol-whipped, while the kidnappers called his cousin in Atlanta and demanded an $8,000 ransom."They said if I didn't pay, they'd hand me over to 'other people in our organisation'," he recalled. Four days later, his desperate relative wired money, and Moy Eduardo was released.He told the story to US authorities when applying for asylum, "but they didn't believe me and sent me back". Moy Eduardo has a court date in April, but is desperate to leave Nuevo Laredo. "I cannot stay here – they said if they saw me again, they'd kill me"."It's become big business," says Pastor Robles "It's a way for the drug cartels to diversify. It is worse in Tamaulipas than other border states, and worse in Nuevo Laredo than anywhere else in Tamaulipas. There's no formula to the abductions and disappearances – they are kidnapped, beaten, women violated; most return, but not all".Nuevo Laredo was for years controlled by the hyper-violent Zetas group, and is now territory of its offshoot, the North-east cartel. But their one-time associate, now rival, the Gulf cartel is knocking at the gates, backed by the Jalisco cartel, eager for access to the city's vast commercial transit routes into the USA. .While the Zetas/North-east cartel control migrant movement within Nuevo Laredo, the Gulf and Jalisco cartels often bring migrants to the city. And each group sees migrants and asylum seekers as a source of easy money."They go after the ones who've been brought here by a rival cartel. They have to pay twice," says Pastor Ortiz "And the Cubans – because they know the Cubans have richer relatives."Inside the safe house, Yaqueline and her daughter Lisbeth, described how she was given a code by their coyote after fleeing gang violence in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.She was told that in Nuevo Laredo, the word "rana" – frog – would ensure safe passage. But when three thugs approached them outside the government migrant registration offices, they were told the word meant they were property of the enemy; mother and child were bundled into an SUV.Relatives north of the border were again contacted. After five days, they were still unable to find the ransom money, and Yaqueline and Lisbeth were released to find their own way to Pastor Robles' church. Asked if she had been maltreated, Yaqueline lowers her eyes, gestures towards the child, and crossed herself. "The gangs were bad in Honduras, but it is even more dangerous here."All these people have US "Notice to Appear" papers for dates months away, when they will re-cross the bridge into Laredo, Texas, and enter a tent court beside the Rio Grande, for a cursory video-link hearing to a judge hundreds of miles away in San Antonio. Less than 1% are granted asylum.Those summoned to court begin gathering on the Mexican side of the bridge before 4am. A group from Cuba and Venezuela assembles first, manifestly nervous.There are 67 on the docket to appear at the tent court, but by 6am, only 29 are shuffled through into the canvas corridor, to plead their case, and await judgment on a screen from 150 miles away. The rest are presumed to have given up and returned home. Reporters have never been admitted into the Laredo tent court."The authorities make no attempt to intervene, says Pastor Ortiz, "the mafia is right there in the open, and there's nothing done to stop them. It's total impunity for the cartels."Local and national governments play down the abduction emergency. Edwin Aceves, the chief investigator for the Office of Disappeared Persons in Nuevo Laredo, said he had received "no reports of kidnapping and extortion of migrants. These are just rumours."Meanwhile, Mark Morgan, acting commissioner for US Customs and Border Protection, told a round-table of reporters last year he was unaware of reports of kidnapping, while Mexico's foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, has said kidnaps were "not a massive number"; his department had information on 20 cases nationally.Mexico's leftwing government cooperates enthusiastically with President Trump's MPP. In contrast to the pastors' buses helping migrants wait in relative safety, government buses chartered depart daily from Nuevo Laredo's state migration centres to take migrants back to the border with Guatemala. Even one of those was hijacked last autumn, surrounded by gunmen aboard pickup trucks, and migrants taken. But here at the safe house, the minivan is ready to take people on a round-trip, to relative safety away from Nuevo Laredo, and then back again to cross the border when their date arrives. The group shuffles out of the front door on to the sidewalk and scrambles onboard. Pastor Robles says a prayer for the road through the front passenger window – and off they go, in the opposite direction to that of their plans, but away from the clutches of the mafia.
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| Coronavirus: Self-quarantined family shunned as neighbour calls 911 on them Posted: 18 Feb 2020 03:15 PM PST  A California family in self-quarantine over the coronavirus after a visit to China have found themselves shunned, and even had the police called on them.Amy Deng and her eight-year-old daughter, Daisy, have no symptoms, but following a trip to visit family in Guangzhou over Chinese New Year, they are in self-quarantine monitored by local officials in Santa Rosa, The East Bay Times reports.
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| Iraqis wanted to topple the system, but taboos fell instead Posted: 18 Feb 2020 03:35 AM PST  Mocking clerics, falling in love at rallies and mending a broken society: even if Iraq's young protesters have failed to overthrow entrenched politicians, they have scored by shattering decades-old taboos. Since October, the country of 40 million has been rocked by a historically large grassroots movement with big goals: ending corruption, unaccountable sectarian parties and overreach from neighbouring Iran. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi resigned in December, only to be replaced by ex-minister Mohammad Allawi, slammed by protesters as too close to the ruling elite.
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| Chinese authorities arrest a prominent rights activist who called on President Xi Jinping to step down Posted: 18 Feb 2020 06:52 AM PST  Chinese authorities have arrested a prominent rights activist and legal scholar who had called on President Xi Jinping to step down over his handling of crises including the coronavirus outbreak, two fellow activists said on Monday.
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| Suspended sheriff in SC faces 13 more corruption charges Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:58 AM PST  A suspended South Carolina sheriff already indicted on domestic violence charges now faces 13 additional criminal charges including giving alcohol to someone under 21 and using his power to continue a sexual relationship with an employee, authorities said. The new indictments against Colleton County Sheriff R.A. Strickland were unsealed Tuesday. Authorities accuse Strickland of a broad range of misconduct and corruption, ranging from using deputies to do personal work and campaign for him while on duty, giving a $3,000 radio that could access secure police and other emergency radio traffic to someone with no official purpose and using his power to hire, fire and determine salaries to coerce an employee to keep having a sexual relationship, according to the indictments.
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| Missing more than a year, an abandoned 'ghost ship' washed ashore on the other side of the Atlantic Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:50 AM PST  The MV Alta washed ashore in Ireland's County Cork amid Storm Dennis, but the vessel took a more than a year journey from off Bermuda to get there.
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| See This Submarine? It Could Likely End the Human Race (Or Close To It) Posted: 18 Feb 2020 04:22 PM PST  You'd never see them coming.
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| George H.W. Bush deputy attorney general says ex-colleague Barr is creating a 'banana republic' Posted: 18 Feb 2020 04:00 AM PST  More than 2,000 former Justice Department officials, current federal prosecutors, and federal judges are urgently concerned about Attorney General William Barr's evident politicization of the Justice Department. Even "Trump voters" should be afraid of "Bill Barr's America," a "banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen," Donald Ayer, a former colleague of Barr's and deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, wrote in The Atlantic on Monday. He elaborated on CNN Monday evening.Barr was Ayer's successor as deputy attorney general before starting his first go as attorney general a year later, in 1991. In the 40 years the two men have known each other, Ayer told CNN, Barr has "always had a very strong view that the executive ought to have a great deal of power. I've never known quite how far it would go, and there was never any reason to test it, because when he was attorney general under George H.W. Bush, George H.W. Bush had no interest in being an autocrat. So now we're faced with a situation where Bill Barr has won the job of attorney general under a president who apparently does want to be an autocrat."In The Atlantic, Ayer writes that "it is not too strong to say that Bill Barr is un-American," and he elaborated on CNN. "The reason that I say that he's un-American is because I think it's fair to say, and I think most people would agree with me, that the central tenet of our legal system and our justice system is that no person is above the law," he wrote. "Bill Barr's vision is quite different. Bill Barr's vision is that there is one man, one person who needs to be above the law, and that is the president. ... He said that before he became attorney general but he's now carried it out in many steps."Ayer elaborated on the ways he thinks Barr is harming America in his Atlantic article, concluding that to prevent this "banana republic," America needs "a public uprising demanding that Bill Barr resign immediately, or failing that, be impeached." Read more at The Atlantic.More stories from theweek.com Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils The first poll of Susan Collins' 2020 senate race shows her tied with Democratic challenger The Democratic Party is weak. Mike Bloomberg could break it.
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| Turkey reveals new plan to buy drones, helicopters and air defense systems Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:41 AM PST  Turkey's defense procurement agency has unveiled an ambitious procurement plan for 2020, even as its economy seeks to recover from a recession and the government spends money fighting wars in multiple theaters, including Iraq and Syria.
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| Britain's row with Greece over treasures spills into Brexit tensions Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:25 AM PST  A long-running dispute between Britain and Greece over ancient treasures has spilled into tensions over Brexit after a demand for the return of stolen cultural artefacts was added to the draft of a European Union negotiating mandate. The British Museum in London has refused to return the Parthenon Marbles, 2,500-year-old sculptures that British diplomat Lord Elgin removed from Athens in the early 19th century when Greece was under Ottoman Turkish rule.
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| Obama’s childhood home hits the market for $2.2m Posted: 18 Feb 2020 08:34 AM PST  A seemingly unremarkable house in Honolulu is priced at a premium due to the part it played in the formative years of the 44th president of the United States.The property was home to Barack Obama between the ages of three and six, from 1964 to 1967. His mother attended the nearby University of Hawaii during that time.
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| Chinese police reportedly put a professor under house arrest, cut his internet, and kicked him off social media after he criticized President Xi over the coronavirus Posted: 17 Feb 2020 09:30 AM PST  Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at the elite Tsinghua University, had published a scathing essay on the Chinese government's handling of the coronavirus.
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| Men linked to white supremacist group plead not guilty Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:15 AM PST  Three men accused of being members of a violent white supremacist group called The Base pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges in a federal indictment in Maryland. Former Canadian Armed Forces reservist Patrik Mathews, 27; and Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, of Elkton, Maryland; entered their pleas during separate arraignments on charges including transporting a firearm and ammunition with the intent to commit a felony. In a court filing, Justice Department prosecutors said Lemley and Mathews discussed "the planning of violence" at a gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia, in January.
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