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Jan 23, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Sign up for Next China, a weekly email on where the nation stands now and where it's going next.The case of a Chinese student jailed for tweets he sent while studying in America underscores that being overseas is no protection from Beijing's censors.Luo Daiqing, who attends the University of Minnesota in the U.S., was sentenced to six months in jail by a district court in November for "provocation" after he posted tweets that "defaced the image of the country's leaders" and had a "negative impact" on society. He was detained in his hometown of Wuhan between July 12 and Jan. 11.A Twitter account linked to Luo posted photos showing government slogans printed over a cartoon villain who looks similar to Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to Axios, which first reported the case Wednesday. The account, which was inaccessible on Thursday, also posted images of Winnie the Pooh, whose likeness is considered sensitive on Chinese social media due to unflattering comparisons to the Communist Party chief.The case is another sign that China is cracking down on government criticism, even outside its borders. While Twitter Inc.'s service is one of many foreign websites banned on the mainland, it's accessible using virtual private network software that mask a user's location and Chinese propaganda organizations maintain a robust presence on the platform.The court said Luo had "confessed" to using a false identity for a post that included altered pictures in a bid to attract attention. He later deleted them af
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Jan 23, 2020
Derek Tai was arrested outside Hong Kong's Legislative Council building last June, early in the city's anti-government protests, which have seen millions join demonstrations over the past seven months. Tai, a soft-spoken 21-year-old philosophy major, was one of the first protesters to be arrested. In past cases, defendants have been sentenced to eight months.
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Jan 23, 2020
An elementary school headmaster said Thursday he planned a gold shop robbery in Thailand due to personal and financial problems and apologized to the families of the three people who were killed. A 2-year-old boy was among the victims of the shooting earlier this month that caused public outrage and increased pressure for a swift arrest. Police arrested Prasitthichai Khaokaew, 38, early Wednesday and said he confessed to his crimes during interrogation.
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Jan 23, 2020
At least one person was killed and seven others injured after a shooting in front of a McDonald's in downtown Seattle on Wednesday night.
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Jan 23, 2020
Iran has long sought the withdrawal of American forces from neighboring Iraq, but the U.S. killing of an Iranian general and an Iraqi militia commander in Baghdad has added new impetus to the effort, stoking anti-American feelings that Tehran hopes to exploit to help realize the goal. The Jan. 3 killing has led Iraq's parliament to call for the ouster of U.S. troops, but there are many lingering questions over whether Iran will be able to capitalize on the sentiment. It is not clear whether the protesters will try to recreate a New Year's Eve attack on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad by Iran-supported militias in the wake of U.S. airstrikes that killed 25 militiamen along the border with Syria.
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Jan 22, 2020
"Obviously, the alleged incident is absolutely antithetical to our fraternity's ideals and values," Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity spokesperson said.
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Jan 22, 2020
California Governor Gavin Newsom, stepping up his bid to enlist U.S. government help to combat homelessness, has urged the Trump administration to open up surplus federal property for construction of more low-cost housing across the state. Newsom's request came in a letter on Tuesday to U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson, who rejected pleas from California in September for more money to fight homelessness but has since adopted a more cooperative stance on the issue.
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Jan 22, 2020
The shooting is the third in Seattle in two days
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Jan 22, 2020
There was no immediate word on a cause or the model of the plane that crashed at Corona Municipal Airport in California.
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Jan 22, 2020
Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Rose Boncoeur brought two emaciated little girls to live in her modest home in Haiti as part of a reform drive aimed at keeping children out of orphanages. The government of the Americas' poorest country is pushing to deinstitutionalize children so as to avoid the darkest sides of orphanage life -- trafficking of kids or even worse abuse. Boncoeur gets no financial help to feed or clothe her two charges, and is forced to ask people for used clothing for her foster children -- sisters, aged eight months and three years.
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Jan 22, 2020
House Democrats opened their case to remove President Trump from office by imploring the same Senate Republicans who have stood in lockstep with the White House that they're the only ones who can save American democracy.Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the House intelligence committee chairman turned lead impeachment manager, began his side's arguments with an appeal to history. He bookended his recitation of Trump's pressure campaign to suborn Ukraine into aiding his reelection with references to Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin and name checked any other member of the Founding Generation—his colleague Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) later added James Madison—who could help contextualize the constitutional obligation Schiff said senators have when faced with "a man who would be a king."It's likely the only play Schiff, Jeffries and their fellow Democratic impeachment managers have. The unyielding political reality they confront is that only with the assent of 20 Republican senators, practically a third of the entire GOP Senate conference, will Trump be removed from office. Even convincing enough of those Republican senators to vote for hearing new evidence in the trial—just four are needed—is viewed as a tall order for Democrats. Standing on the Senate floor before the body of 100 jurors for more than two and a half hours, Schiff rarely raised his voice, laying the groundwork for a day meant to methodically recap the effort from Trumpworld to pressure Ukrainian
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Jan 22, 2020
The Chinese city at the heart of a deadly virus outbreak is under effective quarantine, with outward flights and trains suspended, subways halted and large public events cancelled as doctors in full-body protective suits treat patients. The coronavirus has spread across China and beyond, with 17 people killed and more than 500 infected in an outbreak that started in Wuhan -- a central city of 11 million people described by state media as "the main battlefield" against the disease. Most cases are in Wuhan, a major transport hub with a seafood market that has been identified as the epicentre of the epidemic.
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Jan 22, 2020
The ban in the Republican-dominated state, which took effect on Wednesday, exempts members of the clergy, lay pastors, and spiritual counselors not licensed by the state from the ban. Conversion therapy involves a variety of psychological and spiritual practices aimed at changing sexual orientation and gender identity in the belief that homosexuality and transgender identity are mental illnesses. The American Psychological Association has called the treatment harmful to young people.
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Jan 22, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal cleared its final hurdles in Parliament, bringing the crisis that paralyzed U.K. politics since the country voted to leave the European Union almost four years ago to a close.The passage of the law vindicates Johnson's gamble to call an election last month in which he asked voters to back his blueprint for leaving the bloc on Jan. 31. His 80-seat majority in the elected House of Commons meant he could sweep aside objections from pro-EU politicians in the upper chamber of Parliament, the Lords, and break the deadlock that cost his predecessor, Theresa May, her job last year."At times it felt like we would never cross the Brexit finish line, but we've done it. Now we can put the rancour and division of the past three years behind us," Johnson said, according to an emailed statement.Later Wednesday, members of the unelected House of Lords formally dropped their opposition and accepted the legislation as approved by the Commons. The bill will now go to Queen Elizabeth II who will sign it into law, putting Britain on track to leave the EU in nine days' time.The agreement with the EU will now need to be formally ratified by the European Parliament on Jan. 29, before the U.K. leaves the bloc at the end of the month. Britain will then enter a transition period, scheduled to last until the end of the year, during which it will continue to be bound by EU laws until it negotiates a new trade deal with the remaining 27 member states.Johnson is expected to sign the agreement in
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Jan 22, 2020
Under a proposed federal rule, airlines wouldn't be required to accept emotional support animals, and would exclude service animals other than dogs.
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Jan 22, 2020
Former Vice President Joe Biden seemingly doesn't want to hear about his apparent feud with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).After an Iowa campaign event on Wednesday, Biden walked off the stage in a pretty typical way: followed by reporters asking him questions. But one from CBS News' Ed O'Keefe about Sanders seemingly sent him over the edge.As Biden left the stage, O'Keefe asked why he was attacking Sanders after just accepting his apology a day earlier. "Why wasn't his apology enough, Mr. Vice President?" O'Keefe asked. Biden stopped, turned around, and peppered O'Keefe with a barrage of "why why why why why." "You're getting nervous, man! Calm down," Biden then said before briefly answering the question. WATCH: After a campaign event in Mason City, Iowa, @joebiden reacts to @edokeefe's question about his ongoing feud with @berniesanders: "Calm down, it's okay." https://t.co/a2hmMbnjnf pic.twitter.com/ymOMWRR2zP — CBS News (@CBSNews) January 22, 2020O'Keefe's question stems from one of Sanders' supporters accusing Biden of having a "corruption problem" in an op-ed, and another putting together a video purportedly showing Biden opposing social security. Sanders apologized for the op-ed but not for the video, as Biden pointed out to CBS News.More stories from theweek.com Giants quarterback Eli Manning retires after 16 seasons The White House is arguing the impeachment articles don't include allegations of a quid pro quo because the exact words don't appear Several senators
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Jan 22, 2020
"Your general should've convinced me to go," President Trump privately said to an aide, adding that it was "a stupid decision."
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Jan 22, 2020
Tulsi Gabbard claims Hillary Clinton's Russia comments were "retribution" for her endorsing Bernie Sanders over Clinton in the 2016 election.
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Jan 22, 2020
Four people were killed Wednesday in the crash of a small airplane at a Southern California airfield, authorities said. The plane went down at Corona Municipal Airport, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, police said. Four fatalities were confirmed, the Corona Fire Department said on Twitter.
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Jan 22, 2020
A Tennessee inmate has chosen the electric chair for his scheduled execution next month, opting like four other inmates in little more than a year for electrocution over the state's preferred execution method of lethal injection. Nicholas Sutton, 58, is scheduled to be put to death Feb. 20 for the stabbing death of a fellow inmate decades ago while serving a life sentence for his grandmother's slaying. An affidavit signed on Tuesday said he waives the right to be executed by lethal injection and chooses electrocution.
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Jan 22, 2020
Details about Hunter Biden could complicate life for Joe Biden — exactly what Trump was trying to do with his Ukraine scheme last summer.
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Jan 22, 2020
Since December, there have been 544 cases of the Wuhan coronavirus and 17 deaths. Local authorities just issued quarantine orders in Wuhan, China.
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Jan 22, 2020
House impeachment managers delivered opening remarks during the US Senate trial into Donald Trump and his dealings with Ukraine, as Democrats blasted White House attorneys for presenting Fox News-style "histrionics" at the hearings.Democratic impeachment manager Adam Schiff ?argued in his opening remarks the president's "misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box" and suggested that Americans "cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won" in 2020 after Mr Trump encouraged Ukraine to launch political investigations into one of his Democratic rivals, Joe Biden.?
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Jan 22, 2020
WASHINGTON -- Armed with rifles and explosives, about a dozen al-Shabab fighters destroyed an American surveillance plane as it was taking off and ignited an hourslong gunfight this month on a sprawling military base in Kenya that houses U.S. troops. By the time al-Shabab was done, portions of the airfield were burning, and three Americans were dead.Surprised by the attack, U.S. commandos took around an hour to respond. Many of the local Kenyan forces, assigned to defend the base, hid in the grass, while other U.S. troops and support staff were corralled into tents, with little protection, to wait out the battle. It would require hours to evacuate one of the wounded to a military hospital in Djibouti, roughly 1,500 miles away.The brazen assault at Manda Bay, a sleepy seaside base near the Somali border, on Jan. 5, was largely overshadowed by the crisis with Iran after the killing of that country's most important general two days earlier and is only now drawing closer scrutiny from Congress and Pentagon officials.But the storming of an airfield used by the U.S. military so alarmed the Pentagon that it immediately sent about 100 troops from the 101st Airborne Division to establish security at the base. Army Green Berets from Germany were shuttled to Djibouti, the Pentagon's major hub in Africa, in case the entire base was in danger of being taken by al-Shabab, an East African terrorist group affiliated with al-Qaida."The assault represented a serious security lapse given how much of a target the base was
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Jan 22, 2020
A former Oklahoma zookeeper and one-time candidate for governor was sentenced Wednesday to 22 years in prison for his role in a murder-for-hire plot and violating federal wildlife laws. A federal judge in Oklahoma City sentenced 56-year-old Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage — who is also known as "Joe Exotic" — for trying to arrange the killing of a Florida animal sanctuary founder who criticized his treatment of animals. The woman, Carole Baskin, wasn't harmed.
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Jan 22, 2020
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a visit to Jamaica on Wednesday, cautioned nations against taking "easy money" from China, warning it could be counterproductive, in a second attack in as many days against China's economic role in the region. On Tuesday, he drew the ire of Chinese officials when he said "flashy" Chinese economic promises often produces debt dependency and erode the sovereignty of borrower nations.
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Jan 22, 2020
Democrats accused the president of boasting about obstructing Congress after a Davos press conference.
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Jan 22, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid risked a clash with President Trump's government after suggesting the U.S. will need to wait in line for a post-Brexit trade deal until Britain finishes negotiating one with the European Union.Appearing side by side in Davos, Switzerland, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Javid both said reaching a trade agreement between the two countries would be a priority once Britain leaves the EU at the end of the month. The difference was that Javid said a deal with the EU will take precedence over any accord with the U.S."Our first priority is of course getting the agreement with the EU," Javid told a finance panel at the World Economic Forum.That wasn't what his American counterpart wanted to hear. Mnuchin told the event that he was "a little disappointed" the U.S. wasn't getting top priority. "I thought we'd go first," he said. "They may be a little harder to deal with than us anyway.''Once the U.K. has left the European Union on Jan. 31, it will be free to try and make trade deals with other countries outside the bloc. Javid said that after conversations this week with his EU counterparts, there is "a strong belief on both sides" they can strike a deal for goods and services by the end of 2020.Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government has said the EU-U.K. and U.S.-U.K. talks will be held in parallel. Later on Wednesday in London, a British official suggested Javid had gone rogue and said there were no plans to prioritize any one set of trade talks over another."From February 1 we are free to talk to any country which we like a
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Jan 22, 2020
American Honda Motor Co. is recalling 875,966 Acura and Honda vehicles to replace the front driver-side airbag. These same vehicles may have received defective Takata airbag modules as part of a ...
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Jan 22, 2020
Police say a man killed his ex-girlfriend's mother at an Iowa home about an hour after officers went to the apartment following a reported assault but left without making an arrest or removing anyone from the tense scene. Mark Russell, of Fort Dodge, is accused of using a golf club to beat 45-year-old Angela McLeod to death. Russell, 28, is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 31 on a first-degree murder charge.
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Jan 22, 2020
President Trump probably should've kept quiet on this one.After the first day of impeachment arguments in the Senate, Trump told a press conference at the World Economic Forum that he's pretty sure he'll end up being acquitted. "Honestly, we have all the material. They don't have the material," Trump said of his impeachment defense team and of the House Democrats prosecuting him, making it clear there's some information he's holding back. The second article of impeachment was for obstruction of Congress: covering up witnesses and documents from the American people. This morning the President not only confessed to it, he bragged about it: "Honestly, we have all the material. They don't have the material." pic.twitter.com/DPAEFHIDjS -- Rep. Val Demings (@RepValDemings) January 22, 2020Beyond Rep. Val Demings' (D-Fla.) callout, her fellow impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) addressed Trump's comments in a press conference before the impeachment trial resumed Wednesday. "Well, indeed they do have the material -- hidden from the American people," Schiff said of Trump's team. "That is nothing to brag about." Rep. Adam Schiff: "The president...bragged that he thought things were going well because they had all the materials. Well, indeed they do have the material--hidden from the American people. That is nothing to brag about." https://t.co/C7AyPvvSTr pic.twitter.com/4cqeFOpHGu -- ABC News (@ABC) January 22, 2020More stories from theweek.com Arizona's biggest energy
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Jan 22, 2020
Sen. Bernie Sanders surged into first place in a new CNN poll, the first time a CNN poll did not find Joe Biden alone at the top since the race began.
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Jan 22, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- A man who fell ill in Mexico on Monday following a December trip to Wuhan, China, is under observation as a potential case of the coronavirus, the respiratory virus that has killed at least 17 people worldwide.The 57-year-old molecular biology professor works for the Instituto Politecnico Nacional university in the city of Reynosa, which borders with the U.S. The man returned to Mexico on Jan. 10 through a Mexico City airport and then flew to the state of Tamaulipas, Mexican authorities said.Tamaulipas State Health Minister Gloria Molina said in a radio interview that the man immediately reported his situation to authorities after feeling sick. He is now in his home under monitoring to prevent any potential spread.Molina said the man also had layovers at the border city of Tijuana when he left and returned to Mexico, according to journalist Joaquin Lopez Doriga's news site.Link: China Seeks to Contain Virus as Death Toll Jumps to 17Earlier on Wednesday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that a second possible case in Mexico had been ruled out."The coronavirus is being looked into. If we have more information we will release it later today," he said.Mexico City airport authorities said late Tuesday that they were expecting recommendations from international and local health authorities on how to deal with passengers showing potential symptoms.Separately, Colombian authorities are also evaluating whether a Chinese man with a respiratory illness, who traveled to Colombia from Turkey, has the same
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Jan 22, 2020
Scientists know of 190 impact craters around the world. The record for the oldest was just awarded to a crater in Western Australia.
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Jan 22, 2020
The mother of a California teenager who has been missing for more than 20 years says the FBI told her to "be ready" for imminent news about her disappearance.Hoping that police would finally be able to bring some closure to a seemingly endless investigation, Kristin Smart's mother Denise told the Stockton Record that the FBI warned that the family "might want to get away for a while" and obtain a spokesperson
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Jan 22, 2020
The Trump administration is coming out with new visa restrictions aimed at restricting "birth tourism," in which women travel to the U.S. to give birth so their children can have a coveted U.S. passport. The State Department planned to publicize the rules Thursday, according to two officials with knowledge of the plans who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The rules would make it more difficult for pregnant women to travel on tourist visas.
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Jan 22, 2020
Some social media users praised the tweet while others criticized it as tone-deaf.
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Jan 22, 2020
The Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump began in acrimonious fashion on Tuesday, with the Republican-dominated chamber voting down 11 Democratic proposals for amendments to the rules, including the rejection of subpoenas for ex-national security adviser John Bolton and White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to give testimony on the Ukraine scandal.Democratic impeachment managers Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler complained the marathon process was "ass-backwards" and accused Republicans of "voting for a cover-up", observing: "Only guilty people hide the evidence."
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Jan 22, 2020
Fifty-three police officers have been hauled in for questioning over the disappearance of an environmental activist who ran a butterfly sanctuary in Mexico.Homero ?Gómez Gonzalez, 50, was reported missing last week amid fears he had been targeted by criminal gangs and illegal loggers in the central state of Michoacán.
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Jan 22, 2020
Over 1.5 million older Honda, Acura, and Isuzu vehicles have been recalled for dangerous Takata airbags that can cause serious or fatal injuries to vehicle occupants. Recalled vehicles include ce...
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Jan 22, 2020
Harry and Meghan's plan to split their time between the UK and Canada might mean that Archie won't have his father's English accent.
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Jan 22, 2020
A group of prominent conservative critics of President Trump released a new ad on Wednesday targeting Sen. Susan Collins, attacking her for voting to block witnesses from testifying in his Senate impeachment trial.
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Jan 22, 2020
A conservative group critical of President Trump released an ad that targets Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins for her votes during the impeachment trial.
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Jan 22, 2020
As well as in mainland China, cases of the coronavirus has been reported in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand.
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Jan 22, 2020
The comments came following Boeing's announcement that the 737 Max will likely not resume flying before mid-2020.
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Jan 22, 2020
A man who served nearly three decades in prison for a triple killing in Philadelphia in what prosecutors called a "perfect storm" of injustice was freed after a judge threw out his conviction. "Theophalis Wilson, you are free to go," Judge Tracy Brandeis-Roman said Tuesday as extended family and friends who packed the courtroom cried and hugged each other, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. "This is a great day," said Wilson, 48, who served 28 years in prison.
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Jan 22, 2020
A Business Insider photo from a security conference in Paris reveals the device NSO Group sells to its clients to carry out hacks.
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Jan 22, 2020
The billionaire running for the Democratic nomination responded to comments from the president calling him a "major loser."
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Jan 22, 2020
The U.S. Department of Transportation on Wednesday proposed that only specially trained dogs qualify as service animals, which must be allowed in the cabin at no charge. Airlines could ban emotional-support animals including untrained dogs, cats and more exotic companions such as pigs, pheasants, rabbits and snakes. Airlines say the number of support animals has grown dramatically in recent years.
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Jan 22, 2020
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - "Go outside," French President Emmanuel Macron demanded in English in a melee with Israeli security men on Wednesday, demanding they leave a Jerusalem basilica that he visited before a Holocaust memorial conference. The French tricolor has flown over the Church of St. Anne in Jerusalem's walled Old City since it was gifted by the Ottomans to French Emperor Napoleon III in 1856. France views it as a provocation when Israeli police enter the church's sandstone complex, in a part of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
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Jan 22, 2020
An Arkansas judge presiding over Hunter Biden's paternity case has ordered the son of former Vice President Joe Biden to appear before the court on January 29 to explain the state of his finances, after missing a deadline to hand over five years of records.Biden "continues to act as though he has no respect for this court, its orders, the legal process in this state, or the needs of his child for support," wrote Clinton Lancaster, the lawyer for Lunden Alexis Roberts, the mother of Biden's 16-month-old child. Judge Holly Meyer signed an "Order to Appear and Show Cause," which was filed in court on Tuesday.Lancaster explained that Biden had failed to reveal addresses, phone numbers, all sources of income, ownership stakes in companies, property deeds, and tax returns. The original "Motion for Contempt and for Order to Show Cause" was filed on December 23, with Lancaster arguing that Biden had already missed deadlines on December 12 and December 19.Biden's lawyer Brent Langdon has argued in response that "to the extent possible [Biden] has complied with the court's orders" and asked for the motion to be dismissed.Lancaster also told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that the case had nothing to do with impeachment. Roberts has been seeking $11,000 from Biden to defray cost of her paternity case, after DNA results proved he had fathered her child."I don't believe we have any stake in the impeachment proceedings. We don't have any stake in it whatsoever. We need his income so we can d
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Jan 22, 2020
"Those addressing the Senate should remember where they are," Roberts said, recalling the Senate is a place where the word pettifogging sparks uproar.
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Jan 22, 2020
Thank god the Soviets never deployed it.
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Jan 22, 2020
Hundreds of Central American migrants stranded in Guatemala on Wednesday were weighing limited options as to how to make it into Mexico, guarded by troops with riot shields and immigration agents. The goal of the migrants is to either to live and work in Mexico or continue on toward the United States. To that end, some broke away from their stalled caravan and struck out on their own to cross in small groups at a distance from the Suchiate River border bridge, which forms a chokepoint on the migratory route north from Central America, hoping to avoid patrolling officers.
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Jan 22, 2020
They keep failing to kill their targets. And they leave lots of evidence behind them.
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Jan 22, 2020
The Australian Reptile Park attributes increased activity in funnel-web spiders to recent weather and expected warm air on the way.
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Jan 22, 2020
Nearly 3 million Honda and Acura vehicles are included in this new airbag-inflator recall, which spans the 1996 through 2003 model years.
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Jan 22, 2020
US officials described an ambitious 'funnel' system to make sure every passenger from Wuhan, China, to the US gets screened — no matter their route.
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Jan 22, 2020
Joe Biden sought on Wednesday to ease tensions with Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders after the two candidates exchanged several volleys over Social Security and other matters. Biden demurred on "Morning Joe" when asked whether Sanders had "lied" when he and his campaign aides asserted Biden sought to cut Social Security benefits over his decades in public office. Biden also noted that Sanders apologized to him after one of the Vermont senator's top supporters wrote that the former vice president has a "corruption" problem.
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Jan 22, 2020
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a native of Brooklyn who's one of the House impeachment managers, quoted the legendary rapper in a speech on the Senate floor.
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Jan 22, 2020
Joshua Collins is ditching traditional ads to raise money and find volunteers through TikTok, which other politicians have been slow to adopt.
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Jan 22, 2020
Sunni Iraqi leaders who spearheaded a bloody insurgency against the 2003 US-led invasion are now the most nervous about a possible withdrawal of American troops, considered a counterweight to Iran. Tensions between Washington and Tehran have boiled over onto Iraqi soil this month, with the US killing top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad and Iran striking back at an Iraqi base hosting American soldiers. Furious at the US hit, Iraq's parliament held a vote on January 5 to oust all foreign troops, including some 5,200 American soldiers deployed alongside local forces.
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Jan 22, 2020
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent Jeff Bezos a photograph of a woman loosely resembling the one he was having an affair with months before the National Enquirer published a report exposing the liaison, according to a United Nations investigation.Two United Nations special rapporteurs released a statement Wednesday detailing forensic evidence linking MBS to the Bezos hack, which suggests the future king of Saudi Arabia may have been threatening the owner of The Washington Post and founder and CEO of Amazon.Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night denied allegations of a politically motivated hack when it emerged that the UN was expected to formally request a response to the extraordinary claim that malware was sent from MBS' personal WhatsApp account to Bezos.The alleged hack took place in May 2018, a few months after Jamal Khashoggi began writing columns critical of the Saudi regime for the Post. Four months later, Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside a Saudi consulate. The CIA concluded that MBS had personally ordered his assassination.Two UN special rapporteurs released a statement Wednesday laying out forensic evidence personally linking MBS to the hack on Bezos, which would later lead to a special edition of the National Enquirer dedicated to discrediting the newspaper boss.Bezos Investigation Finds the Saudis Obtained His Private DataThe statement was drafted by Agnes Callamard, a UN expert on extrajudicial killings who has been probing the murder of Khash
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Jan 22, 2020
In her first comments about her imprisoned husband's sentence in China, the wife of former Interpol president Meng Hongwei dismissed his bribery conviction as "a lie, a fake case" and said he is being punished for using his senior position in the ruling Communist Party to push for reform from within. Grace Meng said during in an exclusive interview Wednesday with The Associated Press that her husband, a long-serving vice minister of public security, had been part of a reformist faction of China's secretive ruling party. In response to worsening corruption, Meng Hongwei and others argued, out of the public eye and at the highest circles of power for a "modern" constitutional and election-based political system, she said.
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Jan 22, 2020
Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to meet with the mother of an Israeli tourist who was jailed in Russia for carrying a few grams of hashish, the Kremlin said Wednesday. The Russian leader is set to meet with Naama Issachar's mother while he is visiting Israel on Thursday, Putin adviser Yuri Ushakov said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of the Holy Land, are also taking part in the meeting that will focus on "the humanitarian aspect" of the case, Ushakov told reporters Wednesday.
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Jan 22, 2020
An alarming graph shows how fast the Wuhan coronavirus has spread in the past two weeks alone and highlights how soon it could become a pandemic.
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Jan 22, 2020
Authorities in Germany say 85 kilograms (187 pounds) of World War II ammunition have been found on the site where Tesla plans to build its first European factory. Local newspaper Maerkische Oderzeitung quoted officials in Brandenburg on Wednesday as saying they estimate about 25 unexploded bombs could be found at the partially wooded site on the outskirts of Berlin, the German capital. Thousands of unexploded bombs dropped over Nazi Germany by American, British and Russian forces remain undiscovered even 75 years after the end of the war.
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Jan 22, 2020
Tulsi Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton for more than $50 million in damages following Clinton's suggestion on a podcast that Gabbard was Russia's favored candidate to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.The defamation lawsuit, which was made public Wednesday morning, claims the 2016 Democratic nominee permanently damaged the Hawaii congresswoman's reputation by describing her as a "Russian asset."Clinton made the controversial remarks on the podcast Campaign HQ With David Plouffe back in October, when she said, "I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on someone who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians."In the key remarks to the lawsuit, Clinton added, "That's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset. Yeah, she's a Russian asset—I mean, totally." It's not clear from the quotes whether Clinton was referring to Gabbard, Stein, or both.Although Clinton didn't explicitly mention Gabbard during the remarks quoted in the lawsuit, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill clarified at the time, when asked if she was referencing Gabbard in the part about Russia favoring one of the existing candidates: "If the nesting doll fits."However, Merrill subsequently tweeted that Clinton's comments were being misreported and said she was referring to the Republican Party grooming Gabbard to be a third-party candidate—not
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Jan 22, 2020
The cellphone of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos was hacked in what appeared to be an attempt by Saudi Arabia's crown prince to "influence, if not silence" the newspaper's reporting on the kingdom, two U.N. human rights experts said Wednesday. The U.N. experts called for an "immediate investigation" by the United States into a report commissioned by Bezos that showed the billionaire technology mogul's phone was likely hacked after he received an MP4 video file sent from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's WhatsApp account after the two men exchanged phone numbers during a dinner in Los Angeles in 2018.
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Jan 22, 2020
The White House has live-streamed a church service which saw the US vice-president speak and a bishop claim "the devil" causes homosexuality.After Mike Pence addressed the congregation in Tennessee, the preacher took to the pulpit to talk about same-sex relations in a sermon still available on the administration's Youtube channel.
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Jan 22, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, is asking the biggest U.S. banks for details on their assessments of and preparations for risks related to global warming. "To protect themselves and the economy from climate-driven catastrophes, large financial institutions must act quickly to address risks," Warren, a frequent critic of big banks, said in letters sent on Tuesday to top executives at Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo. "I write to ask for more information about the risks caused by the climate crisis on the financial industry and your institution's practices, including what steps, if any, your institution is taking to adapt to mitigate these risks," she said in the letters, provided to Reuters.
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Jan 22, 2020
Additional U.S. troops have been flown out of Iraq for closer evaluation of potential concussion injuries from the Iranian missile attack of Jan. 8, U.S. defense officials said Tuesday.
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Jan 22, 2020
Let's dispense with one thing off the bat: President Donald Trump's impeachment defense is -- in addition to being riddled with false factual claims and misleading characterizations -- legal claptrap.It's also likely to work.The essence of the argument, which appears in a 110-page brief submitted Monday by the president's ragtag legal team in advance of his Senate trial, is that Trump can't be impeached for behaviors that are not actual crimes."Every prior presidential impeachment in our history has been based on alleged violations of existing law -- indeed, criminal law," the brief states. Since House Democrats did not charge the president with committing any specific crimes in abusing his power or obstructing Congress, which are the grounds for the two articles of impeachment that the House of Representatives adopted last month, Trump must skate, the reasoning goes. You can almost hear the lawyers swallowing their pride.That's because their argument is, in the words of one legal scholar who recently published a book on the history of impeachment, "constitutional nonsense." "High crimes and misdemeanors" -- the founders' standard for impeachment -- has always been understood to refer to a unique class of offenses, those arising from what Alexander Hamilton called "the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."The federal criminal code didn't even exist when the Constitution was drafted, yet the framers were aware of the innum
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Jan 22, 2020
* Clinton made criticisms in documentary to be aired in March * Opinion: Relax, Democrats: you'll beat Trump in the MidwestBernie Sanders has responded to Hillary Clinton's claim that "nobody likes him", saying: "On a good day, my wife likes me, so let's clear the air on that one."Clinton made her remarks in a forthcoming Hulu documentary, which was quoted by the Hollywood Reporter.Sanders first issued a statement saying he was concentrating on the impeachment of Donald Trump. But later on Tuesday, as Trump's Senate trial began in earnest, he spoke to an NBC reporter.Asked why he thought Clinton was still talking about the 2016 election, Sanders said: "That's a good question. You should ask her."Clinton did not hold back."He was in Congress for years [and] had one senator support him," she said in the released excerpts from the Hulu documentary. She also called Sanders "a career politician" whose claim to represent American workers was "just baloney"."I feel so bad that people got sucked into it," Clinton said.Clinton also criticised the senator's "leadership team" and "prominent supporters … his online Bernie bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women."Asked by the Reporter about Sanders' alleged comment to Elizabeth Warren, another candidate this year, that no woman could beat Trump in 2020, Clinton said: "I think [that] is untrue, which we should all say loudly."I mean, I did get more votes both in the primary, by about 4 million
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Jan 22, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- President Vladimir Putin is to meet in Jerusalem with the mother of an Israeli woman imprisoned in Russia on drug-smuggling charges, the Kremlin said, amid reports Russian authorities are preparing to free her.Putin, who'll be a guest of honor Thursday at a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Red Army's liberation of the Nazi Auschwitz death camp, spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone last week about 26-year-old Naama Issachar. Netanyahu said after the call that he was optimistic about securing her freedom.Issachar was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in a Russian prison in October for carrying a small amount of hashish on a transit flight via Moscow. Her mother, Yaffa, asked Putin in November to pardon her daughter in a letter handed to him by Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. The plight of the U.S.-born Israeli army veteran, who was detained in April, has become a cause celebre in Israel, where she's widely regarded as a pawn in a political game.Putin will meet Yaffa Issachar together with Netanyahu and the patriarch, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday. While Ushakov wouldn't confirm that a release is planned, he said the president's right to pardon a convicted person is "an important prerogative."Property DisputeIn another sign of a possible resolution, Ushakov said Russia and Israel are making progress in settling a dispute over the ownership of Russian Orthodox Church property in Jerusalem. Israel's Haaretz newspaper said resolving the issue could form part of a quid pro quo with Putin for the release of Issachar.Putin will speak at the anniversary ceremony, though
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Jan 22, 2020
The new documents undermine a pillar of Trump's impeachment defense — his claim that he didn't withhold Ukraine aid to pressure Ukraine.
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Jan 22, 2020
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, proposed a sweeping plan that would fundamentally change how the internet works in the US.
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Jan 22, 2020
A Kosovo court jailed eight men on Wednesday for the attempted murder of a former politician and plotting to kill the Balkan country's president and prime minister in 2017. The eight received jail terms ranging from two to 12 years and were part of an organization known as People's Eye which President Hashim Thaci and the court have described as a terrorist organization. One of the eight, Murat Jashari, received a 10-year sentence for shooting at and wounding former politician and prominent lawyer Azem Vllasi on the doorstep of his house in March 2017.
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Jan 22, 2020
An American journalist is facing up to five years in an Indonesian jail and a fine on charges of violating immigration regulations, a lawyer and officials said Wednesday. Philip Jacobson of California was detained Tuesday in Palangkaraya city on Borneo island. The government has promised to ease visa restrictions for international media since President Joko Widodo took office in 2014.
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Jan 22, 2020
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Rohingya refugees who fled persecution and violence in Myanmar are praying for justice as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague prepares to deliver an initial verdict on Thursday in a genocide case filed against Myanmar. More than 730,000 Muslim Rohingya fled an army offensive in Myanmar's Rakhine state in 2017. The United Nations says gang rapes and mass killings were carried out with "genocidal intent".
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Jan 22, 2020
A CNN-SSRS poll released Wednesday morning found a new national frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though his lead over former Vice President Joe Biden is within the poll's margin of error, "meaning there is no clear leader in this poll," CNN says. Sanders, with 27 percent support among registered voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning, and Biden, polling at 24 percent, are now in a category of their own, though, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has fallen to a distant third at 14 percent."For the first time in the entirety of this campaign, in CNN's national polling, Joe Biden doesn't have the lead position all to himself," CNN political director David Chalian said on Wednesday's New Day. Sanders jumped 7 percentage points since December by eating into Biden's support among nonwhite voters and Warren's support among liberal Democrats.The most important quality Democratic voters said they valued was electability, and Biden still held a commanding lead among candidates seen as the most likely to defeat President Trump, but Sanders leads in voter enthusiasm, CNN reports. Nine percent of men and 20 percent of women said they didn't think a woman can win the presidency.In head-to-head polling against Trump, all six leading Democrats beat Trump nationally, with only Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-Minn.) lead falling within the margin of error, but the candidates were all essentially tied with Trump in the 15 battleground states CNN identified. Trump's app
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Jan 22, 2020
A judge refused to overturn part of Utah's lewdness law Tuesday in a blow to a woman who's fighting criminal charges after her stepchildren saw her topless in her own home.
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Jan 22, 2020
In the wake of the U.S. killing of General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran is scrambling to figure out how to respond to President Trump. Throughout 2019, Iran ratcheted up threats and tensions, targeting oil tankers in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and U.S. troops in Iraq via proxies, testing Washington's response. The decision to kill Soleimani, who arrived at Baghdad International Airport without any apparent suspicion of his impending death, threw down a gauntlet to Tehran that left the Ayatollah and the IRGC grasping for response options. This is a lesson to be learned from the recent Iran tensions: The U.S. can strike back at Iran and its allies without a major war resulting, so long as Iran is surprised or confused by the U.S. response.Iran, in response, fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq because it didn't know what else to do. Ballistic missiles enabled Iran to strike without risking its own casualties and to showcase a technology that it has and that the U.S. lacked defenses against in Iraq. But the strike was limited in scope, and Iran hoped that at worst the U.S. would respond with cruise missiles or some similar kind of missile strike. How do we know this? Iran didn't put its whole country on a war footing when it fired the missiles. It did down a civilian Ukrainian Airlines flight by mistake, showing that it expected some kind of aerial retaliation.Iran tries to project an image of itself as massively powerful and cunning, sending its constantly smiling foreign minister, Javad
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Jan 22, 2020
President Donald Trump lashed out at his accusers in the Senate impeachment trial on Wednesday but broke with some of his defenders as he reiterated his preference for witnesses to be called in the proceedings. Leaving the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Trump called a surprise news conference Wednesday to mark a "tremendous two days" at the glitzy summit of world leaders and financiers in Davos, Switzerland, which has served as a respite from the trial underway in Washington.
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Jan 22, 2020
The Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump began in acrimonious fashion on Tuesday, with the Republican-dominated chamber voting down 11 Democratic proposals for amendments to the rules, including the rejection of subpoenas for ex-national security adviser John Bolton and White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to give testimony on the Ukraine scandal.Democratic impeachment managers Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler complained the marathon process was "ass-backwards" and accused Republicans of "voting for a cover-up", observing: "Only guilty people hide the evidence."
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Jan 22, 2020
The food market where China's deadly virus surfaced was a smorgasbord of exotic wildlife ranging from wolf pups to species linked to previous pandemics such as civets, according to vendor information and a Chinese media report. The Huanan Seafood Market in the central city of Wuhan came under greater scrutiny on Wednesday as Chinese officials said that the virus which has so far killed nine people and infected hundreds may have originated in a wild animal sold at the food emporium. Past deadly epidemics have been blamed on wild animals -- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was linked to Chinese consumption of civet meat -- setting Chinese authorities up for potential embarrassment if lax supervision of wildlife trafficking is found at fault in the latest outbreak.
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Jan 22, 2020
Here's what they can do.
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Jan 22, 2020
If politics is just warfare by other means, both Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer have decided to drag out the heavy artillery in advance of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.The Senate majority leader's rules proposal passed, thanks to the simple majority required, which itself is part of a pitted landscape in the upper chamber after nearly 20 years of partisan one-upmanship. That proposal will govern a process that might be more about settling scores with the House and with the Senate Democratic minority than it has to do with Trump or his handling of Ukraine aid.One has to wonder just how much of this will have to do with the case against the president at all. It's just as questionable, after three years of impeachment demands from and to House Democrats, how much the push to impeach Trump has to do with a delay in aid to Ukraine. We have spent the last 20-plus years coming to an inevitable war between Republicans and Democrats in the Beltway, one that will determine whether the institutions matter more than party affiliation.To grasp this, one needs to walk backward to 1999. Earlier this month, McConnell refused to sit down with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or disclose his rules proposal to her before she sent over the articles of Trump's impeachment, claiming the House Democratic majority was trying to unduly influence Senate operations. During the three-week standoff, McConnell repeatedly said that he would use the rules package from Bill Clinton's 1999 im
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Jan 22, 2020
Technically, arguments in the impeachment trial of President Trump haven't even started. Democrats and Republicans spent Tuesday, the first full day of Senate proceedings, doing battle over the rules that will govern the trial that is set to unfold in the coming days.That rule package was ultimately approved, on party lines, early Wednesday morning after a marathon session of debate and votes on 11 amendments to the package proposed by Democrats. The day's significance, however, extends beyond the realm of parliamentary minutiae and dry process detail. The way that senators crafted and passed the rules—and the way those rules were received by the House Democrats prosecuting the case against Trump and the lawyers defending him—revealed some fundamental truths about this historic trial that could hold up until the final vote to acquit or remove the president.The most unexpected thing that became clear on Tuesday—and possibly the most significant—was the emergence of some semblance of boundaries for the most powerful person in this process: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican, whose reputation for political maneuvering is almost mythical at this point, came into the trial phase of the impeachment process touting an extraordinary degree of unity within his conference of 53 senators. As the Senate prepared to receive articles of impeachment from the House last week, McConnell declared that he had within that group the 51 votes required to pass a rules package—giving hi
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Jan 22, 2020
The Trump administration has released a stash of heavily redacted documents about the withholding of military aid to Ukraine just two minutes before the deadline.As the Senate continued to block attempts to subpoena official records for Donald Trump's impeachment trial, 192 pages of emails were disclosed under a Freedom of Information request.
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Jan 22, 2020
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have teamed up to work on drafting potential contours for negotiations with Tehran over the country's nuclear programming and a roadmap for a new deal, according to Graham and two other congressional aides familiar with the matter."I've been working with Senator Menendez on this for some time," Graham told The Daily Beast in an interview last week. "We need a new way forward. And I've been trying to think of alternatives."Graham told The Daily Beast in an interview in August that he was working with senior Trump administration officials on an alternative to the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal. Part of that effort included fielding ideas from outside actors, including foreign officials. Since then, Graham has met with Menendez—although only a few times—on how to kickstart a bipartisan congressional effort to reform the administration's Iran policy.According to sources individuals familiar with the Graham-Menendez partnership, the two senators have largely talked about constructing an actionable plan to present to other lawmakers and to the White House. But the two sides have yet to agree on exactly how to get the ball rolling, according to those sources. One individual said Menendez wanted to work with Graham because the South Carolina lawmaker had gained the president's ear on Iran over the last year.Although the duo has spoken about teaming up for some time, sources say the lawmakers are focused now more than ever on crafting a new deal following the killing of Iran's t
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Jan 22, 2020
Barry Goldwater had the power to tell Nixon it was all over. But don't expect a repeat this time.
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Jan 22, 2020
The emergence of a deadly new virus in China has ignited fresh anger in neighbouring Taiwan about how the island has been squeezed out of international bodies, including the World Health Organization. Modern Taiwan has been a de facto sovereign nation for the last seven decades and has emerged as one of Asia's most progressive democracies. Taiwan has been denied access to the World Health Assembly (WHA) -- the WHO's main meeting -- since 2017 under pressure from Beijing which loathes the island's current president Tsai Ing-wen, who won a landslide second term earlier this month.
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Jan 22, 2020
Masked gunmen on Wednesday ambushed and killed the local commander of a paramilitary security force in southwestern Iran, an associate of Iran's top general recently killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad, the official IRNA news agency reported. The slain commander, Abdolhossein Mojaddami, headed the Basij forces, a paramilitary wing of the Revolutionary Guard used for internal security and other tasks, in the town of Darkhoein.
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Jan 22, 2020
Let's take a look.
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Jan 22, 2020
Trump thinks his oath was a vague, unenforceable promise, that he can't be held accountable as long as he doesn't commit a crime. But he's wrong.
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Jan 22, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Malaysia is unlikely to suffer any loss in its palm oil business from China, despite Beijing pledging to boost soybean purchases from the U.S. amid the trade war, according to the Southeast Asian nation's trade chief."I don't think so," Malaysia's Minister of International Trade and Industry Darell Leiking said Wednesday in a Bloomberg Television interview with Haslinda Amin at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when asked about the impact on its critical palm oil exports."China and Malaysia have had a long relationship," and Kuala Lumpur has offered diplomatic and economic help to Beijing amid "challenges" with the U.S., he said. "The Chinese have continued to be a good friend."The initial U.S.-China trade deal signed last week has a potential downside for Malaysia, as it's expected to depress palm oil prices. China has sought to reassure other trading partners that things will remain business as usual even as the government pledged, under that agreement with the U.S., to significantly increase purchases of American soybeans.Friction between the U.S. and China isn't the only trade spat impacting Malaysia, as it grapples with India's move to reduce imports of Malaysian palm oil. That means $1.4 billion of processed palm products may need to find new buyers, said Khor Yu Leng, an independent economist with Segi Enam Advisors.Leiking aimed to damp worries around the India-Malaysia spat, saying the two governments are engaged on the issue and that Malaysia hasn't been singled out by India, an "important partner" of theirs.Pockets of the Malaysian economy have ben
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Jan 22, 2020
A market in Wuhan, central China, believe to the the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak, was shut down in light of its likely role spreading disease.
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