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Pompeo appeared to coordinate with Giuliani on Ukraine, new documents show

While the impeachment proceedings are now over, ongoing lawsuits and upcoming books are expected to reveal still more details about the campaign to have Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pursue the investigations Trump wanted.

South Korea to launch mass coronavirus testing, U.S. pledges $1 billion for vaccine

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - South Korea aims to test more than 200,000 members of a church at the center of a surge in coronavirus cases, as countries stepped up efforts to stop a pandemic of the virus that emerged in China and is now spreading in Europe and the Middle East. More than 80,000 people have been infected in China since the outbreak began, apparently in an illegal wildlife market in the central city of Wuhan late last year. China's death toll was 2,663 by the end of Monday, up 71 from the previous day.

A California man drove his Jeep off the roof of a six-level parking garage and crashed into a McDonald's, police say

Police say a California man drove a Jeep off a parking garage and into a McDonald's. Two people dove out of the car before it crashed.

It looks like people with no real interest in Bloomberg are signing up to be grassroots campaigners because he pays $2,500 a month

Mike Bloomberg's social-media army, who can command payments of $2,500 a month, have variable levels of commitment.

Pacific NW winds shut interstate, fell tree that crushes man

High winds wreaked havoc on the Pacific Northwest on Sunday, closing a stretch of an interstate freeway in Oregon and toppling a large tree that crushed a man sleeping in an apartment complex in Washington state. The man was critically injured in Renton, Washington, after a tree fell on a six-unit apartment building during a morning of high winds and heavy rain. Elsewhere, Interstate 84 was closed in both directions between Pendleton and La Grande in northeast Oregon, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) east of Portland, because of a downer power line.

Idaho's governor says he's hoping to speed up the extradition of doomsday mom Lori Vallow so she can face charges connected to her 2 missing kids

Lori Vallow, who's two children have been missing since September, was arrested on charges related to their disappearance last week.

Trump Admin. Considers Booting Chinese Reporters in Response to ‘Egregious’ Expulsion of WSJ Journalists: Report

The Trump administration is considering whether to expel Chinese journalists in response to China's own expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.A meeting will be held at the White House on Monday to discuss the administration's options. The meeting will be led by deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who himself was a Journal reporter based in Beijing.According to Bloomberg, administration officials are debating whether to expel up to hundreds of Chinese journalists in its response, or whether such a move would even be legal, seeming to contradict American values regarding freedom of the press."This expulsion is yet another attempt to control the press, and prevent the world’s readers as well as investors from reading important stories about China," said John Ullyot, a spokesman for the National Security Council, in comments on the situation on Friday. Ullyot called China's expulsion of the Journal reporters an "egregious act."China expelled the three reporters after the Journal refused to apologize for a headline China deemed "racist." The headline, “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” was chosen for a column by Bard College professor Walter Russell Mead on China's difficulty in coping with the Wuhan coronavirus and the shaky financial foundations of its economy.The phrase "sick man of Asia" was used in the late 1800's to describe a China that had lost a string of wars and feared conquering by the western colonial powers. Dozens of reporters from the paper's China bureau have called on the Journal's publisher to change the headline.

Fake News or Reality? Did F-35s from Israel Fly Over Iran?

Could that be true?

Virus delivers blow to Hong Kong protests but rage remains

The new coronavirus has handed Beijing an unexpected gift -- an end to Hong Kong's pro-democracy rallies. For the Chinese government -- and its unelected proxy leaders in Hong Kong -- the end of the financial hub's huge rallies that engulfed the city for seven months straight has been a rare spot of good fortune in an otherwise grim start to the year. Protests were winding down when the virus first began to emerge in central China as activists reeled from exhaustion and a huge increase in arrests.

Brushing aside 'namaste' spirit, Trump lays into rivals during India visit

“When we win,” Trump said of his re-election campaign, “I think the market’s going to go up like a rocket ship.”

Ginni Thomas: SCOTUS justice's wife leading right-wing effort to purge officials 'disloyal' to Trump

A group of pro-Trump activists led by Ginni Thomas has reportedly compiled lists of “disloyal” government officials it wants sacked.

Tom Steyer has paid more than $40,000 to rent a property owned by Jim Clyburn's daughter

Billionaire Tom Steyer is facing some criticism over his spending in South Carolina, a state where his Democratic presidential campaign is making some legitimate headway.Some people have even accused him of trying to buy votes from the state's African-American voters, which Steyer and many others have adamantly denied, The New York Times reports. One thing that's been particularly scrutinized is the Steyer campaign's rental agreement with a company owned by Jennifer Clyburn Reed, the daughter of Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking African American in Congress whose endorsement is considered key in South Carolina. Since October, the Steyer campaign has paid more than $40,000 to the company to rent one of its properties as its state headquarters in Columbia, South Carolina. A California-based bank founded by Steyer, meanwhile, has loaned $1 million to a Columbia-based bank that has one of Clyburn's sons-in-laws on its board.The campaign has brushed off the accusations of trying to procure political favor from the Clyburn family, arguing Steyer is simply committed to hiring local organizers and investing in local businesses to get his grassroots operations running. "The question isn't why Tom is doing this," Steyer spokesman Benjamin Gerdes said in a statement. "The real question is why isn't every other candidate doing it?"The politically-active Reed called the accusations of vote-buying "disturbing" and seemed a bit annoyed that people think she merely serves as a surrogate for her father. "I'm an adult," she told the Times. "There is no connection. My father has his business and I have mine. We do not vote the same way."Besides, it's probably all a moot point — both Reed and Clyburn seem likely to back former Vice President Joe Biden. Read more at The New York Times.More stories from theweek.com The coronavirus recession? The real third way in 2020 Top member of Trump's coronavirus task force asks Twitter for help accessing map of virus

China sentences Swedish bookseller to 10 years in prison

A court in eastern China has sentenced a Swedish seller of books that took a skeptical look at the ruling Communist Party to 10 years in prison for “illegally providing intelligence overseas," in a further sign of Beijing’s hard line toward its critics. Gui Minhai first disappeared in 2015, when he was believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents from his seaside home in Thailand. The Ningbo Intermediate People's Court announced Tuesday that it gave Gui, a naturalized Swedish citizen, a 10-year prison sentence.

The coronavirus death toll is still rising, but US interest in the outbreak is plummeting

Serious outbreaks outside of China have been reported in Italy, Iran, and South Korea in the last week.

Senate FISA Abuse Investigation to Focus on Mystery Source Who Contradicted Steele Dossier

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) on Sunday told Fox News the Senate's investigation into FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will focus on interviews the agency conducted with a Russian source who contradicted much of the information in the Steele dossier."The first thing I want to do is call the people who heard from Russian sub-source that this dossier is a bunch of bar talk and hearsay," Graham said on Fox's Sunday Morning Futures. "I want to find out when did [former FBI director James] Comey and [former FBI deputy director Andrew] McCabe understand it was not reliable and start from there."The source, known in the Justice Department Inspector General's report as "Primary Sub-Source," was former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele's only direct contact in Russia for the allegations contained in the dossier. However, the IG report states that the primary sub-source told the FBI and Justice Department that Steele's allegations were false or misleading, including the assertion of Page's involvement in what the dossier terms a "well-developed conspiracy of cooperation" between the Trump campaign and Russian government."The Primary Sub-source made statements during his/her January 2017 FBI interview that were inconsistent with multiple sections of the Steele reports, including some that were relied upon in the FISA applications," the IG report states.Following the publication of the IG report, prominent Republicans called for an overhaul of the FISA system to prevent future abuses. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration is considering doing just that before FISA legislation is set to expire in March.

Trump's 'Big' China Trade Deal Has Some Really Big Problems

The remaining issues, such as cyber theft, cyber security, and standardization, are untouched by the Agreement and could be the source of tension in the future.

Iran is closing schools, scrambling for hospital places, and spraying disinfectant in the subway as coronavirus deaths and cases spike

The government said 12 people had died of the novel coronavirus as of Monday, though one official said the number is actually much higher.

U.S. judge rejects Roger Stone's request she be kicked off his case

A U.S. federal judge on Sunday denied a request by Roger Stone's lawyers that she be removed from the case in which she last week sentenced the long-time adviser to President Donald Trump to three years and four months in prison. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had been accused of bias by Stone's attorneys in a filing on Friday that called for her recusal. Stone, 67, was convicted on Nov. 15 of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

14 products dermatologists recommend for soothing redness and rosacea

These products help soothe skin, minimize redness and prevent flare-ups of rosacea.

'It's my guilty pleasure': Sen. Chuck Schumer confirms spending $8,600 on Junior's cheesecake

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer admitted he has dropped almost $9,000 on his favorite cheesecake over the years. "Guilty as charged," he said.

Putin Sent Her Activist Boyfriend to the Arctic Circle. Now She Wants to Go, Too.

MOSCOW—Few people are familiar with Novaya Zemlya, a very obscure archipelago above the Arctic Circle that is controlled by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the infamous Soviet spy agency, the KGB. Even fewer people hope to travel to those thinly populated and thoroughly militarized islands, where the Russian army tests its Arctic missile systems, and where polar bears suffering the effects of climate change dig through garbage pits at impoverished settlements. Alexei Navalny on Standing Up to Putin and His Murderous MinionsIt sounds like hell frozen over, in fact—and it figures in what looks like a new tactic by President Vladimir Putin (a former KGB operative) to intimidate his most vocal critics. But Kira Yarmysh has a special reason to go there. She is desperate to see her partner, who became the first victim of such an operation last December.“The FSB abducted my boyfriend, Ruslan Shaveddinov, and isolated him in Novaya Zemlya,” Yarmysh told The Daily Beast. “The most outrageous truth is that several divisions of the state system, including military authorities, aviation, and secret services, are helping to hide Ruslan from us.” This was hardly a random act. Yarmysh is a news presenter and spokesperson for Russia’s top opposition leader, Aleksei Navalny, and his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). Shaveddinov is one of the group’s star reporters and presenters as well.Russia still has a military draft, and 12 months of service are mandatory for all male citizens age 18 to 33. Shaveddinov, known as “Shav,” has been famous for presenting vivid, well-documented corruption investigations on YouTube. But at 23 years old, he was vulnerable, and authorities claimed he was draft-dodging.The news agency TASS quotes Moscow’s military commissar, Col. Maksim Loktev, claiming the conscription of Shaveddinov was perfectly ordinary: “He departed to the place of his military service on the draft.” But the young activist’s colleagues aren’t buying it. It’s not just the matter of conscription; it’s the deployment that’s suspicious.“This is a unique example of how the FSB begins to use military service as a prison for politically active young men,” Navalny told The Daily Beast. “I think the order was to isolate Shav.”Viewers all over Russia recognize Yarmysh and Shaveddinov from YouTube, which is the main outlet for Navalny’s reports. More than three million viewed their presentation last summer (while Navalny was in jail) about Moscow Deputy Mayor Natalia Sergunina. They reported she was making millions of dollars off property deals in the Russian capital for companies controlled by her relatives, an allegation that she has denied.  There are frequent police raids on FBK offices, along with confiscations of computers, cellphones, and video cameras. On July 27, members of an armed special unit raided Yarmysh’s home at dawn, woke the couple up, put Ruslan on the floor, and confiscated all of the digital equipment. After a tough 2019, Kira and Ruslan looked forward to celebrating the New Year’s holiday together, without any people around. But on Dec. 23, Kira’s boyfriend vanished and his cellphone was not answered. His friends found the door to his apartment broken. Nearly 24 hours later, Yarmysh discovered that her partner was more than 3,000 kilometers (some 2,000 miles) away, in a unit of what’s called the 33rd Guards Rocket Army based in Rogachevo village on the Southern Island of Novaya Zemlya. Yarmysh had never heard much about the rules of the archipelago and the news came as a shock: there was an old nuclear testing ground near Ruslan’s base; she could not visit his island without a special FSB permit. Then Ruslan called her, and what she heard broke her heart, she says.“There were two army captains with him listening in our conversation, so every time I asked him how he was, he said, ‘Let’s talk about you,” Yarmysh remembered. “He told me he was banned from using his cellphone, which is a violation—every Russian soldier can call home once a week! So I decided to sue his commander.”Yarmysh wanted to be present during the court hearing last week, and, of course, to see Ruslan. She requested an FSB permit earlier this month, but days passed and there was no word back. The court hearing was scheduled for last Wednesday, but a Moscow judge on the case was not able to get to Novaya Zemlya, Yarmysh said—the flight got canceled due to harsh weather conditions. (This is not unusual given the brutal Arctic weather.) “They regularly cancel flights during the winter, so I am surprised that the army managed to transport Ruslan there so easily in December,” Yarmysh said. “It is obvious that the weather is not an issue, if there is an order to bring the guy.”Finally a hearing was held at the end of the week, and a lawyer from the Navalny team was able to make it there, but there was no satisfaction to be had and communications were spotty. At midday on Saturday, Yarmysh tweeted that she still had heard nothing about her boyfriend's fated. (A troll responded with pictures of polar bears eating a bloody corpse: "Found him. But no need to thank me.")The lawyer finally got in touch late Saturday, but only briefly. He reported that, officially, the court said Shaveddinov had no unusual restrictions. But in practical terms that was no consolation, and Yarmysh said she couldn't be sure what happened until the attorney made it back to Moscow. As of Monday, however, he was till stuck above the Arctic Circle because of the weather."Prisoners have more rights than Ruslan," Yarmysh told The Daily Beast. "He doesn't have any right to call, or even to send letters."Yarmysh grew up in Rostov-on-Don, a provincial southern town on the border with Ukraine’s Donbas region. Her single mother brought her up dreaming that one day Kira would win The Clever Heads, a televised competition for high-schoolers that awards the winners with a chance to enroll in Russia’s most prestigious university for future diplomats, the MGIMO, or Moscow State Institute of International Relations. And, yes, Yarmysh won.While studying at MGIMO, she thought she would one day get a diplomat’s position in Africa, far from the Russian political scene. But anti-Putin street protests in 2011-2012 changed her life, and she wound up on the front line of the opposition’s constant fight with corrupt bureaucrats. Her mother has always been an Aleksey Navalny fan, Yarmysh said, so when she got her job at the FBK six years ago, her family supported her. “Kira Yarmysh is one of the brightest stars in Navalny’s team. She is emerging to be even bigger but still stay in Navalny’s shadow,” Echo of Moscow Deputy Chief Editor Olga Bychkova told The Daily Beast. Yarmysh says that if she has to she will wait for her boyfriend for 12 months, as do millions of other Russian girls all over the country. “I hope this is going to be just one year,” she says.  For two months, Yarmysh has been worried, feeling “hurt,” she says, wondering why out of all Russia’s vast military bases, her boyfriend was isolated in the Arctic. “The authorities might think that Ruslan and I, if we come out to a street protest, might lead masses of people,” Yarmysh said, then added: “I personally have no fear. If they raid our homes, if they detain us, I tell myself, we must be doing everything right.” But for the moment that is, at best, cold comfort.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.

Dispute leaves Taiwanese stuck in locked-down Chinese cities

Beauty salon operator Shelly Chen flew from Taiwan to her hometown in China last month to see her aging parents for the Lunar New Year holiday. A month later, she is still there, with flights to Taiwan bottled up in the perennial tug-of-war between China and the self-governing island that China claims as its territory.

Two-Thirds of the World’s Most Polluted Cities Are in India

(Bloomberg) -- Several Chinese cities, including Beijing, have dramatically improved their air quality in recent years, while Indian metropolises remain some of the world’s worst polluted, according to a new report.Beijing -- once infamous for its toxic haze -- has reduced smog levels and dropped down a list of the world’s most polluted cities, falling to 199 from 84 three years before, according to the 2019 World Air Quality Report published Tuesday by IQAir AirVisual. In contrast, India still dominated its list of the smoggiest urban areas, accounting for 14 of the top 20.Despite new government policies meant to address the issue, New Delhi’s air quality has fallen from where it was five years ago, rising to the fifth-worst spot globally and making it by far the world’s most polluted major city, the report said. The worst-ranked city -- Ghaziabad -- is a Delhi suburb, as are a number of others ranked separately in the top 20.India, China and other Asian countries remain disproportionately affected by toxic air as a result of factors ranging from crowded cities, vehicular exhaust, coal-fired power plants, agricultural burning and industrial emissions. The issue is hardly tangential. The World Health Organization estimates that dirty air kills around 7 million people each year, while the World Bank says it drains the global economy of $5 trillion annually.Even before the coronavirus outbreak and trade war slowed China’s smog-producing industries, Chinese officials had mobilized the country’s top-down, authoritarian state to implement -- and enforce -- sweeping measures, as well as shifting production away from its biggest cities. A recent report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air separately found that Beijing and Shanghai had seen “major progress,” while levels of fine particular called PM 2.5 increased in other parts of the country.India faces a starkly different situation. Across much of northern India, air quality remains catastrophic as politicians prioritize economic growth and spar over responsibility. Many citizens are still unaware of health concerns and resource-starved agencies struggle to carry out new -- or even existing -- measures designed to curb the smog.“In Beijing, it’s a priority -- in China, when they say something, they do it, they put the resources in,” said Yann Boquillod, AirVisual’s director of air quality monitoring. “In India, it’s just starting. People need to put more pressure on government.”A spokesman for India’s environment ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.Why Winter Brings Deadly Smog to India’s Capital: QuickTakeIndian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has won praise for promoting solar power and improving emission standards. It has handed out millions of gas canisters to reduce the number of families using smoky household cooking fires. In January of last year, the government also launched the National Clean Air Programme.But these measures haven’t had a serious impact on increased coal power plant usage, dust left by the thousands of under-regulated construction sites and exhaust from millions of new cars and motorcycles. Air quality experts have also criticized the national program for lacking strong enforcement and funding.Although many Indian cities saw progress between 2018 and 2019, “unfortunately these improvements are not representative of the very recent, but promising National Clean Air Programme” and cleaner fuel standards, according to the AirVisual report.Indians Are Addicted to Cheap Coal Power and It’s Killing ThemInstead, the authors said, they signal a lagging economy, which grew at about 5% -- the slowest expansion since 2009 -- compared with 8.3% in 2017. The deadly air also kills roughly 1.2 million Indians each year, according to a recent study in the Lancet.While President Donald Trump visited the Indian capital and met with Modi on Tuesday, New Delhi was ranked by AirVisual as the world’s most polluted city. PM 2.5 levels soared as high as 199 -- more than double the local annual average last year.India was far from the only country that remained deeply challenged by smog. Although several Chinese cities -- including Shanghai -- saw improvement in air quality, Kashgar and Hotan in the restive, western Xinjiang region were among the world’s worst.Cities across Asia -- including Chiang Mai, Hanoi, Jakarta and Seoul -- saw sharp increases in PM 2.5 levels. Since 2017, Jakarta saw pollution increase by 66%, making it the worst in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, Chiang Mai and Bangkok both saw a number of extremely smoggy days -- some of which led authorities in the capital to close schools -- resulting from construction, diesel fuel and crop fires in surrounding regions.The problem is particularly challenging for South Asian countries. Using a weighted population average, Bangladesh was actually ranked the world’s most polluted country, while its capital Dhaka was the second worst after Delhi. Pakistan was the second-most-polluted country, while Afghanistan, India and Nepal were all in the top 10.(Updates with details of Trump visit to Delhi in 13th paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected the labeling of Delhi and Chennai on the chart showing pollution levels of Indian cities.)\--With assistance from Bibhudatta Pradhan.To contact the reporters on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Hannah Dormido in Hong Kong at hdormido@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Chris KayFor 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.

Russia strikes kill 5 civilians as Syria regime advances: monitor

Five civilians were killed in Russian air strikes backing Syrian regime forces as they chipped away at the country's last major rebel bastion in fighting that cost dozens of lives Monday, a war monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air raids hit the Jabal al-Zawiya area on the edge of the jihadist-dominated northwestern province of Idlib. In fighting on the ground, regime forces gained ground in the southern part of Idlib, the Britain-based monitor said.

Supreme court denies Rodney Reed appeal

The court did leave open the possibility for another appeal following the outcome of upcoming hearings, which could lead to a new trial.

Greyhound will stop allowing immigration checks on buses

Greyhound, the U.S.’s largest bus company, said on Friday that it will stop allowing Border Patrol agents without a warrant to board its buses to conduct routine immigration checks.

Iran, Italy, and South Korea announced harsh new measures to stifle their own outbreaks of the coronavirus

New cases outside China have caused global concerns that more major regions were at risk and the outbreak could reach pandemic status.

NASA space telescope spots a double star system with an alter ego

It's like a cosmic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Missing Tennessee toddler's grandmother and her boyfriend extradited after arrest

Evelyn Boswell, a Tennessee toddler who is 15 months old, was last seen in December. An Amber Alert was issued for her on Wednesday.

Auschwitz Museum upset at scene in Amazon series 'Hunters'

The museum of the Nazi German Auschwitz death camp is objecting to a scene in a new Amazon TV series that shows a murderous game of human chess being played there, insisting that no such thing took place at the camp. The museumand memorial that guard the Auschwitz-Birkenau site in southern Poland, its historic facts and the memory of the victims tweeted about the scene in Amazon's series “Hunters.” It said inventing fake scenes is “dangerous foolishness and caricature," encourages Holocaust deniers and is disrespectful of the camp's some 1.1 million victims, including women and children. The series' creator, David Weil stressed in a statement it was not a documentary but a narrative with largely fictional characters.

After raucous welcome in India, Trump clinches $3 billion military equipment sale

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that India will buy $3 billion worth of military equipment, including attack helicopters, as the two countries deepen defence and commercial ties in an attempt to balance the weight of China in the region. India and the United States were also making progress on a big trade deal, Trump said. Trump was accorded a massive reception in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state on Monday, with more than 100,000 people filling into a cricket stadium for a "Namaste Trump" rally.

China 'comprehensively bans' wildlife trade over virus

China on Monday declared an immediate and "comprehensive" ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals, a practice believed responsible for the deadly coronavirus outbreak. The country's top legislative committee approved a proposal "prohibiting the illegal wildlife trade, abolishing the bad habit of overconsumption of wildlife, and effectively protecting the lives and health of the people," state television reported. Previous temporary bans have been put in place, including after the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in 2002-03 and was also traced to wild animal consumption.

Russia Unveils Laika, Its Next-Gen Nuclear Attack Submarine

It looks like an exotic sea creature.

Sunk: How Sweden Sent America's USS Ronald Reagan to the Bottom of the Sea

(In a simulation.)

North Korea has yet to officially report any coronavirus cases. But it just quarantined 380 foreigners.

The majority of the quarantined individuals in the secretive, isolated country are diplomats. The nationalities of the quarantined individuals have not been identified.

Former AG Loretta Lynch to lead investigation into Syracuse University police

Lynch will lead the investigation as the school has been rocked by a series of racist incidents and a call by some students to disarm campus cops.

Wrong-way crash on Interstate 95 in Georgia kills 6 people, including Virginia parents and their 3 children

Six people, including three children, were killed early Sunday in a head-on crash on Interstate 95, according to the Georgia State Patrol.

Bloomberg Killed the Best Chance at Justice for the 9/11 Attacks

If it wasn’t for Mike Bloomberg, the alleged perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack in American history would likely have been convicted of mass murder by now.According to all the evidence available both at the time and in the nine years since Bloomberg’s intervention, a federal court almost certainly would have convicted the five co-defendants. A judge would have had to reckon with the torture the CIA inflicted on them, barring the prosecution from using tainted evidence—and showing, for the record, how torture jeopardized the case. Most importantly, there would have been closure, provided in open court and displaying the inheritance of centuries of jurisprudence, for the atrocity of 9/11 and the brutality America chose when confronting it. All that was why Eric Holder, then the attorney general, announced in November 2009 that the Justice Department would bring criminal charges against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ammar al-Baluchi, Ramzi Binalshibh, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who—then as now—were detained at Guantanamo Bay. The venue for the trial was to be the federal courthouse in Manhattan, a short walk from the former site of the World Trade Center. It was an even shorter walk to City Hall, where Michael Bloomberg presided as mayor. Bloomberg at first backed trying the 9/11 conspirators in the city. But the NYPD and the big real estate developers central to Bloomberg’s vision of New York as a “luxury brand” viewed the trial as a national-security version of a Not-In-My-Backyard concern—all as a broader backlash to Barack Obama’s handling of the war on terror was brewing. By January 2010, Bloomberg reversed himself, and his opposition doomed the trial. “I remember the hopes I had that there would be a federal trial, and I remember when Bloomberg and others came together and said it wasn’t going to happen,” said Terry Rockefeller, whose sister died in the World Trade Center and who apportions blame for the trial’s collapse on Holder as well. “It’s just been the most frustrating reflection on what we’ve done as a nation that this many years later we can’t have a trial.” The episode is less remembered than Bloomberg’s defense of racist policing, his accommodation of police Islamophobia, his history of misogyny and his affinity for foreign authoritarians, all of which Bloomberg shares with the occupant of the White House he seeks to dislodge. But it had a devastating effect on the Obama administration’s ambitions for emptying the wartime prison in Cuba and proving the merits of civilian courts over military tribunals for what Holder had called the trial of the century. Eighteen years after 9/11, justice for the attack remains locked away in Guantanamo.“It’s hard to overestimate the damage that Bloomberg’s opposition to holding the 9/11 trials in New York federal courts caused,” recalled Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University. “The inability to have closure on the 9/11 attacks, which this country is still owed; the lack of trust in the federal criminal justice system; and the perpetuation of Gitmo—it is an incalculable misstep, and it pulled the rug out from under Obama and Holder’s conviction that the 9/11 trials needed to be held in federal court on federal soil, just as [international terrorism cases] had always been prior to 9/11.”Joseph Marguiles, attorney for Abu Zubaydah, another Guantanamo detainee tortured by the CIA, said Bloomberg’s rejection of the trial showed the same “fear-mongering and bone-headedness” as his embrace of stop-and-frisk. “It’s all of a piece: a mindless, reflexive cowardice,” Marguiles said. Representatives for Bloomberg’s campaign did not respond to messages seeking comment. Holder, through a spokesperson, declined comment. So did Holder’s national security adviser at the time, Amy Jeffress. Barack Obama came into office pledging to close Guantanamo Bay, but quickly alienated civil libertarians by his parsimonious definitions of what closure meant. Rather than forsake military detention away from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama sought to replicate it at an Illinois prison that critics derided as “Gitmo North.” By the spring of his first year in office, he proclaimed himself open to indefinite military detention for the “toughest” cases, even as he pledged he would seek civilian prosecutions for terrorist suspects “whenever feasible.”The centerpiece for that feasibility was the 9/11 trial. For years, the 9/11 co-conspirators had languished in unofficial CIA prisons known as black sites where they faced torture so extreme that one of them, Hawsawi, experienced a rectal prolapse. Holder called prosecuting them in federal court the “defining event” of his tenure atop the Justice Department. He had support from important New York politicians. “New York is not afraid of terrorists,” boasted Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat representing Manhattan. Bloomberg, at first, joined the chorus. “It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered,” he said the day of Holder’s announcement. Doing so was entirely feasible, he noted, as proven by the federal trial for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Bloomberg said he had spoken to Holder and pledged city support “in any way necessary.” He expressed confidence in the NYPD’s “experience dealing with high-profile terrorism suspects and any logistical issues that may come up during the trials.”But he quickly developed other ideas. By the time the Justice Department announced its intended 9/11 trial, a backlash to Obama was coalescing around the country. One of its focal points was Obama’s emphasis on using the criminal justice system for terrorism cases, which the right interpreted as a five-alarm fire. Mitch McConnell, the Senate GOP leader, led an early charge warning “how dangerous closing Guantanamo could be.” Then, weeks after the Justice Department announcement, FBI agents read a Miranda warning to a Nigerian jihadist named Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab who tried and failed to blow up a civilian airliner as it descended into Detroit. Abdulmutallab extensively cooperated with investigators, but to the right, it crystallized a danger Obama allegedly posed. Rudy Giuliani wailed, “Why in God’s name would you stop questioning a terrorist?”   The 9/11 trial suddenly had a new, hysterical context. A rally at Foley Square in December, featuring relatives of 9/11 victims, denounced the attorney general. It was organized by a group led by Islamophobic 9/11 widow Debra Burlingame, future Rep. Liz Cheney and neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol, called Keep America Safe—explicitly meaning safe from terrorism and, tacitly, from Obama. Accordingly, the crowd around or passing by Foley Square yelled “traitor” and “lynch Holder!” Then there were more parochial concerns. The NYPD began worrying aloud that the trial would be a logistical snarl, and ratcheted up their estimates of its cost. Commissioner Ray Kelly briefed community officials with intimidating projections about blanketing downtown Manhattan with police checkpoints and intrusive searches. The police weren’t the only influential constituency that blanched. The New York Times reported that Bloomberg got “an earful” of opposition to the trial when he attended an annual gathering of the Real Estate Board of New York; its president warned “it would destroy the economy in Lower Manhattan.” Jane Mayer of The New Yorker noted that “companies with downtown real-estate interests had been lobbying to stop the trial.” The chairwoman of the downtown-Manhattan community board wrote an op-ed opposing having the trial “in the midst of a dense residential and office neighborhood.” Bloomberg’s Money Won’t Right the Wrong of ‘Guantanamo-on-Hudson’By early January, weeks after supporting the trial, Bloomberg reneged. In a letter to the White House, Bloomberg asserted a security threat to the trial that he felt no political pressure to explain. Now the trial would cost the city over $200 million annually, largely due to reallocating police officers, who would accrue “significant overtime.” Bloomberg, backed by Kelly, expected federal reimbursement—something he insisted would not be a “blank check.” Bloomberg was backed by his home-state senator, now-Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, who insisted that “not a nickel of these costs should be borne by New York taxpayers.”It happened that there was a test case undercutting Bloomberg’s argument in real time. In June 2009, federal prosecutors in New York indicted a different Gitmo detainee, someone whom the CIA also tortured in the black sites. The trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani wasn’t on the scale of the 9/11 trial—he was indicted for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania—but it featured no security disruption from terrorists, no abnormal police presence, and no economic disaster. Its judge, Lewis Kaplan, refused the government one of its desired witnesses, someone whom Ghailani named during his black-site interrogations. A jury acquitted Ghailani of all but one count of conspiracy, but it was enough to sentence him to life in prison in 2011, a sentence that has survived Ghailani’s appeals. His trial took a month.  But by then, the 9/11 trial had long been a lost cause. At a press conference on a Wednesday in late January, fueled by a nonbinding community-board vote against the trial, Bloomberg said that his “hope is that the attorney general and the president decide to change their mind” and hold the trial elsewhere. Two days later, Justice Department officials conceded to Times reporters that it was now “obvious” the trial couldn’t happen in New York.“If these trials were going to take place anywhere, they’d take place in New York, and the mayor of the largest city in the country said they can’t handle it. Well, if you can’t do it there, you can’t do it anywhere,” Marguiles said. “It was just nonsense. Of course they could have done it. These cases would have been resolved 10 years ago.” That November, before the Justice Department could salvage the prosecutions and indict Mohammed and his co-conspirators elsewhere, the Republicans won control of Congress. Once in office, the new GOP majority spearheaded legislation barring the Pentagon from spending money to move Guantanamo detainees onto mainland American soil, effectively killing any federal criminal indictment of anyone held in the wartime prison, a prohibition that continues to this day. Conceding defeat, the Obama administration in 2012 re-indicted the five co-conspirators in a military commission held at Guantanamo.The death of the 9/11 trial didn’t stop Obama from prosecuting terror suspects, something Donald Trump’s Justice Department has pursued as well. “It just became impossible to resolve the stain of 9/11 and the reality of Guantanamo,” Marguiles observed. “Everything about the show trial taking place down at Gitmo is inferior.”Indeed, the 9/11 military tribunal has lasted almost eight years without proceeding to trial. It’s been beset by a baroque series of setbacks, including accusations of government spying on the defense attorneys. Its new judge has set a trial date for 2021, some 20 years after 9/11, but that target is, as ever, in doubt. This week, one of Binalshibh’s attorneys, James Harrington, sought to remove himself from the case on health grounds. To keep the trial date alive, the prosecution took the extraordinary step of motioning to keep Harrington involved.Like many attorneys—including Holder—Greenberg and Marguiles believe the abundance of evidence about the 9/11 plot obtained outside of torture is sufficient to secure a federal conviction for the accused co-conspirators. As well, Marguiles said the 9/11 trial would have provided a way to “reckon with the legacy of torture.” Without a trial, New Yorkers and Americans generally lack the “closure and a narrative” that court cases provide, Greenberg said. “This country continues to live inside the post-9/11 moment,” she said, “in a way that didn’t need to happen.”No one continues to live in that moment more than the thousands of people like Rockefeller, who lost their loved ones on 9/11. “It was a crushing failure of will to actually do the right thing, to try the [accused conspirators] in a federal court,” said Rockefeller, who is affiliated with Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “That would have been to say that our pride in our rule of law, and our belief in our legal system, is what makes us different from terrorists.”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. 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Trump fumbles his pronunciation of several Indian names and a Hindi word at India speech

President Trump managed on Monday to mangle his pronunciation of several Indian names and a Hindi word on an otherwise successful first day of his state visit to India.

Trump returns to domestic squabbles on India trip

Returning to domestic squabbles, President Donald Trump lashed out at Supreme Court justices and his Democratic rivals on Tuesday during the second and last day of a whirlwind trip to India. Addressing reporters and business leaders, Trump warned of economic calamity if he loses his reelection race in November and repeated his call for two liberal-leaning Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from cases involving him or his administration. The Republican president also said he had not been briefed on intelligence suggesting Russia is meddling in the 2020 election, either to bolster him or Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

Coronavirus updates: Senior Iranian health official tests positive as pandemic fears grow

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US economy faces long-lasting damage from trade war: Fed official

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A British Tank Army Expected to Last Just a Few Days Against the Russians

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Korean Air is not offering refunds on flights to South Korea as customers desperately try to cancel trips because of coronavirus

Korean Air is not offering refunds on flights to South Korea, even after one of its own flight crew tested positive.

Daredevil 'Mad Mike' Hughes dies in crash of his homemade rocket in California

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Mad Mike" Hughes, a self-styled explorer and daredevil bent on proving that the earth is flat was killed over the weekend when his homemade rocket crashed in the California desert over the weekend. "Michael 'Mad Mike' Hughes tragically passed away today during an attempt to launch his homemade rocket," the Science Channel, which was planning to feature him on an upcoming series called "Homemade Astronauts," said on Twitter. A videotape of the incident, in which the rocket appears to fail shortly after take-off in the Mojave Desert outside Barstow, California, was posted to Twitter by Justin Chapman, a freelance journalist who was filming the launch.

Clinical trial of experimental coronavirus vaccine expected to start in April

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is expected to soon launch a clinical trial of an experimental coronavirus vaccine.The vaccine was developed by the drugmaker Moderna, and researchers hope to begin testing it on humans in late April. The first trial will involve 20 to 25 healthy volunteers, with results expected by July or August. If that round is successful, a second trial will include hundreds or thousands of subjects. The vaccine was created after the coronavirus' genetic sequence was determined in January."Going into a Phase One trial within three months of getting the sequence is unquestionably the world indoor record," NIAID Director Anthony Fauci told The Wall Street Journal on Monday. "Nothing has ever gone that fast."Gene-based technology has yet to result in an approved vaccine for humans, the Journal reports. If this vaccine does work, it will still have to go through regulatory measures, and likely won't be widely available until 2021. Fauci said the virus might not spread as quickly in the summer due to the heat, but could roar back in the winter. More than 2,600 people have died in this coronavirus outbreak, and there are more than 79,000 confirmed cases worldwide, with most in China.More stories from theweek.com The coronavirus recession? The real third way in 2020 Top member of Trump's coronavirus task force asks Twitter for help accessing map of virus

California woman, boyfriend accused of killing 3 roommates over rent argument

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Harvey Weinstein: Video resurfaces of convicted rapist calling Bernie Sanders sexist

As the news of former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on criminal sex acts and rape dominate headlines, a video circulating Twitter today in which Mr Wesintein calls Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders a “sexist” on MSNBC stands as a reminder that not long ago, he was considered a valuable voice in the world of politics.In a 2016 clip of the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” Mr Weinstein appears as a guest and is prompted by co-host Joe Scarborough to explain why he is “for Hillary instead of Bernie.”