| 60 percent of Americans say federal government's coronavirus response is making the pandemic worse Posted: 01 Sep 2020 08:57 AM PDT  The U.S.'s COVID-19 response has fallen far behind most of the rest of the world's — and many Americans think the federal government is largely to blame.In contrast to President Trump's false insistence that the U.S. has one of the world's lowest mortality rates from coronavirus, a New York Times analysis published Tuesday shows the U.S. actually accounts for more than its population's share of COVID-19 deaths. And Americans largely recognize the U.S.'s failures, with 60 percent of them saying the federal government's COVID-19 response is actually making the pandemic worse, an Axios-Ipsos poll has found.Just 39 percent of Americans say the federal government is making America's coronavirus recovery better, the poll found, though there's a sharp divide between parties. Only 19 percent of Democrats say the federal government is making things better, while 80 percent say things are getting worse. Independents largely agree, with 68 percent say the government isn't helping. Meanwhile 74 percent of Republicans say the federal government is improving things, while 25 percent say it's actively worsening the pandemic, the poll found.Beyond just his response, Americans don't even trust Trump to give them accurate information regarding the coronavirus, the Axios-Ipsos poll says. But things aren't much better for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — 31 percent of Americans say they trust Trump for accurate COVID-19 information, while 46 percent say they trust Biden.The Axios-Ipsos poll surveyed 1,100 adults from Aug. 28-31, with a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.More stories from theweek.com Fauci shoots down false claim only 6 percent of coronavirus deaths are legitimate: 'They are real deaths from COVID-19' Trump is not the law and order candidate Andy Murray's double comeback advances him to U.S. Open's 2nd round
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| FBI Reports Chicago Gangs Have Formed Pact to Shoot Cops ‘On Sight’ Posted: 01 Sep 2020 11:13 AM PDT  A federal intelligence alert from the FBI field office in Chicago, Ill., warned that about 30 gangs in the city have made a pact to shoot police officers if they draw their weapons in public, ABC 7 reported on Monday.Intelligence alerts are frequently distributed to law enforcement officials, especially if the alerts involve threats to an officer's safety. This particular alert was based on "a contact whose reporting is limited and whose reliability cannot be determined," meaning a street source, witness, or information obtained through surveillance.The alert states that Chicago gangs have agreed to "shoot on-sight any cop that has a weapon drawn on any subject in public.""Members of these gang factions have been actively searching for, and filming, police officers in performance of their official duties," the alert continues. "The purpose of which is to catch on film an officer drawing his/her weapon on any subject and the subsequent 'shoot on-sight' of said officer, in order to garner national media attention."In early August, mobs of people staged what appeared to be a coordinated spate of looting and vandalism at Chicago's Magnificent Mile, a stretch of high-end businesses in the city's downtown. The looting occurred after police shot and arrested a suspect in the Englewood neighborhood. The looting was reportedly prompted by a rumor, which went viral on social media, that the cops had shot and killed a child, when in fact they had injured a 20-year-old man.Chicago has seen a rise in murders and shootings since the death of George Floyd earlier this year, a surge in violence likely compounded by economic dislocation caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a rise in anti-police sentiment, which has reportedly led police in many cities to adopt less aggressive tactics. There were 2,749 shooting victims in the city as of Monday, up 917 from the same period last year.Chicago police superintendent David Brown, who started his position several weeks before the Floyd protests, said on Monday that "a sense of lawlessness" has been observed by officers on the street. Brown also noted that the dangers for officers have dramatically increased."I think 51 officers being shot at or shot in one year, I think that quadruples any previous year in Chicago's history," Brown said. "So I think it's more than a suggestion that people are seeking to do harm to cops."
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| A grieving daughter in Wuhan is suing China, saying its early cover-up of COVID-19 killed her father. In response, the authorities reportedly intimidated her family. Posted: 01 Sep 2020 05:13 AM PDT  Zhao Lei told Sky News, "I think the government covered up some facts."
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| A transgender woman died while in custody on Rikers Island after she couldn't afford $500 bail. NYC just agreed to pay her family $5.9 million. Posted: 31 Aug 2020 11:56 PM PDT  Layleen Polanco had an epileptic seizure while being held in isolation at Rikers Island in 2019. A report identified several systemic failures.
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| The New Uighurs? Mongolians Protest as China Moves to Erase Local Culture Posted: 01 Sep 2020 02:02 AM PDT  HONG KONG—Students, teachers, parents, and others are staging protests in Inner Mongolia, a semi-autonomous region in northern China, by surrounding police stations and gathering outside schools. Thousands are congregating in rare displays of open defiance of governmental orders.These demonstrations were sparked by the Chinese government's directive issued in the summer to broaden the footprint of Mandarin Chinese in state-compiled textbooks and classroom instruction within the region, displacing the Mongolian language in academic environments and daily usage.From Sept. 1 onward, the authorities will shift public elementary and middle schools' language of instruction to Chinese, specifically for three courses—language and literature, history, as well as morality and law (which includes political and ideological indoctrination). The change will be rolled out in phases, eventually keeping just mathematics and art classes in the region's dominant native tongue.On anonymous parent said teaching everything in a second language would make it more difficult for children to learn in school. "As Mongolians—myself and other parents—we are not willing to watch our mother tongue be gradually replaced by another language. Sure, we study Chinese, from a young age so that's not an issue," they told the Voice of America Mandarin service.Ethnic Mongolians who reside in China see this as a step to erase an important part of their culture. Some see it as forced homogeneity directed at their youngsters, much like what is happening in Tibet and Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has strict rules that limit the public displays and practices related to each region's cultural identity. It's all part of the Chinese central government's objective to impose cultural and linguistic homogeneity on one of the world's largest and most diverse nations. As new policies are rolled out to bring this closer to fruition, the many cultures of more than one hundred million people are slowly expunged.The snapback came right before the start of the academic year. High school pupils, many wearing their school uniforms—blue and white track jackets with loose-fitting blue pants, worn by public school students all over the country—formed crowds and chanted, "Mongolian is our mother tongue! We are Mongolian until death!"The gatherings were peaceful. As of Tuesday, police officers were on site mostly to observe the protests.> ӨвөрмонголЭхХэлээХамгаалахТэмцэл > Жирэм, Хүрээ хошуунд, эцэг эхчүүд хүүхдүүдээ сургуулиас нь гаргаж авч байгаа байдал. pic.twitter.com/KM0wPVKWXQ> > — Enkhochir Khuvisgalt (@Khereid_Mongol) August 30, 2020Since the July announcement that schools in Inner Mongolia would phase out Mongolian language instruction, 4,200 petitions have circulated by ethnic Mongols in China against the policy, according to Made in China Journal, a quarterly publication that covers the socioeconomic changes in the country.In some cases, names are added to the petitions in circular formation so as not to create a hierarchy on paper, preventing the authorities from singling out one person as an organizer within the opposition. This method has historical precedence: regional resistance groups and secret societies in the 19th and 20th centuries applied this arrangement so that ringleaders could not be identified and captured.> While China forces the Chinese language onto students in Inner Mongolia, Mongolian elders write back in protest. pic.twitter.com/u7032oyBSF> > — Ungerni Khooloi (@Nicholastrad) August 31, 2020The regional education bureau of Inner Mongolia issued a statement on Monday to soothe the concerns of parents and students, saying, "The current bilingual education system has not changed." But people in the region point out that television, radio, and other forms of media are already broadcast in Mandarin Chinese, and that their own language is largely absent in massively distributed media. While families generally speak Mongolian at home, paring it back from schools will diminish the language's usage by ethnic Mongols who live in China.Language schools in five other provinces are also reducing their usage of local languages and dialects, replacing the curriculums with Mandarin Chinese instruction according to the government's new rules.Online posts about reactions to this policy, especially protests and petitions, are being censored. Videos of the demonstrations in Inner Mongolia have been scrubbed from Weibo, a domestic platform that functions like Twitter, as well as other social media sites. In late August, the only Mongolian language social network, Bainu, was taken offline by the Chinese government.The People's Republic of China propagates a myth of social harmony where the Han Chinese majority (more than 91 percent of the population) lives alongside 55 minorities. During the annual gathering of the country's rubber-stamp parliament, known as the National People's Congress, delegates from non-Han regions wear their traditional attire to stand out from the sea of black suits worn by most bureaucrats. Oftentimes, the lives and cultures of minorities are reduced to folksongs and dances, paving over the tensions caused by the Chinese authorities' demands for uniformity.This is particularly true in Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region where up to a million Uyghurs are in "thought transformation" camps at any given moment. People who are trapped in these high-security locations spend hours each day rehearsing musical and dance programs, which are then performed for visiting journalists as "proof" that individuals are "transformed" or "reformed," and can be integrated into the Chinese fabric of society.In these camps, language instruction plays an important role too. A leaked 2017 memo that was penned by an official who was at the time in charge of the region's security included this directive: "Make remedial Mandarin studies the top priority."This type of linguistic engineering is not new in China. The Chinese Communist Party governs by uniformity, mainly addressing ideological and economic matters, not so much social and cultural factors. Part of the idea is that people can be unified—or more easily kept under control—if they speak, hear, and read a single, flattened language, one that removes cultural intricacies and distinctions, breaking connections within regional pockets to channel direct links to the party's own organs.The policy in Inner Mongolia is, on paper, meant to foster stronger economic inclusion in an impoverished area within China. But the fact is that locals see its implementation as a slight—and a continuation of Han Chinese incursion into their culture. Many feel that their traditions are being dismantled in the name of poverty reduction, and few ethnic Mongolians have benefited from mining booms in an area that is nearly twice the size of Texas. Instead, state-run enterprises have reaped most of the profits.Now, the people of Inner Mongolia wonder if even their own language may be fading away too.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Women forced to 'make the sacrifices' as child care centers face lack of support Posted: 31 Aug 2020 04:11 AM PDT  Economic challenges have only grown amid the coronavirus pandemic, leaving workers and providers squeezed.
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| US vetoes UN resolution over Islamic State fighters' return Posted: 31 Aug 2020 11:20 AM PDT  The United States vetoed a U.N. resolution Monday calling for the prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration of all those engaged in terrorism-related activities, saying it didn't call for the repatriation from Syria and Iraq of foreign fighters for the Islamic State extremist group and their families which is "the crucial first step." U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft said the resolution, "supposedly designed to reinforce international action on counter-terrorism, was worse than no resolution at all."
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| Rioting is beginning to turn people off to BLM and protests while Biden has no solution Posted: 31 Aug 2020 02:25 PM PDT  Jacob Blake's shooting has sparked more rioting and as violence escalates, people are turning away from BLM, protesting, and social justice.
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| St. Louis couple charged after waving guns appear in court Posted: 31 Aug 2020 07:56 AM PDT  The attorney for a white St. Louis couple charged for waving guns during a racial injustice protest outside their home said Monday that they're anxious to prove "with absolute certainty" that they did not commit a crime. One week after Mark and Patricia McCloskey spoke on video to the Republican National Convention, they were in court briefly Monday morning and did not enter a plea. Mark McCloskey, 63, came out with AR-15 rifle, according to court records, which said Patricia McCloskey, 61, displayed a semiautomatic handgun.
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| American Airlines pilots landing in Los Angeles spotted a 'guy in a jetpack' just 300 yards from their passenger jet Posted: 01 Sep 2020 07:48 AM PDT  After other pilots confirmed the sighting near LAX, the LAPD is investigating the rogue aeronaut, who could face hefty fines if caught.
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| 'Antifa hunter' gets 3 years in prison for online racist threats Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:54 PM PDT  A Florida man who called himself "the Antifa hunter" as he began an online campaign to terrorize and harass people who opposed his white supremacist ideology was sentenced on Monday to more than three years in prison.
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| Trump White House Warns Colleges: Don’t Send Your COVID-Infected Students Home! Posted: 01 Sep 2020 09:48 AM PDT  Top White House officials rang the alarm bell during a call with the nation's governors on Monday, pleading with them to advise college presidents in their states to keep COVID-infected students on campus or risk another major outbreak. "We know that what happened across the South [in June] was primarily driven by 18-to-25 year olds, across the South, with asymptomatic spread," said Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force. "Sending these individuals back home in their asymptomatic state to spread the virus in their home town or among their vulnerable households could really recreate what we experienced over the June time frame in the South. So I think every university president should have a plan for not only testing but caring for their students that need to isolate."The comments represent one of the most explicit acknowledgments to date that the White House's aggressive push to bring students back to campus this fall has created serious risks for increased COVID transmission. It also underscores just how fragile the current situation is at college campuses across the country. Emails Show Chaos and Confusion at Ole Miss Over Coronavirus ExposureAccording to a New York Times tracker of COVID-19 at American colleges and universities, some 26,000 cases have emerged at over 750 institutions since the novel coronavirus hit the United States early this year. At the University of Alabama system alone, over 1,300 cases have been reported, according to the school's own coronavirus case tracker.Those spikes in infections have put college and university officials in a difficult position over how to manage community spread on their campuses. On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that students and professors at the University of Mississippi—a state where GOP Gov. Tate Reeves explicitly cited saving college football to justify a mask mandate—felt the administration was pressuring exposed (if not infected) students to return home to their families. Transparency concerns about outbreaks, and the prospect of students bringing coronavirus back to their older, possibly immunocompromised relatives, have also followed outbreaks at other major southern colleges like Alabama. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, meanwhile, shut down in-person instruction for undergrads just one week into the semester last month, and at least some students were reportedly set to head home without being tested for COVID-19. The University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, and Michigan State University also quickly pivoted to online learning last month.Despite these cases, the White House has been adamant that schools not only open their doors to on-campus learning this fall but that fall sports—specifically football—proceed as usual. Justifying this stance, top administration officials have downplayed the severity of transmission and infection among younger populations. President Donald Trump himself has insisted—despite inconclusive evidence, at best, to support his claim—that healthy college athletes are "not going to have a problem" with the disease. In fact, powerhouse college football programs like Texas Tech and Oklahoma have reported recent outbreaks among their active players.University of Alabama to Profs: Don't Tell Students About COVID-Infected ClassmatesSpeaking to governors on the call Monday, Vice President Mike Pence echoed Birx's admonition that infected students remain isolated on campus for fear that asymptomatic transmission could impact wider populations. "In general, we want to encourage, even when you have test positivity on campuses, we want to encourage universities to have students remain on or near campus and minimize the potential exposure to the larger community," said Pence. "We really believe—and I spoke to a university president just the other day—in suspending classes for a few weeks, have people study in their rooms, and... that kind of isolation."We believe, let's have the testing, let's have the mitigation efforts, good practices in place," Pence added. "But we really believe that remaining on or near campus is the best course possible for the overall health and well-being [of the community]."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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| The right-wing group Patriot Prayer, associated with a man killed in the Portland protests, has a history of provoking left-wing groups: 'This was just a matter of time' Posted: 31 Aug 2020 10:31 AM PDT  An Anti-Defamation League researcher fears that Aaron Danielson's killing will spur more bloodshed between right- and left-wing groups.
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| Homeless ‘ninth-grader’ given school laptop is really 21 years old, Georgia cops say Posted: 01 Sep 2020 01:23 PM PDT  Abay Holmes, 21, is accused of impersonating a high school student.
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| Riot Declared in Portland after Mob Shows Up at Mayor Wheeler’s Residence Posted: 01 Sep 2020 05:42 AM PDT  Portland Police declared a riot Monday evening after about 200 demonstrators marched to Mayor Ted Wheeler's residence to demand that he resign.Police reported that an "arson fire" was started in the area. Rioters also broke windows and attempted to set a store on the ground floor of the Democratic mayor's condominium building on fire."It was critical to secure the area to allow firefighters to respond to this dangerous situation," police said.Oregon State Police were also sent to Portland on Monday after a weekend of violence that saw one pro-Trump demonstrator fatally shot as Black Lives Matter protesters clashed with Trump supporters downtown.Democratic Governor Kate Brown on Sunday announced a plan to quell the nightly violence while still allowing peaceful protests, saying state police troopers and officers from several surrounding areas will be called in to assist Portland's police force. Meanwhile, the FBI and federal prosecutors will commit more resources to prosecute criminal offenses that arise from the demonstrations, she said."We all must come together—elected officials, community leaders, all of us—to stop the cycle of violence," Brown said in a statement. "But this is only the first step. Real change will come from the hard work to achieve racial justice."A pro-Trump demonstrator was shot and killed Saturday night during clashes in Portland between Black Lives Matter protesters and a caravan of Trump supporters who drove trucks through the downtown streets. The man wore a hat with the logo for the right-wing group Patriot Prayer. The male suspect reportedly under investigation for the fatal shooting declared his allegiance to Antifa on social media before the incident."Every Oregonian has the right to freely express their views without fear of deadly violence. I will not allow Patriot Prayer and armed white supremacists to bring more bloodshed to our streets," Brown said. "Time and again, from Charlottesville to Kenosha to Portland, we have seen the tragic outcome when armed right-wing vigilantes take matters into their own hands."Protests and rioting have been ongoing in Portland for more than 90 days since the police custody death of George Floyd in May.
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| AG Barr: 'What happened to the Trump presidential campaign ... must never happen again' Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:49 PM PDT  Attorney General William Barr issued restrictions on the FBI's ability to conduct surveillance of elected officials following Carter Page wiretap errors.
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| Fort Hood commander loses post, denied transfer after incidents at Army base Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:56 PM PDT  Maj. Gen. Scott Efflandt had been set to take over the 1st Armored Division in coming weeks.
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| Hamas says deal reached to calm violence with Israel Posted: 31 Aug 2020 12:42 PM PDT  Gaza's Hamas rulers said Monday they have reached an agreement through international mediators to end the latest round of cross-border violence with Israel. Under the deal, Hamas is to halt the launches of explosives-laden balloons and rocket fire into Israel, while Israel said it will ease a blockade that has been tightened in recent weeks. The Israeli restrictions have worsened living conditions in Gaza at a time when it is coping with a new coronavirus outbreak.
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| Face mask sales soar as Swedes eye potential guideline change Posted: 31 Aug 2020 08:04 AM PDT  Sweden is seeing a spike in demand for face masks, several drug stores said, ahead of a possible U-turn by the authorities, who have so far doubted their effectiveness in fighting the spread of the new coronavirus. Unlike most other European countries, Sweden has kept many businesses, restaurants and most schools open, while not recommending the use of face masks, which remain a rare sight unlike in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland. Face mask sales at online pharmacist Apotea have increased to around 400,000 units a week in the past two to three weeks from 150,000 in previous weeks, CEO Par Svardson said.
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| Residents in Kenosha are dismayed at law enforcement's response to the Jacob Blake shooting and protests: 'They just let the fires burn' Posted: 31 Aug 2020 11:45 PM PDT  During nights of civil unrest, parts of the city burned as armed citizens attempted to protect their properties from being destroyed.
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| Wildlife Photographer of the Year: How many crocodiles can you see? Posted: 01 Sep 2020 02:26 AM PDT  Gharial crocodiles may number less than 1,000 individuals in the wild - but there is always hope.
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| Letters to the Editor: Warp-speed vaccine manufacturing sickened 40,000 kids with polio in the 1950s Posted: 01 Sep 2020 03:00 AM PDT  A reader who became sick with polio after being vaccinated in 1955 warns of the perils of rushing a COVID-19 vaccine.
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| US warns NKorea still pressing ballistic missile development Posted: 01 Sep 2020 08:51 AM PDT  The US government warned Tuesday that North Korea continues to acquire materials and equipment for its ballistic missile program, despite claims in Washington that Pyongyang has pulled back on its nuclear ambitions.
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| Russia released secret footage of history's largest man-made explosion — a nuclear blast thousands of times stronger than Hiroshima Posted: 01 Sep 2020 03:09 PM PDT  The blast was equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT — nearly 1,500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined.
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| Trump intel officials announce they will no longer offer Democrats election security briefings Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:41 AM PDT  Democrats condemn "shocking abdication" of responsibility as intelligence officials scale back
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| Abu Dhabi crown prince says committed to Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:06 PM PDT  The Abu Dhabi crown prince said on Monday that the United Arab Emirates is committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV reported. In a statement read by UAE's foreign minister Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said to the Palestinian community in the country that the normalistion deal with Israel was a sovereign decision in the favour of peace. "Peace is a strategic choice, but not at the expense of the Palestinian cause," he said according to Al Arabiya.
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| 75 years later, Japanese man recalls bitter internment in US Posted: 31 Aug 2020 08:02 PM PDT  When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the first thing Hidekazu Tamura, a Japanese American living in California, thought was, "I'll be killed at the hands of my fellow Americans." At 99, amid commemorations of Wednesday's 75th anniversary of the formal Sept. 2, 1945, surrender ceremony that ended World War II, Tamura has vivid memories of his time locked up with thousands of other Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps. Torn between two warring nationalities, the experience led him to refuse a loyalty pledge to the United States, renounce his American citizenship and return to Japan.
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| Black jogger mistaken for suspect in Texas has all charges dismissed after arrest Posted: 01 Sep 2020 02:22 PM PDT  The district attorney dropped the case against insurance adjuster Mathias Ometu after last week's confrontation with San Antonio police.
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| Pentagon intensifies China operation with waterway flyovers Posted: 01 Sep 2020 07:49 AM PDT  The Trump administration is intensifying a challenge to China's ruling Communist Party and its sweeping territorial claims over some of the world's most important strategic waterways.
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| Zimbabwe to return land seized from foreign farmers Posted: 01 Sep 2020 09:16 AM PDT  Hundreds of mainly European farmers could benefit from the move, aimed at mending relations with the West.
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| Miami Democrat wants gun dealers held responsible for suspected straw purchases Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:37 PM PDT  A new bill from Miami Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell would make gun dealers responsible for identifying when customers are purchasing a weapon for someone else and halting the transaction.
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| 'We don't have a family pastor': Jacob Blake's father disputes Trump's account of trying to reach the family Posted: 31 Aug 2020 06:07 PM PDT  The family lawyer later said the president reached out to Jacob Blake's mother's pastor and declined to have a call if their legal team monitored it.
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| Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says new coronavirus relief bill 'hopefully' coming next week Posted: 01 Sep 2020 05:43 AM PDT  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday that the Trump administration and Senate Republicans have been discussing a possible revamp of coronavirus relief measures. The new bill will "hopefully" be unveiled next week, Mnuchin said.
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| U.S. Senator Markey battles Kennedy 'mystique' in Massachusetts Democratic primary Posted: 01 Sep 2020 03:06 AM PDT  Massachusetts Democrats on Tuesday were voting on whether to position a young member of the fabled Kennedy family to join the U.S. Senate or stick with their incumbent, who has been in Congress for decades fighting to tackle climate change and reduce nuclear weapons proliferation. This primary election pits Representative Joe Kennedy III, 39, the grandson of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, against 74-year-old Senator Ed Markey, who has spent over 40 years in the House of Representatives and Senate.
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| '2020 has been rough, but yesterday was Supreme': Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiates couple's wedding Posted: 01 Sep 2020 05:39 AM PDT  "2020 has been rough, but yesterday was Supreme," the bride, Barb Solish, said in a tweet along with a photo of Ginsburg presiding over the ceremony.
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| Police: Teacher with far-right ties harassed health officer Posted: 01 Sep 2020 11:35 AM PDT  A California community college instructor with ties to the far-right, anti-government "boogaloo" movement was in custody on suspicion of sending two dozen misogynistic and threatening letters to a county health officer involving the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said Tuesday. Alan Viarengo, 55, was arrested last week and investigators seized 138 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and explosive materials from his home in Gilroy, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said. Viarengo was charged with felony counts of stalking and threatening a public official after authorities said the letters were sent to county Health Director Dr. Sara Cody.
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| Sharp rise in Chinese coercive diplomacy in 2020, says new report Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:51 AM PDT  The Chinese Communist Party is increasingly resorting to the use of coercive diplomacy, taking advantage of the lack of a coordinated pushback from like-minded governments, according to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The study analyses 152 cases of the CCP's use of coercive diplomacy across 28 countries, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand and in East Asia over the past decade, and concludes that governments need to counter its "divide-and-conquer" tactics through a joint strategy via multilateral institutions. "Our dataset suggests the CCP has begun to use coercive diplomacy far more actively. We found a sharp increase from 2018 onwards," said Fergus Hanson, Emilia Currey and Tracy Beattie, the ASPI authors, in a statement. "In the first eight months of 2020 we found 34 cases of coercive diplomacy, which equates to more than half of the number recorded in 2019. Unless states can come up with a better strategy to resist coercive diplomacy, we can expect this trend to continue."
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| Here Is the Bloody Face of Putin’s New Crackdown Posted: 31 Aug 2020 10:17 AM PDT  MOSCOW—Yegor Zhukov is the face of a new generation of Putin opponents using social media as well as student rallies to stand up to the regime. On Sunday night, he was beaten up outside his home in Moscow hours after posting a YouTube video criticizing Putin. In a statement to the police, he said: "I have not suffered any property damage, but my face is broken."An image of the 22-year-old's bruised face, with bleeding lips and a swollen eye, has already gone viral online—an instant new symbol of Putin's latest crackdown.The country's leading opposition figure, Aleksey Navalny, was already comatose in a hospital bed in Berlin, fighting to regain consciousness after what German doctors describe as exposure to a poisonous substance whose effects are consistent with a nerve agent. This has been a summer of doom for Putin's opponents. The Russian president prevailed in a constitutional referendum in July, which is likely to keep him in power until 2036. Since then, Russians have watched bloody police crackdowns on protesters in Belarus, including alleged cases of torture and rape, ordered by Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator now being aided and abetted by Putin. Last week, the country was horrified to wake up to the news of Navalny's poisoning in Siberia. The attack on Zhukov—who is really just a kid—only added to a widespread sense of repression. On Sunday, Zhukov posted a video on his YouTube channel, which has 227,000 subscribers, about a crackdown against Putin's critics at his university, the Higher School of Economics. The school used to be a bastion of free speech in a country where that is increasingly rare.Zhukov, who was arrested last year during anti-government protests and threatened with eight years in prison, was due to begin his studies on the Masters program this fall. The video was posted in response to university administrators who abruptly told him that he would not be enrolled this year, even though he had already been accepted and had paid to start the course.Almost 200,000 people online watched Zhukov say: "Clearly, no professional person, who is serious about political science, would describe Vladimir Putin's regime as effective." Within hours, the student opposition leader was badly beaten outside his house in Moscow by unknown assailants. In the two decades of the Putin era, Russia has seen crackdowns on the media, human rights defenders, and opposition parties. Universities are the latest target. Professors and students believe potential students are blacklisted from enrolling at the Higher School of Economics by the FSB, Russia's successor to the KGB. "Authorities must be aware of Russia's history: students have always united in political movements," former Higher School of Economics professor and founder of Transparency International, Yelena Pamfilova, told The Daily Beast. "There is a giant crisis and not only in Russia: people in trouble, like Zhukov, want to call police for help but there is no trust for police and that is very dangerous." Intellectuals have long used the Higher School of Economics as a safe space where progressive political and economic ideas could be formulated and shared. "Recently, all professors with skeptical attitudes toward the government have lost their contracts," Zhukov said. "Our opposition student media was deprived of its status as a student organization."Last summer, Zhukov, who is morer libertarian than liberal, joined protests triggered by numerous violations at Moscow City Council elections. He was arrested and charged with public appeals for extremism. He could have been sentenced to eight years in prison, but he became a cause célèbre with thousands of students, professors, and ordinary Russians protesting that the charges should be dropped. The case against him was eventually dismissed but the university took action to avoid a repeat of the controversy, and in January all students and university staff were banned from making any political declarations in public or engaging in political activity. Zhukov believes the university was forced to make these announcements by the authorities. "The government got scared of our unity, that we were together with the university's management. It is hard for me to believe that people who for years built 'the most liberal university of the country,' all of a sudden turned into the guardians of the government," he said. It is unclear who or what scared the university management into the sudden policy change, but some of its best professors stopped working, including Yulia Galyamina, a linguist and opposition leader. Police broke her jaw, cracked her teeth, and gave her a severe concussion when she took part in a protest. Yelena Lukyanova, another professor who left the university, said kicking out Zhukov had forced the crackdown into the public eye. "At least they told the man everything openly, while all we heard was some indirect hints," she wrote on social media. Lukyakova and three other former professors have started "the Free University," an independent educational project free of political pressure and censorship. "There will be no 'disloyal' students at the Higher School of Economics, we spoke about these horrible changes six months ago, and here is the nail in the coffin of my alma mater," wrote former student Roman Kiselyov-Augustus on Facebook. "They can ban you from studying for your political activity."Zhukov returned home on Monday still badly bruised, but doctors said there would be no lasting damage from the attack. From the hospital, he had repeated the favorite slogan of former Putin nemesis Boris Nemtsov: "Russia will be free." The Russian opposition leader was assassinated beneath the walls of the Kremlin in February 2015, when Zhukov was 18 years old. In neighboring Belarus, crowds are also demanding freedom after discredited elections. More than 100,000 protesters marched across the bridge in Minsk to the presidential residence, demanding Lukashenko's resignation on Sunday. The Kremlin had stayed quiet for the first couple of weeks of the protests, while hundreds of Belarusians were detained, many beaten and tortured. Putin has since signaled growing support for the Lukashenko regime. To demonstrate Moscow's backing, Putin called Lukashenko on Sunday with birthday greetings, while a crowd of protesters was outside chanting, "Happy birthday, Lukashenko, you are a rat!"Putin has also promised to send men from Moscow to help Lukashenko "halt extremist activity in the republic if an urgent need arises," a spokesman said.Veteran human rights defender and chairwoman of the Civic Assistance Committee, Svetlana Gannushkina, said the two autocrats from the former Soviet Union had been emboldened by President Donald Trump's calls to violently put down protests in the U.S. "Looking at Trump, they think it is OK to solve problems with the opposition outside of the rule of law," she said. "In Russia the first target for the Kremlin's reprisal is always the intelligentsia. Until recently, Zhukov's university, the Higher School of Economics, was the source of progressive liberal ideas. Clearly it was an unpleasant place for the authoritarian government." Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| After 3 unplanned shutdowns at Turkey Point nuclear plant, feds launch ‘special inspection’ Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:13 PM PDT  After three unplanned nuclear reactor shutdowns over three days this month, federal regulators have launched a "special inspection" at Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point plant.
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| Police use footage from Amazon's Ring doorbells for investigations, but leaked documents reveal the FBI is concerned that homeowners could spy on officers Posted: 01 Sep 2020 01:29 PM PDT  Motion-detection cameras could also show officers' locations in a standoff or compromise officer safety, the FBI report said.
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| Russia's military seemingly toeing the line with U.S. after armored vehicle 'deliberately rammed' American troops Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:11 PM PDT  Russian military aggression is on the rise against the U.S. -- but President Trump has seemingly not responded to it.Russian warplanes are increasingly flying close to Alaskan airspace, forcing the U.S. to run interception efforts more often than it has in recent years. Russian fighter jets kept zooming within 100 feet of a U.S. Air Force bomber over the Black Sea, and a Russian helicopter recently hovered close to U.S. forces. And just last week, a Russian armored vehicle "deliberately rammed" into an American patrol in Syria, injuring seven U.S. troops, The New York Times notes.But President Trump hasn't given much public attention to the threats -- something both Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Trump's own former officials have called him out for. They say it's a continuation of Trump's lack of public confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin over reports that Russia placed bounties on U.S. troops' heads in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did tell the Times that "America will respond" to the armored vehicle situation.Biden brought up the ramming incident in a Monday speech, asking "Did you hear the president say a single word? Did he lift one finger?" to respond to it. Russia similarly escalated aggression during the Obama administration, but reportedly to a lesser extent. "Never before has an American president played such a subservient role to a Russian leader," Biden continued, calling Trump's lack of action "not only dangerous," but "humiliating and embarrassing."Brett McGurk, a former national security official who served under both former President Barack Obama and Trump, meanwhile tweeted some harsh criticism of his own. > Reminder: these incidents have been ongoing for months. Trump has apparently never raised the issue in multiple calls with Putin. He leaves our troops to fend for themselves. https://t.co/55eT4qDhfl> > -- Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) August 26, 2020More stories from theweek.com Fauci shoots down false claim only 6 percent of coronavirus deaths are legitimate: 'They are real deaths from COVID-19' 60 percent of Americans say federal government's coronavirus response is making the pandemic worse Trump is not the law and order candidate
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| South Korea charges intelligence officers with raping North Korean defector Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:23 AM PDT |
| Airbus unveils B-model Lakota helos to enter US Army fleet next year Posted: 01 Sep 2020 11:53 AM PDT  A new Lakota will join the Army National Guard in 2021.
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