| Trump's new press secretary pledges not to lie from podium Posted: 01 May 2020 05:27 AM PDT  President Donald Trump's new spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, vowed Friday not to lie to reporters from the podium as she made her debut at the first White House briefing by a press secretary in more than a year. "I will never lie to you," McEnany told reporters. McEnany, who joined the White House last month, took the stage behind a podium that had quite literally been collecting cobwebs before the president began the practice of holding his own daily briefings because of the coronavirus.
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| Top House Democrat Says Tara Reade Allegation against Biden Should Be ‘Investigated Seriously’ Posted: 30 Apr 2020 02:46 PM PDT  Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday that the sexual-assault allegation against Joe Biden must be "investigated seriously" and that Biden will likely have to address the claim directly."It's got to be taken seriously because this is a serious allegation raised by a serious individual and needs to be investigated seriously. We've probably got to hear from him [Biden] at some point directly," Jeffries said Wednesday on WNYC when asked about Tara Reade's claim that Biden sexually assaulted her when she worked for him as a Senate staffer. "I'm not really in a position to say what is the appropriate mechanism, although this needs to be taken seriously."Reade alleges that in 1993, when she was a Senate staff assistant for Biden, she was told by a top staffer to bring Biden a duffel bag in a Senate building, and when she met with him he pinned her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers while forcibly kissing her. In early April of last year, before he announced his run for the Democratic nomination, Reade alleged along with several other women that Biden had touched her inappropriately.Several other top Democrats have stood by the presumptive Democratic nominee as he has denied the allegations, including House speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is considered one of the contenders to be Biden's running mate."He's devoted his life to supporting women, and he has vehemently denied this allegation," Gillibrand said."I'm satisfied with how he has responded. I know him. I was proud to endorse him on Monday," Pelosi said."I know Joe Biden and I think he's telling the truth and this did not happen," Abrams said during a CNN appearance.Biden will reportedly appear on MSNBC's Morning Joe and address the allegations on Friday.
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| No arrests after black man shot dead while jogging Posted: 30 Apr 2020 02:06 PM PDT  Ahmaud Arbery's mother says she feels "very discouraged" by the investigation into her son's death.
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| Afghan president, feuding rival reach 'tentative' agreement Posted: 01 May 2020 06:10 AM PDT  A bitter feud between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah appeared closer to resolution Friday after Abdullah said the two men had moved forward in talks. Abdullah previously served as Afghanistan's "chief executive" under a power-sharing deal with Ghani, but lost that post following last year's presidential elections that Ghani won amid claims of fraud. Instead of accepting defeat, Abdullah proclaimed himself president, a title he uses to this day, though the international community only recognises Ghani.
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| Governor closes all roads into a New Mexico city Posted: 01 May 2020 01:26 PM PDT  Effective immediately, all roads into Gallup, New Mexico, are closed.
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| If flu deaths were counted like COVID-19 deaths, the worst recent flu season evidently killed 15,620 Americans Posted: 30 Apr 2020 10:34 PM PDT  The U.S. now has more than 63,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, and most experts say that's almost certainly an undercount. Still, if you compare that number to the 2017-18 flu season, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates killed 61,000 people, it looks like COVID-19 might be similar to a bad flu — President Trump has made this point, as have many conservative media personalities. But the data so far show that this new coronavirus is much more lethal than the flu, and Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust has an explanation.Faust, a Harvard Medical School instructor and emergency physician at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, wrote in Scientific American that he started wondering about the flu-to-COVID comparisons when it occurred to him that in nearly eight years of hospital work, "I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu." Neither had any of the colleagues he called around the country. So he did some research, and this is what he found:> The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDC's reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths — that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus — has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620. [Jeremy Faust, Scientific American]So in an apples-to-apples comparison, matching the second week of April's COVID-19 deaths to the worst week of the past seven flu seasons, "the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu," Faust writes. Read his entire essay at Scientific American.More stories from theweek.com The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit Elon Musk declares he's 'selling almost all physical possessions' because he's 'devoting myself to Mars and Earth'
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| Gov. Cuomo Is Blaming the New York Times for His Own Coronavirus Mistakes Posted: 30 Apr 2020 06:52 PM PDT  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has an answer for critics who say the state didn't react to the novel coronavirus quickly enough: Blame The New York Times.Over the past several days, the governor has repeatedly used his press conferences to take shots at the self-described "Paper of Record," lumping the publication in with other official organizations that were slow to react to the spread of COVID-19."Where were all the experts?" Cuomo said during a press conference earlier this week. "Where was The New York Times? Where was The Wall Street Journal? Where was all the bugle blowers who should say, 'Be careful, there's a virus in China that may be in the United States.'"On Thursday, the governor got more specific. When asked about his response to critics who said other states were quicker to adopt measures to curb the spread of the virus, Cuomo instead said the paper's editorial writers should be blamed along with other organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that supposedly did not sound the alarms early enough about the dangers of the virus."They didn't write an editorial saying I should close down until after I closed down, right?" he complained. "Where was The New York Times editorial board?" Cuomo continued moments later. "Everybody missed it. Governors don't do global pandemics, that's not in my job description."Either Cuomo didn't actually read the Times' coverage, or he has selective amnesia about the paper's articles and the recommendations in op-eds when contrasted with his own response. Beginning in mid-January, the Times has run multiple stories daily about the spread of the virus, tracing the pandemic from its initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, and chronicling scientists' warnings about the disease and the first cases and deaths in many countries. Later that month, the paper was running at least half a dozen increasingly alarming items per day about the spread of the virus, particularly in Asia, and its effects on global markets.At the time, some of the paper's opinion columnists had a message as well: The threat of the virus is real, and scientists need to be driving policy. In one column that ran on January 23, the same day Wuhan was sealed off from the rest of China by its government, Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, warned about the danger of the novel virus. He argued that politicians need to let scientists dictate policy on issues: "border screenings, travel restrictions and potential quarantine have major public health consequences, and they should be driven by science and emerging biological and epidemiological evidence.""We are once again faced with the outbreak of an emerging pathogen with potentially global implications," he wrote. "We don't know how bad it will get. But there is no excuse for not getting ready for the worst. We already know the consequences of inaction."In January, before there were any confirmed known cases in New York, the Times ran at least ten opinion pieces speculating about the dangers of the virus and how the U.S. should react. The editorial board itself warned about the risks of the virus on Jan. 28, saying the U.S. needed to heed the concerns of health experts. And by mid-February, the Times opinion section ran op-eds arguing how "the rapid—sometimes necessarily draconian—response of governments and health authorities has made a dent in transmission."In an email to The Daily Beast, the governor's senior adviser Rich Azzopardi reiterated Cuomo's claim that the paper's editorial board did not call for travel bans or a shutdown order until five days after the governor put New York on "pause.""For all of the Monday morning quarterbacking, it's important to acknowledge the role everyone played, and didn't play," he said. "No one is saying articles weren't written on the topic generally, but the point is, no one—not the experts, not the major health organizations, not the media who covered them, even The New York Times—were sounding the alarm on the potential for thousands of cases in the New York Metropolitan area before any testing confirmed a single case."While there were certainly mixed messages and little outright direction from the U.S. government, New York was still slower to react than other states and countries. Infectious disease experts and doctors urged the closing of schools for days before the state eventually announced such action (Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said in late February that states should be prepared to close schools). The state government also dragged its feet as top health officials suggested that it was possible that many states would see stay-at-home measures. By the middle of the month, as New York attempted to mount a response to the virus, Cuomo was still feuding with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, declaring, "There's not going to be any 'you must stay in your house' rule" (which he, in effect, reversed course on three days later when he put the state on "pause").And while Cuomo's public approval rating has jumped and he has become a media darling and Democratic Party hero, in the months after the Times' coverage, New York state still lagged behind some of the other localities affected by the coronavirus. Though the state's cases were growing, New York waited until after Washington and California had adopted widespread social-distancing measures to institute similar policies. In public statements, Cuomo attempted to reassure the public by proclaiming that the virus would not hit New York as particularly hard. "When you're saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don't even think it's going to be as bad as it was in other countries," Cuomo said in early March."New York City as a whole was late in social measures," the city's former deputy health commissioner Isaac B. Weisfuse said in a recent interview. "Any after-action review of the pandemic in New York City will focus on that issue. It has become the major issue in the transmission of the virus."Cuomo's complaints about the press have not, however, reached the level of pettiness displayed daily by President Donald Trump, who continues to use the pandemic as an opportunity to complain about media coverage of his administration. As The Daily Beast reported this week, the president even encouraged his friend and unofficial adviser, Fox News host Sean Hannity, to explore legal action against the paper for its critical coverage.And certainly Cuomo realizes the paper's editorial board and opinion section have become easy punching bags for public figures of all political persuasions.Over the past year several years, the paper's op-ed section has been admonished for serious errors and bizarre editorial decisions. The Times opinion section hired and quickly fired a tech columnist who had a public friendship with a neo-Nazi. Another op-ed columnist was widely ridiculed for tweeting that an American-born Olympic ice skater was an immigrant. Climate-change skeptic Bret Stephens has repeatedly generated controversy from his perch at the Times, from peddling arguments with whiffs of race-science to attempting to get a George Washington University professor reprimanded by his bosses for mean tweets. The editorial board's unprecedented endorsement of two Democratic presidential primary candidates (who both went on to lose without winning a single state) was also widely criticized for its lack of relevance or teeth in a crucial election year. The Times was also far from perfect on the issue of the virus. The opinion section has published several columns downplaying the severity of the virus or suggesting that the measures pushed by top global epidemiologists were useless. But the depth of reporting on the virus on the paper's news side, coupled with the warnings on the opinion side, do not make fair scapegoats for questions about the governor's response to the virus."Public health professionals will also need to work with political leaders to make hard decisions on if or when large events should be canceled, workers should be told to telecommute, schools should change the way they operate or schools should close," the Times opinion section warned in March, weeks before the governor put his state on "pause." 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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| Top CDC official says there's 'not a lot of science' to back-up theory that 'farting' spreads coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 10:54 AM PDT  Though coronavirus has been found in the fecal matter of some infected people, there's currently no evidence it can spread from feces to a person.
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| United sees 'zero' travel demand, says major layoffs loom if bookings don't pick up by fall Posted: 01 May 2020 11:22 AM PDT  United Airlines says it will have to lay off employees this fall if travel demand doesn't resume by then.
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| California governor says coronavirus easing 'days away' as protesters throng beach Posted: 01 May 2020 03:52 PM PDT  California is days away from announcing a meaningful loosening of its coronavirus-related restrictions, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday, as protesters sneaked on to closed beaches and crowded the lawn outside the state Capitol in Sacramento. Newsom hinted that restaurants would soon be allowed to re-open for table service with some restrictions, and promised additional relief as stay-at-home orders in place since March 19 wore on residents' nerves and pocketbooks. "Know that I am looking forward to answering your call and addressing your anxiety," Newsom said in his daily press briefing.
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| 30 Easy Side Dishes For Lasagna Posted: 30 Apr 2020 11:46 AM PDT |
| Coronavirus: President Trump’s testing claims fact-checked Posted: 01 May 2020 02:06 AM PDT  President Trump has made several claims about coronavirus testing in the US - is he right?
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| Prison sentence for 'Hot Pockets' heiress delayed amid coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 01:44 PM PDT  Judge denies bid for house arrest but won't have surrender this month, as originally scheduled.
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| Woman spots 12-foot-long alligator in South Carolina Posted: 01 May 2020 08:46 AM PDT  The woman was with her dog when she came across this giant beast.
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| Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin tells tells President Vladimir Putin he has the coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 06:48 AM PDT  Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that he had been diagnosed with the coronavirus and was temporarily stepping down to recover.
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| Michigan governor extends coronavirus state of emergency until May 28 Posted: 30 Apr 2020 09:27 PM PDT  Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) on Thursday extended a coronavirus state of emergency declaration through May 28, saying "common sense and all of the scientific data tells us we're not out of the woods yet."The Republican-controlled state legislature did not approve her order to extend the declaration, which was set to expire on Friday. Whitmer continued the state of emergency by executive order, and GOP lawmakers are now planning on taking her to court over her exercise of state emergency powers, the Detroit Free Press reports. Whitmer said in a statement that by "refusing to extend the emergency and disaster declaration, Republican lawmakers are putting their heads in the sand and putting more lives and livelihoods at risk."There are now 41,379 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Michigan, with the death toll at 3,789. Conservative groups have complained that Whitmer's stay-at-home order is too strict, and on Thursday, dozens of demonstrators, some of them carrying rifles, entered Michigan's statehouse, calling on Whitmer to end the state of emergency. This was a "political rally," Whitmer said, and if participants become infected from COVID-19 because they didn't practicing social distancing, the stay-at-home order could last even longer.More stories from theweek.com The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit Elon Musk declares he's 'selling almost all physical possessions' because he's 'devoting myself to Mars and Earth'
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| Roger Stone bought more than 200 fake Facebook accounts, which he used to run ads defending Roger Stone Posted: 30 Apr 2020 10:15 AM PDT  Stone, a longtime friend to Donald Trump, ran a sprawling network of fake Facebook accounts starting in 2016, according to newly unsealed FBI records.
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| Tucker Carlson Guest Shares Maine Governor’s Cellphone Number On the Air Posted: 30 Apr 2020 06:25 PM PDT  Chaos ensued on Thursday night when a guest on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight shared the private cellphone number of Maine Gov. Janet Mills and asked for the show's millions of viewers to spam her line.Host Tucker Carlson welcomed on restaurant owner Rick Savage ostensibly to talk about Mills' recent decision to extend the state's coronavirus stay-at-home orders until May 31. Savage, who was prepping his restaurant for a May 1 re-opening, insisted that he will defy the orders and open back up on Friday."If you don't like it, take me to court," he exclaimed. "And if they do take me to court, I will save my tax money that I collect this month and I'll use that to find a lawyer."Carlson, who has been a vocal advocate for reversing social distancing restrictions and opening the country back up, applauded Savage while blasting Mills, calling the Democrat "the most incompetent dictatorial governor that I've seen in a long time."Savage, meanwhile, didn't want to just leave it there. Instead, the restaurateur said that he would "love to share Janet Mills' cellphone number with everybody so they can give her a call directly," claiming that the governor has all the government's phone lines shut down.As Savage began reading off the number, Carlson began waving his hands into the camera while yelling: "Wait, wait!" After his guest finished, the Fox News host apologized to Savage for possibly cutting him off before quickly plugging the restaurant and ending the segment, all while Savage continued talking about "starting a revolution." 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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| Ten soldiers killed in bomb attack in north Egypt Posted: 01 May 2020 11:07 AM PDT  Ten Egyptian soldiers, including an army officer, died in a bomb attack during the holy month of Ramadan in the volatile northern Sinai region of the country. The region is known for its jihadist insurrection and it is suspected this attack was carried out by Islamic State although no one immediately claimed responsibility. A spokesman for the army said the soldiers were targeted as they travelled in convoy near the town of Bir al-Abed on Thursday. The Egyptian army has been fighting an insurgency from the Sinai branch of IS since 2013. Fighting has intensified since the ousting of Mohamed Morsi that year. Since the Egyptian military moved into the region, official figures show that more than 845 jihadists and nearly 70 members of the security forces have lost their lives. However, it is impossible to verify these figures, as the region is cut off from media access. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi praised the fallen soldiers as "heroes" and "martyrs." Footballer Mohamed Salah was among those commenting on the incident, as he wrote on Twitter: "May God have mercy on the martyrs of the homeland in the Sinai and my wishes for a speedy recovery for all the injured."
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| Protests mark growing unrest with California stay-home order Posted: 30 Apr 2020 10:08 PM PDT  Californians weary of stay-at-home orders that have left millions unemployed staged displays of defiance Friday, with hundreds of flag-waving protesters gathering at the Capitol and along a famed Southern California beach, while a sparsely populated county on the Oregon border allowed diners back in restaurants and reopened other businesses. While much of the state's population remained behind closed doors to deter the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged the building anxiety while repeatedly teasing the possibility the state could begin relaxing some aspects of the restrictions next week. Newsom noted the state just passed the grim marks of 50,000 confirmed infections and 2,000 deaths but that hospitalization statistics are heading in a better direction and that has him hopeful.
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| Trump says new FBI notes exonerate Michael Flynn, analysts say that's not the case Posted: 01 May 2020 01:16 PM PDT  Critics said Trump is distorting the contents of notes about an FBI interview in which Flynn apparently lied about talks with a Russian ambassador.
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| WHO investigates link between coronavirus and syndrome that affects young kids Posted: 30 Apr 2020 07:04 AM PDT  "We are urgently conducting a surveillance study in the United Kingdom to establish what is going on," said Dr. Adam Finn.
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| President's 'So what?' as 5,000 die sparks fury in Brazil Posted: 01 May 2020 06:29 PM PDT  "So what?" said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday when a journalist asked him about the fact that more than 5,000 Brazilians had died of the coronavirus. The far-right leader's off-the-cuff comment has been sparking anger ever since, with governors, politicians, healthcare professionals and media figures all weighing in to express their outrage at his lack of empathy. Bolsonaro is no stranger to controversy.
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| You may be required to take a blood test before your next flight Posted: 01 May 2020 06:38 AM PDT  Bad news for needle-phobes: You may soon be required to take a blood test before you're allowed to board a plane.Airlines have been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with passenger traffic down up to 95 percent during the outbreak. As air travel begins to ratchet back up in the coming months, though, the health of passengers is going to be paramount — already a number of airlines are requiring passengers wear masks on board. A new report by Axios suggests measures post-coronavirus could go even further than that, with travelers potentially required "to have your blood tested" via finger-prick "to prove you're in good health before boarding."It would not be a totally unprecedented move. Emirates has already rolled out an on-site "quick blood test" for travelers passing through Dubai International Airport, which returns results within 10 minutes. The blood test, though, doesn't check for "active coronavirus infections," CNN Travel clarifies, but rather for "proteins in the immune system, known as antibodies … Their presence means a person was exposed to the virus and developed antibodies against it." However, such a test would not catch everyone who's just getting sick because in the early days of an infection, antibodies are not yet being produced at a detectable level.Still, blood tests may be one of many changes coming to protect travelers as the country begins to slowly reopen. Other possible changes could include requiring passengers to arrive at the airport four hours early to pass through a "disinfection tunnel" prior to entering the airport, a required proof-of-antibodies certificate, or extreme social distancing measures at boarding gates. Read more about what could be coming for air travelers at Axios.More stories from theweek.com The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit Elon Musk declares he's 'selling almost all physical possessions' because he's 'devoting myself to Mars and Earth'
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| DOJ began investigating a doctor promoting unproven COVID-19 treatments after Roger Stone's former associate accidentally emailed a federal prosecutor instead of the doctor Posted: 01 May 2020 08:12 AM PDT  Corsi meant to email the doctor and instead emailed Aaron Zelinsky, one of the prosecutors who spent months investigating him in the Russia probe.
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| A former bodyguard for Ellen DeGeneres said his experience with the host was 'kind of demeaning' Posted: 01 May 2020 10:37 AM PDT  The former security official said DeGeneres never said hello to him when he worked with the talk-show host at the 2014 Oscars.
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| Stacey Abrams’ Formidable Political Machine Could Be Used Against Her as Biden’s Veep Posted: 30 Apr 2020 01:46 AM PDT  Stacey Abrams is lobbying hard to be Joe Biden's presidential running mate, and she brings to the table an asset few other contenders do: an extensive, battle-hardened organizing apparatus that she can bring to bear on behalf of the Democratic presidential ticket in November.But with that asset comes a liability. The extensive work done on Abrams' behalf by a network of political and nonprofit groups that she founded has raised persistent questions about her use of ostensibly apolitical voter-registration and canvassing outfits to boost her own political profile.The advocacy work and more nonpartisan activities of Abrams' network of nonprofits take place parallel to each other, as required by her groups' varying legal classifications. But their work also bleeds together in notable ways. Her political outfit and its sister dark-money nonprofit share a website and social-media pages, for instance. They also lean heavily on the same cadre of organizations to execute their missions. A Daily Beast analysis of public records shows that two of Abrams' groups, a tax-exempt voter-registration organization and a more aggressive advocacy group, have steered millions of dollars to the same political consultants that helped elect Abrams to the Georgia statehouse and tried to win her the governorship in 2018.The data portray an organizing apparatus that is primed to advance Abrams' political prospects in 2020 regardless of the form they take, but which could force her—and, if she gets her wish, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden—to address questions, albeit many posed by political adversaries, about her use of groups legally bound to remain legally independent and politically neutral.They're largely questions that Abrams and some of her top allies write off as baseless attacks from political opponents. "The organizations founded by Leader Abrams give a voice to marginalized communities and empower people of color and low-income Americans across the country," her spokesperson, Seth Bringman, told The Daily Beast in an emailed statement. "This critical work has been the target of allies of [Georgia Gov.] Brian Kemp and Donald Trump, because they are desperate to hold on to their power, and they know they can only maintain their power if voters and people in this country are not counted. She will not be deterred from her critical work by fishing expeditions and made-up accusations from Kemp and Trump cronies."Publicly and privately, Democrats frequently point to Abrams' organizational prowess as the leading reason that she would be a formidable vice-presidential nominee for Biden. The Georgia Democrat, the thinking goes among some of her closest allies, Democratic Party strategists, and some within Biden's own campaign, would fill in key gaps that the presumptive nominee lacks, particularly with younger voters. Abrams is also considered to be someone who can turn out black voters at a large scale for the general election, a key argument used among some in the party who believe that's the best approach to beating President Donald Trump."When Stacey ran for governor, she mobilized hundreds of thousands of African-American and younger voters to vote for her. That shows just the personal appeal of her and how strong she is with turnout," Freg Yang, Abrams' pollster during the 2018 governor race, told The Daily Beast. "More than a year ago, she knew turnout was going to be important in 2020, based on her own experience in 2018. It makes her even more relevant now given all this uncertainty."Pressure Mounts for Biden to Select a Black Woman as VPNikema Williams, the head of the Georgia Democratic Party, said Abrams and her organizational structure transcend racial, geographic, and socio-economic lines, and can help boost turnout more broadly. "If you speak with progressives, they think she's the most progressive person ever because she connects with them," Williams said. "And if you speak with people that are moderate, they're able to connect with her because she speaks their language as well."When Biden pledged to nominate a female Democrat to be his running mate in March, Abrams again shot to the top of many elected officials' and operatives' lists. At least two high-ranking officials in Biden's campaign have been praising Abrams internally as recently as last month, before her public push for VP ramped up in earnest. Her core draw, in that instance, was a sense that she, and the network she's built, have a broad reach well beyond her home state. But Abrams' network has also faced allegations that it exists primarily to advance her public profile and political agenda. In 2019, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a right-leaning watchdog group, filed a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service alleging illicit politicking by Fair Fight Action, a dark-money nonprofit group that Abrams leads."By providing support for an individual's personal political activities," FACT wrote in its IRS complaint, "Fair Fight Action is in violation of the requirement that a social-welfare organization serve general community purposes rather than provide a private benefit to an individual or political group."The group wrote off the complaint at the time as a "bogus attack" from "right-wing hit groups allied with Donald Trump."Similar allegations are at the heart of an investigation by the Georgia Ethics Commission into the activities of another Abrams-founded nonprofit, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, during the 2018 campaign. David Emadi, the commission's executive director and an appointee of Gov. Kemp, Abrams' Republican opponent in 2018, suggested that New Georgia may have illicitly acted as a political committee on Abrams' behalf, an allegation that Abrams and her team have flatly denied.Neither the FACT complaint nor the investigation in Georgia have resulted in findings of wrongdoing by any Abrams group, though the ethics commission said last week that its investigation was still ongoing. As it did with FACT, Abrams' team has largely written it off as politically motivated.After Abrams' 2018 defeat, she alleged that Kemp, Georgia's former secretary of state, used his position to suppress votes that might have swayed the election. After Abrams conceded in mid-November, her campaign donated more than $1 million in leftover funds to Fair Fight Action, which continued litigation and advocacy efforts to address those voter suppression allegations. The group did so under the new leadership of Abrams' former campaign manager.At the time, Fair Fight Action was still officially called the Voter Access Institute. But it amended its corporate structure on Dec. 5, 2018, to reflect its new moniker. It also made a significant change to the group's corporate bylaws: It deleted language saying it would not get involved, "directly or indirectly," in political contests.Just days later, Fair Fight Action began running television ads. And it did so through the same media buyer, Chicago-based AL Media, that the Abrams campaign had been using just weeks earlier. Campaign-finance records show the Abrams campaign had already paid the firm more than $4.7 million. By the end of 2018, Fair Fight Action had steered it an additional $165,000. Federal Communications Commission records show that the same AL Media employee handled media buys for both the nonprofit and the campaign.More recent FCC filings show that AL Media continues to buy ads for Fair Fight Action. So far this year, the group has purchased about $155,000 in broadcast ad time, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, for a pair of ads going after Kemp, whom Abrams has pondered challenging in 2022. AL Media is simultaneously handling ad buys for Fair Count, Abrams' 501(c)(3) charitable group.There's nothing legally problematic with that relationship; such vendors often work for both political entities and nonprofit and advocacy groups, and are free to do so as long as the proper firewalls are in place to ensure that work remains separate. But it underscores how complementary the electoral and apolitical nodes of Abrams' network are.Since 2014, Fair Fight Action has paid more than $2 million to five different vendors that also worked for Abrams' campaign or Georgia Next, her state-level political action committee, including fundraising firm G Strategies, phone-banking vendor Control Point Group, and direct-mail firm Deliver Strategies.During the same time period, Fair Count paid G Strategies for fundraising services as well. In 2014 and 2015, Fair Count and Fair Fight Action paid more than $2.7 million combined to a voter contact and communications firm called Field Strategies. In 2017, a partner at that firm, founded a new consulting firm called New Ground Strategies, which received more than $5.5 million from Abrams' gubernatorial campaign. According to its website, New Ground has worked for years with the New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded and led prior to her gubernatorial run. All told, Abrams' 2018 gubernatorial campaign, her past statehouse campaigns, and Georgia Next paid more than $14.7 million to political vendors that have also worked for one or more of Abrams' nonprofit groups.Do Stacey Abrams and Steve Bullock Want to Make Mitch McConnell President?Even among the nonprofit groups themselves, that division of labor can be difficult to distinguish. Fair Fight Action, for instance, shares a website and a Facebook page with Fair Fight, Abrams' PAC. Both advise that the web properties are joint projects of the PAC and the dark-money group, a rare move for organizations with different legal structures—and different limits on how explicitly political their work can be.The website's donation link directs visitors to the PAC's contribution page. The PAC, in turn, passes along funds to the dark-money group. It's provided about $1.8 million in contributions to Fair Fight Action since last year, and paid it another $2 million in reimbursements for shared overhead and expenseNone of that is inherently problematic from a legal perspective. But the common thread among all parties—the political action committees, the nonprofits, and their vendors—is a drive to promote Abrams, the woman whose drive to enfranchise and turn out communities of color have animated their work for years.Abrams, in turn, is front and center as they carry out that work. Since December, Fair Fight Action has paid tens of thousands of dollars to run scores of Facebook ads promoting its voter registration and turnout activities. Every one of the ads has featured a photo or a video of Abrams herself.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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| Citing no evidence, Trump says he’s seen information that coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab Posted: 30 Apr 2020 03:20 PM PDT  Without citing any evidence, President Trump said he's seen information that the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. When pressed by a reporter to back up his claim, Trump said he wasn't at liberty to do so.
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| Black Georgia man chased and killed while jogging, mom says Posted: 01 May 2020 06:09 AM PDT  Gregory McMichael told police he saw Ahmaud Arbery run by and said he recognized him from recent break-ins.
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| Trump confident that coronavirus may have originated in Chinese lab Posted: 30 Apr 2020 02:28 PM PDT  U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was confident the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese virology lab, but declined to describe the evidence, ratcheting up tensions with Beijing over the origins of the deadly outbreak. Trump did not mince words at a White House event on Thursday, when asked if he had seen evidence that gave him a "high degree of confidence" the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology has dismissed the allegations, and other U.S. officials have downplayed their likelihood.
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| Syrians in Idlib protest opening of trade link with regime Posted: 01 May 2020 11:18 AM PDT  Maarat al-Naasan (Syria) (AFP) - Protests broke out across opposition-held parts of northwest Syria Friday against an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group after it opened a trade crossing into regime territory, an AFP correspondent and a war monitor said. "Mass protests broke out in several towns and villages in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo to denounce the practises of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance" said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor. Led by Syria's former al-Qaeda affiliate, HTS and allied rebel groups dominate large swathes of Idlib province and slivers of neighbouring Aleppo.
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| South Korea says recovered coronavirus patients who tested positive again did not relapse: Tests picked up 'dead virus fragments' Posted: 30 Apr 2020 06:36 AM PDT  The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was worried the virus was reactivating after people recovered, but scientists dismissed the fear.
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| Three Days in a Detroit Funeral Home Ravaged by the Coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 05:00 AM PDT  On April 29, Stephen Kemp arrived at his office just outside Detroit to a perplexing silence. Since COVID-19 hit the city, the phones at his…
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| Coronavirus: California anti-lockdown movement gaining support after memo warned statewide beach closures Posted: 01 May 2020 12:10 PM PDT  Gov. Newsom has repeatedly said he's feeling the pressure to reopen the state more quickly, but is leaning on scientific data to decide on timing. "Politics will not drive our decision making. Protests will not drive our decision making. Political pressure will not drive our decision making," the governor said.
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| The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden Posted: 01 May 2020 02:45 AM PDT  Never was former Vice President Joe Biden the 2020 dream. He promised electability and familiarity, which turned out to be good enough for a plurality of Democratic voters in the early primaries.But now that every other Democratic contender has dropped out and dutifully lined up behind the presumptive nominee, that choice might be sitting less comfortably. Biden is campaigning from his basement, giving interviews in which he occasionally moves past gaffes into total incoherence, raising questions about his mental fitness. Worst of all, evidence for a sexual assault allegation against him begins to mount.Add that to pandemic-induced uncertainty about when and how the Democratic National Convention will be held and it's fair to ask: Is Biden definitely the nominee? Right-wing commentators like Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson as well as former Bernie Sanders Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray have speculated Biden will be replaced on the ticket, but how could that happen? Is there a path to nominating someone else?Before the convention, which is currently rescheduled for August, the answer is probably no. Suspended primary elections have already raised concerns about abrogation of transparent, democratic processes — as have elections that weren't suspended. While Democratic delegates will understand the need to modify normal convention procedure to avoid spreading COVID-19, their understanding won't be unlimited. Sweeping changes to the nominating process would be suspect, and if the process continues as anticipated, Biden will very likely be selected as the nominee on the first ballot.So far, Biden has 1,406 of 1,991 delegates needed to win that initial vote, and those are delegates pledged (by strong custom, though not law) to Biden by primary and caucus results. Between now and August, there will be 22 more primaries whose outcomes will pledge another 1,368 delegates. Biden has no remaining challengers campaigning against him and needs fewer than half those delegates to win the first ballot. Unless the Democratic Party, wildly improbably, tosses its entire rule book out the window, Biden will take the nomination at the convention in a single vote.Ah, but what then? In the waning days of the Sanders campaign, I argued endorsements from superdelegates — prominent Democratic leaders and elected officials — showed party bosses had decided Biden was their guy. I don't expect to see those endorsements disappear, not publicly. But is the party leadership's commitment to Biden as solid as it once was?Suppose, plausibly, it is not. Suppose they don't want to run a historically elderly candidate amid a pandemic that is deadliest for the elderly? Suppose Tara Reade's assault accusation and Biden's tendency to misspeak even from the low-pressure, high-preparation environment of his own basement further fuel the "two senile sex offenders" narrative of this election? Suppose enthusiasm continues to grow for running New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), whom one poll found 56 percent of Democrats would prefer to Biden as their nominee? (Cuomo says he won't do it, but that could be an obligatory performance of deference to a party elder.)"The presidential debates are in effect already occurring daily between" Cuomo and Trump, Craig Snyder, a former Republican Senate chief of staff, argued in The Philadelphia Inquirer. We don't have to suppose Democratic Party leaders have noticed; they undoubtedly have.So if they wanted to replace Biden (whether with Cuomo, the veep nominee, or some arrangement of both) Democratic leadership could wait until after the nomination to do so. Then, as they did with Democratic vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton in 1972, they could ask Biden to step aside, citing his health.Biden's agreement is a long shot. Eagleton continued his Senate career after leaving the 1972 ticket over pressure about his mental health, but he was a much younger man. At Biden's age, stepping aside would end his political career for good. Relinquishing the nomination would therefore suggest he expects an embarrassing loss and ruined legacy if he stays.With Biden out, the Democratic National Committee, a group of around 350 which is "composed of the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party Committee and over 200 members elected by Democrats in all 57 states and the territories," would vote to select a new nominee.Such a switch could be made any time between the convention nomination and Election Day. Because we technically vote for Electoral College members rather than presidential candidates, it may be, as Vox proposes, that Electors could simply transfer their vote from the old Democratic nominee to the new one regardless of what was printed on the ballot. But the legal situation is uncertain and varies from state to state. "For instance," notes FiveThirtyEight, "Michigan's law requires an Elector to vote for the ticket named on the ballot whereas Florida's rules say that an Elector is to 'vote for the candidates of the party that he or she was nominated to represent.'" That means a sooner swap, allowing more states to print the new name on the ballot, would be better. Yet court battles would be inevitable with the ever-litigious Trump involved.The likeliest outcome remains the most straightforward: That Biden will be the Democratic nominee and will face Trump in November. But if Democratic leaders did want to change horses midstream, late August or September could well be when they make their move.More stories from theweek.com 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit Elon Musk declares he's 'selling almost all physical possessions' because he's 'devoting myself to Mars and Earth' Parks and Recreation reunion raises almost $3 million for coronavirus relief
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| Prisoners in Iran 'disappearing', British inmate claims Posted: 01 May 2020 12:44 PM PDT  Prisoners with suspected coronavirus in Iran are "disappearing" due to illness or being given sleeping pills and sent back to crowded cells where the virus can easily spread, a British-Iranian father who is jailed on spying charges has claimed. Retired engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, 66, secretly recorded an audio diary detailing the chaotic conditions in Evin prison, Tehran, where he is serving a 10-year sentence for "spying for Israel", which he strongly denies. Several inmates have fallen ill due to suspected coronavirus, Mr Ashoori claims, adding that once a sick prisoner goes to the prison's medical centre, "he does not return… nobody knows any more about his fate." Another prisoner complained of Covid-19 symptoms but was not tested, he added. Instead, he was given sleeping pills and told by a prison doctor to "go back and rest" in a cell shared with 11 other men. Iran has been the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic in the Middle East and has recorded more than 95,000 cases and 6,000 related deaths, although the official figures are heavily disputed. As a precaution in March, the Islamic Republic temporarily released thousands of prisoners from its over-crowded jails, including British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who has been allowed to stay with her parents in Tehran while being monitored by an ankle tag. But other dual nationals accused of espionage, including Mr Ashoori and the British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, have remained behind bars in Evin, while other inmates are now returning following their temporary release. "It is just enough for one contaminated person to arrive and the rest will soon contract the virus," Mr Ashoori said in the diary, recorded last month [April] during phone calls to his wife, Sherry Izadi. Ms Izadi, from South London, today [Friday] criticised the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for a lack of action to release her husband, saying he had become "forgotten" since being arrested in August 2017 while visiting his family in Iran. "Every time I hear Dominic Raab talk about returning Britons who have been trapped on holiday by coronavirus, I wonder why he is not giving the same priority to those, like my husband, who are held unlawfully in a foreign prison", she said. "Other countries are doing deals to free their citizens, but the government that is showing the least action has to be the British. It's as if they have forgotten my husband exists." A Foreign Office spokesperson said: "We strongly urge Iran to reunite British-Iranian dual national Mr Ashoori with his family. Our Embassy in Tehran continues to request consular access and we have been supporting his family since being made aware of his detention. The treatment of all dual nationals detained in Iran is a priority and both the PM and Foreign Secretary have recently raised this issue with their Iranian counterparts."
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| 4 women arrested after Arizona mom found dead, blood found in bathroom Posted: 01 May 2020 04:36 AM PDT  Detective Jason Flam, a department spokesperson, confirmed in an email the arrest of the four women is related to Melissa Valenzuela's case.
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| Nearly 900 workers at a Tyson plant in Indiana test positive for coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 11:23 AM PDT  The 890 employees who have tested positive so far represent 40 percent of the workforce at the pork-processing plant.
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| Trump calls Michigan lockdown protesters ‘good people’ a day after armed demonstrators stormed statehouse Posted: 01 May 2020 05:02 AM PDT  Donald Trump has called Michigan protesters "good people" and implored the state governor to ease stay-at-home measures, just one day after armed residents intimidated lawmakers."The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire," Mr Trump tweeted on Friday, addressing Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. "These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal."
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| Top E.U. Official Confirms China Objected to Coronavirus Report, Denies Revisions Were Result of Pressure Posted: 01 May 2020 07:23 AM PDT  The European Union's foreign policy chief admitted Thursday that China "expressed their concerns" over an EU report on Chinese disinformation regarding coronavirus, after allegations that his team had watered down their initial findings "to appease the Chinese Communist Party."Speaking to the European Parliament in Brussels, Josep Borrell denied that Beijing had coerced him to soften the report's verdict. Drafts of the report showed that language condemning China for "a global disinformation campaign" was removed, while an analyst in the EU administration warned her superiors of "self-censoring.""I can assure you that no changes had been introduced to the report published last week to align the concerns of a third party, in this case, China. There is no watering down of our findings. We have not bowed to anyone," he said.But Borrell admitted that it was "clear and evident" China was unhappy with the leaked report, first reported by the New York Times, stressing that the Chinese "expressed their concerns through the diplomatic channels."The admission did not satisfy some lawmakers. Thierry Mariani, a French politician, told Borrell that his team had been "caught with their hand in the cookie jar," while a Beligan member, Hilde Vautmans, demanded further answers. "Who interfered? Which Chinese official put pressure? At what level? What means of pressure?" she asked. "I think Europe needs to know that. Otherwise you're losing all credibility."Borrell did not go into details over his contact with China over the report. "The Chinese were not happy," he stated. "They were not happy at the beginning and they are still not happy now."
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| Kim Jong-un and the brutal North Korea rumour mill Posted: 01 May 2020 09:49 PM PDT  Kim Jong-un is not dead, but that won't stop the rumour mill in future. Here is how it works.
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| We Asked 30,000 Black Americans What They Need to Survive. Here’s What They Said Posted: 01 May 2020 10:05 AM PDT  The coronavirus has laid bare the disparities that have been ravaging Black communities for decades. Sure, we're all in this together, but we're not all…
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| This Is How Horribly They’re Treating the Dead in Brooklyn Posted: 01 May 2020 01:40 AM PDT  Zeqway Clarke was in the back pew in the upstairs chapel at the Andrew D. Cleckley Funeral Home in Brooklyn when he chanced to gaze under the coffin and see what looked like a bare foot."You could see it," he later told The Daily Beast. "You could actually look under the casket and see it. I asked somebody else, 'Is that a foot?'" Clarke was there on April 9 with his wife and daughters and a small number of relatives in masks and gloves, bidding farewell to her grandfather, 88-year-old Francois Jules. The pastor continued conducting the service as Clarke gazed at what was indeed a bare foot visible beneath the hem of the cloth backdrop closing off the front of the room. At the end of the service, Clarke went up for a final parting moment with Jules, a military veteran and retired graveyard security guard, who was recovering from a stroke in Kings County Hospital when he was fatally struck by COVID-19. Clarke used the moment by the coffin to raise his cellphone above the cord on which the backdrop hung. "I stuck the phone up and took a picture," the 39-year-old entrepreneur recalled.He did not see the result until he returned to his seat and checked his phone."It was just bodies, bodies on the floor, people on top of each other," he said. The picture, which he later shared with The Daily Beast, showed at least eight bodies had been left haphazardly on the floor. They were only partly covered by sheets or quilts and appeared to be unclothed. Three of the faces were visible."Horrified," Clarke said of his reaction.Twenty days later, the whole city was horrified when police responded to complaints of a foul odor coming from two trucks parked in front of this same funeral home. They discovered dozens of bodies decomposing inside.The owner, 41-year-old Andrew Cleckley, told police that he had been unable to get cemeteries and crematories to accept enough bodies to keep his facility from overflowing."I am out of space," he was quoted telling The New York Times. "Bodies are coming out of our ears."Clarke lives in the neighborhood, and he had walked past the funeral home with his daughters, aged 15 and 16, as the pandemic was intensifying. He noticed that the usual hearse and men in suits and ties had been replaced by rental trucks and men in work clothes."It looked like they just picked up some winos off the street: 'Yo, we'll give you some money,'" Clarke recalled. "I said to my kids, 'It looks like they're bringing these bodies in U-Haul trucks.' It looked like they were bringing in more and more bodies and the place is not even that big."'It's Never Been Like This': Coronavirus Deaths Overwhelm New York Funeral WorkersThe daughters now saw their father's cellphone photo of what lay just beyond the backdrop behind the coffin."My daughters said, 'What?'" Clarke reported. "That's the first time my children actually seen something like that.""As a parent you want them to know that's not right," he later said. "You want them to know people should be treated with respect."He noted to himself that there was no air conditioning in the chapel."Not cool," he said in more than one sense. "In regular room temperature like that, what's going to happen?"As he and his family resumed sheltering in place, Clarke considered reporting to the authorities what he had photographed. "[But] there was so much going on with the pandemic, social distancing, I figured it hell or high water to get in contact with somebody," he recalled.He decided just to post the photographic evidence on Facebook. Some commenters noted that funeral homes were overwhelmed. Most comments were unalloyed outrage.Then came the discovery of the decomposing bodies in the trucks outside the funeral home. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams responded to the scene. He later said that much the same is happening throughout New York as the usual progression from hospital and morgue to funeral parlor to cemetery and crematorium has backed up. "We have an emergency going on right now," Adams told The Daily Beast. "I'm surprised we don't have cars stuffed with bodies."He added, "There is so much more we could do to better move this situation forward."To that end, he is establishing a Bereavement Task Force that will begin meeting next week. "We're going to bring people in the room in every aspect of this industry and sit down and hear directly from them what we should be doing to coordinate this operation," he said.Cleckley hung up twice when The Daily Beast sought comment, the second time suggesting the reporter ask crematories why they are not taking more bodies from funeral directors. Cleckley no doubt was facing problems the death industry could not have imagined before COVID-19 turned the city into the global epicenter. But he could have been more easily forgiven were it not for the photo Clarke blindly took of what was going on behind the backdrop. NYC Is Taking Hundreds of Body Bags Out of Houses—and Soon They Will Be CountedNo matter how inundated the funeral home may have been, and no matter how frightened the workers may have been of catching the virus themselves, there is no excuse for just leaving bodies every which way. Only a moment would have been needed to pull a sheet up over a face or cover bare limbs. "I BEEN TELLING Y'ALL ABOUT THIS PLACE AND WHAT THEY DOING," Clarke declared on Facebook after the Wednesday raid. I'M HAPPY ITS FINALLY ALL OVER THE NEWS!!!!!...������RESPECT PEOPLE FAMILY...SAD SAD SAD."And the photo he blindly took with his upraised phone now teaches us what his daughters learned regarding the importance of simple respect even when overwhelmed at the global epicenter of the pandemic. 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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| Reporter: Pence's office punished me for saying VP ignored mask rule Posted: 01 May 2020 10:25 AM PDT  Photos showed Pence was the only person not wearing a mask during his visit to the Mayo Clinic
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| Defiant Californians protest against coronavirus lockdown restrictions Posted: 01 May 2020 07:57 PM PDT  Californians weary of stay-at-home orders that have left millions unemployed staged displays of defiance on Friday, with hundreds of flag-waving protesters gathering at the Capitol and along a famed Southern California beach, while a sparsely populated county on the Oregon border allowed diners back in restaurants and reopened other businesses. While much of the state's population remained behind closed doors to deter the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged the building anxiety while repeatedly teasing the possibility the state could begin relaxing some aspects of the restrictions next week. "We are all impatient," the governor said during his daily briefing, adding "We have to be really deliberative on how we reopen this economy." Mr Newsom noted the state just passed the grim marks of 50,000 confirmed infections and 2,000 deaths but that hospitalisation statistics are heading in a better direction and that has him hopeful. "We can screw all that up. We can set all that back by making bad decisions," he said. "All of that works because people have done an incredible job in their physical distancing."
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| Newly engaged lesbian couple missing in North Carolina Posted: 30 Apr 2020 08:13 AM PDT  Stephanie Mayorga, 27, and Paige Escalera, 25, disappeared in mid-April under "suspicious" circumstances, according to the Wilmington Police Department.
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