| Trump crashes Iowa ahead of caucuses and crucial impeachment vote Posted: 30 Jan 2020 06:35 PM PST  Four days before the Democratic presidential candidates will compete in the Iowa caucuses, and with the U.S. Senate debating in Washington whether to remove him from office, Trump stormed into the Hawkeye state to try to create headlines of his own.
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| U.S. declares coronavirus health emergency, bars foreign nationals who visited China Posted: 31 Jan 2020 10:16 AM PST  The Trump administration, while insisting the risk to Americans from coronavirus is low, nevertheless declared a public health emergency on Friday and announced the extraordinary step of barring entry to the United States of foreign nationals who have recently visited China. In addition, U.S. citizens who have traveled within the past two weeks to China's Hubei Province - epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic - will be subject to a mandatory quarantine of 14 days, the incubation period of the virus, officials said. Americans who visited other parts of mainland China will undergo special health screening upon their return, followed by up to 14 days of "monitored self-quarantine," under the temporary restrictions.
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| Americans living at the center of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak aren't mad at China — they're outraged with the US: 'Why aren't the US embassies calling us?' Posted: 31 Jan 2020 12:01 PM PST  Americans at the center of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak said the US government had failed to give them critical information about the pandemic.
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| Atlanta Couple Caught Up in New Zealand Volcano Eruption Have Both Died From Their Injuries Posted: 31 Jan 2020 08:41 AM PST  Pratap Singh, 49, died a month after his wife Mayuari
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| How Do Stealth Destroyers Sail the Seven Seas (And Not Sink?) Posted: 01 Feb 2020 05:39 AM PST  A vital function.
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| Chinese tourists desert Thai resort as coronavirus spreads Posted: 31 Jan 2020 09:05 PM PST  The narrow laneways and pastel-coloured shophouses of Phuket Old Town are usually bustling with Chinese tourists during the Lunar New Year holiday, but travel bans and local fears about coronavirus have largely emptied the streets this year. "The impact is tremendous," 45-year old Ausana Akaradachakul told Reuters as she waited behind the counter for shoppers in her store selling postcards, straw bags, clothing and jewellery. "Only a few days after the news broke about the virus, the Chinese tourists were visibly few," Akaradachakul said.
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| Jury foreman regrets convicting teen in girl's 2002 death Posted: 31 Jan 2020 04:05 PM PST  "I do feel badly," jury foreman Joe McLean told the AP. No gun, fingerprints or DNA were ever recovered, and the 2003 trial of Myon Burrell centered on the testimony of one teen rival who offered conflicting stories when identifying the triggerman, who was standing 120 feet away, mostly behind a wall. McLean said he and other jurors did the best they could with the evidence presented and were unaware of information turned up in the AP review of the case -- in part because his co-defendants were not allowed to take the stand.
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| Uncertainty, face masks and worry in Illinois suburb where 2 coronavirus patients are treated Posted: 01 Feb 2020 03:00 AM PST  Protective face masks have been sold out for days in this northwest Chicago suburb, where two patients were being treated for coronavirus.
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| Impeachment endgame: Here's what we know about how and when the Senate trial will end Posted: 31 Jan 2020 09:09 AM PST  There are a few things we know about the final stage of the Senate impeachment trial that begins Friday afternoon, but there are still quite a few things that are unclear about how things will go down. The Senate will hear up to four hours of debate from President Trump's lawyers and from the Democratic House impeachment managers, starting just after 1 p.m., on whether to call witnesses. And then there will be a vote on whether to consider witnesses, probably around 5 p.m.
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| Impeachment trial: Rob Portman knee-deep in Trump's Ukraine shakedown Posted: 31 Jan 2020 05:11 AM PST  Ohio Sen. Rob Portman must recuse himself from the Trump impeachment trial because of his involvement in and knowledge of the Ukraine scandal.
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| The Best Headlight Restoration Kits Posted: 31 Jan 2020 12:40 PM PST |
| Here's the Other Epidemic Coming Out of Coronavirus Posted: 01 Feb 2020 06:01 AM PST  It's all about the economy.
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| China virus death toll rises to 259, infections surge Posted: 31 Jan 2020 04:26 PM PST  The death toll from China's new coronavirus outbreak has risen to 259 and the tally of confirmed infections has surged to nearly 12,000, the government said on Saturday. The National Health Commission said in its daily update that 46 more people had succumbed to the respiratory disease. All but one of the new deaths came in hardest-hit Hubei province, the epicentre of an outbreak that has spread around the world.
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| Hong Kong union calls strike to demand China border closure Posted: 01 Feb 2020 07:33 AM PST  A union for Hong Kong hospital workers said its members will go on strike Monday to press a demand for the semi-autonomous Chinese territory to reject all travelers from the mainland in an effort to stem the spread of a new viral disease. The Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, one of several groups that represent hospital employees, said Saturday more than 9,000 of its members signed a pledge to join the five-day strike. The announcement followed decisions by the United States, Japan, Australia and other governments to block or limit entry to travelers who have been to China in the past two weeks, which scientists say is the virus's maximum incubation period.
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| First case of coronavirus in US: Patient got pneumonia, but now only has cough, study says Posted: 31 Jan 2020 11:55 AM PST  The Snohomish County, Washington man remained in the hospital on Thursday. He has no symptoms other than a cough after treatment with antiviral meds.
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| Lamar Alexander says charges against Trump are 'proved' but will vote against witnesses Posted: 30 Jan 2020 08:18 PM PST  The Republican senator concluded that the charges against President Trump did not "meet the Constitution's 'treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors' standard for an impeachable offense."
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| India bans export of protective masks, clothing amid coronavirus outbreak Posted: 31 Jan 2020 06:31 AM PST  India on Friday banned the export of personal protection equipment such as masks and clothing amid a global coronavirus outbreak. It did not give a reason for the ban but it reported its first case of the new coronavirus on Thursday, a woman in Kerala who was a student of Wuhan University in China. The central Chinese city of Wuhan is the epicentre of the outbreak, and the virus has since spread to more than 9,800 people globally and killed 213 people in China.
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| U.S. Rejects Obamacare Work-Around Sought by Republican States Posted: 31 Jan 2020 02:12 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- A health insurance venture that threatened to erode Obamacare and had the backing of seven Republican state attorneys general has been rejected by the U.S. Labor Department.The proposal, from an obscure company in Georgia that was the subject of a Bloomberg News article last month, won the support of states including Georgia and Louisiana, whose attorney general personally pitched it last year to senior White House officials. Among those pushing for the plan was a Washington lobbying firm whose senior adviser is Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's onetime campaign manager.The initiative would allow LP Management Services to create a data-sharing partnership that small firms could join; after agreeing to provide online user data, those in the network could then pay full premiums to buy into LP Management's health insurance.Read More: Manafort Mystery Lender's Next Act Is an Obamacare End RunBut in a highly technical advisory ruling, the Labor Department said on Jan. 24 that those joining the venture wouldn't be "bona fide partners" and "do not work for or through the partnership.""The DOL is turning LP Management down," said Timothy Jost, a health-law expert at Washington and Lee University.Several health policy specialists who reviewed the plan for Bloomberg News said LP Management's plan, if approved, could undermine the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, by allowing insurers to cherry-pick their policyholders. The plan's supporters deny that.The ruling could scuttle the venture because potential partners won't join a health-insurance program that lacks the Labor Department's blessing, experts said. A lawyer behind the plan, Alexander Renfro, said LP Management would seek approval through a pending lawsuit."We are disappointed that after 14 months of ignoring our request, and four days before they were required to respond to our lawsuit, the DOL has rushed out an opinion that violates its own rules, ignores the facts presented, and rewrites existing statutes and regulations without a legal basis to do so," he said in an email.One executive involved in the health initiative is Arjan "Ari" Zieger, a California man who made a mysterious $1 million loan in 2017 to Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Zieger's lawyer has said the loan had nothing to do with the insurance venture.Companies Zieger helps run have spent about $400,000 to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of the plan.Emails to the attorneys general of Georgia and Louisiana weren't immediately returned.To contact the reporter on this story: David Glovin in New York at dglovin@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey D Grocott at jgrocott2@bloomberg.net, David S. Joachim, Joe SchneiderFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Photos of stores in Wuhan show what life is like under the coronavirus lockdown Posted: 31 Jan 2020 12:02 PM PST  The quarantine and fears of coronavirus have made Wuhan a ghost city. Residents only occasionally go out to stock up on supplies.
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| A U.S. Plane Crashed in Afghanistan. Why So Many Believed a CIA Chief Was On It. Posted: 31 Jan 2020 03:31 PM PST  The wreckage of a U.S. military plane that crashed and burned on a snowy mountain peak in Afghanistan on Monday was still fresh when Iranian…
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| Is This Picture How China Takes Over the South China Sea? Posted: 30 Jan 2020 10:48 AM PST  The outposts in the South China Sea are a serious threat to demilitarized sea lines.
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| McConnell’s Democratic rival endorses Biden for 2020 Posted: 31 Jan 2020 05:48 AM PST  Amy McGrath, a former Marine combat aviator who has raised more than $16 million in her effort to challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell in November's election, said Friday that she was endorsing Joe Biden for president.
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| Coronavirus Has Europe Treating Chinese People Like the Plague Posted: 31 Jan 2020 10:12 AM PST  ROME—The sign taped to the glass door of a popular gelateria in front of Rome's iconic Trevi Fountain is perfectly clear, and perfectly ugly. Written in both Chinese and English, it states what pretty much everyone in a country of hypochondriacs and the rest of Europe is thinking: "Due to international safety measures, all people coming from China are not allowed to have access to this place." The writer then apologizes for any inconvenience. WHO Calls Coronavirus 'Emergency' as Person-to-Person Spread Confirmed in U.S.Italy has confirmed just two coronavirus cases despite quarantining 7,000 people on a cruise ship this week over a feverish woman from Hong Kong who had, as it turned out, nothing but the flu. A full 24 hours after the woman was cleared, citizens of the port town of Civitavecchia near Rome staged a protest at the port, demanding that all 750 Chinese passengers on board be tested for the disease before anyone could get off the ship. The two cases that actually are confirmed in Italy are a Chinese couple who traveled from Wuhan to Milan and then across the peninsula on a bus tour with more than 100 other Chinese tourists over the last five days, sparking a panic across the entire country as authorities alert everyone at every stop of their tour—highway rest areas included. The hotel where they were staying, just a block from the Colosseum, was cordoned off with armed police on Friday, prompting passersby to ask each other if there was a terrorist threat. You would think the epidemic has reached plague proportions. On Friday, Italy's civil protection authority announced a six-month "state of emergency" over the health crisis—the first time in the country's history. Twelve people who are tied to the confirmed cases are in Rome's Spallanzani Infectious Disease Hospital under surveillance. But Chinese restaurants, Chinese-owned convenience stops, and even coffee bars with Chinese staff have been empty all week. In Tuscany, where the town of Prato has the highest concentration of Chinese residents in the country, Italians have stopped sending their children to school out of fear they'll contract the virus. About five million Chinese tourists visit Italy each year, pouring millions of euros into the economy, but the Rome Tourism Bureau told The Daily Beast that many tour guides have called off group tours for Chinese people "until things blow over" out of fear their very presence will make other tourists feel uncomfortable. There are also 300,000 Chinese residents living and working across Italy, many in the service and fashion industries. The lack of government guidance on how to handle the epidemic has angered the Chinese community across Italy, many of whom feel betrayed that the government seems to be scapegoating them, according to the head of Rome's Chinese Community in Italian media interviews. A Chinese woman who runs a small convenience store in the bustling neighborhood of Trastevere told The Daily Beast that she has simply started wearing a surgical mask and rubber gloves because Italians wouldn't enter her store. "I haven't been to China for more than 10 years, but they are so scared of us, it just makes sense to show them I'm being safe," she said. "It's either this or risk closing if I lose business."Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy's xenophobic far-right League party, didn't miss an opportunity to exploit the situation. "Every day dozens of flights arrive in Italy from China," he said at a recent rally. "We need checks, checks, and more checks." At a civil protection press conference in Rome on Friday, the panel of doctors meant to calm fears continued to insist that only people with symptoms were contagious despite confirmation last weekend that the opposite is true. There have also been troubling reports of blatant racism and bullying in the Italian press including how a Chinese-Italian boy playing in a school soccer match in Milan was told by an opponent, "I hope you get the virus, too."Roberto Giuliani, director of the prestigious Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, was sanctioned by the institution after telling students from China, Japan, and even South Korea that they needed a doctor certificate to attend class—even if they had not traveled to China recently. 7,000 People Trapped on Mediterranean Cruise in Italy Over Suspected Coronavirus CaseThe same paranoia has sparked a race debate in France, where six cases have been confirmed. There, Chinese citizens have started using the hashtag JeNeSuisPasUnVirus or "I am not a virus" after the local newspaper Le Courier Picard used the race baiting headlines "Yellow Alert" and "Yellow Peril" over a photo of a Chinese woman wearing a white surgical mask.The French aren't only stigmatizing Chinese people but all Asians, it seems. Shana Cheng, a 17-year-old Paris resident of Vietnamese and Cambodian origin, told the BBC that she was hassled on a Paris bus last weekend. "There's a Chinese woman, she is going to contaminate us, she needs to go home," Cheng says she heard two passengers say. Then she said they looked at her "in a disgusted way, as if I was the virus."Another woman tweeted, "Not all Asians are Chinese. Not all Chinese were born in China and not all have been there. An Asian who coughs doesn't have the coronavirus. Insulting an Asian because of the virus is like insulting a Muslim because of the bombings."In Germany, the only other continental European country with confirmed cases so far—six and counting tied to the automotive supplier Webasto in Stanberg—things aren't much better. A 33-year-old German who worked there is the first human-to-human contact case in Europe after attending a training session hosted by a visiting Chinese colleague who has since returned to Wuhan. All such training sessions with Chinese visitors have since been suspended.As the number of confirmed cases grows across Europe, fear will surely spread, too. And a continued lack of guidance by authorities about how the virus is actually transmitted and who potential carriers are will undoubtedly feed racism and xenophobia, which risks becoming a worse epidemic than the disease itself. 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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| Palestinians cut all ties with Israel, US: Abbas Posted: 01 Feb 2020 05:31 AM PST  Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas Saturday announced a cut of all ties with Israel and the United States, including security cooperation, days after Washington unveiled a controversial Middle East peace plan. Abbas spoke at an Arab League meeting in Cairo called after US President Donald Trump presented the plan, which is seen as staunchly favouring Israel, but offers Palestinians a pathway to a limited state.
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| Firefights, blocked roads in Mexican city after senior cartel leader detained Posted: 31 Jan 2020 01:33 PM PST ![Firefights, blocked roads in Mexican city after senior cartel leader detained]( "Firefights, blocked roads in Mexican city after senior cartel leader detained") Armed men blocked roads, burned cars and there were reports of shootouts in the city of Uruapan in western Mexico after a senior leader of the Los Viagras cartel was detained, local media and a source from the prosecutor's office said. Luis Felipe, also known as "El Vocho", was captured earlier in the day in the western state of Michoacan, which has long been convulsed by turf wars between drug gangs and where unrest is not uncommon after the detention of senior cartel figures. Michoacan's state security services, without giving names, said on Twitter that three people have been detained.
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| How $98 trillion of household wealth in America is distributed Posted: 31 Jan 2020 02:53 AM PST  If a pie represented the wealth in the United States, nine pieces, or 90% of the pie, would go to the wealthiest 20% in the country.
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| Democrats Rally to 2020 Candidates on Surge of Anti-Trump Energy Posted: 01 Feb 2020 03:00 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- New data shows that the surge of Democratic activism around the country in 2020 has already eclipsed the record level of the midterm elections two years ago -- and is still growing.While some Democrats worried that grassroots energy might taper off nationally after the party's success in 2018, organizers say the exact opposite is happening as it gears up for the 2020 presidential nominating process, which kicks off Monday in Iowa.Nationwide, the number of Democrats signing up to canvass, for phone banks, host gatherings or train as precinct captains for presidential hopefuls has eclipsed 2018's record-setting pace, according to data from MobilizeAmerica, an organizing platform used by all the major candidates, the Iowa Democratic Party, and many outside groups."For Democrats there was something so existentially jarring about Trump's election that it created a kind of socialization around politics in a way that we maybe haven't seen since the Civil Rights movement," said Alfred Johnson, the co-founder and chief executive officer of MobilizeAmerica.Johnson said that 402,000 people signed up to volunteer for Democratic candidates or progressive causes in the month leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats gained 41 congressional seats and took control of the House of Representatives.As of Friday afternoon, the number who had volunteered around the country in the month of January had reached 428,000, with thousands of new registrants joining each day.Much of that energy has been focused on Iowa and other early nominating states. Johnson said there is no sign the trend is slowing down. He expects that 4 million volunteers could register by Election Day, as the chance of defeating Trump grows nearer.For many Democrats who were first drawn to the Women's March right after Trump's inauguration or local Resistance groups, he said, political organizing has grown from an activity geared toward a particular race into something much broader: A form of community like a bowling league or the PTA.Right now, that effort is centered in Iowa and the Feb. 3 caucuses. Betty Salmon, a 68-year-old from Urbandale serving as a precinct captain, was among the dozen volunteers making phone calls at Bernie Sanders' West Des Moines field office. Although she caucused for Sanders in 2016, she did not volunteer for the campaign — a mistake she says she is seeking to rectify."I assumed Bernie would win, and I vowed I would never pass up a chance to help Bernie if he ran again," she said, rattling off the rallies, house parties, phone banks and canvasses she has participated in on behalf of her candidate.From Joe Biden to Pete Buttigieg to Elizabeth Warren, every Democratic candidate this cycle has hundreds or thousands of people like Salmon, newly activated as a Democratic mega-volunteer, most with plans to continue through till November."I can't believe the number of people like me who had never been active in politics before until the Women's March," Salmon said. "Like me, they went to that and haven't stopped since."On a recent Sunday morning in Des Moines, one of those volunteers was pulling on snow boots before heading out to canvass for Sanders. Andy Johnson, a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, had traveled a long way to join the fight for Sanders. "Seeing the dead heat in Iowa and how close Bernie was to winning, I thought I'd do everything I could to put him over the top," Johnson said. "So for Christmas I asked for — and got — a plane ticket to Iowa. The campaign has great infrastructure for volunteers, with buses to take you everywhere."Johnson's story is hardly unique. At a Sanders field office in West Des Moines on Wednesday night, volunteers from around the country — and one from New Zealand — spent the evening calling other Sanders supporters and asking them to volunteer. Nearby, a campaign organizer taught supporters how to caucus, while others distributed yard signs and canvass packets. The staff also set up a room filled with toys to accommodate families with young children who wished to volunteer, which, judging from the kid quotient, many did."One of the beautiful things about the caucuses is that you have to build out organizations across the state," Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said after a Biden event. "We're seeing new people energized and engaged in parts of the state that we haven't seen in a while."One of them was Bruce Koeppl, a retired former AARP executive from Des Moines who is a co-precinct captain for Biden. "I think the world needs to be reassured we haven't lost our way in America," he said, explaining his decision to volunteer. "I fear for what will happen if [Trump] gets another four years. Not necessarily so much for me but for my grandnieces, my nieces and my nephews."Republicans are keen to heighten their activism, too, but growth is hampered by the lack of a competitive Republican contest. Last March, Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale claimed his team would "build the largest ground game operation in history" and that "we're gonna have 1.6 million volunteers." In a December briefing, the campaign said its volunteer base stood at 300,000.(DISCLAIMER: Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)To contact the reporters on this story: Joshua Green in Des Moines at jgreen120@bloomberg.net;Tyler Pager in Des Moines at tpager1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Magan Crane, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Why You Should Be Afraid of Russia’s New Heavy Flamethrower Battalions Posted: 31 Jan 2020 03:51 AM PST  Heavy flamethrower battalions are coming to the Russian army. The goal is to use incendiary weapons – devastating physically and psychologically – to clear enemy troops from cities, bunkers and tunnels.
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| Why Coronavirus Seems to Be Striking More Adults Than Kids Posted: 31 Jan 2020 04:00 AM PST  Expert theories on why the coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV seems to be infecting more kids than adults, according to early data out of Wuhan.
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| 'Do not travel': The US issued its most extreme warning against going to China as the coronavirus continues to spread Posted: 30 Jan 2020 07:11 PM PST  The State Department advises against travel to China after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency.
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| Mom of 2 missing Idaho children misses court deadline to bring kids to police Posted: 31 Jan 2020 06:16 AM PST  Lori Vallow, 46, had until Thursday to present the two children to authorities in Idaho, but she, her new husband and her children were not present.
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| Rand Paul Defends Blocked Question, Says it Dealt With Obama Holdovers, Not Whistleblower Posted: 30 Jan 2020 12:39 PM PST  After his question was blocked by Chief Justice John Roberts during impeachment proceedings on Thursday, Senator Rand Paul pushed back against speculation that the question named the Ukraine whistleblower, telling reporters it merely addressed the role of two partisan staffers who he believes may have coordinated President Trump's impeachment.Roberts declined to read the question Paul submitted, apparently because it named the alleged whistleblower, a member of the intelligence community who filed a formal complaint about President Trump's handling of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.Before filing the complaint, the anonymous whistleblower reportedly told a House Intelligence Committee aide that he was concerned about Trump's behavior during a July phone call with the Ukrainian president, and the aide passed that information to committee chairman Adam Schiff."My question today is about whether or not individuals who were holdovers from the Obama National Security Council and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings," Paul wrote on Twitter."My question is not about a 'whistleblower' as I have no independent information on his identity," Paul claimed.> Sen. @RandPaul: "It's very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists part of the Obama, Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president." https://t.co/e0kl6NUKFH pic.twitter.com/TAnetrmc40> > -- The Hill (@thehill) January 30, 2020However, the NSC staffer mentioned in Paul's question has been floated as the alleged whistleblower by a number of media outlets and some lawmakers. Paul asked whether Roberts was aware that the Intelligence Committee staffer and individual suspected as the whistleblower may have plotted to impeach Trump before there were formal House impeachment proceedings."I think this is an important question, one that deserves to be asked," Paul said afterwards at a press conference. "I think it's very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists, part of the Obama-Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president.""I'm the biggest defender of the whistleblower statutes," Paul said, but he added that, "You shouldn't be able to use statutes to somehow make a whole part of the discussion over this impeachment go away."Democrats, Paul charged, have a "selective" belief in protecting whistleblowers.
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| Egypt's population nears 100 million, putting pressure on resources and jobs Posted: 31 Jan 2020 06:02 AM PST  Sitting in her sister's apartment on a noisy Cairo street, Rania Sayed one day hopes to leave a city that is becoming more congested as Egypt's population ticks up to 100 million, a milestone it will pass next month. Like many others, she wants to move to one of the new satellite settlements being built for a booming population whose rapid growth President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has identified as one of Egypt's biggest challenges alongside terrorism. Egypt's 100 millionth person is expected to be clocked up on the official statistics agency's digital counter in central Cairo in February.
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| In former Syria rebel stronghold, nothing was spared Posted: 31 Jan 2020 03:28 AM PST  Maaret al-Numan (Syria) (AFP) - Once the throbbing heart of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, Maaret al-Numan is an eerie ghost town where few buildings have been spared by nine years of war. Following a major ground offensive, the Syrian army captured the town in the northwestern province of Idlib on Wednesday, a key prize in its push to reconquer the country's last rebel enclave. Majed Marahesh, 27, remembers the day he first visited Maaret al-Numan 13 years ago with his classmates and teacher.
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| Mayor Pete’s South Bend Awarded No Major Contracts to Black-Owned Firms for Three Years Posted: 31 Jan 2020 01:47 AM PST  DES MOINES, Iowa—Of the many pledges that Pete Buttigieg has made in his as-yet unfruitful quest to earn the support of black voters, his guarantee that a quarter out of every federal contracting dollar will be awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses is one of his most ambitious. "Look at what it would be like if we were co-investing in promising businesses led by black entrepreneurs, start-ups and other kinds of businesses that have the best track record of creating the kind of employment that can help lift people up economically," Buttigieg told BET in September. But an analysis of such spending during Buttigieg's tenure as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, shows that the presidential hopeful fell dramatically short of that goal. According to a 2019 study analyzing the city's contract data conducted by Colette Holt & Associates, a national law and consulting firm specializing in disparity studies, the city of South Bend did not award a major contract to a black-owned business for three straight years.The study found that from 2015 through 2017, the city of South Bend distributed $83,675,547 in contract dollars, roughly 12 percent of the city's contracts, to businesses owned by racial and gender minorities—and none to a black-owned business, despite the study finding that there were more than 200 qualifying minority-owned firms in the market at the time.Minority-owned and women-owned businesses make up 15 percent of the market in the city, which means that while South Bend was close to achieving proportional awards for some categories, black-owned businesses continued to lag. While the city is more than 25 percent black by population, eligible black-owned contractors make up a mere 3.25 percent. More than 88 percent of contracts between 2015 and 2017 went to businesses not owned by women or racial minorities.At the same time, Buttigieg's administration awarded numerous lucrative contracts to past campaign donors and to corporations whose lobbyists and executives had given to Buttigieg's mayoral election efforts.One minority business owner told the study's authors that South Bend employees "are trained to believe that black folks, poor people, or minorities can't deliver," and that she keeps her status as the owner of a minority-owned business under wraps because the "stigma" has kept her from winning contracts."I really felt like [the city of South Bend] didn't want me to have the job. It wasn't because I wasn't the best at what I do, because I am—it was just because they would say, 'Well, you don't need that much money,' like, 'You just a little black girl. You won't need that much money,'" she told the study's authors. "Our problem is that people are trained to believe that black folks, poor people, or minorities can't deliver… There's a whole lot of black people in here that wanna do something, and somebody needs to see that." Another black business owner said that the difficulty in obtaining South Bend city contracts had even led to some minority-owned businesses to go under."There are black-owned construction companies, but one reason a lot of them that I talked to went out of business [is] because they can't get contracts with the city," the business owner said. "So, they can't get any big contracts, then they have to try to build their business with only small ones, and it's hard to maintain a cash flow with the other issues that you deal with." The analysis, titled "The South Bend Disparity Study" and produced at Buttigieg's behest, measured contracts and subcontracts worth $50,000 and up, and found a 72.38 percent disparity ratio for contract utilization of minority-owned business enterprises in the city. That ratio measures the participation of a group in contracting opportunities by dividing that group's utilization by the availability of that group to participate in the contracting process.A disparity ratio of less than 100 indicates that a given group is utilized less than would be expected based on availability; a ratio of less than 80 percent has been presented by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as indicating a prima facie case of discrimination.Buttigieg's poor track record on awarding city contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses has been reported before. In November 2019, shortly after his proposal mandating that the city award 15 percent of its contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses was passed through South Bend's city council, the Intercept reported that Buttigieg had only awarded 3 percent of city contracts to black-owned businesses as mayor, citing annual audits conducted by the city.But the outside analysis by Colette Holt & Associates, revealing the eye-popping three-year stretch with zero contract awards to black-owned businesses, has not been reported, and comes at a moment when even Buttigieg's most diehard fans are growing increasingly anxious that his statistically insignificant support among black registered voters represents an insurmountable obstacle to his electability."It is a concern! It is a concern about the South—can he win in the South? Can he win the black vote?" June Schindler, a potential supporter, told The Daily Beast, at a Buttigieg town hall in Ottumwa on Tuesday. "It's a concern."Buttigieg's campaign pointed to the small number of eligible black-owned firms in the region as a partial explanation for why South Bend lagged so far behind the former mayor's Douglass Plan. In an interview with Charlamagne Tha God last week, Buttigieg explained that the disparity study was a painful but crucial step to understanding how the city would address the problem in the future."We found out that we are below where we ought to be," Buttigieg said, of the city's contracts with black-owned firms. "That wasn't a surprise, but now I had the legal power to do something about it."While Buttigieg has touted the creation of a training program aimed at helping minority-owned and women-owned businesses apply for city contracts, the city was slow to improve the city's designated official in charge of ensuring minority- and women-owned businesses were being included in the selection process. In 2014, Buttigieg's office proposed cutting the hours for the city's Diversity Compliance Officer position from 32 hours a week to 18 hours per week. At the time, members of the city's Common Council expressed open concern that cutting the officer's hours would undermine efforts to expand the number of contracts awarded to such businesses."I don't think 18 hours per week is going to be enough to support the goals of the ordinance," said Valerie Schey, a Democrat on the council, in August 2014. "Even with a 32-hour workweek, the workload has been enormous."The move would have saved the city roughly $18,000 per year.In 2016, that role was instead changed following the signing of an executive order by Buttigieg ordering the creation of South Bend's Office of Diversity & Inclusion, a position intended to boost the number of contracts and subcontracts to minority- and women-owned businesses with the job description of "[leading] efforts to make hiring and management practices more inclusive, and city purchasing more diverse."Christina Brooks, who served as South Bend's first Diversity & Inclusion Officer until last year and hired the firm Colette Holt and Associates to conduct a disparity study, said in a statement that the shift in resources was critical for the city to understand how poor its history of awarding contracts to minority-owned businesses had been up to that point. "It wasn't a priority for three decades until Pete shifted resources to really focus on this by creating a department that was intentional about supporting, creating, and sustaining women- and minority-owned businesses and building up capacity," Brooks said.During the same three-year period that black-owned businesses received zero dollars in city contracts, South Bend did award plenty of city contracts to businesses owned by white men—including several generous political donors who had supported Buttigieg's mayoral campaigns and his ill-fated run for Indiana state treasurer in 2010.Among the beneficiaries of city contracts include lobbyist Brad Queisser, whose lobbying firm, mCapitol, and its parent company, MWH, gave $2,000 in cash and an in-kind contribution of $2,577.82 to Buttigieg's 2011 mayoral campaign. The firm was later contracted to lobby the federal government on South Bend's behalf, and was paid $230,000 over the next three years for its lobbying work. In 2014, MWH was awarded a contract worth as much as $2 million by South Bend's Board of Public Works to modernize the city's sewers—a favorite achievement of Buttigieg's. Four months later, it won an additional $430,000 in city contracts for its work on the system.Another lobbyist later hired to work on the city's sewer plan was Thomas New, executive director of government affairs at the Indianapolis law firm Krieg DeVault. New, who had donated $1,500 to Buttigieg's 2010 treasurer campaign, was later retained by the city to handle federal authorities on the plan.The Buttigieg campaign has explained in the past that both Queisser and New had been involved in city contract work and municipal politics long before Buttigieg first ran for mayor.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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| McConnell's Democratic rival McGrath endorses Biden for 2020 Posted: 31 Jan 2020 03:04 AM PST  Amy McGrath, a former Marine combat aviator who has raised more than $16 million in her effort to challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell in November's election, said Friday that she was endorsing Joe Biden for president. Now she is trying to win the Democratic Senate nomination and unseat McConnell, one of the most powerful men in Washington. McGrath said Biden was "respected and beloved by Democrats and Republicans alike" and had the ability to bring the country back together.
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| Police kill man holding 20 women and children hostage in north India Posted: 30 Jan 2020 10:24 AM PST  Police shot dead a man holding around 20 women and children hostage at his house in northern India after a 10-hour standoff, state officials said on Friday. The hostages who were held at gunpoint were safe, principal secretary home Awanish Kumar Awasthi said after the raid at the house in a village in Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh state. The hostage taker was serving a life sentence for murder and was out on parole, he added.
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| American trapped in Wuhan: Despite coronavirus, I won't evacuate without my wife and son Posted: 31 Jan 2020 11:17 AM PST  Because of the coronavirus outbreak, my newborn son can't get his citizenship paperwork. The U.S. government's response disappoints expats like me.
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