| Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows two-thirds of voters want the Senate to call new impeachment witnesses Posted: 22 Jan 2020 02:55 PM PST  In a new poll, 63 percent of registered voters agree that the Senate should call new witnesses to testify during President Trump's impeachment trial.
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| Steyer: U.S. reparations for slavery will help 'repair the damage' Posted: 22 Jan 2020 02:52 PM PST  The billionaire presidential candidate Tom Steyer reiterated his support Wednesday for reparations for African- Americans suffering from the legacy of slavery.
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| Residents paint a picture of Epstein's life on "Pedophile Island" Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:07 PM PST  When Epstein was convicted and serving time for procuring an underage girl in Florida for sex, word of his 13 month sentence and his alleged crimes made their way to St. Thomas.
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| The Doomsday Clock Creeps As Close to Midnight As It's Been in Decades Posted: 23 Jan 2020 12:04 PM PST  Here's the history of the countdown to apocalypse.
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| Spirit Airlines passenger: Cabin crew didn't take my groping allegation seriously Posted: 23 Jan 2020 04:46 AM PST  A Michigan college student says she was sexually assaulted on a Spirit Airlines flight, but that flight attendants treated her like an annoyance.
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| A University of Minnesota student was arrested in China and sentenced to 6 months in prison for tweeting cartoons making fun of President Xi Jingping Posted: 23 Jan 2020 06:18 AM PST  According to Chinese court documents obtained by Axios, 20-year-old Luo Daiqing was arrested after returning to Wuhan for summer break.
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| Additional U.S. troops have been flown out of Iraq following Iranian missile attack Posted: 22 Jan 2020 05:53 AM PST  Additional U.S. troops have been flown out of Iraq for closer evaluation of potential concussion injuries from the Iranian missile attack of Jan. 8, U.S. defense officials said Tuesday.
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| Iran Has A Lot Of Missiles And The U.S. Navy's Carriers Look Like Juicy Targets Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:00 PM PST  Could Iran sink a carrier?
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| Trump impeachment scandal emails released, moments before midnight deadline Posted: 22 Jan 2020 02:18 AM PST  The Trump administration has released a stash of heavily redacted documents about the withholding of military aid to Ukraine just two minutes before the deadline.As the Senate continued to block attempts to subpoena official records for Donald Trump's impeachment trial, 192 pages of emails were disclosed under a Freedom of Information request.
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| Islamic leaders make 'groundbreaking' visit to Auschwitz Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:25 AM PST  Muslim religious leaders joined members of a U.S. Jewish group at Auschwitz on Thursday for what organizers described as "the most senior Islamic leadership delegation" to visit the site of a Nazi German death camp. The secretary general of the Muslim World League, Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, and the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, led the tour to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial in Poland.
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| Thunberg fires back at Mnunchin after college degree jab Posted: 23 Jan 2020 09:13 AM PST  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin said Greta Thunberg can discuss fossil fuel divestment "after she goes and studies economics in college."
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| 16 people under observation after contact with U.S. coronavirus patient Posted: 22 Jan 2020 11:14 PM PST  The patient, a 30-year-old man, is doing well and may be released from Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington in the near future, the hospital's chief medical officer Jay Cook told a press conference. None of the people who were in close contact with the patient have displayed symptoms of the flu-like illness, said John Wiesman, secretary of health for Washington State.
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| Family attorneys say cruise line's story of toddler's death is 'physically impossible' Posted: 23 Jan 2020 12:53 PM PST  Attorneys representing Chloe Wiegand's family say a ship visit proves it's "physically impossible" for her grandfather to hold her out of the window.
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| Man in Mexico Now Ill After Visiting Coronavirus Ground Zero Posted: 22 Jan 2020 02:24 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- A man who fell ill in Mexico on Monday following a December trip to Wuhan, China, is under observation as a potential case of the coronavirus, the respiratory virus that has killed at least 17 people worldwide.The 57-year-old molecular biology professor works for the Instituto Politecnico Nacional university in the city of Reynosa, which borders with the U.S. The man returned to Mexico on Jan. 10 through a Mexico City airport and then flew to the state of Tamaulipas, Mexican authorities said.Tamaulipas State Health Minister Gloria Molina said in a radio interview that the man immediately reported his situation to authorities after feeling sick. He is now in his home under monitoring to prevent any potential spread. His test results are expected on Thursday, Mexico's chief epidemiologist Jose Luis Alomia said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon.Molina said the man also had layovers at the border city of Tijuana when he left and returned to Mexico, according to journalist Joaquin Lopez Doriga's news site.Link: China Seeks to Contain Virus as Death Toll Jumps to 17Earlier on Wednesday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that a second possible case in Mexico had been ruled out. "The coronavirus is being looked into. If we have more information we will release it later today," he said.Mexico plans to inform daily on the latests developments of the virus around the world. A preventive travel recommendation is in place for the country and passengers arriving from international ports will be checked for any symptoms, Alomia said.Separately, Colombian authorities are also evaluating whether a Chinese man with a respiratory illness, who traveled to Colombia from Turkey, has the same virus, according to Blu, a Bogota-based radio station. The country's health ministry declined to comment.The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he needs to consider all evidence before deciding if the coronavirus that emerged from Wuhan is an international health emergency.(Adds Alomia comments in paragraphs 3 and 6, and WHO comments in last paragraph)To contact the reporters on this story: Cyntia Barrera Diaz in Mexico City at cbarrerad@bloomberg.net;Lorena Rios in Mexico City at lriost@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ney Hayashi at ncruz4@bloomberg.net, Dale QuinnFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| See This Nuke? Meet the Most Destructive Nuclear Bomb Ever Made By Man Posted: 22 Jan 2020 07:45 AM PST  Thank god the Soviets never deployed it.
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| NYT Ed Board Member Wrote Out ‘Full Draft’ of Biden Endorsement, but Scrapped It over His ‘Normal’ Message and Lack of ‘Urgency’ Posted: 23 Jan 2020 11:27 AM PST  Kathleen Kingsbury, a deputy editorial page editor and member of The New York Times's editorial board, revealed Thursday that she wrote a full 2,000-word endorsement of Joe Biden, only for the board to reject it because "it didn't match the moment."The Times broke new ground this cycle by conducting on-the-record interviews with nine of the top candidates and airing the interviews, which have historically been off-the-record, on their documentary show The Weekly on FX.Kingsbury explained to Times columnists on the The Argument podcast how the Times editorial board arrived at its first-ever dual endorsement of Senators Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), saying that "policy prescriptions" and the "messages" drove much of the thought-process. She also dismissed concerns about electability, calling the effort to predict which candidate would be most successful in the general election a "fool's errand.""What we realized is that the party needs to have that conversation amongst itself. It's really not the role of the editorial board to determine the future of the Democratic Party," Kingsbury said.But she revealed that, following heightened tensions with Iran after President Trump's decision to kill Qasem Soleimani, she went ahead and drafted an endorsement of Biden, citing his opposition to the war in Afghanistan."Right after we had the outbreak of conflict with Iran, I sat down and I wrote an entire endorsement of Joe Biden," Klingsbury said. "I think that came from a desire on my part for the comfort of having someone who during his interviews, spoke so fluently about foreign policy, who's been in the room in some of those more difficult decision-making [moments]."In August, Biden fabricated an Afghanistan-war story about how he resisted safety concerns to travel to "godforsaken country" and honor a war hero."We can lose a vice president," he recounted at a campaign event. "We can't lose many more of these kids. Not a joke."Klingsbury then explained why the Times ultimately did not pursue Biden's endorsement, implying that Biden's campaign hasn't meaningfully grappled with the conditions that gave rise to Trump's election."Joe Biden's message simply is 'let's go back to normal, whatever normal is, right?' For a lot of Americans, 'normal' wasn't working and I think that there needs to be some recognition that at least for some portion of the American public, the government and the economic systems were failing them," she said.In an emailed statement to National Review, Kingsbury said she did not "have much to say beyond what I said on The Argument." She declined to comment on whether the board wrote any other endorsement drafts, or when it decided to scrap Biden's."Once I had a draft in hand, I realized I should return to the wisdom of my board," she explained ". . . [Biden's] message and his proposed plans don't feel like they match the urgency of the moment."
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| Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow says he'd advise the president not to attend his impeachment trial Posted: 22 Jan 2020 05:45 PM PST  President Trump may "love" the idea of attending his Senate impeachment trial, but his lawyer Jay Sekulow thinks he needs to sit this one out.While in Davos on Wednesday morning, Trump told reporters he thinks it would be great to watch the trial in person, sitting "right in the front row" so he can "stare into their corrupt faces." When asked about Trump's comments, Sekulow responded, "His counsel might recommend against that. That's not the way it works. Presidents don't do that."Like the House managers, Trump's defense lawyers will have 24 hours over three days to argue their case. Sekulow said he doesn't yet know how much time they will use. "When you're in a proceeding like this, you have to be flexible, you have to be fluid," he added. "We're doing that."More stories from theweek.com Democrats walked right into Mitch McConnell's trap 5 brutally funny cartoons about Mitch McConnell's impeachment rules Virologist who helped identify SARS on coronavirus outbreak: 'This time I'm scared'
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| World airports taking precautions after China virus ourbreak Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:56 AM PST  Airports around the world have begun taking precautions to deal with an anticipated influx of Chinese tourists taking Lunar New Year holidays, just as the outbreak of a pneumonia-like virus in China has prompted officials there to take drastic measures to prevent its spread. Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest for international travel, announced on Thursday that, following government guidance, all passengers arriving on direct flights from China will receive thermal screening at the gate upon arrival and be provided with informational brochures. The screening at the airport, home to Emirates airline, will be conducted at secured, closed gates by teams from the Dubai Health Authority and the Airport Medical Center, Dubai Airports said in a statement provided to The Associated Press.
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| 1 Killed, 7 Wounded, Including 9-Year-Old, in Shooting in Downtown Seattle. Here's What to Know Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:28 PM PST  The shooting is the third in Seattle in two days
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| These 9 Dining Chairs Are Sculptural, Surprising, and Downright Sleek Posted: 23 Jan 2020 05:00 AM PST |
| Smugglers tried to bring 3,700 invasive crabs through the Port of Cincinnati Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:21 PM PST  Mitten crabs are a delicacy in Asia and sell for about $50 each in the United States, officials say. They are considered an invasive species.
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| 'Haters gonna hate & deniers will deny': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends Greta Thunberg after Steven Mnuchin dissed the activist Posted: 23 Jan 2020 08:30 AM PST  "If you don't have an economics degree like Greta, they'll mock you for not having one. If you DO have one, as I do, they'll claim it's illegitimate."
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| Iran Says Drone Used in Soleimani Strike Came From Kuwait Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:49 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the U.S. drone used to kill a top Iranian general in Baghdad took off from a military base in Kuwait, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, citing Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Guards' aerospace force.The Guards had detected activity from the drone and fighter jets near Baghdad airport but didn't know they were planning to target Qassem Soleimani, according to Hajizadeh. At least four military bases in the Persian Gulf were involved in the Jan. 3 operation, he said, according to the report late Wednesday.To contact the reporters on this story: Farah Elbahrawy in Dubai at felbahrawy@bloomberg.net;Golnar Motevalli in Dubai at gmotevalli@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Amy TeibelFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Russia, China, and Iran Would Love to Take Out a Nuclear Aircraft Carrier. Here's Why They Can't. Posted: 22 Jan 2020 09:30 PM PST  The beasts are more survivable than they seem.
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| Hillary Clinton is done trying to be liked Posted: 23 Jan 2020 03:41 AM PST  These days, her statements are unvarnished and resentful. To the voters who hate her, she seems comfortable letting them know that she hates them, tooIn the months after the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton went into the woods. They became almost comic, the sightings of her that would pop up on social media, as the woman who had exercised uncommon influence over American political life, who had in fact won the popular vote and nearly became president, reduced to a soul-searching wanderer in the wilderness, wearing fleece and wondering what went wrong. People asked her for selfies in public locales whose mundanity stood in contrast to her former power. Here she was, the woman who had watched Osama bin Laden die in real time, who had led one of the first major fights for healthcare reform, who had sat with presidents and prime ministers and extracted from them commitments to do things that they did not want to do. Here she was, once one of the world's most powerful people, walking on a low-altitude beginners' hiking trail. Here she was, the former senator and secretary of state and very nearly the first female president, in a supermarket outside her tony suburb, posing with a fan in front of a stack of organic apples.There was a degree of schadenfreude in the sharing of these pictures of Clinton during the months following the 2016 presidential election. Even those most alert to the coming dangers and needless suffering that would be imposed by a Donald Trump presidency seemed a bit giddy at how far she had fallen, relieved to see her knocked from her perch of power. Much of the hate, of course, came from Republicans, people who resented the moments of her political career, fleeting and sporadic as they were, that seemed aimed at reducing the suffering of working people, or inching the nation towards justice. The rest of the hate came from liberals and leftists, people who had voted for Clinton in 2016 begrudgingly or with reserve, who considered their support of her against Trump as a kind of harm reduction.Some of the left's hostility to her was revived this week when an excerpt from an interview she conducted for a new Netflix documentary series, Hillary, was released by the Hollywood Reporter. In the interview, Clinton offers commentary on perhaps the one person in American political life it is most dangerous for her to comment on: her 2016 Democratic primary rival, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. She said that "nobody likes him" in Washington. She said he has accomplished little in his career. She said that other politicians are disinclined to work with him.All of this may or may not be true, but it's not clear why Clinton would say it. If these comments were meant to harm Sanders' chances of winning the Democratic primary, they are more likely to do the opposite. Sanders' own pitch to voters relies heavily on his outsider status in Washington, and tends to aestheticize his grumpy temperament as a sign of integrity. Many voters, alienated by Washington, will hear that a candidate is disliked there and think: good. Disapproval from Clinton may itself be seen as a virtue from a certain class of liberal voters, among whom her reputation is not good.Because though she is hated passionately and without reserve on the right, the Democratic party and those roughly aligned with it rightly have at best a very ambivalent relationship toward Hillary. Ambivalence might be the most that she deserves. Her political career was long, and over her three decades of activity in national politics she was frequently on the wrong side of history. Many of her positions seemed motivated more by political convenience than by principle. She was too cozy with corporate interests as a senator, and she was too comfortable with military intervention as secretary of state. She seemed inscrutable; it was difficult to know what she really thought, perhaps because so many people who interpreted her career as pundits and commentators insisted that what she said was never what she really meant.Over these decades, Clinton became an avatar of the Democratic party's worst impulses: its frightened run to the center during the 90s and 2000s, its comfort with compromise and acquiescence, its elites' preoccupation with convention and procedure at the expense of taking important moral stands or being accountable to its base. Hillary became a symbol of corruption, centrism and cynicism. At times, she really deserved it.> This is what is so maddening: she makes it clear sexism can happen to women who are also bad people, or who have made bad choicesAt other times, she didn't. It is impossible to deny the reality that Clinton, as an uncommonly powerful woman, was also the object of tremendous sexist vitriol, a passionate fixation on her that animated even the legitimate grievances against her with an intensity unseen in critiques of similar male politicians. The media fixated on her thick ankles, and then they fixated on her masculine pantsuits. It became a common party joke to make strange and morbid speculations about her sex life. Her personal virtues were interpreted as suspicious: intelligence morphed into cunning, determination became ambition, resolve morphed into stubbornness, care and studiousness became dishonesty and scheming. Among the most fixated and rancorous of her critics, even valid complaints about her seem undergirded with a passion that is more psychological than moral.This is what is so maddening about Hillary Clinton: she makes it clear that sexism can happen to women who are also bad people, or who have made bad choices. She makes it clear that righteous anger can also contain misogynist contempt. She makes it clear that sexist double standards often mean not only that good women are held unfairly responsible, but that bad women are held responsible where bad men are not. The role of sexism in our reactions to Clinton is complex, as complex as the messy reality that all of us who have been wronged have in fact done wrong ourselves. But complexity is something our political media, in particular, are ill-equipped to describe. Clinton's example requires us to hold multiple inconvenient, contradictory thoughts in our minds at the same time: that sexism can be unjust even when it is directed at women who are themselves perpetrators of injustice; that sometimes bigotry is wielded even against people who are not impeccable or particularly deserving of sympathy. But even when its targets are unlikable, sexism, still, is wrong.For her part, Clinton has turned into another kind of figure that our culture has difficulty parsing: a woman who is not just old, but old and angry. Her long career was punctuated with humiliations: the defeat of her healthcare reform effort, her husband's public affairs, her loss of the 2008 presidential primary. And it was capped with the greatest humiliation of all: her loss, on a constitutional technicality, to a racist, sexist, boorish man, who outmatched even her in cynicism but possessed none of her intellect. She is angry at these humiliations, and she seems committed to her anger, directing it unhelpfully at some of the wrong people, uselessly at some of the right ones.Still, there is something disarming about this version of Hillary, even as she kicks dirt bitterly at an old rival, and throws destructive bombs into the political conversation. The woman who has given interviews since the 2016 election is vulnerable, angry, resentful and tired, nothing at all like the consultant-polished entity she was before, speaking in vague, noncommittal terms that were so rigorously inoffensive that they hardly had any content. Now that her political career is over and she is no longer seeking power, the aura of suspicion and dishonesty about her has dissipated, and people no longer reflexively disbelieve her. Her statements are unvarnished, sometimes even frankly resentful. She says the kind of thing that would be disastrous if she were actually in power. To the voters who hate her, she seems comfortable letting them know that she hates them, too. For better and frequently for worse, Clinton has shed the pretense of trying to be liked. Finally, we feel sure she's saying what she means. * Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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| Trump outright brags he's withholding 'all the material' to beat impeachment Posted: 22 Jan 2020 10:18 AM PST  President Trump probably should've kept quiet on this one.After the first day of impeachment arguments in the Senate, Trump told a press conference at the World Economic Forum that he's pretty sure he'll end up being acquitted. "Honestly, we have all the material. They don't have the material," Trump said of his impeachment defense team and of the House Democrats prosecuting him, making it clear there's some information he's holding back.> The second article of impeachment was for obstruction of Congress: covering up witnesses and documents from the American people.> > This morning the President not only confessed to it, he bragged about it:> > "Honestly, we have all the material. They don't have the material." pic.twitter.com/DPAEFHIDjS> > -- Rep. Val Demings (@RepValDemings) January 22, 2020Beyond Rep. Val Demings' (D-Fla.) callout, her fellow impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) addressed Trump's comments in a press conference before the impeachment trial resumed Wednesday. "Well, indeed they do have the material -- hidden from the American people," Schiff said of Trump's team. "That is nothing to brag about." > Rep. Adam Schiff: "The president...bragged that he thought things were going well because they had all the materials. Well, indeed they do have the material--hidden from the American people. That is nothing to brag about." https://t.co/C7AyPvvSTr pic.twitter.com/4cqeFOpHGu> > -- ABC News (@ABC) January 22, 2020More stories from theweek.com Democrats walked right into Mitch McConnell's trap Longtime PBS anchor Jim Lehrer dies at 85 The world is less than 2 'minutes' from doomsday, atomic scientists warn
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| Boy accused in fatal family shooting to be charged as adult Posted: 22 Jan 2020 12:36 PM PST  A teenager in Utah accused of fatally shooting four of his relatives and wounding a fifth will be charged as an adult as soon as Wednesday, a prosecutor said.
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| 'End of the world': Wuhan a ghost town under quarantine Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:48 AM PST  Wuhan residents called for help and shared worries of food shortages Thursday, with streets in the virus-hit central Chinese city left deserted after it was put on lockdown. After he bought some, the person behind him in the queue bought the remaining stock in the shop.
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| Family of Kristin Smart, who went missing in 1996, now says there's no news coming soon Posted: 23 Jan 2020 05:15 AM PST  Kristin Smart's mother said she was contacted by a former FBI agent, but there is no timeline for an announcement in her case, the family later said.
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| Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said a US-Iran war would be a 'disaster' and questioned the sanity of those who recommend conflicts Posted: 22 Jan 2020 01:27 PM PST  "There's no way — no sane mind should ever think of another conflict," Khan said.
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| Chinese Food Will Determine the Spread of Pandemics Posted: 22 Jan 2020 07:00 PM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- With the world's largest high-speed rail network, a payments system that's largely conducted via phone apps, and half the world's solar-power plants, China often looks like a country at the technological frontier. When you consider how it feeds itself, though, it's still just catching up.About 44% of the country's livestock in 2010 were still raised in backyards and traditional mixed farms, where they mingle with crops and other animals. While that's a dramatic fall from a generation ago, when about 97% of livestock were raised in traditional conditions, it trails countries like the U.S. and Europe, where 95% or more of pigs and poultry are raised in so-called "intensive systems" — in common parlance, factory farms.That transition is likely to be a major factor in the spread of new diseases such as the coronavirus, which has killed 17 people since it was first detected last month in Wuhan. The central Chinese city was put on lockdown Thursday to contain the virus. How China handles the changes taking place in its food industry will determine the future of infections for everyone on the planet.Epidemics are a product of urbanization. Only when humans started to pack themselves into densely populated cities around 5,000 years ago were infections able to attain the critical mass needed to kill us in large numbers. The worldwide disease outbreaks we call pandemics started to emerge only when our urban civilization went global.Think about that in terms of the livestock industry and the implications are concerning. In the space of 50 years or so factory farming has "urbanized" an animal population that was previously scattered between small and midsize holdings. Epidemic conditions that once only affected humans can increasingly pose threats to our food animals, too.Then consider each animal as a potential laboratory for the mutations that can cause new epidemics to emerge. Globally, the population of farm animals is about three times that of humans. Some of the most serious disease outbreaks in recent decades have resulted from infections crossing the species barrier from intensively farmed livestock to people.H5N1 avian flu may have started to spread when migratory birds wound up in close proximity to the new intensive poultry farms that sprang up across eastern China in the 1990s. The origins of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic are harder to unpick, but several studies have suggested diverse origins relating to global movements of pigs and poultry between Europe, Asia and North America.The Wuhan virus, similarly, was first found among people linked to the city's wet market. As my colleague Adam Minter has written, the conditions in these open-air stalls — where many animals are slaughtered to order or taken home alive — are a major factor in the spread of disease in China in recent years.It's not all bad news. Precisely because they're such potent sources of infection, biosecurity measures and surveillance on intensive farms are generally much tighter than they are on traditional holdings. China's bureaucracy has often been characterized by secrecy and indecision in the face of epidemics and food safety problems. It seems to take strong direction from the top for this stasis to be reversed, so it's good that President Xi Jinping has called for action around the latest outbreak. Even so, the devastating spread of African swine fever over the past year suggests that food safety is still weaker than it should be.The changing nature of the retail grocery trade may improve matters. As amazing as the persistence of China's wet markets may seem to outsiders, it's easy to overlook how quickly they're fading. Until the 1990s, supermarkets didn't exist, rationing was common, and meat in many areas was a treat reserved for rare occasions like the coming Lunar New Year festival. Nowadays, the market share of modern grocery stores is about 65%, according to Euromonitor International. That puts far more of the meat supply chain into large-scale facilities with better biosecurity procedures.The bigger problem is likely to be a political one. Food-safety measures work best where there's a high degree of trust in society. Farmers are most likely to pay the personal costs of following hygiene rules when they think they can benefit more from the integrity of the system than from smuggling infected livestock. As even Beijing acknowledges, trust is one commodity that's in short supply in China these days. To contact the author of this story: David Fickling at dfickling@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Rachel Rosenthal at rrosenthal21@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities, as well as industrial and consumer companies. He has been a reporter for Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Guardian.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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| Ok, 'Boomer': This Is the Deadliest Submarine Monster Lurking the Deep Posted: 22 Jan 2020 10:54 PM PST  Ballistic missile submarines—or as sailors call them, 'boomers.'
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| Global airlines on high alert as virus outbreak spreads Posted: 22 Jan 2020 10:18 PM PST  The biggest concern is a sharp drop in travel demand if the virus becomes a pandemic. During the height of the SARS outbreak in April 2003, passenger demand in Asia plunged 45%, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Cathay cut nearly 40% of its flights and reported a financial loss, as did Singapore Airlines Ltd, Japan Airlines Co Ltd and ANA Holdings Inc.
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| Protester interrupts Trump impeachment trial Posted: 22 Jan 2020 04:29 PM PST  A protester interrupted House Manager Hakeem Jeffries during Wednesday evening's impeachment trial.
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| School headmaster charged in fatal gold robbery in Thailand Posted: 22 Jan 2020 11:05 PM PST  An elementary school headmaster said Thursday he planned a gold shop robbery in Thailand due to personal and financial problems and apologized to the families of the three people who were killed. A 2-year-old boy was among the victims of the shooting earlier this month that caused public outrage and increased pressure for a swift arrest. Police arrested Prasitthichai Khaokaew, 38, early Wednesday and said he confessed to his crimes during interrogation.
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| US Treasury Secretary pledges tax cuts for 'middle class' Posted: 23 Jan 2020 06:27 AM PST  US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday pledged a new round of tax cuts that he said would benefit ordinary Americans. President Donald Trump, who faces a tough reelection bid in nine months, raised the possibility of tax cuts earlier this week, saying a proposal could be rolled out within three months. Any new stimulus would add to 2017's budget-busting $1.5 trillion round of tax cuts, mostly aimed at corporations and the wealthiest taypayers.
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| Welp, Scientists Found 28 New Virus Groups in a Melting Glacier Posted: 23 Jan 2020 11:06 AM PST  This is how the world ends.
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| The mysterious, deadly Wuhan coronavirus may have jumped from snakes to humans, scientists say Posted: 23 Jan 2020 03:13 AM PST  The new findings appear to be the most comprehensive understanding of the mysterious virus, known as 2019-nCoV, so far.
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| Turkey Slams Greece for ‘Illegally’ Arming 16 Aegean Islands Posted: 23 Jan 2020 12:09 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar asked Greece to demilitarize 16 Aegean islands near Turkey he claims were illegally armed, in a move that may exacerbate strains in the countries' relations."We expect Greece to act in line with international law and the agreements it has signed," state-run Anadolu Agency cited Akar as saying in Ankara on Wednesday.The two neighbors are already at loggerheads over offshore natural-gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean. Tensions over conflicting claims have escalated since Turkey and Libya signed a contentious agreement last year that delineates maritime borders and affirms claims of sovereignty over areas of the Mediterranean.Turkey's claims could make it more difficult and costly to build a planned natural-gas pipeline that could link the eastern Mediterranean basin with European markets through Cyprus, Greece and Italy.Greece and Turkey, both NATO members, came close to conflict in 1996 over a pair of uninhabited islets in the Aegean.To contact the reporter on this story: Cagan Koc in Istanbul at ckoc2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Paul AbelskyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| China's New H-20 Stealth Bomber Is Going To Shake Up East Asia Posted: 22 Jan 2020 10:49 AM PST  The military balance will never be the same.
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| Polish conflict over judges heats up after vote, court ruling Posted: 23 Jan 2020 10:52 AM PST  The conflict over judges in Poland deepened on Thursday, as a supreme court ruling and a parliament vote ratcheted up tensions over an issue that has set the country on a collision course with the European Union. Poland's top court ruled on Thursday that judges appointed under new government rules do not have the right to issue judgments there. The governing nationalists Law and Justice (PiS) believe it has no right to make such a decision.
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| Canadians petition for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to pay security costs: 'Part of giving up royal life is paying their own bills' Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:04 PM PST  Thousands of Canadians have signed a petition demanding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pay for their own security costs, amid mounting concern the country could be saddled with a bill costing millions of dollars.Since the couple announced they were giving up formal royal duties and public money, they have been holed up in a $20m private mansion on a secluded cove on Canada's Victoria Island.
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| New Suspected Coronavirus Cases Pop Up in Two States Posted: 23 Jan 2020 01:55 PM PST  Officials across the United States probed potential cases of a new coronavirus on Thursday, while a divided World Health Organization declined to dub the deadly outbreak a health emergency and authorities confirmed the first death outside the virus' Chinese city of origin.Brazos County, Texas officials said they had isolated a potential 2019 novel coronavirus patient at home, pending precautionary testing. The individual had recently visited Wuhan, China, where 17 people have died and hundreds more have fallen sick since last month. Texas A&M University confirmed that one of its students was identified as the possible case there and said the "immediate health risk to the campus community" was low.Meanwhile, a sick individual representing another potential case in California reportedly arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Mexico City on an American Airlines flight at about 6:45 p.m. local time on Wednesday. They were taken to the hospital with flu-like symptoms, NBC Los Angeles reported. It's not yet clear when the results of the evaluation on the suspected cases will be available, but local health authorities in Los Angeles County said it was "very possible" the area will see cases of the virus, since so many people travel from China to Southern California. The LA County Department of Public Health said in a statement that there have been no confirmed local cases of the virus, that "currently the risk of local transmission is low," and that the county responds to suspected cases by working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "to assess and test."Coronavirus Patient Had Close Contact With 16 in Washington StateOfficials with the CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast regarding either suspected case. A patient in Washington state was announced as the first official U.S. case of the virus on Tuesday.Also on Thursday, an emergency committee convened in Geneva by the World Health Organization decided against declaring a global health emergency and planned to re-evaluate the issue in 10 days, while acknowledging the "urgency" of the situation. Such a declaration is rare and reserved for "serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected" outbreaks and would have given the organization broader authority to shape global responses to the virus, reported The New York Times. The organization said in a press release that committee members were split, with some believing it was "still too early" to designate the outbreak a global health emergency.Two days earlier, the CDC announced the first U.S. case of the virus in Washington state: a man in his 30s who became ill days after returning from Wuhan, China on Jan. 15. Because of the man's travel history, officials collected a clinical specimen and sent it to the CDC overnight, where laboratory testing confirmed the diagnosis through a real time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test, also known as rRT-PCR.The CDC said at the time that it was in the final stages of developing a version of the test that would be able to confirm cases outside of CDC facilities. Until those tests are shared with the CDC's domestic and international partners, they must take place on site in Atlanta. The man in Washington state reportedly had close contact with at least 16 people since returning from China—before he was isolated from the public—and the CDC said Tuesday that it had deployed a team to trace his contacts and "determine if anyone else has become ill."During a recent update, hospital officials said the Washington patient was resting comfortably, making progress, and being cared for by a group of volunteer nurses.The first death linked to the virus outside of Wuhan was confirmed by provincial authorities more than 600 miles north of that city on Thursday afternoon. The 80-year-old victim had lived in Wuhan—a major port city of 11 million people—for more than two months, according to the health department in the province of Hebei. Wuhan is now under total quarantine.The man's death marked the 18th fatality caused by the virus, which can infect both animals and people, and cause severe illnesses in the respiratory tract, including SARS. The CDC has confirmed limited person-to-person spread of the virus, but officials have not fleshed out just how easily it is spread. Associated symptoms include fever, cough, and trouble breathing. Roughly 800 people died during a 2003 SARS outbreak.Last Friday, the CDC began entry screening of thousands of passengers at airports in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles—the U.S. airports that receive most travelers from Wuhan, China. Similar screenings were added this week in Atlanta and Chicago.Eric Toner, a senior scientist with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the University's School of Public Health, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that the current risk to the average person in the United States remained "low" but that screening methods were also "far from perfect.""The important thing is to identify people as early as possible, get them tested, and get them isolated," said Toner. "That's how you control the introduction of a contagious disease into a country.""But I'd be shocked if we don't see some more cases," he added.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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| Rep. Ilhan Omar launches reelection bid with big advantages Posted: 23 Jan 2020 10:59 AM PST  Rep. Ilhan Omar's congressional career got off to a rocky start just a year ago, with her provocative remarks on Israel and Jews stirring anger across the country and raising speculation that some other Minnesota Democrat might step forward to challenge her in 2020. Omar was kicking off her reelection campaign Thursday night with a massive bank account and no challengers who pose a serious threat from either party. In an overwhelmingly Democratic district that where Omar took 78% of the vote in 2018, University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs gives her opponents no chance.
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