| Centrist Dem Amy McGrath beats Charles Booker in Kentucky primary to face McConnell Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:42 AM PDT  The former fighter pilot leveraged a massive fundraising advantage and absentee votes to survive a challenge from the progressive state senator.
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| As coronavirus spreads to people under 40, it's making them sicker — and for longer — than once thought Posted: 29 Jun 2020 04:50 PM PDT  Once assumed to be safe from the dangers of COVID-19, younger adults share their prolonged struggles with the disease.
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| Rand Paul again rips Dr. Anthony Fauci over coronavirus: 'We just need more optimism' Posted: 30 Jun 2020 03:09 PM PDT  Paul criticized Fauci for a lack of "certitude" when it comes to advice on if kids should be allowed to go back to school in the fall amid COVID-19.
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| Pakistan could soon release slain US reporter's kidnapper Posted: 29 Jun 2020 11:16 AM PDT |
| Texas Bar Owners Sue Over Reimposed Coronavirus Restrictions Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:36 AM PDT  Several Texas bar owners on Monday sued over Governor Greg Abbott's order to shut down their businesses again as coronavirus cases in the state soar.Texas reported a record high on Monday of 5,913 individuals hospitalized for the coronavirus, and new cases of the virus rose on Saturday to a record daily high of 6,263 confirmed new cases. Deaths from the virus have remained level, however.The bar owners filed lawsuits in Austin, Houston, and Galveston, charging that the governor has exceeded his authority under the state constitution to order bars to close again and claiming that the restrictions are being unfairly imposed on bars while other businesses, such as nail and hair salons, are allowed to continue operating. The owners are demanding that Abbott call the state legislature into a special session to handle the issue."Gov. Abbott continues to act like a king," said Jared Woodfill, a lawyer representing the bar owners. "Abbott is unilaterally destroying our economy and trampling on our constitutional rights."Abbott rolled back his state's reopening process on Friday, singling out activity in bars as a driving factor of the spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations Texas has experienced."As I said from the start, if the positivity rate rose above 10%, the State of Texas would take further action to mitigate the spread of COVID-19," the Republican governor said. "At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars."The governor's slowdown of the reopening process reimposes restrictions on businesses he had allowed to reopen at partial capacity, including bars, restaurants, gyms, malls, and bowling alleys. Bars were required to close at 12 p.m. on Friday but are allowed to remain open for delivery and take-out orders. Restaurants may operate dine-in service at 50 percent capacity, down from the 75 percent capacity Abbott approved earlier this month. The majority of gatherings of 100 or more people must gain approval from local governments.The announcement came two days after Abbott warned that the coronavirus is now spreading in Texas at an "unacceptable rate" and pleaded with residents to wear masks in public and continue practicing social distancing.Several other states have seen their coronavirus cases spike in the last several weeks, including Florida, Arizona, and California. Along with Texas, Alabama, Missouri and Nevada.
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| Belgian king expresses deep regret for colonial past in Congo Posted: 30 Jun 2020 01:46 AM PDT  Belgium's King Philippe expressed deep regret on Tuesday for the "suffering and humiliation" inflicted on the Democratic Republic of Congo during its 75 years under Belgian rule. Philippe's message in a letter to Congo President Felix Tshisekedi is the first such expression of regret for Belgium's colonial past by a reigning monarch, the royal palace said, although it stopped short of formally apologising. "I want to express my deepest regret for these past injuries, the pain of which is regularly revived by the discrimination that is still all too present in our societies," said the letter, released to mark the 60th anniversary of Congo's independence.
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| Radiation Leak in Europe Points to a Possible Russian Weapons Test Posted: 29 Jun 2020 02:15 PM PDT  This isn't the first time Europe's detected radiation leaks likely originating from Russia.
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| The 10 Best Dino-Killing, Ice Spewing, Earth-Destroying Asteroids Posted: 30 Jun 2020 11:20 AM PDT |
| Study This Submarine: Could It Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier? Posted: 29 Jun 2020 11:00 PM PDT  "The ambush tactics for which the mini-sub is designed seem to fit the pattern of recent Iranian weapons procurement and their expressed interest in building a robust anti-access/area denial capability."
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| US could buy Turkey’s Russian-made S-400 under Senate proposal Posted: 29 Jun 2020 02:42 PM PDT  The U.S. would be able to buy Turkey's Russian-made S-400 air defense system under legislation proposed in the Senate last week.
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| Vice President Mike Pence discloses donors who helped pay nearly $500K in legal bills from Mueller investigation Posted: 30 Jun 2020 12:16 PM PDT  Vice President Mike Pence received nearly $500,000 from a dozen contributors to help him pay his legal bills from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
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| Homeowner shoots woman trying to steal his Nazi flag, Oklahoma cops say Posted: 30 Jun 2020 03:56 PM PDT  Authorities said the victim is expected to recover.
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| Couple draw guns at crowd heading to St. Louis mayor's home Posted: 29 Jun 2020 01:03 AM PDT  A white couple who stood outside their St. Louis mansion and pointed guns at protesters support the Black Lives Matter movement and don't want to become heroes to those who oppose the cause, their attorney said Monday. Video posted online showed Mark McCloskey, 63, and his 61-year-old wife, Patricia, standing outside their Renaissance palazzo-style home Sunday night in the city's well-to-do Central West End neighborhood as protesters marched toward the mayor's home to demand her resignation. Mark McCloskey told KMOV-TV that he and wife, who are personal injury lawyers, were facing an "angry mob" on their private street and feared for their lives Sunday night.
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| China to impose visa restrictions on U.S. individuals over Hong Kong Posted: 29 Jun 2020 12:37 AM PDT  Beijing said on Monday it will impose visa restrictions on U.S. individuals with "egregious conduct" on Hong Kong-related issues, mirroring U.S. sanctions against unnamed Chinese officials deemed responsible for curbing freedoms in the city. The announcement comes as the top decision-making body of China's parliament deliberates a draft national security law for Hong Kong that pro-democracy activists in the city fear will be used to eliminate dissent and tighten Beijing's control. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who announced the new sanctions during a press briefing in response to a question about Washington's new visa restrictions, did not specify which U.S. individuals have been targeted.
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| Tucker Carlson’s Journey From Coronavirus Alarm-Puller to COVID Truther Posted: 30 Jun 2020 12:17 AM PDT  In early March, while President Donald Trump's loudest allies at Fox News downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, with some claiming it was nothing more than an "impeachment scam" to destroy the president, Tucker Carlson received widespread—and usual, considering his notoriously far-right rhetoric—praise for calling out his colleagues and Trump for "minimizing" the impending danger.The Fox News primetime star continues to receive plaudits for reportedly convincing the president to finally take the crisis seriously. Days after that March 9 monologue, which was delivered shortly after Carlson privately spoke with Trump about the virus, the president publicly addressed the nation and his administration began pushing social-distancing guidelines.While Carlson sounding the alarm much earlier than his Fox News peers may have a had a positive impact (on his viewers, especially, as studies show his audience took protective measures before Trump confidant Sean Hannity's), it didn't take long for the right-wing TV host to shift gears and rage against social distancing, lockdowns, and any other measure implemented to slow the spread of the virus.Over the past two months, Carlson has devoted much of his coronavirus coverage to discrediting public-health experts, specifically top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. On top of telling his audience to stop listening to Fauci and other health officials, the Fox News star has repeatedly boosted a fellow contrarian, former New York Times reporter-turned-spy-novelist Alex Berenson, as an expert on the deadly virus.Less than a month after his much-lauded call to action on the virus, Carlson declared the crisis to be over—a claim that received far less attention from the mainstream press than his rogue stance against the president. Despite the United States having already experienced 13,000 deaths by that point, Carlson pointed to revised models showing lower expected deaths to call for the easing of stay-at-home orders, insisting that the "short-term crisis may have passed."Since the Fox star's assertion that the pandemic was essentially over and it was time to go back to business as usual, the nation has suffered roughly 115,000 more deaths and at least two million more confirmed cases.Carlson, in his quest to convince viewers that social distancing was futile and lockdowns were useless, began taking aim at Fauci almost immediately, framing the Medal of Freedom honoree as a power-hungry bureaucrat who had suddenly become the most powerful person in the world. Furthermore, the conservative talk-show host repeatedly portrayed the top doctor as incompetent and unknowledgeable about infectious diseases.One way Carlson often sharply criticized the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was by highlighting his shifting opinions on the virus as more information became known about the disease. In particular, he hit Fauci for initially saying mask-wearing was unnecessary—a position the renowned immunologist quickly reversed, as have other health officials who initially worried that masks might instill a false sense of security.Tucker Carlson Wants to Have It Both Ways on CoronavirusAt one point in mid-May, following Sen. Rand Paul dressing down Fauci in a Senate hearing, Carlson applauded the pro-Trump Republican before delivering his own lengthy takedown of Fauci, arguing that the top doctor's advice was "buffoon-level stuff," later describing him as "the chief buffoon of the professional class." Weeks prior, Carlson called it "national suicide" for Fauci to urge aggressive social-distancing restrictions."We should never let someone like that run this country," he fumed.Besides repeatedly dismissing social distancing, Carlson has also told his viewers that the virus is just not that deadly, even as the death toll continues to rise. In late April, for instance, Carlson pointed to some antibody studies—which have since largely been dismissed due to a large number of false-positive statistical errors—and the laughable claims made by a pair of California doctors who pushed for reopening by claiming the disease "just isn't nearly as deadly as we thought it was."The segment was steeped in so much disinformation on the disease that MSNBC host Chris Hayes, his direct 8 p.m. time slot competitor, directly called out Carlson for peddling "coronavirus trutherism" the next evening, picking apart the arguments put forth by the Fox star."There is a reason many of the employees of Fox News, which is based in New York, are working from home right now," Hayes pointedly stated. "At least someone there understands why it is important to continue to keep physical distance."Weeks later, Carlson again pointed to antibody tests and cherry-picked surveys to claim the deadly virus was relatively tame."We now know, thanks to widespread blood testing, that the virus isn't that deadly," he said on May 21. "An enormous percentage of coronavirus infections produce mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, they're asymptomatic. The death toll is a tiny fraction of what we were told it would be."Carlson, meanwhile, has also seemed more than willing to accept that the death toll—which is now approaching 130,000—is overinflated and possibly a hoax, despite overwhelming evidence showing it has likely been undercounted. Besides giving airtime to "COVID Contrarian" Berenson, who has repeatedly suggested the death toll is inflated or would remain low, he has also hosted Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume to make those same claims. "Dr. Birx said tonight during the briefing at the White House that all deaths from anyone who died with coronavirus is counted as if the person died from coronavirus. Now, we all know that isn't true," Hume said on April 7 before relaying anecdotal evidence: " I remember my own doctor telling me at one point when I was discussing prostate issues, he said about prostate cancer—I didn't have it, as it happened, but he said, 'You know, a lot more people die with it than die from it.'"In recent weeks, amid nationwide unrest following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, Carlson has spent far more time demonizing the Black Lives Matter movement than covering the outbreak of new coronavirus cases, many of which are occurring in the states that rushed to reopen. When the Fox host did shift from fear-mongering about a race war to cover the virus, however, he actively minimized the damage of the pandemic while once again claiming lockdowns do not work.Just as multiple states began seeing a massive uptick in confirmed cases following relaxed restrictions and Memorial Day weekend celebrations, Carlson definitively declared social-distancing rules to be useless."We do think it's worth, for a minute, taking a pause to assess whether or not they were in fact lying to us about the coronavirus and our response to it," he said on June 10, taking issue with media criticizing lockdown protests but praising police brutality demonstrations. "And the short answer to this is: Yes, they were definitely lying.""As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not necessary. In fact, we can prove that and here's the most powerful evidence: states that never locked down at all, states where people were allowed to live like Americans and not cower indoors alone, in the end turned out no worse than states that had mandatory quarantines, the state you probably live in," Carlson continued. "The states that did lock down at first but were quick to reopen have not seen explosions of coronavirus cases."Since making that proclamation, Florida, Texas and Arizona have all set single-day records for confirmed cases, and have reported newly overwhelmed hospitals and ICU capacity. Presented with Carlson's repeated claims that social distancing and stay-at-home orders have been unnecessary, Dr. Irwin Redlener, a Daily Beast contributor and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University outright dismissed the TV host's analysis."Tucker Carson is one of the most fervent anti-science commentators on the airway," the public-health activist told The Daily Beast. "He, like Sean Hannity, seems to relish in unwavering support for Donald Trump, no matter how outlandish, dishonest or ignorant the president's statements or policies might be. I assume that Tucker is probably a bright guy, but his uncritical support of Trump is a dangerous disservice to his audience."While Carlson has privately advised the president on several issues and is regularly cited by the president's Twitter account, he has also stood out among his Fox primetime peers in offering up criticism of Trump. Besides subtly calling the president out over his COVID-19 response, Carlson has also knocked the president for not being tough enough in dealing with the protests, arguing that it is placing him on a trajectory to lose.An analysis from Columbia University, meanwhile, has found that if the United States had implemented physical-distancing guidelines just one week earlier in March, as many as 36,000 American lives could have been saved.I Spent a Week Down the Right-Wing Media Rabbit Hole—and Was Mesmerized by ItAs Carlson has dismissed the expertise of epidemiologists and scientists, while boosting spy novelists and talking heads, he has occasionally sought the advice of actual medical professionals to provide pandemic analysis. One of the most frequent voices on his show in this respect has been Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel.While the Fox News primetime star has blasted Fauci and others for their inaccurate predictions and so-called buffoonery, he doesn't seem to have an issue with Siegel's history of comically over-the-top projections and medical punditry that seemingly bends over backwards to please the Fox audience.For example, Siegel, who infamously said in March that the "worst-case" for coronavirus is that it "will be the flu," told Carlson last month that "we're not going to have a big second wave," citing the low number of cases in Australia. "That's the southern hemisphere," he said. "That's essentially our November right now."He would eventually walk back that claim on Carlson's show days later, noting that Brazil—which is also in the southern hemisphere—was experiencing a huge surge in cases. And last week, Siegel lashed out at the European Union for possibly banning American visitors due to the latest rise in cases. "Could this be retaliatory? Possibly," he huffed. "Could it be public health? Whatever it is, it is not the tone they sounded back in March, when they were horrified at our travel ban, at a time when thousands and thousands of cases were coming here." And then the unmistakably Carlson-esque reactionary barb. "So I have a message for the European Union tonight: How about remembering what we did for you in the middle of the 20th century?"Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| School teacher who self-quarantined at Connecticut home for three weeks vanishes after going for a walk in early May Posted: 29 Jun 2020 03:05 PM PDT  Gil Cunha was last seen just after midnight on May 7, 2020, at his parents' home on Overlook Avenue in West Haven, Connecticut. Later that morning, Gil's parents figured he was out for one of his daily walks. He never returned. Gil had been self-quarantining in his room the prior three weeks due to COVID-19 symptoms. He left behind two cell phones, his passport, credit cards and cash. The only item that appears to be missing is his driver's license. The West Haven Police Department is inve
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| Russian envoy says North Korea anger over leaflets was for depiction of Kim’s wife Posted: 30 Jun 2020 03:38 AM PDT  A series of condemnations over leaflets distributed in North Korea were driven by fury over "dirty, insulting" depictions of leader Kim Jong Un's spouse, Russia's top envoy in the reclusive country has said.
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| Xi Jinping’s Internal Great Wall Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:40 AM PDT  Like the Great Wall of generations past, Xi's Internal Great Wall will continue to keep China behind the rest of the world because a nation that suppresses its own people is not a nation the world can trust to do business fairly.
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| Netanyahu warns Assad against Iran entrenchment in Syria Posted: 30 Jun 2020 06:26 AM PDT  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday he would be "risking the future" of his regime if he allowed Iran to be entrenched militarily in his country. "We will not allow Iran to establish a military presence in Syria," he told reporters alongside visiting US pointman on Iran policy, Brian Hook. The two men called for an extension of an arms embargo on Iran, archfoe of both their countries, which expires in October.
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| Supreme Court strikes down consumer agency's autonomy in win for Trump administration Posted: 29 Jun 2020 01:04 PM PDT  The case was a major test of the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
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| An Italian teenager is one miracle away from becoming the first millennial saint Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:28 AM PDT  Carlo Acutis coined the phrase: "Everyone is born an original, but many die like photocopies," to warn people not to lose themselves on the internet.
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| Ex-Atlanta officer who killed Rayshard Brooks granted bond Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:07 AM PDT  The former Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks can be free on bond while his case is pending, a judge ruled Tuesday. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick set a bond of $500,000 for Garrett Rolfe, who faces charges including felony murder in the killing of Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man. Appearing via teleconference because of the coronavirus, lawyers for Rolfe argued that he is a native Georgian with strong ties to the community who is not at risk of fleeing or failing to show up for court and is not a danger to the community.
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| First coronavirus cases found in sprawling migrant camp at U.S. border Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:30 AM PDT  Three asylum seekers have tested positive for coronavirus in a sprawling encampment steps from the U.S. border in Matamoros, Mexico, marking the first cases in a settlement that advocates have long viewed as vulnerable amid the pandemic. Global Response Management (GRM), a nonprofit providing medical services in the camp, said it is proactively testing and isolating all close contacts of the three migrants who tested positive. "We have 5 patients in isolation: 2 who are awaiting results of testing and 3 who have tested positive on antibody testing," GRM Executive Director Helen Perry told Reuters on Tuesday.
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| Miami-Dade teachers union ratifies new contract. Starting teachers to get big raise Posted: 29 Jun 2020 03:16 PM PDT  Despite technological difficulties with electronic voting — and with the 2019-20 school year behind them — Miami-Dade teachers approved Monday a new labor contract that benefits new educators by increasing the minimum salary by $6,500 but shorts mid-career teachers, who will receive almost the same base pay as rookie teachers.
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| The coronavirus is devastating communities of color. The Trump administration's top doctor blames 'structural racism' and shares his plans to take action. Posted: 29 Jun 2020 05:19 AM PDT  Dr. Jerome Adams is preparing two calls to action — one on high blood pressure, the other on maternal mortality — to address racial health inequality.
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| FCC Bans Funding to Huawei, ZTE over China Ties Posted: 30 Jun 2020 11:48 AM PDT  The Federal Communications Commission has banned Huawei and the ZTE Coroporation from receiving federal funds because of the companies' ties to the Chinese government.The ban prevents both companies from drawing on the FCC's Universal Service Fund, an $8.3 billion fund paid for by Americans via phone bill fees."The [FCC] has designated Huawei and ZTE as national security risks to America's communications networks-and to our 5G future," FCC chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. "We cannot and will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to exploit network vulnerabilities and compromise our critical communications infrastructure."Both companies have been criticized by the U.S. for sharing data and information with the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly urged allies including Germany and the U.K. not to allow Huawei to develop local 5G networks. Additionally, Pentagon Defense Innovation Board chairman Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Google, has said Huawei can essentially act as "signals intelligence" for the CCP."The CCP has gained footholds in countries around the world with Huawei and ZTE under the premise that they are independent companies," Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) said in a statement. "The United States will not put US dollars in the communists' pockets and today's decision shows that. This is good for our national security and for our shared fight against China becoming the world's leading superpower."
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| Russia vs. NATO: Welcome to the Fourth Battle of the Atlantic Posted: 30 Jun 2020 04:14 AM PDT  The Russian submarine threat is significant.
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| Federal appeals court upholds GOP-enacted voting restrictions in Wisconsin Posted: 30 Jun 2020 04:46 AM PDT  The judicial panel found that the state can restrict early voting hours and restored a requirement that people must live in a district for 28 days.
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| Biden announces he won't hold campaign rallies during pandemic Posted: 30 Jun 2020 11:40 AM PDT  Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden outlines precautions he's taking while campaigning during the coronavirus pandemic.
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| China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization Posted: 28 Jun 2020 09:04 PM PDT  The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country's Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of "demographic genocide."
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| Missing hiker's body found at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington; 2 others still missing Posted: 30 Jun 2020 04:18 AM PDT  The body of one of three hikers missing at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state has been found, according to the National Park Service.
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| Russian state exit polls show 76% so far back reforms that could extend Putin rule Posted: 29 Jun 2020 01:15 AM PDT  Russian state opinion pollster VTsIOM said on Monday that its exit polls showed that 76% of Russians had so far voted to support reforms that could allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his rule until 2036. The nationwide vote on constitutional reforms began on June 25 and is being held over seven days as a precaution against the coronavirus pandemic. If approved, the changes would allow Putin to run twice for president again after his current term expires in 2024.
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| Lebanon army scraps meat from meals as prices skyrocket Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:26 AM PDT  The Lebanese army has scrapped meat from all meals it offers to soldiers on duty as food prices skyrocket because of a deepening economic crisis, state media said Tuesday. Lebanon is in the throes of its worst economic downturn since the 1975-1990 civil war, with poverty surging to now afflict around half of the population. Although its currency is officially pegged at 1,507 pounds to the dollar, a shortage of hard currency has seen its black market value plummet to more than 8,000 to the greenback.
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| A stacked deck: How police forces get away with killing more than 1,000 Americans a year Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:58 AM PDT  Most people who shoot and kill someone else are investigated and prosecuted. Police have a different set of rules.
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| The 20 Best Deals from REI’s Fourth of July Sale Posted: 30 Jun 2020 11:09 AM PDT |
| Trump's 'white power' retweet set off 'five-alarm fire' in White House Posted: 29 Jun 2020 06:11 PM PDT  Aides couldn't immediately reach the president to get him to take down the offending tweet because he was on the course at his golf club and had put down his phone, officials said.
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| City of London must face Brexit hit, Barnier tells finance chiefs Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:22 AM PDT  British trade negotiators will fail in their efforts to insulate the City of London from the worst consequences of Brexit, Michel Barnier warned a meeting of finance chiefs on Tuesday. The EU's chief negotiator said that British demands in the ongoing trade talks in Brussels were unacceptable and that UK plans to ditch EU financial regulation risked another crisis that could hurt the bloc. UK proposals would make it easy to continue to run EU businesses from London after the end of the transition period on December 31, he said, and prevent the EU from freezing UK financial services out of the Single Market at short notice. "I will be blunt. Its proposals are unacceptable," he said as negotiations continued in the Belgian capital, "The UK is trying to keep as many Single Market benefits as it can." London remains Europe's pre-eminent financial hub but that status is coveted by Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, which hope to profit from Brexit. "[The UK] would like to make it easy to continue to run EU businesses from London,with minimal operations and staff on the continent," Mr Barnier, said. "It wants to ban residence requirements for senior managers and boards of directors, to ensure that all essential functions remain in London," he added. "We are asking for arrangements just like those the EU agreed with Japan," a UK spokesman said, "Japan is not in the single market." UK financial services lose their EU "passport" to the Single Market at the end of the year. Brussels insists that future access will be based on "equivalence", a system of regulatory approval that can be withdrawn by the European Commission unilaterally and at as little as 30 days notice in some cases. British negotiators have called for a joint committee on equivalence decisions, which Mr Barnier said was attempting to turn unilateral decisions into co-managed ones. "These are autonomous, unilateral tools. And, as such, they are not part of our current negotiations," Mr Barnier said. Last year, the commission froze Swiss stock exchanges out of the Single Market in a bid to force Bern back to the negotiating table over a new treaty governing their relationship. London and Bern said on Tuesday they would begin negotiating a bilateral financial services agreement. Mr Barnier was internal market commissioner during the financial crisis and was responsible for much of the post-crisis regulation that was introduced by Brussels after 2008. Mr Barnier told the Eurofi think tank that the UK planned to ditch EU financial services regulations after Brexit. "Let us have no illusions: The UK will progressively start diverging from the EU framework. This is even one of the main purposes of Brexit," he said. He said, "The size of the UK financial market and the very close links between the EU and UK financial systems mean we need to be extra careful. We need to capture all potential risks: for financial stability, market integrity, investor and consumer protection, and the level playing field." EU and UK negotiators will continue discussion until the end of the week before another round of talks is held in London next week. In London, it emerged that UK companies exporting into the EU will have to wait for permission from tax authorities before moving their goods. Lorries will only be able to move loads into the EU if they have a valid reference from the so-called Goods Vehicle Movement Service, a new and untested IT platform, under plans being drawn up by the government. "British exporters will be the biggest losers from this," said Naomi Smith, chief executive officer of Best for Britain, a pro-EU campaigning group. "Additional bureaucracy threatens to clog up our trade arteries."
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| Iran journalist who fueled 2017 protests sentenced to death Posted: 30 Jun 2020 12:45 AM PDT  Iran sentenced a once-exiled journalist to death over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests that began at the end of 2017, authorities said Tuesday. Ruhollah Zam's website and a channel he created on the popular messaging app Telegram had spread the timings of the protests and embarrassing information about officials that directly challenged Iran's Shiite theocracy. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili announced Zam's death sentence on Tuesday, saying he had been convicted of "corruption on Earth," a charge often used in cases involving espionage or attempts to overthrow Iran's government.
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| Robbery Caught On Camera In Kips Bay Posted: 30 Jun 2020 03:33 AM PDT  Police are searching for a man seen on video putting a woman into a chokehold and then stealing her bag.
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| Russia investigates after journalist says police broke his arm at polling station during Putin vote Posted: 30 Jun 2020 12:31 PM PDT |
| Tokyo court rejects damages for man forcibly sterilised at age 14 Posted: 30 Jun 2020 01:30 AM PDT  A Japanese pensioner forcibly sterilised as a 14-year-old under a now-defunct eugenics law failed Tuesday in a legal bid for $280,000 in state compensation. According to local media, Tokyo District Court found the government was not obliged to pay the man compensation because the 20-year statute of limitations had passed. Last year, the government passed legislation offering the victims 3.2 million yen each ($29,700), an amount campaigners slammed as "failing to meet the seriousness" of the issue.
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| Ilhan Omar, Joaquin Castro demand removal of USAID religious freedom adviser for social media posts Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:31 AM PDT  "Mark Kevin Lloyd, who has a long history of promoting hateful, Islamophobic rhetoric has no business promoting religious freedom abroad," said Omar.
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| How Turkey Could Get Back into the F-35 Program: America Buys Their Russian S-400 Air Defense System. Posted: 30 Jun 2020 08:23 AM PDT  Oh, and Putin won't like that one bit.
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| The Texas Medical Center scrubbed data showing ICU beds at full capacity as the state's coronavirus cases spike Posted: 29 Jun 2020 08:01 AM PDT  The medical center had no empty ICU beds by Thursday. Its ICU capacity is usually between 70% and 80% of its total stock.
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| White couple who pointed gun at protesters say they support Black Lives Matter but felt threatened by ‘angry mob’ Posted: 30 Jun 2020 04:40 AM PDT  A white couple who pointed guns at protesters in St Louis have said they were threatened as crowds marched down their street.Video shared online showed 63-year-old Mark McCloskey and 61-year-old Patricia McCloskey stationed on the lawn outside their St Louis home on Sunday night as protesters walked past.
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| Three men arrested for murder in case of missing California couple who vanished in 2017 Posted: 29 Jun 2020 11:23 AM PDT  Three men have been arrested for murder in the case of Audrey Moran and Jonathan Reynoso, who have been missing since 2017. Manuel Rios, of Coachella, Abraham Fregoso, of Indio, and Jesus Ruiz Jr., of Stockton, were taken into custody on Saturday, June 27, 2020, and booked in Riverside County Jail. The Riverside County Sheriff's Office is investigating.
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