| AOC and Michael Moore urge Iowa voters not to 'play it safe' as they stand in for Sanders Posted: 25 Jan 2020 07:22 AM PST  Two of Bernie Sanders's highest-profile allies, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, filled in for him on the campaign trail Friday night, speaking to a rally here at the University of Iowa, as the Vermont senator participated in the impeachment trial in Washington, D.C.
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| Kobe Bryant was famous for using his Sikorsky S-76 private helicopter, a type that has a strong safety record Posted: 26 Jan 2020 02:06 PM PST  The S-76 was first developed in the 1970s and has developed a reputation for a strong safety record and reliability.
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| Hong Kong bars Hubei residents from entering city as coronavirus fears intensify Posted: 26 Jan 2020 05:00 AM PST  Hong Kong authorities on Sunday barred residents of China's Hubei province, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, from entering the city, in response to mounting pressure to enact preventative measures to contain the spreading epidemic. The ban includes those who have been in the province in the past 14 days but excludes Hong Kong citizens. Earlier a group of protesters set alight the lobby of a newly built residential building in Hong Kong that authorities planned to use as a quarantine facility for the coronavirus outbreak.
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| What's in a Moon Name?: A Guide to Lunar Labels Posted: 26 Jan 2020 09:00 AM PST |
| Chinese Uighurs in Saudi face impossible choice Posted: 25 Jan 2020 06:18 PM PST  His eyes brimming with tears, a Uighur student in Saudi Arabia holds out his Chinese passport -- long past its expiry date and condemning him to an uncertain fate as the kingdom grows closer to Beijing. The Chinese mission in Saudi Arabia stopped renewing passports for the ethnic Muslim minority more than two years ago, in what campaigners call a pressure tactic exercised in many countries to force the Uighur diaspora to return home. Half a dozen Uighur families in Saudi Arabia who showed AFP their passports -- a few already expired and some approaching the date -- said they dread going back to China, where over a million Uighurs are believed to be held in internment camps.
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| What's new in the China virus outbreak Posted: 26 Jan 2020 02:55 AM PST  Almost 2,000 cases of a new viral respiratory illness have been confirmed since an outbreak began last month in the Chinese city of Wuhan. ___ The National Health Commission said the number of confirmed cases in China rose to nearly 2,000 and the death toll, to 56. All had traveled to Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak.
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| White House Counsel Cipollone delivers closing remarks Posted: 25 Jan 2020 09:47 AM PST  White House Counsel Pat Cipollone delivered his closing remarks during the Senate impeachment trial on Saturday.
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| Trump impeachment trial: Democrat says ‘country’s fate hanging’ on outcome Posted: 26 Jan 2020 10:21 AM PST  * House manager says case against Trump 'overwhelming' * Schiff says Trump's comment about him intended as a threatOne of the prosecutors in Donald Trump's impeachment trial insisted on Sunday that "the country's fate is hanging" on the outcome of the showdown now taking place in the US Senate, in which she declared the case against the president regarding his conduct with Ukraine to be "overwhelming".Zoe Lofgren, a California congresswoman and one of the senior Democrats presenting the evidence against the president for abuse of power and obstructing Congress, said senators trying the case needed to agree this week to hear additional witnesses and evidence in order to provide the "impartial justice" that America depends upon.Trump is accused of pressuring Ukraine to investigate his domestic Democratic political rivals, especially 2020 election candidate and former Vice-President Joe Biden, and has refused to allow his most senior aides to testify in the process, despite court challenges by the Democrats in the House, who initiated the impeachment process last September."It's for the senators to find out all the information I think they would want," Lofgren told CNN's State of the Union politics program on Sunday morning."But here's the thing, the chief justice of the United States [John Roberts] presiding over this trial, if he signs a subpoena for a witness to come, we're going to get that witness … promptly. We're not going to be in court for three or four years."We have a great hope that the senators will do the duty that they are obliged to do, that they'll take the oath that they took seriously, that they will do impartial justice. That's what our hope is and I think the country's fate is hanging on it."Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, has fiercely resisted calls for witnesses to appear at the Senate trial, including John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser who has called the meddling of Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine matters, seemingly at the president's orders, as "a drug deal".Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff said Republican senators were terrified of hearing fresh, direct testimony in the trial."I think they're deathly afraid of what witnesses will have to say and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial," he said on NBC's Meet the Press.House Democrats accuse Trump of orchestrating a corrupt scheme in Ukraine to assist his re-election campaign. The president's defence team decries the impeachment on principle and accuses Democrats, in turn, of using it as a tactic to "interfere" in the 2020 election.Schiff added on Sunday: "What was so striking to me was that they basically acknowledge the scheme, they don't really contest the president's scheme. They just try to make the case that you don't need a fair trial here, you can make this go away."Meanwhile, Lofgren defended comments by Schiff after he was blasted by Trump in a tweet on Sunday, where Schiff had quoted a CBS report claiming that Republicans' heads could be "on a pike" if they went against the White House and voted for witnesses – a move that enraged moderate Republicans that Democrats had been hoping would support them in the push for more witnesses.Lofgren said, "I can't believe the president's misbehavior would be ignored because of something like that."Schiff added that he considered Trump's comment that Schiff has not "paid the price, yet, for what he has done to the country," a threat. "I think it was intended to be," he told NBC's Meet the Press.Trump also went on Twitter early on Sunday to repeat his complaint that: "The Impeachment Hoax is a massive election interference the likes of which has never been seen before." The tweet castigated his accusers as "Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats".Trump's legal team opened an aggressive defence of the president in the Senate on Saturday, laying out their case that he broke no laws, and insisting that the trial was merely an attempt to reverse the 2016 election."They're asking you not only to turn over the results of the last election but they're asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot in an election that's occurring in approximately nine months," said White House counsel Pat Cipollone. "They're here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history."Democrats say Trump abused his power to strong-arm Ukraine into conducting an investigation against Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in November's election, and obstructed Congress by withholding testimony and documents from their inquiry.Trump's lawyers will resume their arguments on Monday.Trump ally and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures program that he planned when the impeachment trial is over to investigate freshly the activities of Joe Biden in relation to his son Hunter Biden's past employment on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma."We will do oversight of the Bidens to give the vice-president the scrutiny the president has had," he said, despite theories of corruption relating to the Bidens and Ukraine having previously been debunked.The US temporarily withheld $400m in military aid to Ukraine, while Trump was pressuring Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his rivals. The aid was released in September, in a sequence of events that followed an intelligence community whistleblower formally complaining about Trump's conduct involving the aid and interactions with Zelenskiy.
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| Photos show the horrors of Auschwitz, 75 years after its liberation Posted: 26 Jan 2020 06:15 AM PST  Over 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, including nearly a million Jews. On the day of liberation 75 years ago, only 7,000 were saved.
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| Andrew Yang Will be Back on Democratic Debate Stage in February Posted: 26 Jan 2020 09:06 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Businessman and outsider Democratic candidate for president, Andrew Yang, has earned a spot in the upcoming eighth democratic debate in New Hampshire. In order to make the stage for the debate on Feb. 7, candidates have to receive at least 5% in four Democratic National Committee--approved polls or 7% in two early-state polls. Candidates also have to receive at least 225,000 individual contributions. Yang had already met the donor threshold. He earned 7% in a national poll from a Washington Post and ABC News poll and 5% in a Fox News poll, both released Sunday. He had received 5% in a December NPR/PBS/Marist national poll and 5% in an early January Quinnipiac University national poll. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren have already qualified. Candidates who come out of the Iowa caucus with at least one pledged delegate to the Democratic convention also automatically qualify for the debate. The entrepreneur did not qualify for the last debate in Des Moines. He's currently on a 17-day bus tour of Iowa ahead of the Feb. 3 caucus in that state. (Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)This post is part of Campaign Update, our live coverage from the 2020 campaign trail.To contact the author of this story: Emma Kinery in Washington at ekinery@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Ros Krasny at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net, Magan SherzaiFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| To Combat the Soviets, the U.S. Almost Built Its Own "Skyfall" Nuclear Powered Missile Posted: 26 Jan 2020 12:00 AM PST  The mistake was narrowly avoided.
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| Iranian airplane makes emergency landing at Tehran airport Posted: 25 Jan 2020 11:25 AM PST ![Iranian airplane makes emergency landing at Tehran airport]( "Iranian airplane makes emergency landing at Tehran airport") An Iranian airplane made an emergency landing at a Tehran airport, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Saturday. The plane was en route from Tehran to Istanbul but returned because of a technical problem and landed safely at Mehrabad airport without any injuries to passengers or crew, Mehr reported, citing an official at the Imam Khomeini airport, the departure point of the airplane. The report did not provide any additional details about the technical problem encountered by the airplane, which belonged to the Iran Airtour company.
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| 3 dead in protest against Gambian head Barrow: hospital Posted: 26 Jan 2020 11:58 AM PST  Three people died Sunday as hundreds of people took to the streets demanding the resignation of Gambian President Adama Barrow who wants to extend his term. Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters who responded by throwing stones and setting tyres on fire, an AFP correspondent at the scene saw. "I can confirm that there have been three dead," said Kebba Manneh, director of the Serrekunda hospital where victims were taken.
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| China stiffens its defences against epidemic as death toll hits 56 Posted: 26 Jan 2020 03:59 AM PST  China on Sunday expanded drastic travel restrictions to contain a viral epidemic that has killed 56 people and infected nearly 2,000, as the United States, France and Japan prepared to evacuate their citizens from a quarantined city at the outbreak's epicentre. China has locked down the hard-hit province of Hubei in the country's centre in an unprecedented operation affecting tens of millions of people to slow the spread of the respiratory illness. The previously unknown virus has caused global concern because of its similarity to the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) pathogen, which killed hundreds across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
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| Inmate found dead at Mississippi prison Posted: 26 Jan 2020 02:30 PM PST ![Inmate found dead at Mississippi prison]( "Inmate found dead at Mississippi prison") A Mississippi inmate was found dead in his one-man cell, the corrections department said Sunday, the latest fatality in the state's troubled prison system. Joshua Norman, 26, was found hanging in his cell at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, according to a news release from the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton said foul play is not suspected in the death.
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| Scientists say this planet could unlock insights about Earth Posted: 24 Jan 2020 07:45 PM PST  Venus' heat-trapping atmosphere – 97% carbon dioxide – and 900-degree average surface temperature present both a challenge and an opportunity for learning about Earth's formation.
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| As defense opens, Trump attorneys accuse Democrats of 'blind drive' to impeachment Posted: 25 Jan 2020 12:22 PM PST  Attorneys for President Trump opened their defense in his Senate impeachment trial Saturday morning by charging that the case presented by House Democrats was full of "bluster and innuendo," and that "devastating evidence" would lead to the inevitable conclusion that the two articles of impeachment now being considered have no merit.
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| The US government will reportedly evacuate its diplomats and citizens from Wuhan on a chartered plane amid the coronavirus outbreak Posted: 25 Jan 2020 07:13 AM PST  A chartered Boeing 767 will transport US diplomats, citizens, and their families from Wuhan to some location in the US, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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| Biden, Sanders Pull Further Ahead in ABC-WaPost National Poll Posted: 26 Jan 2020 07:17 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who represent rival visions for the Democratic Party, are solidifying their status as frontrunners in the crowded presidential field, according to a Washington Post-ABC News national poll.Coming just a week before voters finally get to have their say in the Iowa caucuses, the polls show Biden with a solid 32% overall among registered voters who lean Democratic, while Sanders registered support from 23%. Both are doing slightly better than in the same poll in October.Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was once considered a front-runner and earned endorsements from the New York Times a week ago and from the Des Moines Register in Iowa on Saturday, has seen a significant drop in her support. She was at 12% in this poll, down from 23% in October.Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has spent $250 million on advertising since getting a late start in the race and will not compete in the first contests, pulled in support from 8%. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.Businessman Andrew Yang, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar, who was also endorsed by The New York Times, were all mired in single digits.National polls are less predictive of the eventual winner at this point in the race because the winners of early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire often ride a wave of momentum and attention to surge nationally.The Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone Jan. 20-23. Results have an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.Separately, an NBC News/Marist poll for New Hampshire released on Sunday showed Sanders, at 22%, and Buttigieg at 17% leading in the state, with support for Biden and Warren also in the teens. That survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points and was also taken Jan. 20-23.This post is part of Campaign Update, our live coverage from the 2020 campaign trail.To contact the editor responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| India Has Fallen Far Behind China’s Military—Here are Five Affordable Steps It Can Tale to Secure Its Border With China Posted: 26 Jan 2020 12:30 AM PST  This could work. Here's how.
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| Iraqi security forces raid protest camps after Sadr supporters withdraw Posted: 25 Jan 2020 01:01 AM PST  Iraqi security forces fired bullets and tear gas on Saturday in raids on protest camps in Baghdad and southern cities, killing four people and wounding dozens more, police and medical sources said. The new push to end the sit-in protests and restore order came hours after populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has millions of supporters in Baghdad and the south, said he would end his involvement in anti-government unrest. Sadr's supporters, who had bolstered the protesters and sometimes helped shield them from attacks by security forces and unidentified gunmen, began withdrawing from sit-in camps early on Saturday after his announcement.
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| In Peru, 'they teach you to be ashamed,' indigenous trans candidate says Posted: 25 Jan 2020 11:04 PM PST  The first indigenous transgender candidate to run for parliament in Peru says it's time to end the culture of machismo in the South American country. "I suffered, in my own flesh, the consequences of inequality, discrimination, violence and corruption," Gahela Cari, 27, said in an interview with AFP before Sunday's nationwide parliamentary ballot. "I'm an animal-rights advocate, an ecologist and a student leader," Cari told AFP.
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| Military investigating video of Navy members shot through peephole Posted: 25 Jan 2020 11:46 AM PST  The Navy is reportedly investigating videos found on the website Pornhub that it believes show unsuspecting Navy service members through a peephole in a bathroom.
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| ‘We did’ give in to Trump stonewalling, House impeachment manager says Posted: 26 Jan 2020 09:23 AM PST  Rep. Zoe Lofgren said Democrats believed they had sufficient evidence.
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| NASA is hiring someone to help figure out how to get Mars rocks back to Earth — and the position pays at least $182,000 Posted: 25 Jan 2020 05:31 AM PST  The Mars Sample Return mission aims to get pristine rocks from the red planet back to Earth, perhaps by the end of the decade.
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| Biden Leads USA Today/Suffolk Iowa Poll; Sanders, Buttigieg Next Posted: 26 Jan 2020 02:35 PM PST ![Biden Leads USA Today/Suffolk Iowa Poll; Sanders, Buttigieg Next]( "Biden Leads USA Today/Suffolk Iowa Poll; Sanders, Buttigieg Next") (Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden leads the Democratic field in Iowa, according to a USA Today/Suffolk poll, with 25% support. Bernie Sanders was second at 19%, followed by Pete Buttigieg in third at 18%.It's a better result for the former vice president than an NYT/Siena survey out Saturday, which showed Sanders in first and Biden trailing Buttigieg in third place. Elizabeth Warren was fourth and Amy Klobuchar fifth in both polls.Yet taken together, both surveys show a fluid Democratic field a week before Iowa caucuses. RealClearPolitics, aggregating recent surveys in Iowa, showed Biden and Sanders essentially tied ahead of the USA Today survey's release.Under Iowa's unique caucus system, voters' backup plans could be decisive. If a candidate doesn't reach 15% support in a local area, they aren't considered viable, their votes won't tally and supporters are encouraged to pick someone else.Yet there's no clear indication where the supporters of lesser-polling candidates might wind up. Three quarters of those supporting a candidate outside the top five were undecided about their next choice.The USA Today/Suffolk poll surveyed 500 likely Democratic caucusgoers from Jan. 23-26, with an error margin plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.To contact the reporter on this story: Derek Wallbank in Singapore at dwallbank@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Chua Baizhen at bchua14@bloomberg.net, Steve GeimannFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| The Fate of the China-Russia Alliance Posted: 25 Jan 2020 11:34 AM PST  The Moscow-Beijing collaborative relations have already yielded major shifts in the military balance in the Asia-Pacific two times. Will the third time be a global transformation?
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| Postal worker dies a week after being shot while delivering mail in Mississippi Posted: 25 Jan 2020 03:59 PM PST  The local community rallied around Ingold by hosting prayer vigils, dressing in purple and placing purple bows along her mail route.
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| Jordanian charged with 'terror' over tourist stabbings Posted: 25 Jan 2020 04:48 PM PST  A Jordanian court on Sunday levelled "terrorism" charges against a man suspected of wounding eight people in a November knife attack at a popular tourist site. The suspect, Moustafa Abourouis, 22, faces up to 20 years in prison after the stabbing of three Mexicans, a Swiss woman, a Jordanian tour guide and a security officer at the Roman city of Jerash. At a hearing open to the press, prosecutors accused Abourouis of committing a "terrorist act" and "promoting the ideas of a terrorist group" -- a reference to the Islamic State (IS) group.
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| Pope backs Iraqi call for its sovereignty to be respected Posted: 25 Jan 2020 04:56 AM PST  Pope Francis met Iraq's president on Saturday and the two agreed that the country's sovereignty must be respected, following attacks on Iraqi territory this month by the United States and Iran. President Barham Salih held private talks for about 30 minutes with the pope and then met the Vatican's two top diplomats, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, its foreign minister. The talks "focused on the challenges the country currently faces and on the importance of promoting stability and the reconstruction process, encouraging the path of dialogue and the search for suitable solutions in favor of citizens and with respect for national sovereignty," a Vatican statement said.
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| Seven months detained: seven-year-old is longest-held child migrant in US Posted: 26 Jan 2020 01:00 AM PST  Maddie Hernandez and her father, Emerson, fled crime in Guatemala. After months, her parents says she has changedEmerson Hernandez and his daughter Maddie have withstood hunger and thirst.They've been dumped in a threatening border city in Mexico, a foreign country with nowhere to shelter. And, for seven months, they've been locked up at what critics call a "baby jail".The father and daughter have weathered all of this just for a chance at asylum in the United States after they fled a home in Guatemala that's now overrun with crime."I don't want my daughter to grow up in that environment of delinquency. I really am afraid that something could happen to her," Emerson told the Guardian.Maddie has been detained the longest of any child currently held in family immigration detention across the country, her attorneys say. On 17 January, she turned seven years old at Berks county residential center, a controversial detention facility in Pennsylvania where she has spent roughly 8% of her life.Despite her lawyers exhausting the legal avenues that could get her out, the government won't release her and Emerson together.A spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the agency detaining them, said, "ICE's custodial determinations for Mr. Hernandez and Maddie have been based on the merits and factors of their individual cases and are in conformity with the law and current agency priorities, guidelines and legal mandates."Emerson said Maddie has always been strong, but being confined for such a long time has changed her. She's gone from an easy, smiley little girl to someone who has become violent and throws explosive temper tantrums, according to her parents and an attorney."Her change was sudden," Emerson said. "And she says to me, 'When are we going to leave this place?'"The truth is no one knows. The Flores settlement, a landmark 1997 federal agreement that regulates child and family detention, made it the longstanding rule that kids and families should be released within 20 days. But there have been huge exceptions: Bridget Cambria, a lawyer representing Maddie, said the longest she was aware of a child being held through family detention was 707 days.Emerson and Maddie are desperate to see the rest of their family, Maddie's mother, Madelin, and her newborn baby, who still hasn't met his dad. Madelin traveled to the US with a visa and lives in New Jersey, but Maddie's visa application was denied. She and Emerson made a more perilous journey north last spring, when they went a full day without stopping."That day was hard for me," Emerson remembered. "To see that my daughter said to me, 'Papi, I'm thirsty, Papi, I want to eat,' and I had nothing to give her."Madelin said she came to the US because she thought her family would be reunited soon after. But Maddie and Emerson were swept into the Trump administration's increasingly hardline immigration policies, and Madelin hasn't seen them since.Last April, Emerson and Maddie finally made it to the US only to be turned back to Tijuana, Mexico, through the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a Trump-era program that returns people across the border while they await US immigration court hearings.Suddenly, they were homeless in one of the world's most dangerous cities.Emerson called Madelin to say there was no space for them at the local shelter. "I remember that he started to cry, and I did, too, because we didn't know what to do," she said.A US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said around 57,000 people had been subject to MPP, and in October, Reuters found that 16,000 migrants under 18 had been sent to Mexico.At least 816 violent attacks against migrants under MPP have been reported, including 201 cases of children who were kidnapped or almost kidnapped, according to the not-for-profit Human Rights First.On days when Emerson and Maddie found housing with good Samaritans, she rarely went outside because the city was so dangerous."Tijuana is not a very pretty place, it's not a safe place," Emerson said.After two months in Mexico, they got their opportunity to go in front of a US immigration judge in June. Emerson made the mistake of following advice he said an immigration official gave him. He told the judge that he had come to the US to give his daughter a better life, a line that completely discredited his case.There are immigration laws that protect asylum seekers. There aren't immigration laws that protect devoted parents.The judge gave him two options: he could return to Mexico and, against all odds, continue to fight for the right to come to the US. Or – after all Emerson and Maddie had endured –they could return to Guatemala.Faced with an impossible choice, Emerson opted for the latter because at least if something happened to him at home, his family could look after his daughter and wife. But when he and Maddie boarded a plane, it didn't land in Guatemala. Instead, they took a long trip deep into the country's interior, to Berks county residential center in Leesport, Pennsylvania.The family immigration detention facility garnered national notoriety a few years ago after an employee admitted to sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman who was being held there. Critics have advocated for its closure, and reports of poor medical care and racism from employees have hamstrung the facility's reputation.But it continues to operate, as it has since 2001.After Emerson and Maddie arrived at Berks, they met Cambria, the attorney who has helped to revive their asylum bid. When the government flew them to San Diego in July and tried to return them to Mexico again, Cambria quickly filed a federal lawsuit to bring them back to Berks, where they've remained ever since.That lawsuit could eventually set a major precedent as to whether children can legally be placed under MPP. A ruling in Maddie's favor would mean other kids like her could sue the government, arguing they shouldn't be sent to Mexico. (Ice's spokesperson said the agency did not comment on pending litigation.)But Maddie didn't come to the US to challenge immigration policy. She's a kid who celebrated a Christmas and a birthday in detention, without her mom and little brother."This little girl is not doing well psychologically, we'll put it that way," said Cambria. "She's saying things that are scary. She's very sad."Ice has offered for Maddie to leave Berks, but without Emerson. This family separation is legally dubious, and Cambria said it was unprecedented in her experience representing immigrant families.Amy Maldonado, another of Maddie's lawyers, said Ice could release both Maddie and Emerson at any time, and has done so for families in similar situations.Cambria said she doesn't know why Ice is treating Emerson and Maddie differently from any other family at Berks. But the detention center is only for parents with children. If Maddie leaves and Emerson doesn't, he'll be sent away to another facility for adults or returned to Mexico.Maddie is so young that she thinks of everything she's gone through as a vacation, and she keeps telling her parents she's ready for the vacation to be over."When I speak to her, she sometimes cries and says, 'Mami, I want to leave already,'" Madelin said."'I want to leave already.'"
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| Georgia inmate who came close to execution in 2017 dies Posted: 26 Jan 2020 06:13 AM PST  A Georgia death row inmate whose planned execution was halted in September 2017 by the U.S. Supreme Court after his lawyers argued his death sentence was tainted by a juror's racial bias has died, according to the state Department of Corrections. Keith "Bo" Tharpe, 61, died of natural causes Friday, Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Joan Heath confirmed in an email Sunday. In 1991, a jury convicted Tharpe of murder in the September 1990 slaying of his sister-in-law, Jacquelyn Freeman, and sentenced him to death.
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| What we learned at the Trump trial Saturday Posted: 25 Jan 2020 06:39 AM PST  Here are some of the key moments of the day.
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| The coronavirus has reached Los Angeles, where the fourth person diagnosed in the US just arrived from China Posted: 26 Jan 2020 12:13 PM PST  The fourth person the US to be diagnosed with coronavirus just arrived in Los Angeles from Wuhan, China, where the virus originated.
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| Death Toll Rises in Turkey Quake as Erdogan Slams Social Media Posted: 26 Jan 2020 01:12 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- A magnitude 6.8 earthquake in Turkey's eastern Elazig province on Friday evening killed at least 31 people and injured hundreds. By Sunday, 45 people had been rescued from the rubble of collapsed buildings.A total of 76 buildings were destroyed and 645 heavily damaged, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, or AFAD, said in a statement. As many as 20 of the 640 aftershocks since the first temblor had a magnitude greater than 4 on the Richter scale, according to the agency.Speaking on Sunday in Istanbul, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan targeted "provocative" social media posts about the earthquake. "Some messages are terrible, depraved," he said, according to the Anadolu Agency. "For example, some question what the government has done about earthquakes in the past two decades."The earthquake occurred at 8:55 p.m. local time on Friday at a depth of 6.75 kilometers (4.2 miles) on the East Anatolia Fault Line. Tremors were felt in many cities across the region.Prosecutors have launched an investigation into social media posts found to be "provocative," Anadolu reported. Two people in Gaziantep province have been detained.Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, Environment & Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum and Health Minister Fahrettin Koca were in Elazig as of early Sunday to coordinate rescue efforts.Turkey is situated in a seismically active area and is among countries, including China and Iran, that can experience catastrophic earthquakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1999, a 7.5-magnitude quake shook the western Marmara region killing thousands of people and damaging more than 300,000 buildings. The nation's economy contracted 3.4% that year.To contact the reporters on this story: Cagan Koc in Istanbul at ckoc2@bloomberg.net;Taylan Bilgic in Istanbul at tbilgic2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Lars Paulsson, Michael GunnFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| India police decommission historic British-era rifles Posted: 26 Jan 2020 02:59 AM PST  Police in northern India on Sunday bid goodbye to the historic British-era bolt-action rifles after using them for one last salute during the annual Republic Day parade. The Lee-Enfield .303 rifle was the main firearm of British colonial military forces and, despite being designated "obsolete" around 25 years ago, it has been the main weapon used by police in Uttar Pradesh state over seven decades. "They have been in use since independence (from the British in 1947) and now they'll be replaced by INSAS (Indian Small Arms System) and SLRs (Self-Loading Rifles)," said police superintendent Amit Verma.
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| 'Doorbell Ditch' Prank Led to Crash That Killed 3 Teens, Officials Say Posted: 25 Jan 2020 07:02 AM PST  A man who the authorities contend deliberately crashed his car into another one on a Southern California road last Sunday, killing three of the six teenagers inside, did so because the group had played a so-called doorbell ditch prank on him, prosecutors said this week.The man, Anurag Chandra, 42, faces several murder charges for his role in the Temescal Canyon Road crash, which the Riverside County District Attorney's Office said Thursday occurred after the boys played a doorbell ditch prank on him.In a doorbell ditch, also commonly known as a ding-dong-ditch, a person rings a doorbell and tries to run away before anyone opens the door.After one of the boys had been dared, all six teenagers drove to a nearby home on Mojeska Summit Road in Corona, about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the district attorney's office said, citing the California Highway Patrol's investigation. The boy rang the doorbell and returned to the 2002 Prius that they were riding in, and the group took off.But Chandra, who lives at the home, chased after them in his 2019 Infiniti Q50, prosecutors said. His car rammed into the back of the Prius, "causing it to veer off the road and into a tree," prosecutors said.Daniel Hawkins, Jacob Ivascu and Drake Ruiz, all 16-year-old passengers, were killed in the crash, prosecutors said. The 18-year-old driver and two other boys, ages 13 and 14, were injured but survived."The circumstances in this case are unusual," John Hall, a spokesman with the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, said in an email Friday. "Based on the evidence in this case, the response and actions taken by the defendant are egregious and extremely disproportionate to a teen ringing a doorbell and running away."Chandra was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday, but "it was continued at the request of the defense," Hall said. A new arraignment has been scheduled for Feb. 21, he said.Chandra "is being held on no bail because this is a potential death penalty case," Hall said. "That is because we have alleged a special circumstance allegation of multiple murders, making him eligible for the death penalty."District Attorney Mike Hestrin of Riverside County will decide whether to seek the death penalty at a later date, he said.Phone calls and messages to numbers listed for Chandra were not immediately returned Friday night. Calls and messages on Friday to the public defender's office, which represented him in court Thursday, were not immediately returned.Speaking to NBC4 in Los Angeles, a bandaged and still-healing Sergio Campusano, the driver of the Prius, said in an interview this week that he had blacked out after the driver of the Infiniti "rammed his car into my back" and his head whipped into his window.Describing the prank, which Campusano said the group came up with during a sleepover, one of the boys was dared to "either jump into a pool at night or go ding-dong-ditch a house."After the boys drove away from the house where the doorbell was rung, the group saw a man from the home following them, and Campusano said the other car got "really, really close.""I was like, 'What is this guy doing?'" Campusano, who tried to drive away from the Infiniti, told the TV station. "Then I felt like a nudge forward, like he hit me from the back.""When he rammed us from the side, I thought, I was like, if anything happens, I love these guys," said Campusano, who described the close-knit group of friends as "all a part of me."The group had been celebrating Jacob's birthday over the weekend, the TV station reported.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| 3rd woman accuses Michigan lawmaker of sexual harassment Posted: 26 Jan 2020 09:31 AM PST  A third woman in two weeks has publicly come forward with sexual harassment allegations against a Michigan state legislator, according to a published report Sunday. Melissa Osborn, who works as a regulatory affairs specialist for a trade group, told Crain's Detroit Business that Republican state Sen. Peter Lucido commented on her appearance and clothes while visually scanning her body and touching the region she described as "my lower back/upper butt." Osborn, 40, said it happened at the Michigan Credit Union League's annual government affairs conference in May. Lucido declined to comment to Crain's.
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| Pompeo lashes out at journalist; NPR defends reporter Posted: 25 Jan 2020 11:14 AM PST  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out Saturday at an NPR reporter who accused him of shouting expletives at her after she asked him in an interview about Ukraine. In a personal attack, Pompeo said the journalist had "lied" to him and called her conduct "shameful."
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| Paula White, a White House employee and Trump's spiritual advisor, calls for 'satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now' Posted: 26 Jan 2020 04:20 PM PST  Paula White, a prosperity gospel televangelist who last year joined the White House, says the words in her sermon were taken out of context.
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| Putin Decides Low-Growth Russia Could Use Some Help From Keynes Posted: 25 Jan 2020 10:00 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Explore what's moving the global economy in the new season of the Stephanomics podcast. Subscribe via Apple Podcast, Spotify or Pocket Cast.With time running out on his final term as president, Vladimir Putin evidently wants to end it with a boom.Putin has been a cautious steward of Russia's $1.7 trillion economy, partly to shield it against blowback from his more adventurous foreign policy. For the last five years, he's imposed some of the world's toughest budget austerity. Combined with high interest rates, that's made Russia a favorite of carry-trade investors –- but it's left living standards mired at 2012 levels and economic growth stuck below 2%.Now, the president is changing course –- and channeling an economist whose pro-growth ideas are mainstream almost everywhere else: John Maynard Keynes. Putin just appointed a new cabinet stacked with advocates for more government spending and investment, a Keynesian recipe. And he's told them to hurry up about it.In power for 20 years, Putin gets credit at home for steadying an economy that suffered a decade of chaos and debt default after the Soviet Union collapsed. But lately, stability has threatened to turn into stagnation.Until now, the government hasn't rushed to the rescue. It's pared borrowing to a minimum in the last five years, and has been stashing any spare cash from Russia's commodity exports into a massive rainy-day fund."Russia's first priority was to secure its borders to reduce its vulnerabilities," said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance in Washington. "At the time, it would've been wrong to lean on Keynesian theories. Now they're so comfortable on that front that it's time to start thinking about how to boost potential growth."'Feel the Change'Western sanctions and volatile oil prices have been a key reason for Putin's "fortress Russia" approach, which aimed to make the economy self-sufficient. But the turn to Keynesian stimulus shows that Russia isn't walled off from wider currents of economic thinking. There's been a similar shift in other countries.The U.S. has widened budget deficits even after a decade-long expansion, and the U.K. and Germany have begun to shift away from austerity. India and Turkey are trying to boost growth via fiscal policy.At the first meeting of Russia's new government, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said he wants to get the spending spree underway quickly. Russians should "feel the changes in their lives and surroundings in the near future," he said.Mishustin has appointed former Kremlin adviser Andrey Belousov, who's lobbied for more government borrowing and spending, as his deputy premier. Evgeny Yasin, a director at Russia's Higher School of Economics and one of the country's most prominent economists, calls Belousov a "Russian Keynesian.""Russian political changes at this moment have one goal: to boost economic growth," Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, founder of aluminum producer United Co Rusal Plc, told Bloomberg Television in Davos.There are limits to how far he can loosen the purse-strings. The government is sticking to a budget law that says revenue from oil above $42 a barrel (it currently trades around $61) must be saved, not spent.Still, extra spending this year could total 2.1 trillion rubles ($34 billion), or 1.3% of gross domestic product, according to calculations by ING Groep NV in Moscow. The government will likely tap its rainy-day fund and release about 500 billion rubles left over from last year's budget, which posted a surplus equal to 1.8% of GDP.Any Means NecessaryA key part of the fiscal push will be speeding up an existing plan to invest $400 billion in things like highways, housing and ports over four years. The so-called National Projects got mired in bureaucracy and made little progress in 2019.Other elements are new. Putin proposed last week to spend about $65 billion through 2024 on expanding benefits for families and the poor.Putin's growth program relies mainly on state spending because increased pressure on business and a still-uncertain sanctions outlook has stalled private-sector investment.Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina argues that Russia needs structural reform aimed at improving the business climate and increasing competition. Putin has long claimed to support such measures, but never made much progress on implementing them."This isn't a market economy," and Putin doesn't follow any particular economic principles, Yasin said. The president "uses any methods that seem necessary to him in order to maintain full control."His latest methods may not deliver much of a boost right away. Budget easing will probably add 20 or 30 basis points to economic growth rates in the short term, according to Bloomberg Economics.But as Keynes always argued, spending is better for growth than squirreling away money. Markets have generally welcomed the shift –- including even some of the bond investors who've reaped rewards from years of tight policy.Russian austerity was geared all along to "preparing for a future crisis," said Oleg Shibanov, a finance professor at Moscow's New Economic School."Russia is prepared now," he said. "I expect that there'll be more spending and more investment."\--With assistance from Anya Andrianova.To contact the reporters on this story: Natasha Doff in Moscow at ndoff@bloomberg.net;Evgenia Pismennaya in Moscow at epismennaya@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Ben HollandFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| France's Barracuda Attack Submarine Is Changing How Paris Views Military Power Posted: 26 Jan 2020 06:00 AM PST  It's just that good.
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| Anxious foreigners await rescue from China virus epicentre Posted: 26 Jan 2020 03:47 AM PST  Anxious foreigners in the locked-down city that spawned China's deadly viral epidemic say they are stranded at home, running out of food and desperate to leave, as governments scrambled to draw up evacuation plans. Authorities have barred travel to and from Hubei province and its capital Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected before it spread across China and to a dozen other countries -- including the United States, France and Australia. Several other large cities in China have introduced their own travel restrictions in a bid to contain the disease, which has killed 56 people and infected nearly 2,000 others.
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