| Hillary Clinton kicks off the 'stop Sanders' movement. Will Obama follow her lead? Posted: 21 Jan 2020 02:35 PM PST  Sanders himself has been dismissive of Clinton's comments. And then there's Obama himself to consider. Clinton's timing is conspicuous.
|
| Impeachment trial grinds on, testing physical endurance of senators Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:00 PM PST  After keeping the august members of the U.S. Senate in their seats for roughly 18 of the previous 30 hours, Adam Schiff told the group of not-so-young lawmakers that he and a fellow impeachment manager had just over two hours more to go Wednesday night.
|
| 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.
|
| China extended its Wuhan coronavirus quarantine to 2 more cities, cutting off 19 million people in an unprecedented effort to stop the outbreak Posted: 23 Jan 2020 05:26 AM PST  Huanggang and Ezhou joined Wuhan in shutting down transport links on Thursday. The WHO says the quarantine is "unprecedented in public health history."
|
| 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.
|
| Zimbabwe billionaire to pay doctors about $300 a month to end strike Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:19 AM PST ![Zimbabwe billionaire to pay doctors about $300 a month to end strike]( "Zimbabwe billionaire to pay doctors about $300 a month to end strike") Striking junior doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals will end a four-month strike after accepting an offer from a telecoms billionaire to pay them a monthly allowance of about $300 for six months, their union said on Thursday. The doctors went on strike on Sept. 3 to protest against poor wages and a lack of adequate equipment and medicines, leaving many poor people unable to get treatment. Junior doctors in Zimbabwe earn an average of just over $200 a month, including allowances.
|
| Penn State student allegedly assaulted by 4 fraternity brothers Posted: 22 Jan 2020 08:35 PM PST  "Obviously, the alleged incident is absolutely antithetical to our fraternity's ideals and values," Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity spokesperson said.
|
| Impeachment trial fallout: Trump could get his wish — to hurt Biden Posted: 22 Jan 2020 12:20 PM PST  Details about Hunter Biden could complicate life for Joe Biden — exactly what Trump was trying to do with his Ukraine scheme last summer.
|
| Macron grows angry with Israeli security during church visit Posted: 22 Jan 2020 09:39 AM PST  French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday lost his temper with Israeli security agents during a visit to a French church in Jerusalem and angrily ordered one of them to leave the premises. The incident occurred during a spat between Israeli forces and Macron's own security detail as he entered the Church of St. Anne. The church, located in Jerusalem's Old City, is French state property and Macron did not want the Israeli guards leading him inside.
|
| 'The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions': did Arkansas kill an innocent man? Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:00 AM PST  Revealed: two years after Ledell Lee was executed, damning evidence emerges that experts say could prove his innocenceThe day before Ledell Lee was executed on 20 April 2017, he talked to the BBC from death row. He said that while he could not prevent the state of Arkansas from killing him, he had a message for his executioners: "My dying words will always be, as it has been: 'I am an innocent man'."Almost two years after Lee was strapped to a gurney and injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs, it looks increasingly likely he was telling the truth: he went to his death an innocent man. New evidence has emerged that suggests Lee was not guilty of the brutal murder of a woman in 1993 for which his life was taken.The deceased inmate's sister Patricia Young lodged a lawsuit on Thursday with the circuit court of Pulaski county, Arkansas, petitioning city authorities and the local police department in Jacksonville to release crime scene materials to her family.The ACLU and the Innocence Project, who are investigating the case on the family's behalf, believe state-of-the-art forensic examination of the materials, including DNA testing and fingerprint analysis, could definitively prove Arkansas did indeed execute an innocent man.An 81-page filing in the lawsuit provides damning new evidence that key aspects of the prosecution case against Lee were deeply flawed. The complaint includes expert opinion from a number of world-leading specialists who find glaring errors in the way forensic science and other evidence was interpreted.The lawsuit also includes a bombshell affidavit from Lee's post-conviction attorney who admits to having struggled with substance abuse and addiction throughout the years in which he represented him.Lawyers who prepared the filing, led by Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU and the Innocence Project's Nina Morrison, conclude: "It is now clear that the state's forensic experts from trial misinterpreted the evidence in plain sight, and their flawed opinions were further distorted by the state in its zeal to convict [Lee] of the crime. The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions about the shaky evidentiary pillars on which the state executed Ledell Lee."Innocence has always been the achilles heel of America's death penalty: how to justify judicially killing prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted. The question is far from academic: since 1973 no fewer than 167 death row inmates have been exonerated.The most harrowing question is whether innocent prisoners have been executed before the flawed nature of their convictions emerged. In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest that innocent men have been put to death.They include Cameron Todd Willingham executed in Texas in 2004 for allegedly having caused a fire that killed his three young daughters. After the execution, further evidence emerged that conclusively showed that he could not have set the fire.The Columbia Human Rights Law Review carried out a groundbreaking investigation in which it concluded Carlos DeLuna was innocent when he was executed – also by Texas – in 1989. The six-year study discovered that the convicted prisoner had almost certainly been confused with another man, a violent criminal who shared the name Carlos.Now Ledell Lee looks as though he may be added to the grim rollcall of the wrongly executed. He relentlessly insisted he was not guilty from the moment he was arrested less than two hours after the brutally beaten body of Debra Reese was discovered in her home in Jacksonville on 9 February 1993.The difficulties with the case against Lee began almost immediately. He was picked up nowhere near the crime scene and was not in possession of any possessions that could be linked to the break-in at Reese's home.The only evidence against him was inconclusive at best. There were two eyewitnesses, but they gave conflicting reports of the suspect's identification.> In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest innocent men have been put to deathThe crime scene was shocking, with blood splattered over the walls and floor. Yet when Lee was arrested on the same day detectives could find no blood on his clothes or body including under his fingernails and nothing was found in a forensic search of his house.Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that it took two trials to find Lee guilty and sentence him to death. The first trial collapsed after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.The ACLU and Innocence Project took up Lee's case very late in the day having been asked to get involved shortly before his scheduled execution date. What they discovered when they opened the case records astounded even these experienced death penalty lawyers.Very quickly they established there were major problems with the prosecution case against Lee. One area that especially concerned them was the inadequacy of Lee's legal representation, both during the second trial in which defense attorneys inexplicably failed to call alibi witnesses that could have placed Lee elsewhere at the time of the murder, and in terms of the help he received at the appeal stage of his case.At one post-conviction hearing, a lawyer working for the state of Arkansas approached the judge and raised concerns about Lee's attorney, Craig Lambert. "Your honor, I don't do this lightly, but I'm going to ask that the court require him to submit to a drug test," the counsel said. "He's just not with us … His speech is slurred."In an affidavit obtained since Lee's execution, signed by Lambert in October, the lawyer admits: "I was struggling with substance abuse and addiction in those years. I attended inpatient rehab. Ledell's case was massive and I wasn't in the best place personally to do what was necessary."Partly as a result of poor legal representation, terrible errors were made in Lee's defense – both at trial and for years afterwards during the appeals process. The complaint goes into detail about these "deeply troubling" shortcomings.One of the key examples relates to the marks found on the victim's cheek. The state's experts mistakenly interpreted the marks as having come from a pattern on a rug in Reese's bedroom where she had been beaten to death with a wooden tire club.In fact, the filing says, the pattern on the body's cheek did not match that on the rug. Instead it was consistent with the murderer stomping on Reese's face directly with his shoe.That is critically significant because the shoes that Lee was wearing that day, which the state used during the trial as evidence against him, were incompatible in the composition of their soles with the injury pattern on Reese's face.To establish this point, an affidavit is provided by Michael Baden, former chief pathologist for New York who is recognized internationally as a leading forensic pathologist. He concludes: "The soles of Mr Lee's sneakers have a much more closely spaced pattern than was transferred in the cheek imprint."That inconsistency is just one of many that were uncovered when Baden and four other specialists were invited to review the case.Lee was executed in a flurry. When the state of Arkansas realized its supply of one of its three lethal drugs, the sedative midazolam, was about to expire at the end of 2017 with no hope of replacing it due to a global ban on medicines being sent to the US for use in executions, it went into overdrive.It announced plans to kill eight prisoners in 11 days.The declaration prompted revulsion from around the US and the world and accusations that the state was engaging in conveyor-belt executions. It was in that climate that attempts by the ACLU and the Innocence Project to have materials gathered at the crime scene of Reese's murder released for DNA testing fell on deaf ears.Though the lawyers presented a strong argument that DNA testing could be crucial in casting doubt on Lee's conviction and pointing towards the real killer, a federal district court denied the request on grounds that Lee had "simply delayed too long" in asking for the materials.It is too late now for Lee. But his lawyers hope that it is not too late to get to the bottom of the case posthumously.The city of Jacksonville is in possession of a rich array of crime scene materials including "Negroid" hairs collected from Reese's bedroom and fingernail scrapings likely to contain DNA from the actual killer – Lee or otherwise."This evidence can now be tested with state-of-the-art methods unavailable at trial, and compared to Mr Lee's unique DNA profile," the filing says.After a welter of legal challenges, Arkansas succeeded in killing four prisoners in one week, including the first double execution held in the US in a single day since 2001. The first of the four to die was Ledell Lee.Should Arkansas now agree belatedly to hand over the crime scene materials for testing, he may yet be proven to have been, just as he always said he was, an innocent man.
|
| 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.
|
| New Guatemalan government won't cancel U.S. asylum deal Posted: 22 Jan 2020 10:20 AM PST  Guatemala's new government will continue receiving Central American migrants under an asylum agreement with the United States, Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo said on Wednesday, in a boost to the Trump administration's efforts to curb migration. Before taking office this month Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei had pledged to review the contentious U.S. immigration deal, which is designed to make migrants from Honduras and El Salvador seek asylum in Guatemala instead of the United States.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| Why France's Nuclear Weapons Still Matter Posted: 23 Jan 2020 01:50 AM PST  They protect Europe.
|
| Bernie Sanders Once Compared Vermont Workers to Black ‘Slaves’ Posted: 23 Jan 2020 01:43 AM PST  In recent weeks, Sen. Bernie Sanders has criticized his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination for having too much "baggage" to win the diverse coalition needed to defeat President Donald Trump in November. But as the Vermont independent tops national polls for the first time, newly unearthed baggage from his own decades-long political career could call his own past statements and judgment into question.As the leading member of a self-described "radical political party" in the 1970s, Sanders repeatedly compared Vermont workers to enslaved black people, according to archival interviews obtained by The Daily Beast. In one 1976 conversation, Sanders told a local newspaper that the sale of a privately held mining company by its founders harkened back to "the days of slavery, when black people were sold to different owners without their consent," and compared the service economy to chattel slavery."Basically, today, Vermont workers remain slaves in many, many ways," Sanders said in another interview in 1977, in which he compared the burgeoning service industry in the nearly all-white state to the enslavement of black Americans at the nation's founding. "The problem comes when we end up with an entire state of people trained to wait on other people."At the time, Sanders was the chairman of the Liberty Union Party, a Vermont offshoot of the socialist People's Party. The future senator and presidential hopeful had run for statewide office as the party's nominee twice—once for the U.S. Senate in 1972, and once for governor in 1976, when he garnered 6 percent of the vote. Those bids were unsuccessful, but the message in the interviews was not dissimilar from that of his 2020 presidential campaign, with an emphasis on working-class solidarity and the disruption of a corrupt political elite enabled, he said in the 1976 article, by "a handful of billionaires [who control] the economic and political life of the nation.""Your average person is thoroughly disgusted and turned off to the political and economic structure as it now exists in America," Sanders told the Rutland Daily Herald on Oct. 8, 1976, "but has been led to believe that there is no alternative or that the only alternative is a political system like the Soviet Union's."But Sanders' previously unreported comparisons between the conditions of Vermont workers and that of enslaved people evoke a different element of his campaign—assertions by critics that he tends to view systemic racism primarily through the lens of economic disenfranchisement."The racial wealth gap lingers in part because the politicians who could close it are funded by the very corporate donors who continue to benefit from it," Sanders wrote in an illustrative op-ed in The Washington Post in July 2019. "As long as corporations can rely on the indifference to black lives as a cover for their exploitation, they will continue to do so."In the first interview, published in October 1976 when Sanders was the Liberty Union Party's nominee for governor, the future senator responded to the announced sale of the century-old Vermont Marble Company to a Swiss conglomerate by calling for worker control of businesses, calling it "absolutely absurd" that the family that owned Vermont Marble could have "the unilateral right" to sell the company without the approval of its employees."We believe ultimately that companies like Vermont Marble should be owned by the workers themselves and that workers—not a handful of owners—should be determining policy," Sanders said. "If a worker at Vermont Marble has no say about who owns the company he works for and that major changes can take place without his knowledge and consent, how far have we really advanced from the days of slavery, when black people were sold to different owners without their consent?"The population of Vermont was, at the time, more than 99 percent white and roughly 0.2 percent black.Later in the 1976 article, Sanders called for "the working people of this country, who constitute the vast majority of the population," to seize control of the economy to thwart poor labor conditions, "if we are free people and not slaves."In the second interview, conducted on the occasion of Labor Day in 1977, Sanders—then the Liberty Union Party's chairman—said that the decline of industry and the increase in service-sector jobs meant that "basically, today, Vermont workers remain slaves in many, many ways.""How can a worker be happy with his or her job when he or she has no control over that job?" Sanders asked. "The problem comes when we end up with an entire state of people trained to wait on other people."In that interview, Sanders pointed to a worker-owned asbestos plant in Lowell, Vermont, as an example of the kind of worker-owned enterprise that he envisioned in the economy of the future."In the long run," Sanders said, "what we are talking about is a peaceful revolution."A Sanders campaign official told The Daily Beast that as a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Sanders has long been an opponent of modern-day slavery in the context of poor work conditions, and has been involved in investigating such cases as a senator.Sanders, the official noted, has also called for the United States to officially apologize for slavery.Although Sanders has stated that the United States was founded on "racist principles" and has called for an end to "physical, political, legal, economic, and environmental" violence against Americans of color, the Vermont senator has been on the receiving end of criticism by those who see his description of economic inequality and institutional racism as "parallel problems" as a way to subsume the cultural underpinnings of racism into a class-based paradigm.In an interview with The New York Times' editorial board released last week, Sanders said that the political appeal of racism is rooted in economic and political disenfranchisement—an "economic anxiety" explanation for Trump's rise that some critics see as dodging the heart of the issue."I criticized both Warren and Sanders back in 2017 for trying to make Trump's appeal to racism all about economics and poverty. It's just not true. But Bernie's still saying it," tweeted Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan, who has written about the issue in the past. "I get why, he's just wrong, sadly."Despite a long history of advocating for civil rights, Sanders faced difficulty in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary winning over voters of color, particularly across the Deep South, which contributed to his loss to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In South Carolina, where black voters account for two-thirds of the Democratic primary electorate, Clinton defeated Sanders by nearly 50 percent, winning African-American voters by a 72-point margin. Current polling indicates that Sanders' support among black voters is healthier than it once was, particularly among those under 50, but he still trails former Vice President Joe Biden by more than 20 points.The slavery comments also threaten to undercut one of Sanders' main selling points as a candidate: his consistency. Supporters of the Vermont senator often note that fellow progressive candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was once a registered Republican, and Biden's past support for the invasion of Iraq has put him on the defensive in recent weeks as Sanders has victory-lapped his vote against the war. Sanders, as evinced by the interviews with the Herald, has been a champion of fighting income and wealth inequality since before some of his Democratic rivals were even born."I categorically disagree with the idea that the only alternatives facing the people of America and Vermont are, on the one hand, a system in which a handful of billionaires controls the economic and political life of the nation," Sanders said in the 1976 interview, "or, on the other hand, a situation in which the political hacks sitting at the head of the state bureaucracy and the military and the secret police control the economic political life of their countries."Although Sanders has avoided personally hitting his opponents, leaving that work instead to his surrogates and supporters, his campaign has declared that questions about past decisions and statements by Democratic rivals are fair game."Before folks attempt to frame an accurate critique of a candidate's record as an 'attack,' I hope they consider whether doing so helps the millions of voters who need to hear the underlying facts of a candidate's record/policies to make an informed decision about their futures," tweeted Briahna Joy Gray, the Sanders campaign's national press secretary, on Wednesday.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.
|
| Fifth condemned Tennessee inmate opts for the electric chair Posted: 22 Jan 2020 12:42 PM PST  A Tennessee inmate has chosen the electric chair for his scheduled execution next month, opting like four other inmates in little more than a year for electrocution over the state's preferred execution method of lethal injection. Nicholas Sutton, 58, is scheduled to be put to death Feb. 20 for the stabbing death of a fellow inmate decades ago while serving a life sentence for his grandmother's slaying. An affidavit signed on Tuesday said he waives the right to be executed by lethal injection and chooses electrocution.
|
| Man apparently jumps from cruise ship docked in San Juan and dies Posted: 23 Jan 2020 03:42 AM PST  Coast Guard says surveillance footage shows what appeared to be a "clean jump" from the Royal Caribbean's "Oasis of the Seas," which was docked in San Juan.
|
| 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 Marianne Williamson backs Andrew Yang in Iowa caucuses because 'we need to lighten up' Michael Bloomberg gets another moderate mayor's endorsement from San Francisco's London Breed
|
| Greta Thunberg fires back after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says she isn't qualified to lecture the US on climate change Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:00 AM PST  "Is she the chief economist or who is she? I'm confused," Mnuchin joked about the Swedish teenager's call for America to quit fossil fuels.
|
| Spanish police free hundreds of dogs from illegal puppy farms Posted: 23 Jan 2020 09:43 AM PST ![Spanish police free hundreds of dogs from illegal puppy farms]( "Spanish police free hundreds of dogs from illegal puppy farms") Spanish police rescued 270 small dogs, many crammed inside cages and in poor health, and arrested five people after raiding two illegal puppy farms on the outskirts of Madrid on Thursday. Among the group, mostly Chihuahuas and Pomeranians, police found two dead animals whose frozen bodies had been wrapped in newspaper. Police said the breeders had cut some of the dogs' vocal chords, possibly to prevent them from barking and alerting neighbours.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| Mexico detained more than 2,000 after caravan border crossing Posted: 22 Jan 2020 11:04 PM PST  Mexican migration authorities released Wednesday an official count of the number of people detained along the country's southern border two days before, estimating that more than 2,000 people were "rescued" after they crossed the border with Guatemala. National Institute of Migration (INM) officials explained that among the detained were not only members of the so-called "2020 Caravan" that left Honduras about a week ago, but also many who had entered the country through other spots. On Wednesday, Mexico deported 460 Hondurans via official planes and buses from the two southern states, the ministry of the interior said.
|
| 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.
|
| Gray wolves, once nearly extinct, could be coming back to Colorado Posted: 23 Jan 2020 03:00 AM PST  Conservationists are applauding a ballot measure to reintroduce the gray wolf to the state. But ranchers and hunters are putting up a fightThe gray wolf, once numbering in the tens of thousands throughout North America, have faced public vilification and extermination programs that drove it to near extinction in the US. Now Colorado will vote on whether to reintroduce them into the wild after an 80-year absence, thanks to an effort that has cattle ranchers outraged but which conservationists say could restore an ecosystem that has long suffered without the apex predator.The species was systematically exterminated by controversial, US government-backed programs in the 19th and 20th centuries. This was primarily due to wolves' attacks on the cattle, a booming industry that has been integral to the expanding west economy. By 1940, wolves were almost completely gone.Their inclusion on the 1973 Endangered Species Act, along with a 1995 effort to build a home for them in Yellowstone national park, has helped bring their numbers back up to 5,500 in the lower 48 states.This year, a ballot measure in Colorado will let voters decide whether a home should be built for the gray wolf in the state. Polling indicates the measure is likely to pass, though segments of both the ranching and hunting communities are strongly opposed.Conservationists argue that eradication of wolves threw the ecology of the Rocky Mountains into disarray, with elk and deer excessively grazing in open lands where they otherwise would have been targets for wolves, created a domino effect that has harmed a variety of species. 'Ecological engines'Colorado's vote comes at a time when safeguards for gray wolves are threatened: the Trump administration announced last year intentions to remove the animals from the endangered species list."Gray wolves are the ecological engines of the northern hemisphere," says Rob Edward, president of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, who spearheaded the ballot measure and has been working to reintroduce wolves into Colorado for over 25 years. He points to the successes of the Yellowstone reintroduction as evidence that similar efforts would be good for Colorado's environment."The Aspen groves, which hadn't regenerated in 50 years, were totally coming back" as a result of wolves returning, he says. "And with that regeneration came more beavers, which led to more beaver dams, which was good for the rivers, which led to more trout, and on and on with a cascading effect."He adds that wolves also benefit the landscape by forcing elk to move around. When the elk aren't hunted, they "can hang out in river bottoms, which causes mass erosion, and the water gets shallower and hotter", he explains. Rancher oppositionEdward points out that the measure safeguards ranchers against losses by offering compensation for any wolves that kill their livestock, but Terry Fankhauser, executive vice-president of the 153-year-old Colorado Cattlemen's Association – which represents the 11,600 cattle farms and $2.8bn industry in the state – believes the matter is more complex than just wolves killing cattle."Beyond the kills, there are indirect impacts of wolves being reintroduced to cattle," Fankhauser says. "Cattle are fight-or-flight animals and they're continually on the lookout for predators. And when there's reintroduction of wolves, there's a decrease in gestation, pregnancy, and weight gain, much like elk, deer and moose."Potential disruption of wild animals is also a concern for opponents of the ballot measure, who advocate on behalf of hunters who don't want to see their game disappear. Preserving targets for hunters was also the motive behind the controversial, government-sponsored practice of shooting wolves in Alaska from helicopters. Sarah Palin's endorsement of the practice was fuel for attack ads when the then governor ran for vice-president in 2008.The proposed measure would call for the Colorado parks and wildlife commission to construct a plan – building on scientific data and concerns from public hearings – to reintroduce wolves into public lands by the end of 2023. The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund would like to see enough wolves introduced to return balance to the ecology, with the additional aim of creating a habitat that links the wolves of northern states (along with Canada) and southern states (along with Mexico) stretching the length of the Rocky Mountains.Fankhauser is concerned that the ballot measure will tie the hands of those tasked with reintroducing the wolves to Colorado, forcing them into blunt action where a nuanced approach is needed."We should not be making biological decisions at the ballot box," he says. "And to arbitrarily decide, through a population vote, that we need x amount of wolves in Colorado without considering that ecosystem, it's not only irresponsible to the ranching community, but to the wolves themselves." Rehabilitating the wolf's imageThe Colorado Stop the Wolf Coalition, another opposition group that describes itself as a group of "concerned sportsmen, farmers, ranchers and businesses", has been playing up fears that wolves could be a danger to humans. Its homepage cites a story from last summer about a family of campers in Canada being attacked by a wolf, which has the potential to make the millions who enjoy camping in Colorado's Rocky Mountains a little anxious.Edward finds the suggestion wolves pose a threat to humans wildly misleading. (The Colorado Stop the Wolf Coalition did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)> They're curious about us, like their descendants, the dogs"That is a one-off rarity," he says. "Millions of people have camped in Yellowstone since wolves were reintroduced, and there has never been an attack. Wolves do not see humans as prey. They're curious about us, like their descendants, the dogs."A poll commissioned on behalf of Edward's campaign showed that two-thirds of likely voters said they were in favor of the wolf reintroduction, with only 15% opposed. The poll showed no divide between rural and urban voters, which is noteworthy considering how large the cattle industry looms in the Colorado economy and culture.Meanwhile, supporters of the gray wolf have been working to overhaul its fearsome image. A Denver-based musical collective, Lost Walks, wrote and performed a rock opera about a wolf who saves a pregnant woman in danger in the Colorado wilderness."It felt important to us to use our voices for a creature who is voiceless," says Jen GaNun, the band's creative director. "When we found out about how wolves were and are hunted and treated today, we felt like we had to use our internal momentum in this project we started to be a part of a social and environmental movement."Profits from the album have gone toward the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, and live events have doubled as signature collection opportunities for the ballot measure."We have gotten some messages of opposition," she says, "but mostly find that people are in support and on the side of science and kindness towards animals and the greater ecosystem."
|
| Trump says he doesn't think injuries soldiers suffered in Iranian strike are 'serious' Posted: 22 Jan 2020 08:21 AM PST  President Trump on Wednesday downplayed the injuries suffered by U.S. soldiers following retaliatory Iranian missile strikes on a military base in Iraq earlier this month.Speaking to reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump was asked why he has repeatedly said no Americans were hurt in the strikes despite reports that 11 U.S. service members were airlifted for medical reasons. The president said he was told the soldiers had "headaches" and he doesn't consider the injuries to be as serious as others he's seen in the past, such as the loss of limbs.> When asked about the 11 U.S. servicemen injured in the Iran airstrikes, President Trump told @weijia he didn't "consider them serious injuries relative to other injuries I've seen." https://t.co/anmIdCHO6a pic.twitter.com/boSjvDujCS> > -- CBS News (@CBSNews) January 22, 2020The comment quickly stirred up some backlash -- CNN's Chris Cillizza called Trump's description of the injuries "problematic" considering some of the patients are still being evaluated. He also brought up Trump's personal history which includes five deferments from serving in the Vietnam War, four of which were the result of bone spurs in his heels.The president was also chastised by Mark Hertling, a retired Army officer who served as the commanding general of the U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army. Hertling said that blasts like the one in Iraq can result in various long-term effects, some of them quite severe. Trump, he said, was "dangerously wrong" in his dismissal. > No longer an "active duty commander," I did spend 3+ yrs commanding large organizations & was personally subjected to multiple IED blasts. These can be serious injuries, they can contribute to death, neurological and psych disorders...and POTUS comment is dangerously wrong. https://t.co/dfVyrwj4Qt> > -- Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) January 22, 2020More stories from theweek.com Democrats walked right into Mitch McConnell's trap Marianne Williamson backs Andrew Yang in Iowa caucuses because 'we need to lighten up' Michael Bloomberg gets another moderate mayor's endorsement from San Francisco's London Breed
|
| These 9 Dining Chairs Are Sculptural, Surprising, and Downright Sleek Posted: 23 Jan 2020 05:00 AM PST |
| The outbreaks of both the Wuhan coronavirus and SARS started in Chinese wet markets. Photos show what the markets look like. Posted: 23 Jan 2020 08:47 AM PST  The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak started in a Chinese wet market, where livestock and poultry are sold alongside animals like dogs, hares, and civets.
|
| Kosovo President Expects New Government to Be Formed Soon Posted: 21 Jan 2020 12:41 PM PST ![Kosovo President Expects New Government to Be Formed Soon]( "Kosovo President Expects New Government to Be Formed Soon") (Bloomberg) -- Sign up here to receive the Davos Diary, a special daily newsletter that will run from Jan. 20-24.Kosovo's president said he hopes a new government will be formed "very soon" as the nation needs to proceed with reforms."We have one goal: to move as fast as possible toward European integration and to be a member of NATO," President Hashim Thaci said Tuesday in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Thaci on Monday gave Albin Kurti, whose party won October elections, 15 days to create a new government. Coalition talks have dragged on for months as the top two parties, both previously in opposition, wrangle over key posts and future endorsements for next year's presidential race.Thaci also hailed a U.S.-brokered agreement signed Monday by Serbia and Kosovo that will allow flights to resume between their capitals for the first time since they fought a 1998-1999 war. He said it should be seen as a "crucial step" toward mending the ties, which the EU has set as a condition for both countries to win membership.Kosovo will keep trying to win further recognition among nations and integration in international organizations, he said.(Updates with further integration in last paragraph)\--With assistance from Misha Savic.To contact the reporters on this story: Andrea Dudik in Prague at adudik@bloomberg.net;Jasmina Kuzmanovic in Zagreb at jkuzmanovic@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Andrew LangleyFor 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.
|
| Arizona mother admits killing her 3 children, police say Posted: 22 Jan 2020 05:53 PM PST  Officials described the mother, who was not identified, as a 22-year-old woman who recently moved to Arizona from Oklahoma.
|
| 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.
|
| U.S. Secretary of State cautions nations against taking 'easy money' from China Posted: 22 Jan 2020 11:32 AM PST  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a visit to Jamaica on Wednesday, cautioned nations against taking "easy money" from China, warning it could be counterproductive, in a second attack in as many days against China's economic role in the region. On Tuesday, he drew the ire of Chinese officials when he said "flashy" Chinese economic promises often produces debt dependency and erode the sovereignty of borrower nations.
|
| U.S. deports Honduran family with sick kids to Guatemala Posted: 21 Jan 2020 08:25 PM PST  Advocates, citing the children's recent hospitalization, mounted an unsuccessful legal challenge to stop the deportation — which took place Tuesday
|
| Haiti pushes foster homes to counter problems in orphanages Posted: 22 Jan 2020 05:36 PM PST  Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Rose Boncoeur brought two emaciated little girls to live in her modest home in Haiti as part of a reform drive aimed at keeping children out of orphanages. The government of the Americas' poorest country is pushing to deinstitutionalize children so as to avoid the darkest sides of orphanage life -- trafficking of kids or even worse abuse. Boncoeur gets no financial help to feed or clothe her two charges, and is forced to ask people for used clothing for her foster children -- sisters, aged eight months and three years.
|
| Iran Is Left With Few Strategic Options After Trump's Bold Move Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:35 AM PST  Scoring legitimate foreign-policy wins has not been easy for U.S. President Donald Trump, Twitter proclamations notwith-standing. But he's just notched his biggest one yet against…
|
| WWII-era ammunition found at Tesla factory site near Berlin Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:32 AM PST  Authorities in Germany say 85 kilograms (187 pounds) of World War II ammunition have been found on the site where Tesla plans to build its first European factory. Local newspaper Maerkische Oderzeitung quoted officials in Brandenburg on Wednesday as saying they estimate about 25 unexploded bombs could be found at the partially wooded site on the outskirts of Berlin, the German capital. Thousands of unexploded bombs dropped over Nazi Germany by American, British and Russian forces remain undiscovered even 75 years after the end of the war.
|
| Here are the symptoms of the deadly Wuhan coronavirus and when you should be worried Posted: 22 Jan 2020 03:37 AM PST  The deadly coronavirus 2019-nCoV, known as the Wuhan virus, has killed nine people and infected 440 others in China.
|
| 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.
|
| Missing butterfly conservationist ‘may have been targeted by illegal loggers’ in Mexico Posted: 22 Jan 2020 09:27 AM PST  Fifty-three police officers have been hauled in for questioning over the disappearance of an environmental activist who ran a butterfly sanctuary in Mexico.Homero Gómez Gonzalez, 50, was reported missing last week amid fears he had been targeted by criminal gangs and illegal loggers in the central state of Michoacán.
|
| The United States Is Ready To Win the Landwars Of the Future With A New Super Missile Posted: 21 Jan 2020 04:00 PM PST  2027 will come with a big upgrade.
|
| Deadly funnel-web spiders descend on battered Australian cities; experts warn of bite Posted: 22 Jan 2020 07:23 AM PST  The Australian Reptile Park attributes increased activity in funnel-web spiders to recent weather and expected warm air on the way.
|
| A brief history of black names, from Perlie to Latasha Posted: 23 Jan 2020 05:51 AM PST  Most people recognize that there are first names given almost exclusively by black Americans to their children, such as Jamal and Latasha. While fodder for comedians and social commentary, many have assumed that these distinctively black names are a modern phenomenon. My research shows that's not true.Long before there was Jamal and Latasha, there was Booker and Perlie. The names have changed, but my colleagues and I traced the use of distinctive black names to the earliest history of the United States.As scholars of history, demographics and economics, we found that there is nothing new about black names. Black names aren't newMany scholars believe that distinctively black names emerged from the civil rights movement, perhaps attributable to the Black Power movement and the later black cultural movement of the 1990s as a way to affirm and embrace black culture. Before this time, the argument goes, blacks and whites had similar naming patterns. Historical evidence does not support this belief.Until a few years ago, the story of black names depended almost exclusively on data from the 1960s onward. New data, such as the digitization of census and newly available birth and death records from historical periods, allows us to analyze the history of black names in more detail.We used federal census records and death certificates from the late 1800s in Illinois, Alabama and North Carolina to see if there were names that were held almost exclusively by blacks and not whites in the past. We found that there were indeed.For example, in the 1920 census, 99% of all men with the first name of Booker were black, as were 80% of all men named Perlie or its variations. We found that the fraction of blacks holding a distinctively black name in the early 1900s is comparable to the fraction holding a distinctively black name at the end of the 20th century, around 3%. What were the black names back then?We were interested to learn that the black names of the late 1800s and early 1900s are not the same black names that we recognize today.The historical names that stand out are largely biblical such as Elijah, Isaac, Isaiah, Moses and Abraham, and names that seem to designate empowerment such as Prince, King and Freeman.These names are quite different from black names today such as Tyrone, Darnell and Kareem, which grew in popularity during the civil rights movement. Once we knew black names were used long before the civil rights era, we wondered how black names emerged and what they represented. To find out, we turned to the antebellum era – the time before the Civil War – to see if the historical black names existed before the emancipation of slaves.Since the census didn't record the names of enslaved Africans, this led to a search of records of names from slave markets and ship manifests. Using these new data sources, we found that names like Alonzo, Israel, Presley and Titus were popular both before and after emancipation among blacks. We also learned found that roughly 3% of black Americans had black names in the antebellum period – about the same percentage as did in the period after the Civil War. But what was most striking is the trend over time during enslavement. We found that the share of black Americans with black names increased over the antebellum era while the share of white Americans with these same names declined, from more than 3% at the time of the American Revolution to less than 1% by 1860.By the eve of the Civil War, the racial naming pattern we found for the late 1800s was an entrenched feature in the U.S. Why is this important?Black names tell us something about the development of black culture, and the steps whites were taking to distance themselves from it.Scholars of African American cultural history, such as Lawrence W. Levine, Herbert Gutman and Ralph Ellison, have long held that the development of African American culture involves both family and social ties among people from various ethnic groups in the African diaspora.In other words, people from various parts of Africa came together to form black culture as we recognize it today. One way of passing that culture on is through given names, since surnames were stolen during enslavement.How this culture developed and persisted in a chattel slavery system is a unique historical development. As enslavement continued through the 1800s, African American culture included naming practices that were national in scope by the time of emancipation, and intimately related to the slave trade.Since none of these black names are of African origin, they are a distinct African American cultural practice which began during enslavement in the U.S.As the country continues to grapple with the wide-ranging effects of enslavement in the nation's history, we cannot – and should not – forget that enslavement played a critical role in the development of black culture as we understand it today. [ Like what you've read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation's daily newsletter. ]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * How a heritage of black preaching shaped MLK's voice in calling for justice * What everyone should know about Reconstruction 150 years after the 15th Amendment's ratificationTrevon Logan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
|
| Judge upholds mom charged for being topless at home Posted: 22 Jan 2020 04:00 AM PST  A judge refused to overturn part of Utah's lewdness law Tuesday in a blow to a woman who's fighting criminal charges after her stepchildren saw her topless in her own home.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment