| Donald Trump is suddenly scared of Mike Bloomberg — as he should be Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:30 PM PST  Mike Bloomberg probably isn't going to win the Democratic nomination for president. But he might beat Donald Trump anyway. The reason? Well, there are a couple billion of them — namely, the $2 billion Bloomberg plans to spend on Democrats' behalf.
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| US military investigating after finding Pornhub video of Navy service members shot through peephole Posted: 24 Jan 2020 01:34 PM PST  The Navy is reportedly investigating videos found on the website Pornhub that they believe show unsuspecting service members through a peephole in a bathroom.The videos were discovered earlier this month by an agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Series, according to a report by NBC News.
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| Australia's Kangaroo Island is looking for volunteers to feed animals injured in bushfires Posted: 24 Jan 2020 07:10 AM PST  Nearly half of Kangaroo Island was burned by the bushfires this month alone. The RSPCA has posted an application form.
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| Damaged By Drone Strike: Suleimani's Sainthood Is Now Being Questioned Posted: 24 Jan 2020 07:52 AM PST  Iran's brand is thinning among the Shi'a and Suleimani's departure creates breathing room for the Shi'a in the region.
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| Victims' bodies still at New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel months after collapse Posted: 23 Jan 2020 09:19 AM PST  * Wind blows tarp off one of two bodies amid ruins * Unstable building to be imploded in MarchThree months after the partial collapse of the Hard Rock hotel construction site on the tip of New Orleans's historic French Quarter, a macabre reminder of the tragedy that claimed three lives was visible to passersby this week.Among the collapsed building's twisted remains and rubble, the dangling legs of a wedged corpse were revealed to the public after a tarpaulin sheet covering the body was blown away by wind.The gruesome sight came as city officials are scrambling to dismantle the 18-storey, 350-room hotel, which remains an eyesore and still holds the trapped remains of two workers, Quinnyon Wimberly and José Ponce Arreola.After images of the exposed corpse provoked outrage on social media, city firefighters installed a new tarp on Wednesday afternoon. As of Thursday morning the covering remained intact, as police maintained a heavy presence around the collapsed building.The mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, urged members of the public and the media not to photograph or share images of the body."To be clear: capturing or sharing images of the victims in such a condition is irresponsible, it is indefensible, and it is not who we are as New Orleanians," a statement from the mayor's office read. "We urge news outlets, residents, and social media users to have nothing to do with making a tragic situation needlessly worse."Cantrell has faced significant criticism for her handling of the saga and it remains unclear if the collapse is being criminally investigated. Last week, city officials announced new plans to implode the building by mid-March, after the firm that owns the site – 1031 Canal Street Development – had lobbied for a gradual demolition process that would have extended into next year.The mayor's office said on Wednesday that "respectful recovery of the remains" is still a "top priority" but that the building's continued instability had made recovery "extremely difficult and very dangerous". One of the bodies is trapped over 11 storeys above street level.A spokeswoman for the mayor's office declined to comment further on Thursday.The city is preparing for the annual Mardi Gras season, which draws about a million tourists to New Orleans in February and brings in about $400m to the local economy.The collapse has also drawn attention to the plight of the city's undocumented community after one worker, Delmer Joel Ramírez Palma, was deported to Honduras by federal authorities, having been hospitalized due to injuries sustained during the incident.Ramírez Palma had alerted authorities to dangers in the construction process before the collapse and was interviewed by Spanish language TV in the aftermath. He had lived in New Orleans for 18 years.Several lawsuits have been filed against the project's developers and contracts, citing allegations of negligence. Plaintiffs include both bystanders and workers injured during the collapse.
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| Philippine President Duterte threatens to end military deal with U.S. Posted: 24 Jan 2020 08:51 AM PST  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned the United States on Thursday he would repeal an agreement on deployment of troops and equipment for exercises if Washington did not reinstate the visa of a political ally.
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| Donald Trump shares image of Barack Obama scaling Trump Tower Posted: 24 Jan 2020 03:49 AM PST  Donald Trump has tweeted a photoshopped image of Barack Obama scaling the walls of Trump Tower with suction cups and holding binoculars.The image, which was posted without a caption, appeared to be a reference to Mr Trump's claims that Mr Obama and the FBI illegally spied on him.
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| The outbreaks of both the Wuhan coronavirus and SARS started in Chinese wet markets. Photos show what the markets look like. Posted: 24 Jan 2020 08:37 AM PST  The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak started in a Chinese wet market, where livestock and poultry are sold alongside animals like dogs, hares, and civets.
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| Warren responds after angry dad confronts her on student loans Posted: 24 Jan 2020 07:53 AM PST  In the exchange, a father asked Warren if he is getting "screwed" because he saved money for his daughter's education.
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| A Bank Wouldn't Take His Bias Settlement Money. So He's Suing. Posted: 24 Jan 2020 12:12 PM PST  Last week, Sauntore Thomas, a black man from Detroit, had a victory over profiling when he settled a race discrimination case against his former employer.But as he learned this week, it was too soon to celebrate.When he tried Tuesday to deposit the money at his TCF Bank, a new lawsuit says, he met resistance that escalated with a call to the police and what amounted to a claim of racial discrimination against the bank. The lawsuit called it "banking while black."After the assistant branch manager called the police, Thomas, 44, was questioned by two Livonia Police Department officers in the lobby for about an hour, Thomas and his lawyer, Deborah Gordon, said in interviews Thursday. He was also accused of fraud, even after Gordon texted screenshots of documents showing that he had just won the funds from the settlement, Gordon said."I have had this with black clients before," Gordon said. "There can be a lot of questions when they suddenly have money."Lt. Charles Lister, the investigative bureau commander at the police department, said that Thomas was not handcuffed or patted down, that the two officers were in the bank with him for 50 minutes and that two others briefly waited outside."He was never told he could not leave by our officers," Lister said.Thomas, whose story first appeared in The Detroit Free Press, had collected the checks from the Jan. 13 federal settlement with his former employer, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Circuit Court for the county of Wayne.On Jan. 21, Thomas went to the TCF branch in Livonia, Michigan, where he has had a checking account since 2018, it says. He asked to open a savings account, obtain a new debit card, deposit the money and get cash back, the lawsuit says.But he did not get far. The lawsuit says he was told by the assistant branch manager that the system was malfunctioning, that the checks had to be "verified" and "called in," and that he needed to answer a question: "How did you get this money?" The lawsuit says that the assistant branch manager went into a back room and called the Livonia Police Department.In an interview Thursday, Thomas said that two police officers arrived, while two were posted outside the bank. Thomas said one of the officers inside the bank told him, "'Can you come over here and speak with us?' And I said, 'Who, me?'"He said he was told to take his hands out of his pockets, which he did, and go to a back room, which he refused to do."He thought I was a threat," Thomas said. "I was just trying to do some banking."TCF did not immediately reply to an email or phone calls seeking comment.The Free Press quoted a bank spokesman, Tom Wennerberg, as saying that race was not a factor and that the checks showed a watermark that read "void" when scanned by the bank. Wennerberg said the three checks were for $59,000, $27,000 and $13,000. Gordon said she was unable to disclose the amount of the checks.After Thomas was questioned by the officers and they spoke to Gordon, he left without depositing the checks, the suit continues. Thomas' "race was a factor" in the bank's decision to "treat him less favorably than other individuals," it says.The lawsuit, which alleges race discrimination and names TCF Financial Corp. as the defendant, is seeking a jury trial.Wennerberg said in an interview Thursday that Thomas had little previous activity on his account and the assistant branch manager, who is black, believed the checks could be fraudulent because they "visually" did not match previous checks."We take extra precautions involving large deposits and requests for cash, and in this case, we were unable to validate the checks presented by Mr. Thomas and regret we could not meet his needs," Wennerberg said."We really want to apologize for the experience," he said. "Local police should not have been involved."Before he left the bank that day, Thomas closed his TCF account; he then went to another bank, where he opened a new account and deposited the checks, he said. They cleared the next morning and Thomas was able to buy a used car that he had his eye on for $6,000, he said.But TCF bank had filed a police report against Thomas, alleging check fraud, according to the lawsuit. On Jan. 22, a Livonia detective asked Gordon in an email for a contact at Thomas' former employer, Enterprise, the rental car company, so that the officer could ask about the settlement checks and "confirm that they are not fraudulent," the email said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Want To Start A War With America? Go Try To Sink An Aircraft Carrier Posted: 23 Jan 2020 01:00 PM PST  Iran and China shouldn't test their luck.
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| 2 elephants escaped a circus in Russia and rolled around in the snow before being recaptured Posted: 24 Jan 2020 07:20 AM PST  Two elephants escaped a circus in Yekaterinburg, Russia. One of them rolled around in the snow. It took a dozen people to wrangle them.
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| Virologist who helped identify SARS on coronavirus outbreak: 'This time I'm scared' Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:58 PM PST  Experts are seeing shocking similarities between the coronavirus that has now spread beyond China and the SARS outbreak of 2003.Like the infectious pneumonia that has killed at least 17 people, SARS was caused by a coronavirus that originated in China. But when one of the virologists who helped identify the SARS virus visited Wuhan, where this virus originated, he didn't see nearly enough being done to fight it. People were out at markets without masks, "preparing to ring in the New Year in peace and had no sense about the epidemic," Guan Yi of the University of Hong Kong's State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases told Caixin. Airports were hardly being disinfected, Guan continued, saying the local government hasn't "even been handing out quarantine guides to people who were leaving the city."The city did disinfect the market where the virus has been traced to, but Guan criticized Wuhan for that, saying it hurts researchers' abilities to track down the virus's source. "I've never felt scared," Guan told Caixin. "This time I'm scared."A case involving the coronavirus was identified in Washington state on Wednesday, and cases have also been identified in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. A total of 639 cases were confirmed in China.More stories from theweek.com Trump debuts official Space Force logo — and it's literally a ripoff of Star Trek 14 dead, hundreds injured after 6.7 earthquake in eastern Turkey Donald Trump and the moral decline of the pro-life movement
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| In southern Poland, archaeologists discover WW2 plane wreck Posted: 24 Jan 2020 06:26 AM PST ![In southern Poland, archaeologists discover WW2 plane wreck]( "In southern Poland, archaeologists discover WW2 plane wreck") Archaeologists have discovered the wreck of a U.S.-made bomber flown by the Soviet Red Army in World War Two, along with the remains of four crewmen killed when it crashed in southern Poland, private broadcaster TVN reported. Marta Wrobel in the town of Bierun during the war and told TVN that the blast from the crash had been powerful enough to blow out windows and doors. The remains of the four Soviet crewmen who perished in the crash will be laid to rest at a nearby Red Army cemetery.
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| Trump imposes visa restrictions on pregnant women to target 'criminal' birth tourism Posted: 23 Jan 2020 09:53 AM PST  The United States will no longer issue tourist tourist visas to foreign women travelling to the country on tourist visas, citing security concerns arising from so-called "birth tourism".The new rules were unveiled by the State Department on Thursday, and seek to put an end to the practice of giving birth in the US so that the child can obtain US citizenship.
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| Biden Calls DACA Recipients ‘More American Than Most Americans’ Posted: 24 Jan 2020 06:29 AM PST  Former vice president Joe Biden said at a campaign event in Iowa Thursday that most undocumented immigrants benfitting from the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are "more American than most Americans.""These kids have come, they've done well, most of these kids — there's a lot of them . . . they in fact have done very, very well," Biden said. "In many cases, they're more American than most Americans are because they have done well in school. They believe the basic principles that we all share. I think they should, in fact, put on a path to citizenship."Biden, who earlier this week said he would fire any ICE agent attempting to deport illegal immigrants who had not committed a felony, has been an outspoken defendant of former president Barack Obama's immigration record."We didn't lock people up in cages. We didn't separate families. We didn't do all of those," the former vice president said during the September Democratic debate. In November, the U.N. revealed that Obama held over 100,000 illegal immigrant children in detention in 2015.DACA is currently facing a Supreme Court decision on its survival, after the Trump administration decided to end it in 2017.A November report from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services showed that approximately one in 10 DACA recipients have an arrest record, after President Trump tweeted many had criminal backgrounds."Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from 'angels.' Some are very tough, hardened criminals," Trump wrote on November 12.Trump has also stated he would be open to a "deal" with Democrats to allow DACA recipients to stay in the U.S.
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| Rep. Ilhan Omar launches 'Send her back to Congress!' reelection bid with big advantages Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:07 PM PST  Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is kicking off her reelection campaign Thursday night with a massive bank account and no challengers who pose a serious threat from either party. Her campaign slogan — "Send her back to Congress!" — gleefully evokes President Trump's personal attacks on her.
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| China Puts 13 Cities on Lockdown as Coronavirus Death Toll Climbs Posted: 23 Jan 2020 09:34 PM PST  China is striving to contain a deadly virus outbreak the World Health Organization has termed a domestic health emergency
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| Mexico sees rise in gangs, vigilantes recruiting children Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:49 PM PST  One day after a vigilante group revealed that it was using children as young as 8 as "recruits" for armed defense patrols, Mexico's president said Thursday that drug cartels too are recruiting ever-younger kids. The whole issue has sparked a debate in Mexico over the use of children in armed confrontations, with rights groups saying the practice threatens not only kids' safety, but their mental health. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that because social programs are giving more youths opportunities to study or work, drug cartels are having trouble finding gunmen, leading them to recruit children.
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| Residents paint a picture of Epstein's life on "Pedophile Island" Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:07 PM PST  When Epstein was convicted and serving time for procuring an underage girl in Florida for sex, word of his 13 month sentence and his alleged crimes made their way to St. Thomas.
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| New Moon Photos! Get Your New Moon Photos Here! Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:38 PM PST |
| White House breaks silence on Jeff Bezos phone-hacking scandal, calls Saudi Arabia an 'important ally' Posted: 23 Jan 2020 10:10 AM PST  The White House weighed in on reports that Saudi Arabia hacked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone, saying it takes the situation seriously.
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| Iran Has A Lot Of Missiles And The U.S. Navy's Carriers Look Like Juicy Targets Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:00 PM PST  Could Iran sink a carrier?
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| 'Serious safety risk': Man arrested after pointing laser at planes, temporarily blinding one pilot Posted: 24 Jan 2020 08:46 AM PST  Two planes were struck by a laser, temporarily blinding one pilot, as they flew into Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport on Wednesday night.
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| Trump impeachment: Senators accused of falling asleep, playing games and reading books during trial Posted: 24 Jan 2020 02:43 AM PST  A Republican senator appeared to fall asleep for 15 minutes during Donald Trump's impeachment trial — while others were spotted doodling, reading books and playing with fidget spinners.Jim Risch, representing Idaho, sat slumped with his eyes closed and his head resting on his right hand as the charges against the US president were outlined.
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| General Says U.S. Troops Deployed to Middle East by Trump Admin. May Be There for ‘Quite a While’ Posted: 24 Jan 2020 06:00 AM PST  Marine General Frank McKenzie, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, warned troops deployed as part of a recent surge that he was "not sure how long you're going to stay" in the region."You're here because I requested that you come," McKenzie said to sailors and Marines aboard the USS Bataan amphibious assault ship, according to the Associated Press. "I'm not sure how long you're going to stay in the theater. We'll work that out as we go ahead. Could be quite a while, could be less than that, just don't know right now."McKenzie was addressing a small contingent of the 20,000 troops who have been deployed to the Middle East in the last eight months due to escalating tensions with Iran.The general told reporters that while Iran is "deterred right now, the nation "continues to pose a very real threat" to U.S. forces and interests. Iran said that they "did not intend to kill" American troops earlier this month, following a retaliatory rocket attack on U.S. military bases in Iraq."Iran is very hard to read," McKenzie said. "So I would say the fact that things are quiet for a while does not mean that necessarily things are getting better."The U.S. caused waves on January 6 following the leak of a draft letter to Iraq's Ministry of Defense that implied U.S.-led coalition forces were planning to withdraw from the country, only for Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley to then say the letter was a "mistake."The State Department then confirmed that U.S. forces would stay in Iraq after Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to withdraw U.S. forces from the country."America is a force for good in the Middle East," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. "Any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership — not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East."
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| 'End of the world': Wuhan a ghost town under quarantine Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:48 AM PST  Wuhan residents called for help and shared worries of food shortages Thursday, with streets in the virus-hit central Chinese city left deserted after it was put on lockdown. After he bought some, the person behind him in the queue bought the remaining stock in the shop.
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| Social worker charged with coercing client into prostitution Posted: 24 Jan 2020 09:20 AM PST ![Social worker charged with coercing client into prostitution]( "Social worker charged with coercing client into prostitution") A former child services caseworker has been charged with human trafficking, accused of recruiting a mother who was her client into prostitution in exchange for a favorable custody recommendation, authorities said. Candace Talley, 27, of Winslow, New Jersey, was working for the Division of Children and Youth Services in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, when she coerced the mother, whose children were in foster care and whose case Talley was managing, into working as a prostitute, the Delaware County District Attorney's office announced Thursday. Talley drove the woman to and from jobs and took more than 25% of the money that was made, authorities said.
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| Brexit Deal Clears Parliament, Paving U.K.’s Way to Leave the EU Posted: 22 Jan 2020 09:00 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal cleared its final hurdles in Parliament, bringing the crisis that paralyzed U.K. politics since the country voted to leave the European Union almost four years ago to a close.The passage of the law vindicates Johnson's gamble to call an election last month in which he asked voters to back his blueprint for leaving the bloc on Jan. 31. His 80-seat majority in the elected House of Commons meant he could sweep aside objections from pro-EU politicians in the upper chamber of Parliament, the Lords, and break the deadlock that cost his predecessor, Theresa May, her job last year."At times it felt like we would never cross the Brexit finish line, but we've done it. Now we can put the rancour and division of the past three years behind us," Johnson said, according to an emailed statement.Later Wednesday, members of the unelected House of Lords formally dropped their opposition and accepted the legislation as approved by the Commons. The bill will now go to Queen Elizabeth II who will sign it into law, putting Britain on track to leave the EU in eight days' time.The agreement with the EU will now need to be formally ratified by the European Parliament on Jan. 29, before the U.K. leaves the bloc at the end of the month. Britain will then enter a transition period, scheduled to last until the end of the year, during which it will continue to be bound by EU laws until it negotiates a new trade deal with the remaining 27 member states.Johnson is expected to sign the agreement in the coming days, and the European Council and Commission presidents may sign it Friday in Brussels, according to a U.K. government official.U.K., EU Draw Battle Lines as the Hard Part of Brexit Begins"We're in a very happy position in that we leave the EU in a position of absolute grace and uniformity," Johnson said as he answered questions from the public about the future negotiations with Brussels on Facebook. "We are in perfect alignment with our EU friends and partners."Looking ahead, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid acknowledged Johnson's Dec. 31 deadline for reaching a new trade deal with the EU was "tight.""Both sides recognize that it's a tight timetable, a lot needs to be put together in the time that we have, but it can be done," Javid said during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "And it can be done for both goods, where we want to see free trade, zero tariffs, zero quotas -- but also on services."The House of Lords had tried to amend the Brexit legislation to enhance EU citizens' rights in Britain, allow judges -- rather than ministers -- to decide on the use of rulings by European Courts, and to ensure unaccompanied refugee children can join family in the U.K. All the measures were rejected by the Commons. Johnson's government rejected these changes and pushed the Lords to back down.\--With assistance from Lucy Meakin, Olivia Konotey-Ahulu, Ian Wishart and Jessica Shankleman.To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Edward EvansFor 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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| Democrats walked right into Mitch McConnell's trap Posted: 23 Jan 2020 02:50 AM PST  As the Senate wrapped up its long, loud squabbling about the rules of the impending impeachment trial in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, it was obvious that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had successfully lured Democrats into yet another procedural trap. The louder the partisan shouting gets, the more McConnell has succeeded in making the president's crimes seem like just another day in a D.C. that is widely loathed by voters. Now in full control of the trial proceedings, and hence the president's fate, McConnell will hold his attenuated trial, the president will huff and puff about total exoneration, and Democrats, still scared of their own shadows and neurotically obsessing over losing a single white voter who can walk to a cornfield, will have kicked away yet another opportunity to properly leverage their power.It didn't have to be this way.When leading Democrats rushed to impeach the president this past fall over the unfolding Ukraine scandal, they were unwittingly playing into the hands of the president and McConnell. While I have always thought the political case for removing Trump was underrated for Republicans, there was probably never any significant chance that McConnell's senate would vote to convict the president. For some Democrats, that meant that impeachment itself was a dangerous waste of time that would inevitably result in a very public victory for President Trump.Others wanted to stand on principle, outcome be damned. But Democrats should always have considered doing what McConnell himself would have done if he had been in Pelosi's shoes — keep the inquiry open as long as possible, strategically deploy leaks and hearings at critical moments like the GOP's summer nominating convention, investigate every possible avenue of the president's wrongdoing in committee after committee, and then sit on it until the upper hand is yours. Maybe you impeach the president close to the election so the Senate has no time to convict. Or maybe you prepare two dozen articles of impeachment and hold onto them in case the president is re-elected. Then impeach him on Inauguration Day. The point is to recognize that the current Senate is an immovable object, and to figure out a way around it rather than plowing directly into it at 65 miles per hour.Pelosi herself seemed to belatedly realize the fundamental dynamic at play here when she refused for several weeks to turn over the articles of impeachment to the Senate. It's hard to believe that she or anyone else in the Democratic caucus thought that McConnell would conduct a fair trial. So what did they think was going to happen, exactly? I can't blame them for hoping for a sharper turn in public opinion against the president, but that ship had sailed long before the full House voted on the articles on December 18.The case for slow-rolling impeachment in the House was threefold. From a substantive standpoint, the White House's hyper-aggressive stonewalling meant that critical witnesses like former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and the Logorrhea-stricken ringleader Rudy Giuliani would not be heard from. The only person in the actual cabal who Americans got to see testify was EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Democrats feared their subpoenas would get tied up in court for too long, perhaps past the election, or that the rulings would not go their way. But it's not clear how that's not preferable to what is transpiring now.Would Trump's cronies have melted down under the pressure and admitted to everything under oath in some kind of Colonel Jessup moment? Probably not. But they would have had to perjure themselves and spend the rest of their lives worried about the emergence of new evidence, like witness-protected ex-mafiosos who sleep with a gun under the pillow in fear that they've been found. And they almost certainly would have slipped at some point and accidentally told the truth about something, a la Mick Mulvaney's "we do that all the time" press conference. The thing about a lot of these people is that they are both corrupt and stupid. They wouldn't hold up forever.The second reason was that there were obviously more shoes to drop. Yes, the basic outline of the president's wretched Ukraine caper have been clear since September: Giuliani spearheaded a campaign to blackmail the new Ukrainian president into announcing investigations into Hunter Biden's time on the board of the energy firm Burisma as well as the LSD-spiked fever dream that Kyiv, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Critical military aid was held up, and a White House visit conditioned on the announcements. The twin goals were sabotaging the 2020 election and undermining the findings of the Mueller investigation.The Giuliani end of this scheme always promised more revelations. And sure enough, over the past few weeks we've learned potentially explosive new details from Giuliani bagman Lev Parnas, including that former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was under surveillance and that her life may have been threatened by some collection of Giuliani's goons. And the more we learn about these efforts, the more questions we have about why and when the influence operation started and who in the Trump administration was involved. Ukrainian officials seem to agree, and have opened a criminal inquiry into the Yovanovitch affair. Does any Democrat in the House really think they've heard the last bombshell?The third reason brings us to McConnell. The moment they passed the articles of impeachment, Democrats were handing control of the impeachment process over to McConnell, the master manipulator who has outfoxed and wrong-footed Democrats at nearly every juncture over the past decade. The Senate floor defeat of his Obamacare repeal effort should be thought of more like Yankees closer Mariano Rivera blowing Game 7 of the 2001 World Series — a rare stumble that only highlighted how dominant he was the rest of the time. And like Rivera, who threw the same pitch over and over and over again, McConnell runs the same play every time, and Democrats still can't make anything more than weak contact.That play is very simple. If something will benefit Republicans and screw over Democrats, it will be done, as long as it doesn't explicitly violate the Constitution. The majority leader relentlessly uses the Democrats' instinctive protectiveness of good government, procedural fairness and professionalism against them, with a kind of weaponized cynicism that somehow still surprises people. He'll negotiate, only to capitulate to his hardliners. He'll sucker Democrats into compromise, only to then violate either the spirit or the letter of it, often both. He'll let his "moderates" make ambiguous remarks that give Democrats hope, only to whip them into line when it really matters.Democrats should have played keep-away from McConnell for as long as possible. Instead, they let Nate Cohn's Midwest polls and the Sunday show geniuses get into their heads and convince them that impeachment was some kind of grenade they had just enough time to pull the pin on and run away.That's what they did. And it did some damage. Fifty-one percent of Americans believe the president should be removed from office, according to one recent CNN poll, with 58 percent saying he abused the powers of his office. The president has spent months mewling about the unfairness of it all instead of making an affirmative case for his re-election. Every day he looks tinier.But now Democrats are realizing that they left the door open for McConnell to come in and sweep the shards under the rug. It's what he does best, and when he wraps this thing up before the Iowa caucuses and the public moves on, Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Trump is reportedly threatening Republicans to keep them in line on impeachment Taylor Swift opens up about her past struggle with an eating disorder in new documentary The Oprah's Book Club controversy, explained
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| Saudi officials close to the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly knew of plans to hack Bezos phone Posted: 22 Jan 2020 05:54 PM PST  Saudi officials told The Wall Street Journal that senior adviser to the crown prince Saud al-Qahtani was involved in plans to hack Bezos' phone.
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| Italy's Crazy World War II Strategy of "Human Torpedoes" Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:00 PM PST  Was it successful?
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| People are really selling iguana meat dubbed 'chicken of the trees' on Facebook Posted: 23 Jan 2020 04:39 AM PST  Iguana meat is listed on Facebook Marketplace for $1.
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| Trump Strips Protections for Streams and Wetlands Posted: 24 Jan 2020 08:05 AM PST  What does it mean for the country's clean water supply?
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| Why Pay Off Your Student Loans if the Government Will Do It for You? Posted: 23 Jan 2020 03:30 AM PST  America's mountain of student-loan debt keeps growing ever higher. But the factors driving the increase have changed, as detailed in a fascinating new report from Moody's.It used to be that we could blame colleges for failing to control their costs. But for the past decade or so, college costs have actually grown in line with the median household income, and the "origination" of new student loans has slowed down a little. The reason we haven't seen a similar slowdown in overall student debt is that borrowers are making less progress on their loans. And a lot of the time they're doing it on purpose — because they participate in programs that were dramatically expanded during the Obama years, and that forgive debt entirely so long as the borrower first makes small payments for a set period of time.Among students who graduated between 2006 and 2008, 60 percent made at least some progress on reducing their loan balances during their first five years post-graduation, despite the recession precipitated by the 2008 financial crisis. Students who left school between 2010 and 2012 faced a better job market as the economy slowly began to recover, but only 51 percent of them reduced their balances. In the aggregate, borrowers today are repaying only 3 percent of their loans each year, despite the "baseline" student loan being one that is paid back in ten years.When someone doesn't manage to reduce his loan balance, there can be several reasons. One is that he's not earning enough money to make significant payments. This is especially likely when a student either failed to graduate or attended a program that doesn't lead to real job opportunities — both of which are especially likely at for-profit and two-year schools, enrollment in which was high in the aftermath of the recession. (It has fallen off since). Some borrowers also opt for longer repayment terms, meaning they pay off their loans more slowly than they otherwise would.But the report also points to another factor that would seem to have a lot of explanatory power, especially when it comes to those with the highest debts: the still-growing popularity of "income-based repayment" (IBR) and similar programs, which were overhauled and dramatically expanded during the Obama years. Under these programs, students can make small payments for a decade or two, often not even covering the interest on their loans, and have the entire debt forgiven at the end.This is not necessarily a bad idea in principle, but — as Jason Delisle has noted previously in this space — the programs were structured in a way that encouraged their abuse by people with incredibly high debt levels, especially from graduate studies rather than two- or four-year degrees. As Delisle wrote,> Under current law, anyone who takes out a federal student loan today can enroll in IBR and have his payments fixed at 10 percent of his income, less an exemption of $18,700 (which increases with household size). . . . Then, after 20 years of payments (or only ten years for those working in any government or non-profit job), all of the remaining balance is forgiven, no matter how high it is.He further points out, that, using the Department of Education's own debt calculator, someone with $80,000 in debt and an income of $60,000 could receive $62,000 in debt forgiveness if he works for the government. Someone with $150,000 in debt and a $75,000 salary could pay for 20 years and still receive $82,000, more than half the initial balance. Meanwhile, as noted in the Moody's report, the median amount borrowed is just about $17–18,000.Income-based repayment is a giveaway to people who choose to spend abnormally large sums on higher education, often earning graduate degrees, but go on to make unremarkable middle-to-upper-middle-class salaries. It's far less generous to someone with a modest debt, even if that person also earns a modest income. It's simply not possible to wring $62,000 or $82,000 in debt forgiveness out of the system if you're a normal borrower and didn't take out anywhere near that much in loans to begin with.The Moody's report further demonstrates that income-based programs are, indeed, highly attractive to people with big debts: "Only 5% of the total balances of borrowers who owe less than $5,000 are covered by [income-driven repayment programs]. Meanwhile, 53% of the balances of borrowers who owe more than $200,000 are in IDR programs." And unsurprisingly, heavy borrowers have a disproportionate impact on student loans in general: Folks who borrow $20,000 or less represent 55 percent of borrowers but only 14 percent of the overall debt.All of this needs to be kept in mind as we ponder proposals to shovel even more money at people who carry student debt. College really does cost too much, but the costs seem to have finally stabilized. And those with incredibly high debt already have options for getting rid of it — overly generous options that many of them are enthusiastically taking advantage of, at taxpayer expense.The concept of income-based repayment is not a bad one. Indeed, I think it would be an enormous improvement for more colleges to base the amounts they get repaid on the amounts students earn after graduating. But there's no justification for structuring such a program as a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to people with graduate degrees.
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| No qualms for India's hangman before first job of executing rapists Posted: 24 Jan 2020 12:53 AM PST  Pawan Kumar feels zero sympathy for the four men he is due to hang next month for a 2012 gang rape and murder that appalled India. The group set to meet their demise before dawn on February 1 -- although it may be delayed -- were convicted for a brutal crime against Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old student. Angry demonstrations by tens of thousands of people broke out across the vast South Asian nation, sparking soul-searching about the plight of Indian women and leading to heavier sentences for sex crimes.
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| 'The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions': did Arkansas kill an innocent man? Posted: 23 Jan 2020 07:00 AM PST  Revealed: two years after Ledell Lee was executed, damning evidence emerges that experts say could prove his innocenceThe day before Ledell Lee was executed on 20 April 2017, he talked to the BBC from death row. He said that while he could not prevent the state of Arkansas from killing him, he had a message for his executioners: "My dying words will always be, as it has been: 'I am an innocent man'."Almost two years after Lee was strapped to a gurney and injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs, it looks increasingly likely he was telling the truth: he went to his death an innocent man. New evidence has emerged that suggests Lee was not guilty of the brutal murder of a woman in 1993 for which his life was taken.The deceased inmate's sister Patricia Young lodged a lawsuit on Thursday with the circuit court of Pulaski county, Arkansas, petitioning city authorities and the local police department in Jacksonville to release crime scene materials to her family.The ACLU and the Innocence Project, who are investigating the case on the family's behalf, believe state-of-the-art forensic examination of the materials, including DNA testing and fingerprint analysis, could definitively prove Arkansas did indeed execute an innocent man.An 81-page filing in the lawsuit provides damning new evidence that key aspects of the prosecution case against Lee were deeply flawed. The complaint includes expert opinion from a number of world-leading specialists who find glaring errors in the way forensic science and other evidence was interpreted.The lawsuit also includes a bombshell affidavit from Lee's post-conviction attorney who admits to having struggled with substance abuse and addiction throughout the years in which he represented him.Lawyers who prepared the filing, led by Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU and the Innocence Project's Nina Morrison, conclude: "It is now clear that the state's forensic experts from trial misinterpreted the evidence in plain sight, and their flawed opinions were further distorted by the state in its zeal to convict [Lee] of the crime. The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions about the shaky evidentiary pillars on which the state executed Ledell Lee."Innocence has always been the achilles heel of America's death penalty: how to justify judicially killing prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted. The question is far from academic: since 1973 no fewer than 167 death row inmates have been exonerated.The most harrowing question is whether innocent prisoners have been executed before the flawed nature of their convictions emerged. In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest that innocent men have been put to death.They include Cameron Todd Willingham executed in Texas in 2004 for allegedly having caused a fire that killed his three young daughters. After the execution, further evidence emerged that conclusively showed that he could not have set the fire.The Columbia Human Rights Law Review carried out a groundbreaking investigation in which it concluded Carlos DeLuna was innocent when he was executed – also by Texas – in 1989. The six-year study discovered that the convicted prisoner had almost certainly been confused with another man, a violent criminal who shared the name Carlos.Now Ledell Lee looks as though he may be added to the grim rollcall of the wrongly executed. He relentlessly insisted he was not guilty from the moment he was arrested less than two hours after the brutally beaten body of Debra Reese was discovered in her home in Jacksonville on 9 February 1993.The difficulties with the case against Lee began almost immediately. He was picked up nowhere near the crime scene and was not in possession of any possessions that could be linked to the break-in at Reese's home.The only evidence against him was inconclusive at best. There were two eyewitnesses, but they gave conflicting reports of the suspect's identification.> In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest innocent men have been put to deathThe crime scene was shocking, with blood splattered over the walls and floor. Yet when Lee was arrested on the same day detectives could find no blood on his clothes or body including under his fingernails and nothing was found in a forensic search of his house.Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that it took two trials to find Lee guilty and sentence him to death. The first trial collapsed after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.The ACLU and Innocence Project took up Lee's case very late in the day having been asked to get involved shortly before his scheduled execution date. What they discovered when they opened the case records astounded even these experienced death penalty lawyers.Very quickly they established there were major problems with the prosecution case against Lee. One area that especially concerned them was the inadequacy of Lee's legal representation, both during the second trial in which defense attorneys inexplicably failed to call alibi witnesses that could have placed Lee elsewhere at the time of the murder, and in terms of the help he received at the appeal stage of his case.At one post-conviction hearing, a lawyer working for the state of Arkansas approached the judge and raised concerns about Lee's attorney, Craig Lambert. "Your honor, I don't do this lightly, but I'm going to ask that the court require him to submit to a drug test," the counsel said. "He's just not with us … His speech is slurred."In an affidavit obtained since Lee's execution, signed by Lambert in October, the lawyer admits: "I was struggling with substance abuse and addiction in those years. I attended inpatient rehab. Ledell's case was massive and I wasn't in the best place personally to do what was necessary."Partly as a result of poor legal representation, terrible errors were made in Lee's defense – both at trial and for years afterwards during the appeals process. The complaint goes into detail about these "deeply troubling" shortcomings.One of the key examples relates to the marks found on the victim's cheek. The state's experts mistakenly interpreted the marks as having come from a pattern on a rug in Reese's bedroom where she had been beaten to death with a wooden tire club.In fact, the filing says, the pattern on the body's cheek did not match that on the rug. Instead it was consistent with the murderer stomping on Reese's face directly with his shoe.That is critically significant because the shoes that Lee was wearing that day, which the state used during the trial as evidence against him, were incompatible in the composition of their soles with the injury pattern on Reese's face.To establish this point, an affidavit is provided by Michael Baden, former chief pathologist for New York who is recognized internationally as a leading forensic pathologist. He concludes: "The soles of Mr Lee's sneakers have a much more closely spaced pattern than was transferred in the cheek imprint."That inconsistency is just one of many that were uncovered when Baden and four other specialists were invited to review the case.Lee was executed in a flurry. When the state of Arkansas realized its supply of one of its three lethal drugs, the sedative midazolam, was about to expire at the end of 2017 with no hope of replacing it due to a global ban on medicines being sent to the US for use in executions, it went into overdrive.It announced plans to kill eight prisoners in 11 days.The declaration prompted revulsion from around the US and the world and accusations that the state was engaging in conveyor-belt executions. It was in that climate that attempts by the ACLU and the Innocence Project to have materials gathered at the crime scene of Reese's murder released for DNA testing fell on deaf ears.Though the lawyers presented a strong argument that DNA testing could be crucial in casting doubt on Lee's conviction and pointing towards the real killer, a federal district court denied the request on grounds that Lee had "simply delayed too long" in asking for the materials.It is too late now for Lee. But his lawyers hope that it is not too late to get to the bottom of the case posthumously.The city of Jacksonville is in possession of a rich array of crime scene materials including "Negroid" hairs collected from Reese's bedroom and fingernail scrapings likely to contain DNA from the actual killer – Lee or otherwise."This evidence can now be tested with state-of-the-art methods unavailable at trial, and compared to Mr Lee's unique DNA profile," the filing says.After a welter of legal challenges, Arkansas succeeded in killing four prisoners in one week, including the first double execution held in the US in a single day since 2001. The first of the four to die was Ledell Lee.Should Arkansas now agree belatedly to hand over the crime scene materials for testing, he may yet be proven to have been, just as he always said he was, an innocent man.
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| Belarus' leader blasts Russia for pushing merger of 2 states Posted: 24 Jan 2020 05:44 AM PST  The president of Belarus on Friday accused Moscow of pressuring his country to merge with Russia and vowed not to let it happen. The statement comes amid stalled talks on further strengthening economic ties between two countries, seen in Belarus as Moscow's plot to swallow its post-Soviet neighbor.
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| 'A Fighting Chance': Tulsi Gabbard Could Possibly Win Her Defamation Suit Against Hillary Clinton Posted: 22 Jan 2020 06:42 PM PST  The case will come down to whether or not Clinton statement's were "statements of fact" or "statements of opinion"
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| Photos show how China is grappling with the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak as 12 cities are quarantined and hospitals run out of space Posted: 24 Jan 2020 03:00 PM PST  Chinese authorities quarantined people in 12 cities, halting transportation and cutting off nearly 33 million people to try and quell the outbreak.
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| Experts fear China virus lockdown is too late Posted: 24 Jan 2020 08:14 AM PST  China's bid to contain a deadly new virus by placing cities of millions under quarantine is an unprecedented undertaking, but it is unlikely to stop the disease spreading, experts warn. The contagious virus has already reached elsewhere in China and abroad, and even an authoritarian government has only a small time frame in which trapped residents will submit to such a lockdown, they say.
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| Wax On, Wane Off: A Guide to All the Lunar Phases Posted: 24 Jan 2020 07:14 AM PST |
| Report: Kamala Harris is considering endorsing Joe Biden Posted: 23 Jan 2020 10:59 PM PST  Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is seriously contemplating endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden, several Democratic officials with knowledge of the matter told The New York Times. Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race in December, and although she sparred with Biden during debates last summer — most famously when she criticized him for once opposing school busing — they are back on good terms and talk often, the officials said.She likely won't announce an endorsement until after President Trump's Senate impeachment trial is over, the Times reports, and she understands the importance of her decision, especially since two of her fellow female senators — Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — are also still in the presidential race.Biden has said he "of course" would consider asking Harris to join his ticket if he is the Democratic nominee. By giving him an endorsement, it could secure her spot as his running mate — or, if he chooses someone else to be vice president, his administration's attorney general.More stories from theweek.com Trump debuts official Space Force logo — and it's literally a ripoff of Star Trek 14 dead, hundreds injured after 6.7 earthquake in eastern Turkey Donald Trump and the moral decline of the pro-life movement
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| Before March for Life, Betsy DeVos stirs controversy by comparing 'choice' of slavery, abortion Posted: 24 Jan 2020 01:47 PM PST  Before March for Life, Betsy DeVos invoked Abraham Lincoln, suggesting his anti-slavery view is similar to anti-abortion stances. Historians disagree.
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| Ex-Maryland police officer has been charged with raping and attempting to transmit HIV to a woman he pulled over Posted: 23 Jan 2020 09:06 AM PST  A Maryland Grand Jury has indicted former police officer Martique Vanderpool on charges that he raped and attempted to expose a woman with HIV.
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