| Bloomberg defends himself after Trump calls him a 'racist' in deleted tweet Posted: 11 Feb 2020 10:41 AM PST  Mike Bloomberg on Tuesday hit back at President Trump over a since-deleted tweet that drew attention to the former New York City mayor's controversial "stop-and-frisk" policing policy.
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| Democratic candidates silent on police shootings of black men Posted: 12 Feb 2020 07:12 AM PST  African Americans, who make up 13 percent of the country's population, were the victims of 31 percent of police shootings last year.
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| A US Army drill sergeant is suspended after a profanity-laced shoving match with a recruit in Georgia Posted: 10 Feb 2020 04:48 PM PST  Video shows a US Army drill sergeant hitting a recruit after he used profanity. Now the drill sergeant is suspended.
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| Stealth Killer? China’s Air Defenses Are Surpassing Russia’s Anti-Aircraft Weapons Posted: 11 Feb 2020 07:32 PM PST  While the West has been focusing on the power of advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles such as the S-400, it should have been watching China.
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| Syria: US troops open fire on locals in northeast, killing 1 Posted: 12 Feb 2020 03:29 AM PST  A Syrian was killed and another was wounded in a rare clash Wednesday between American troops and a group of government supporters who tried to block a U.S. convoy driving through a village in northeastern Syria, state media and activists reported. At that point, American troops fired with live ammunition and smoke bombs at the residents, the reports said. A U.S. military spokesman said coalition forces conducting a patrol near Qamishli encountered a checkpoint occupied by pro-Syrian government forces.
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| Ethiopia Vote Agency Queries Key Opposition Leader’s Citizenship Posted: 12 Feb 2020 01:16 AM PST |
| Death toll from coronavirus surpasses 1,100; US confirms 13th case Posted: 12 Feb 2020 07:11 AM PST  The one-day death toll of 103 pushed the total past 1,000 and provided an ominous warning that the coronavirus epidemic was accelerating.
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| Nikola announces Badger electric pickup set to compete with Rivian and Tesla Posted: 11 Feb 2020 03:16 AM PST  On Monday, Nikola announced the launch of its Badger electric pickup truck, a model said to generate over 900hp and have a range of 600 miles on a single charge. Joining the ranks of Rivian, Tesla, and now GMC with the revival of the Hummer, Nikola will be launching its own rendition of the electric pickup truck. The Badger is a model "designed to target and exceed every electric or petrol pickup in its class" and handle whatever needs a construction company could have for it.
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| Syria displacement is worst since conflict began: U.N. Posted: 11 Feb 2020 05:17 AM PST  More people have fled fighting in Syria over the past 10 weeks than at any other time in the 9-year-old conflict and the city of Idlib, where many are sheltering, could become a graveyard if hostilities continue, two U.N. agencies said on Tuesday. Syrian government forces are shelling their way northwards, backed by Russian air strikes, driving people toward the Turkish border as they try to seize remaining rebel strongholds near Idlib and Aleppo. Turkey, which backs the rebels and is fearful of additional refugees, has retaliated militarily, with displaced civilians caught in between.
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| Giuliani storms back into Ukraine investigation with Hunter Biden documentary Posted: 11 Feb 2020 10:23 AM PST  Rudy Giuliani is working on a new documentary on Hunter Biden, as President Trump's personal attorney reemerges as the central figure behind efforts to continue to investigate Democrats' ties to Ukraine, three Republican sources familiar with the project told Yahoo News.
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| Leaked photos of woman's murder by partner with 'It was cupid’s fault' headline spark outrage in Mexico Posted: 12 Feb 2020 06:15 AM PST  The brutal murder of a young woman, who was allegedly stabbed to death by her partner, has sparked mass outrage in Mexico after photos of her mutilated body were leaked to the press.Ingrid Escamilla had her organs and skin removed, in what is believed to have been an attempt to hide evidence of her grisly murder.
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| Benedict XVI fuels ‘two popes’ headache Posted: 11 Feb 2020 07:12 AM PST  Seven years after his surprise resignation, Benedict XVI — weakened by age but still intellectually spry — appears unable to remain in the shadow of his Argentine successor, Francis, creating the appearance of "two popes" at odds.
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez congratulated Andrew Yang on running a 'great race' after he ended his presidential campaign Posted: 11 Feb 2020 06:58 PM PST  Both Ocasio-Cortez and Yang became political superstars by running grassroots campaigns centered around issues facing working-class people.
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| The Latest: Georgia congresswoman endorses Michael Bloomberg Posted: 12 Feb 2020 05:41 AM PST  Georgia congresswoman Lucy McBath has endorsed former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg for president. McBath's 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was shot to death in 2012 following an argument at a gas station in Florida over loud music. The shooter was a 45-year-old man named Michael Dunn, who claimed he'd done it in self-defense but was convicted of attempted murder.
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| How China Is Making the Coronavirus an Even Bigger Problem Posted: 11 Feb 2020 01:25 PM PST  The International Civil Aviation Organization appears more concerned with doing China's bidding by prioritizing Beijing's political priorities over a global health emergency.
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| Coronavirus updates: More cruise ship cases confirmed as death toll continues to rise Posted: 12 Feb 2020 03:04 AM PST  As the death toll in mainland China reaches 1,113, here is the latest news.
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| US-led coalition clashes with Syria regime loyalists Posted: 11 Feb 2020 04:38 PM PST  The US-led coalition said its forces in northeast Syria Wednesday confronted gunmen with live fire after one of its patrols came under attack near the city of Qamishli. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a US strike during the clashes in the regime-held village of Khirbet Amo, but coalition spokesman Myles Caggins denied any raid had taken place. "Coalition forces, conducting a patrol near Qamishli, Syria, encountered a checkpoint occupied by pro-Syrian regime forces," Caggins said.
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| These 10 Women Are Changing the Way We Talk About Science Posted: 11 Feb 2020 02:39 PM PST |
| Schumer calls on Justice Department watchdog to probe Stone sentencing recommendations Posted: 11 Feb 2020 05:08 PM PST  He sent a letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz requesting an investigation into the change in sentencing recommendations for Stone after four prosecutors involved in the case withdrew.
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| Woman ‘escapes after being held captive as sex slave for 31 years’ in Venezuela Posted: 12 Feb 2020 05:53 AM PST  A man has been charged with holding a woman captive in an apartment as a sex slave for 31 years during a campaign of abuse in Venezuela.Matias Salazar, 56, is accused of sexual violence, sexual slavery and psychological violence against the 49-year-old woman.
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| 29 Outdoor Fire Pit Ideas That Are Lit Posted: 12 Feb 2020 07:00 AM PST |
| Oklahoma professor allegedly says 'OK, boomer' is like 'calling someone a (N-word)' Posted: 12 Feb 2020 09:19 AM PST  According to the OU Daily, the professor said that "Calling someone a boomer is like calling someone a (N-word)."
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| Arkansas lawmaker calls for changes after police encounter Posted: 11 Feb 2020 01:50 PM PST  A black Arkansas lawmaker plans to introduce legislation next year aimed at changing police tactics after officers drew guns on her and another black politician who had called 911 to report that they were being harassed. Democratic state Rep. Vivian Flowers, from Pine Bluff, said the planned legislation would address the use of police body-cameras; police increasingly collecting data; penalties for filing false police reports; and creating limits to police use of force. At a news conference Monday, Flowers recalled the Feb. 3 incident outside of a Little Rock fundraiser for state House candidate Ryan Davis, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
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| These County Jails Shamelessly Detained Immigrants for ICE Posted: 11 Feb 2020 05:09 PM PST  Holding immigrant detainees in jails may strengthen the public's unfounded assumptions about the criminality of immigrants, given that the public often assumes that jails are only for criminal defendants awaiting their trials or for those serving their criminal sentence.
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| Tulsi Gabbard's unique campaign brought people together – but looks to be coming apart Posted: 11 Feb 2020 09:36 AM PST  Hawaii congresswoman made a noble effort to bring together voters with different beliefs, but her poll numbers are lowIf Tulsi Gabbard drops out of the Democratic race in the coming days, her unique campaign is likely to be remembered more for her spats with the Democratic party, accusations of being a Russian operative, and the imagery of her promise to "bring a soldier's heart to the White House" than a realistic bid for president.The Hawaii congresswoman's unusual political journey, which has seen her go from a rising progressive star to a regular Fox News guest supported by Republicans and libertarians, has so far not endeared her to supporters in New Hampshire, which goes to the polls Tuesday.While Iowa traditionally holds the first caucuses in the presidential election, New Hampshire has held the first primary since 1920. The goal for presidential candidates is to win early-voting states and create name recognition and a sense of momentum, as well to pick up their first delegates, who will eventually choose the nominee in summer.Sometimes a clear favorite for the nomination emerges quickly, but the last two major Democratic primary contests, pitting Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton and then Bernie Sanders against Clinton, have lasted from the Iowa caucuses in January through to late spring.After more than a year campaigning and holding more than 130 events in the Granite state alone, Gabbard is currently at 3.3% in the polls. She held 70 events in Iowa, an effort that won her the votes of 342 people on caucus night."As president I will have your back," she told a crowd in Rochester this weekend. "I promise I will treat every American with respect."In all likelihood, Gabbard will not get the opportunity to prove that. The Democratic contest has not been kind to the long-shot candidates so far. The businessman and former congressman John Delaney, after spending two and a half years and more than $25m campaigning, dropped out days before the Iowa caucus.Joe Sestak, a three-star admiral and two-term congressman, pulled out at the end of 2019. Bigger names such as Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke have all fallen to the whims of the Democratic electorate.Gabbard's rally in Rochester had gotten off to an inauspicious start, when the Elk's Lodge venue misspelled her name: a TV screen displaying a "Tulsie" rally alongside listings for "western night" and "meat raffle".Gabbard is 38 and has made physical vitality – along with her military service in the Hawaii national guard – a central feature of her campaign. She has posted videos of her surfing, taking part in push-up contests and working out in the gym.Yet for all that she has run a strangely joyless campaign.At rallies she speaks slowly, using lingering pauses, more like a university lecturer than a politician inspiring a crowd. In Greenland, it didn't bother the crowd."I met Tulsi on New Year's Day," said Spiro Paras, an ardent Gabbard supporter. "With direct personal contact I realized she has a soul and means what she says. That's visible in her eyes and face."The rally came amid a busy weekend for Gabbard. On Saturday she went on Fox News to defend Donald Trump's decision to fire key impeachment witnesses Lt Col Alexander Vindman and EU ambassador Gordon Sondland.On Sunday, she went on Fox News again, this time appearing on Sean Hannity's show. Hannity, a friend and informal adviser to the president who has promoted conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the dead DNC staffer Seth Rich, praised Gabbard for her courage."I think she's taken politically brave acts that have blacklisted her with the Democratic party leadership," Paras said.He was referring not just to Gabbard's Fox News sojourns. Gabbard bucked her party's elders to back Bernie Sanders over Clinton in 2016, and in December did not vote to impeach Trump. In January, Gabbard sued Clinton for $50m in retaliation for Clinton suggesting the Hawaiian was a Russian asset, months after Gabbard filed a $50m lawsuit against Google for allegedly suspending her campaign's advertising.Despite all evidence to the contrary, Gabbard's campaign believes she can outperform expectations in New Hampshire. One aide pointed to polls that show her with more than 5% support here – those polls exist, they are just few and far between – and Gabbard's supporters seem just as optimistic."Definitely top three, possibly even the top one," was Paras's prediction for Tuesday's vote.Gabbard does have some reason to feel aggrieved at her treatment. Along with Clinton's Russia accusations, Gabbard was left out of a pair of CNN town halls last week, even as the former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick – polling even lower than Gabbard – was invited. She has regularly complained that her campaign hasn't received enough coverage from the press.That was the case at her rallies on Saturday and Sunday, where there were comparatively few journalists. They missed Gabbard, whose central theme is ending wars and diverting military funding to social programs, playing up the political diversity of her supporters, who are often male and skew conservative.Gabbard asked the Democrats in the crowd to raise their hands, then the Republicans to raise their hands, and then the "libertarians or independents" to put their hands in the air.Kevin Frost, 38, who was at the Greenland event with his wife and daughters, fitted into the independent camp."I feel like some of the field is a little bit far left for where I feel we are as a country," Frost said.He voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in 2012, and for John McCain in 2008. In 2016, Frost said he voted "against Clinton, but not for Trump"."The idea that [Gabbard] stepped out and held off the impeachment fiasco, that speaks volumes," Frost said. "To me it seems like if she's going to do that now, then when she's president she'll maybe think of things a a little bit more too."If the vote on Tuesday reflects the polling, Gabbard will probably not be president.To her fans, her attempt to bring people with different political beliefs together might have been a noble effort, but it just isn't clear how it helps in winning the Democratic nomination.
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| A photographer captured how eerily empty Shanghai's normally bustling streets are amid the coronavirus outbreak Posted: 12 Feb 2020 07:56 AM PST  Shanghai-based photographer Nicoco captured the haunting difference between the crowds at Chinese New Year in 2014, and in 2020.
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| The FBI Makes a Bizarre Claim About Pro-Choice Terrorism Posted: 10 Feb 2020 05:55 PM PST  The FBI is expanding its focus on domestic terrorism, and that includes pro-choice violence—even though such violence is so vanishingly rare, it's all but nonexistent. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that the bureau has recently "changed our terminology as part of a broader reorganization of the way in which we categorize our domestic terrorism efforts." It's part of a much-heralded reinvigoration of the bureau's domestic terrorism focus after a rising tide of mostly white-supremacist terrorism.Among four broad categories of domestic terrorism that the FBI confronts, Wray said, is "abortion violent extremism." But Wray wasn't only talking about the pro-life extremism that murders abortion providers in their churches, he hastened to add, but "people on either side of that issue who commit violence on behalf of different views on that topic."His questioner, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), was puzzled at Wray's seeming equivalence: "People on either side of that issue don't commit violence." In fact, the FBI pointed The Daily Beast to just one episode of pro-choice-inspired terrorism—one that did not involve an actual act of violence, but rather a threat in an online comments section.But Wray persisted: "Well, we've actually had a variety of kinds of violence under that, believe it or not. But at the end of the day." Bass asked, "Really, that blow up buildings and threaten doctors?" Rather than responding, Wray moved on to detailing the FBI's next domestic-terrorism category, one about "animal rights and environmental extremism."Wray's comments weren't the first instance of the bureau promoting the idea of pro-choice violence as a real threat. In 2017, the FBI distributed a brief "Abortion Extremism Reference Guide" at a counterterrorism training for local law enforcement, listing "pro-choice extremists" as a group of domestic terrorists. The document, first reported by Jezebel, claimed that these extremists "believe it is their moral duty to protect those who provide or receive abortion services"—though even this document noted that only one "pro-choice extremist" had ever been prosecuted. Additionally, an earlier FBI training document obtained by the ACLU in 2012 referenced pro-choice violence but did not "provide a single example of violence against abortion opponents," the ACLU wrote. "Abortion violent extremism" of any sort accounts for a only small percentage of FBI domestic terrorism cases. Wray on Wednesday that the "top threat" of domestic terrorism comes from what he called "racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists." Out of approximately 850 current cases that a senior FBI official cited in congressional testimony last May, about half concern anti-government extremism and another 40 percent concern racist terrorism. That leaves around 85 cases of violence motivated by animal rights, ecological degradation, abortion and miscellaneous cases. An FBI spokesperson confirmed the total caseload and the breakdown are still current.But abortion extremism doesn't have an "either side." The primary case of pro-choice violent extremism that the FBI pointed The Daily Beast toward—the same one cited in the 2017 FBI document—is the 2012 conviction of Theodore Schulman, who had a long history of threatening anti-abortion activists. Schulman's ultimate downfall was the result of posting a threat in the comments section of religious conservative outlet First Things: "if Roeder is acquitted, someone will respond by killing" Princeton's Robert George and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, he wrote. That itself spoke to the discrepancy in violence between the two sides. "Roeder" was a reference to Scott Roeder, who murdered abortion provider George Tiller in the foyer of a Wichita church in 2009. Other instances of anti-abortion violence include a trio of bombings at Florida abortion clinics in 1985, a string of arson attacks on a Washington clinic in 1983, and a 2015 shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood that killed three. Between 1993 and today, anti-abortion activists murdered 11 people and attempted to kill another 26, according to the National Abortion Federation."Anti-choice violence as we know it is constant, pervasive, and escalating dramatically, and it threatens the civil liberties as well as the lives of our patents, our members, our society," NAF President Katherine Ragsdale told The Daily Beast. Wray's comments, she added, are a "danger to public perception.""It tars everyone with the same brush when in fact pro-choice folks simply are not doing this," she said.The Daily Beast has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI to document the extent of its focus on alleged pro-choice violent extremism.Mila Johns, a domestic terrorism researcher affiliated with the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, said violence was "very much lopsided in the other direction," the anti-abortion side, and called Wray's equivalence "a very political statement." The database, which tracks terrorist attacks across the world since 1970, records about 300 incidents related to anti-abortion violence and none for pro-choice violence. However, an Austin woman in 2016 was charged with throwing a crude Molotov cocktail at anti-abortion protesters. And last year, an 85-year old anti-abortion protester in San Francisco was knocked to the ground after he attempted jamming the bicycle spokes of a man who appears to have stolen a pro-life group's banner. Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue—a radical anti-abortion group that moved its headquarters to Wichita, Kansas, specifically to target Dr. Tiller—said his movement has been on the receiving end of threats. He estimated he had made between 20 and 50 complaints to federal law enforcement over the last two decades, for everything from anthrax scares to online intimidation. Wichita resident Christopher Thompson, he noted, was sentenced to 12 months in jail last year for making menacing calls to Operation Rescue's office and employees.But when asked about specific instances of pro-choice violence, Newman cited only the murder of James Pouillon, an Operation Save America activist who was shot while protesting abortion outside a high school in 2009. (The judge in that case said the killer's motivations were not tied to abortion.) Newman declined to give examples of abortion-rights violence of the scale and magnitude of that enacted by the anti-abortion movement. "You got your scorecard and I got mine," he said. "All of them are terrible."The FBI's position is that pro-choice activists and groups not concerned with violence don't need to worry about the new domestic terrorism categorization. "We don't investigate ideology or rhetoric or anything of that sort," Wray testified. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment, but pointed to comments from the bureau's former assistant director for counterterrorism, Mike McGarrity, from last June. "It is important to remember that in line with our mission to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States, no FBI investigation can be opened solely on the basis of First Amendment-protected activity," McGarrity testified to a House panel in June. "Rather, domestic terrorism investigations on individuals are opened on the basis of information concerning the occurrence or threat of violent criminal actions by the individual in furtherance of an ideology."However, prior episodes during the 18-year-old war on terror show the FBI does not always hold a rigid distinction between ideology that isn't to be investigated and violence that is. In 2011, its counterterrorism training at Quantico included instructional material that held Islam was an ideology, rather than a religion, with violence baked into its doctrines. The point of the training was to portray Islam itself as a threat to national security—which, for an investigative entity with broad domestic powers, was ominous enough for the Obama administration to order the training materials removed. Michael German, a former FBI special agent who investigated domestic terrorism, said the FBI was not only engaging in a false equivalence but "the manufacturing of an imaginary violent movement," reminiscent of its now-discarded "black identity extremism" category. Anti-Abortion Violence at All-Time HighThe bureau "seems to be grasping a tiny number of unrelated incidents that are not part of any organized effort to falsely imply that such a 'domestic terrorist' movement exists," said German, now with the Brennan Center for Justice. "This is a misleading analysis of dubious purpose, apparently to satisfy some political constituency, which is not what an objective law enforcement agency should be doing." But for some in the reproductive rights space, the threat posed by anti-abortion violence is enough that they are willing to accept dubious FBI categorization to ensure it gets investigated."Those of us in this movement have lost friends and family," Ragsdale said. "By all means, investigate the escalating violence.""And if politics requires you to have a category that says pro-choice violence, go right ahead," she added. "I'd be interested to see if anything ever pops up."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Migrants raped and trafficked as U.S. and Mexico tighten borders, charity says Posted: 11 Feb 2020 09:45 AM PST  Central American migrants are being kidnapped, raped and trafficked in Mexico as they seek to enter the United States amid a migration crackdown, a medical charity said on Tuesday. In Mexico's Nuevo Laredo city - separated from the United States by the Rio Grande - almost 80% of migrants treated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the first nine months of 2019 said they had been victims of violence, including kidnapping. "They're treated as if they aren't really people," Sergio Martin, Mexico coordinator for MSF, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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| Pakistan unveils $64mn subsidy to tackle rising food prices Posted: 12 Feb 2020 05:40 AM PST  Pakistan's government has approved a hefty subsidy package in a bid to offset the spiralling costs of basic food staples that threaten to undermine Prime Minister Imran Khan. The move comes as the government already faces mounting pressure over inflation, tax increases, the devaluation of the rupee and other woes. Khan's finance advisor Hafeez Sheikh said Wednesday the government had approved a five-month, 10 billion rupee ($64.8 million) package to alleviate the "soaring prices" of basic commodities, including food items such as wheat flour and sugar.
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| Man killed in Tesla crash had complained about Autopilot Posted: 11 Feb 2020 11:03 AM PST  An Apple engineer who died when his Tesla Model X hit a concrete barrier on a Silicon Valley freeway had complained before his death that the SUV's Autopilot system would malfunction in the area where the crash happened. The complaints were detailed in a trove of documents released Tuesday by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the March, 2018 crash that killed engineer Walter Huang. The documents say Huang told his wife that Autopilot had previously veered his SUV toward the same barrier on U.S. 101 near Mountain View, California where he later crashed.
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| The Navy Hopes This New Weapon Will Solve China's Anti-Ship Missile Threat Posted: 11 Feb 2020 10:30 PM PST  U.S. Navy weapons developers are working closely with NATO allies to ensure the weapon is properly operational across the alliance of countries planning to deploy the weapon.
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| A new electric pickup truck with a longer range than Tesla's Cybertruck will beat the hotly anticipated EV to market — check out the Badger Posted: 11 Feb 2020 08:44 AM PST  Nikola's Badger pickup truck has an estimated range of up to 600 miles and can hit 60 mph in 2.9 seconds.
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| Virginia House of Delegates Passes Sweeping Gun-Control Bill Posted: 11 Feb 2020 02:23 PM PST  In a raucous session on Tuesday, the Virginia House of Delegates passed gun-control legislation that would ban the sale of certain semi-automatic rifles and make the possession of magazines holding more than twelve rounds a felony.The House voted to approve the legislation 51–48, with all Republicans and some Democrats voting against. Capitol police removed gun-rights supporters from the chamber due for the manner in which they protested the bill's passage.The bill would require any owner of a semi-automatic rifle it classifies as an "assault weapon," including AR-15 rifles, to register the weapon with government authorities by 2021. It would also make magazines of over twelve rounds and silencers illegal. It will now head to the state Senate, where previous legislation that would have enacted an "assault weapons" ban failed to get out committee.Democrats in November won control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1994. In concert with Democratic governor Ralph Northam, state lawmakers are attempting to pass a flurry of liberal-leaning laws on gun control, abortion, and other issues. The Washington Post on Tuesday noted that Democrats have introduced so much legislation after years out of power that the legislature has been working late-night hours trying to process the backlog. Democrats have also struggled to take control of the legislative process due to their inexperience holding power.
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| As coronavirus spreads on cruise ships, what does it mean for cruisers and cruise lines? 'It's day-by-day' Posted: 12 Feb 2020 09:40 AM PST  Coronavirus has forced the cruise industry to take measures to keep the outbreak at bay. But how will it impact the industry and cruisers?
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| Elizabeth Warren Is Running Her Race. The Real One May Be Passing Her By. Posted: 11 Feb 2020 05:02 AM PST  CONCORD, N.H. -- Two days before a once-mission-critical primary in a state she neighbors, Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- typically exceptional at holding a room -- had not finished speaking when something unusual happened: Dozens of voters began filtering out of the middle school gym she had reserved.Campaign staff strained to enlist prospective volunteers on their way to their cars. "Someone, anyone," one organizer called out as departing guests stepped around him.And when Warren wound toward her big finish, the go-out-and-get-'em kicker in these urgent final hours, her mind wandered accidentally to home."It's up to you, Massachusetts, to decide what to do," Warren instructed.Supporters looked back at her, murmuring. She realized why. "And to the people of New Hampshire!" she amended.On the eve of a contest she had hoped to win (and probably will not, according to polls) -- one week removed from a caucus she had hoped to win (and certainly did not, according to Iowans) -- Warren has arrived, almost imperceptibly, at a precarious stage.In a primary adjoining her own state, it is Sen. Bernie Sanders, another New Englander, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who are leading in polls. Hoping to turn New Hampshire into a two-person race, the pair have been slinging fresh insults: Buttigieg suggested Monday that nominating Sanders would "risk alienating Americans at this critical moment." Sanders, contrasting his online fundraising army to Buttigieg's cadre of high-dollar donors, said he would not "go to rich people's homes and get advice from millionaires and billionaires." And after a chaotic virtual tie in Iowa, both campaigns Monday requested a recanvass of certain caucus precincts.Former Vice President Joe Biden, another fallen front-runner, looked past New Hampshire in a phone call Monday to supporters in South Carolina, where his popularity with black voters is expected to make the state more hospitable to him than the first two. "Keep the faith," he said at a field office in Salem, New Hampshire.Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has edged up in polls after appraising Buttigieg as a "cool newcomer" seeking a megapromotion and insisting a "socialist" like Sanders should not lead the ticket. "We're surging," she told reporters, citing a Boston Globe-affiliated survey by name.But Warren, who has largely avoided engaging her opponents, is making perhaps the riskiest bet available: changing very little, largely declining to alter a 2020 primary approach often premised on self-branding as a "fighter" in a policy context but less often in a political one.She can appear at times to be campaigning in a time capsule delivered from last year, running the race on her terms, largely independent of the changing circumstances. Her riff on a wealth tax for the ultrarich still lands ("Just two cents!" her crowds chant, cheering the policy's tagline). Her supporters still hold signs aloft with purpose ("Win with Warren!").But what if it is not enough?"Yeah, I don't know," Warren told reporters in Concord, when pressed on the early exits in her audience. "It seemed like, to me, a pretty enthusiastic crowd."Many Warren admirers remain almost preternaturally calm about her electoral position, deciding after a year of semipermanent metapunditry from voters that this is not the time to overreact to disappointing news.They cite what they see as a double standard in her treatment as a female candidate, observing that male candidates are less often held to account over squishy policy details or minor missteps, while also choosing to believe in Warren's gentle reminders that "women are outperforming men" in some recent competitive elections."She's hanging in there," said Lisa Nicholson, 60, from Hopkinton, New Hampshire, waiting for Warren on Sunday afternoon."I thought she'd be higher up," admitted Cathy Litchfield, 59, from Concord. "But she'll be in the top three, and that's all you really need right now."Andrea Olmstead, 71, a Bostonian who traveled to see Warren in Manchester, was one of many women to invoke the sting of Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016, suggesting that Warren's campaign had been a kind of balm for hope-seeking women in the Trump age."Her life has been my life in a way -- all women our age," Olmstead said, wearing an "I Love Lizzie" button from Warren's 2012 Senate race, for which she volunteered. "We've lived through the things she's lived through. It's a parallel journey."Olmstead was disinclined to consider the possibility of another letdown."Third in Iowa is not bad," she said. "There are more states to go."There are. But at a most inconvenient moment, Warren finds herself a candidate in-between, neither surging nor necessarily free-falling, struggling to channel the zeal that long powered her last year but also careful not to project any outward alarm to her slice of an often skittish Democratic electorate.Allies are imagining a win-without-winning-yet path to the nomination, arguing that placing first in any state this month is not essential in a field so unsettled that merely surviving into March could suffice for now. It is a theory floated every four years by faltering campaigns in recent presidential cycles, without ultimate success. But their case: There is no front-runner with an overpowering coalition and Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, will provide a useful foil for Warren's familiar crusade against big money once he begins competing in states next month.Warren's rallies can often approximate the sheen of a winner's: the nods from voters as she speaks about her Oklahoma youth; men in flannel shirts whoot-whooting for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; a boy with a blue crayon, coloring in the bubble letters on a sheet of paper reading "Dream Big, Fight Hard," turning to clap when the adults clapped.There are still superfans, like Don Lansing, 32, of Lebanon, New Hampshire, who waited for a photograph with Warren on Sunday evening in a shirt depicting no fewer than five pictures of himself with the candidate."She reminds me of every best teacher I ever had," he said.In high-stakes settings, Warren has made no major mistakes, turning in another solid if unmemorable debate performance last week while competitors claimed more attention and speaking time. In a signal of her peers' view of her chances, Warren barely faced any criticism onstage.Lately, Warren has taken to calling herself the unity candidate -- a complicated messaging task for a senator whose political identity has registered more often for her unswerving progressive passions.She has alluded to the "unwinnable fights" she has won in her life -- transcending a working-class upbringing to excel in academia, flipping a Senate seat -- as evidence of her viability as a general election option against President Donald Trump."There are a lot of folks who are going to talk about what's not winnable, what can't be done and definitely about who can't do it," Warren told supporters in Manchester. "They're going to talk about it right up until we get in that fight, we persist and we win."If she can attract the small-dollar fundraising totals required to sustain a national bid, Warren's team believes she can compete effectively in a primary of attrition. According to a memo from her campaign manager last month, Warren had more than 1,000 staff members on the ground in more than 30 states.But after a year in which Warren so often set the pace of the primary, sending policy plans into orbit and selling puckish apparel like a "Billionaire Tears" coffee mug, some veterans of losing campaigns wonder if her best 2020 moments have passed."I don't know where she can win," said Adrienne Elrod, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Hillary Clinton, while adding that little about this primary can be predicted with confidence. "But if she continues to amass delegates in Super Tuesday states, she can continue to stay in this race."Knocking on doors in Manchester on Saturday with her husband, Bruce Mann, and her golden retriever, Bailey, who sniffed a local news microphone as he walked, the senator received a mixed reception."You're on my shortlist," a jogger told her, stopping briefly to chat.Warren set off on her unity case. "There's been a lot of good people in this race," she said, trumpeting recent staff hires. "I want you to know, I've put as many of them as I could into my campaign."Up the street, a Sanders canvasser walked by a home with signs out front for Klobuchar and Buttigieg.Someone in a passing car recognized Warren as she stepped toward the next address. He lowered the window to announce himself:"Go Bernieeeeeeeeeee."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| A Pennsylvania school called police after a 6-year-old girl with Down Syndrome pointed her finger like a gun, her mother says Posted: 11 Feb 2020 06:57 PM PST  Margot Gaines does not understand the concept of shooting, according to her mom, who thinks Valley Forge Elementary School came down way too hard.
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| Widowed, imprisoned, detained: remnants of Islamic State in limbo in Syria Posted: 12 Feb 2020 02:12 AM PST  In northeastern Syria, prisons and detention camps hold thousands of men, women and children whose lives are in limbo nearly a year after the final defeat of Islamic State to which they once belonged. The area around Qamishli city is mainly controlled by Kurdish fighters who helped defeat the Islamist militant group. Kurdish forces bear the brunt of looking after those captured as Islamic State collapsed, including hundreds of foreigners who fought alongside local militants to create a self-declared caliphate in the Middle East.
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| Two years on, journey of Florida shooting survivors captured on screen Posted: 11 Feb 2020 05:54 PM PST  Two years after a shooting rampage at a school in Parkland, Florida, "the rage, the frustration, the trauma" of the survivors is the focus of a new documentary called "Us Kids" that aims to put gun violence at the heart of this year's US presidential race. The film looks at the ways in which the massacre of 17 people by a former student at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school affected the lives of those who survived the attack, and follows their first steps towards becoming high-profile anti-gun violence activists. Of all the survivors, Emma Gonzalez has become the face of frustration among young people at the lack of political response to endemic gun violence in the United States, which last year suffered a record 417 shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).
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| Japanese man who believes in smiling is world's oldest Posted: 12 Feb 2020 02:23 AM PST  A Japanese man with a sweet tooth who believes in smiles has become the world's oldest male at 112 years and 344 days old, according to Guinness World Records. Chitetsu Watanabe, who was born in Niigata in northern Japan in 1907, received a certificate for his accomplishment on Wednesday at a nursing home in the city. The previous record holder, Masazo Nonaka, another Japanese, died last month.
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| Australia's government listed 113 native animal species that need 'emergency intervention' in order to survive after its devastating bushfires Posted: 11 Feb 2020 10:41 PM PST  Koalas, platypuses, and some species of echidna, possum, potoroo, and dunnart were listed as "high-priority" for government intervention.
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| Tour This Quintessential Beach Retreat in Amagansett Dunes Posted: 12 Feb 2020 07:08 AM PST |
| Tulsi Tells Hannity She Supports Trump Axing Vindman and Sondland Posted: 10 Feb 2020 08:19 PM PST  Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) appeared on Trump-boosting Fox News host Sean Hannity's show on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and defended President Donald Trump's ouster of two key impeachment witnesses just two days after his acquittal.Last Friday, after celebrating being acquitted of abuse of power charges, the president fired National Security Council official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and U.S Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Vindman, specifically, was marched out of the White House by security, along with his twin brother, who was also terminated from his NSC position.Gabbard, who has become a frequent Fox News guest in recent months, defended the firings to Fox News' Neil Cavuto over the weekend, telling him that while she disagrees with many of Trump's decisions "as it relates to foreign policy," the public needs to realize that "there are consequences to elections.""The president has, within his purview, to make the decisions about who he'd like serving in his Cabinet," she added.Appearing on Hannity on Monday night, the Hawaii congresswoman first called for Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez to resign over the chaotic Iowa caucuses, saying "he's had a failure of leadership" and has been unable to "uphold that faith and trust."After telling Gabbard that she's "been treated horribly" by the Democratic Party and that he supports her outspoken criticism of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (Gabbard is suing Clinton for defamation), Hannity applauded her defense of Trump's retaliatory firings."I thought that was courageous," he stated. "Just acknowledging a simple truth that a president gets to hire and fire the people he wants, not people that disagree with his policy."Gabbard said the "deeper issue" is that her defense of Trump isn't based on opinion but "on the Constitution," noting at the same time that she's still an active soldier in the National Guard."Thank you for your service," Hannity interjected."Thank you, thank you very much, but as a member of Congress, I took an oath to the Constitution as does every member of Congress," she continued. "And it is the Constitution that provides that our foreign policy is set by the president of the United States as well as, in some significant ways, by Congress, not by unelected bureaucrats and not by the military.""And the reason why our founders had the wisdom to do this, they knew if voters were unhappy with the foreign policy decisions being made, they could make that decision at the ballot box to hire or fire where they can't do that with unelected bureaucrats or others," the Democratic lawmaker concluded.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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| House Intel Committee Republicans Boycott Hearing Due to Schiff’s Refusal to Address FISA Abuses Posted: 12 Feb 2020 09:23 AM PST  Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee boycotted a hearing on Wednesday, complaining that the committee's Democratic chairman Adam Schiff has neglected proper oversight of the intelligence community by failing to hold a hearing on the Justice Department inspector general's report detailing the FBI's FISA abuses."Under your chairmanship, the House Intelligence Committee has strayed far from its mandate of overseeing the Intelligence Community," the panel's nine GOP members wrote in a letter to Schiff obtained by the Daily Caller."Until the Committee prioritizes oversight activities related to urgent and critical concerns, Republican Members cannot support distractions from our core responsibilities," they added.The Republican representatives afterwards boycotted a hearing of the Strategic Technology and Advanced Research Subcommittee on the development of artificial intelligence for national security, criticizing the hearing as a "publicity event."In December, the Justice Department's inspector general released a report concluding that the FBI omitted crucial details in its requests for warrants to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page, specifically that the agency neglected to inform the FISA court that the controversial Steele dossier, cited in applications to spy on Page, was unreliable.The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele who was investigating Donald Trump for an opposition research firm hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The dossier purported to show connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.The DOJ inspector general did not say the FISA court should have declined to grant the warrants, but Attorney General William Barr has disagreed, saying the FBI launched an "intrusive investigation" of the Trump campaign on the "thinnest of suspicions" that were "insufficient to justify the steps taken.""We have gone months at a time in which we've hardly held any oversight-related briefings or hearings at all," the Intelligence Committee Republicans wrote to Schiff. "Until the Committee prioritizes oversight activities related to urgent and critical concerns, Republican Members cannot support distractions from our core responsibilities."
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| Giuliani storms back into Ukraine probe with Hunter Biden documentary Posted: 11 Feb 2020 11:17 AM PST  Rudy Giuliani is working on a new documentary on Hunter Biden, as President Trump's personal attorney reemerges as the central figure behind efforts to continue to investigate Democrats' ties to Ukraine, three Republican sources familiar with the project told Yahoo News.
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| New York man accused of manipulating daughter's college friends charged with sex trafficking Posted: 11 Feb 2020 05:09 PM PST  Lawrence Ray, the father of a former Sarah Lawrence College student, is accused of manipulating and abusing her school friends.
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| Mexico says number of migrants in 'Remain in Mexico' program drops sharply Posted: 12 Feb 2020 06:42 AM PST  Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Wednesday that the number of migrants awaiting the outcome of their U.S. immigration cases in Mexico has fallen from 50,000 to about 2,500. Since January 2019, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has sent migrants, many from Central America and Cuba, to Mexico under a policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). The policy has been a key element of Trump's push to curb waves of migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
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| More than 2,400 fetuses found at Illinois home to be buried Posted: 11 Feb 2020 02:25 PM PST  In what's sure to be a politically charged ceremony, more than 2,400 fetuses found last year at the suburban Chicago home of one of the Midwest's most prolific abortion doctors will be buried Wednesday in Indiana, a state with some of the nation's toughest anti-abortion laws. Indiana's top law enforcement official will preside over the mass burial in South Bend. The service comes five months after relatives sorting through Dr. Ulrich Klopfer's belongings after his Sept. 3 death came across 2,246 sets of preserved fetal remains stacked floor to ceiling in his garage.
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