January 2020

January 31, 2020

Parents charged after Chicago boy shot in struggle over gunThe parents of a 1-year-old boy who was shot in the head as his parents struggled over a gun inside a Chicago home were each ordered held on Thursday in lieu of $10,000 bond. Travis McCoy, 26, is charged with felony false alarm to 911 and misdemeanor child endangerment. Adriana Smith, 28, is charged with felony obstruction of justice and misdemeanor child endangerment.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2Ug2WfC
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 31, 2020

U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Coronavirus FearsFederal officials declared a public health emergency and will be restricting entry into the United States in light of the 2019 novel coronavirus that has killed at least 200 people and infected nearly 10,000 more worldwide. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters Friday that President Trump would sign a proclamation temporarily suspending entry to foreign nationals deemed to pose a transmission risk.Azar also said any U.S. citizen who traveled to China's Hubei province within the past 14 days before arriving home would be subjected two weeks of mandatory quarantine. And citizens who traveled to any other regions in China would undergo a “proactive entry health screen” and 14 days of monitored self-quarantine.“The risk for infections for Americans remains low,” Azar said, adding that these steps were “measured” reactions that would help officials deal with “unknowns” surrounding the virus.Earlier Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said they were putting 195 people who recently returned from China under quarantine for two weeks, dubbing it an “unprecedented” step that was now warranted.“We are preparing as this is the next pandemic, but hopeful this is not and will not be the case,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on a call with reporters. “We would rather be remembered for overreacting to under-reacting.”The move came after one of those recently-returned travelers reportedly attempted to leave the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, after arriving from Wuhan, China. The CDC declined to provide more information on the individual. There are currently over 9,800 cases of coronavirus in China, while the number of confirmed cases in the United States remained steady at six. Only one, the husband of a woman who recently traveled abroad, had been spread in-country, the CDC said previously. No one had died as a result of infection in the United States by the CDC's latest count.But Messonnier pointed to the most recent number of cases in China, which she said represented a 26 percent increase over Thursday's numbers, as a cause for growing vigilance. She also mentioned an increasing number of reports of person-to-person spread, including growing evidence that the 2019 novel coronavirus can be spread by people who have not yet experienced symptoms. The New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday released a study describing a case in Germany that appeared to show the spread of the virus from a person who traveled to China to several others.“The current scenario is a cause for concern,” Messonnier said.WHO Calls Coronavirus ‘Emergency’ as Person-to-Person Spread Confirmed in U.S.When asked if the coronavirus were more dangerous than the flu, Messonnier said there appeared to be “significant mortality related with this disease” based on cases coming out of China. However, she still didn't recommend face masks for the general public and urged people to stay calm.“Please do not let fear guide your actions,” she said, adding that the public shouldn't assume Asian Americans have the virus amid reports of surging xenophobia against people of Chinese descent worldwide. “There are about 4 million Chinese-Americans in this country.”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.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2SdWFia
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 31, 2020

Biden Claims Trump’s Trial is ‘Not a Partisan Impeachment’ While Clinton’s WasFormer vice president Joe Biden argued Friday that President Trump was not subject to “a partisan impeachment” even if no Republicans vote to remove him from office, while simultaneously defending his resistance to “a partisan impeachment” during Bill Clinton’s 1998 trial.Biden, speaking from Iowa, was challenged in an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos over comments he had made in Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. “No president should be removed from office, merely because one party enjoys a commanding lead in either house of Congress,” Biden said at the time.Stephanopoulos then asked the former vice president why a partisan impeachment was no longer wrong, to which Biden replied “it’s not partisan impeachment.” After Stephanopoulos pushed back and pointed out that no Republicans in the House had voted to impeach the president, Biden insisted that the Constitution had been violated, and that those voting against impeachment were denying the facts.“That’s the issue — was the Constitution violated? Period,” Biden stated. “Even if it’s a party-line vote, it just reflects on those who know, in fact, in their heart and in their head, that it’s in fact a violation of the Constitution to do what he did, and in fact vote no.”> Joe Biden on doing a 180 on opposing “a partisan impeachment”: “This is not a partisan impeachment” pic.twitter.com/iaSRDloVWu> > -- Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 31, 2020Biden then attempted to clarify why a party-line vote in impeachment did not count as partisan.“That’s a party-line vote, but that doesn’t make it right,” Biden said of lack of Republican support for Trump’s impeachment. “A party-line vote that is based upon something that doesn’t relate to a Constitutional violation is a different thing.”Several key Republican Senators announced their intentions on the vote for further witnesses and documents late Thursday night, with Senator Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) saying that Trump’s actions were “inappropriate,” but that “the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.”




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2S5IxHG
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 31, 2020

Chinese planes to bring overseas Wuhan citizens back to virus-hit cityChina sent two planes to Malaysia and Thailand on Friday to bring "stranded" Hubei province residents back to the virus-stricken city of Wuhan, authorities said. The Xiamen Airlines flights will pick up the Chinese nationals from Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia and the Thai capital Bangkok, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2GEE5KD
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 31, 2020

Firefights, blocked roads in Mexican city after senior cartel leader detainedArmed men blocked roads, burned cars and there were reports of shootouts in the city of Uruapan in western Mexico after a senior leader of the Los Viagras cartel was detained, local media and a source from the prosecutor's office said. Luis Felipe, also known as "El Vocho", was captured earlier in the day in the western state of Michoacan, which has long been convulsed by turf wars between drug gangs and where unrest is not uncommon after the detention of senior cartel figures. Michoacan's state security services, without giving names, said on Twitter that three people have been detained.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2vI4kh7
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 31, 2020

7,000 People Trapped on Mediterranean Cruise in Italy Over Suspected Coronavirus CaseROME—More than 7,000 people were quarantined on an Italian cruise ship in the Mediterranean port of Civitavecchia outside of Rome after a Chinese woman from Hong Kong came down with a fever and symptoms that mimic the coronavirus. Initial tests seemed to exclude the deadly virus, according to Italian media, but passengers were expected to be kept onboard overnight as a precaution. A second round of tests late Thursday completely excluded contagion, and Italy’s health authorities gave the green light for passengers to disembark. But as of Thursday evening, the mayor of Civitavecchia refused to authorize any passengers to get off the ship. Tourism operators, suddenly confronted with a new nightmare scenario tied to the virus, scrambled to address fears of an outbreak on a cruise ship. “We have no information, the internet inside the ship isn’t working, and we can’t get news. But above all we take meals together in the common areas, and we don’t know if someone is infected,” Liborio Iervolino, a cruise passenger from Puglia said. ‘There are no disposable dishes and in the rooms, the televisions only broadcast advertisements. We would like to see the news and understand what is happening.”The Costa Smerelda, the fifth-largest cruise ship in the world and the flagship of an Italian company best known for the 2011 crash of the Costa Concordia on Tuscan island of Giglio, departed from Savona, Italy, on Jan. 25 with 6,000 passengers and 1,000 crew onboard. The massive, 19-deck vessel made stops in Marseilles, Barcelona, and Palma de Mallorca before docking in Civitavecchia on Thursday. It was scheduled to return to Savona for the Feb. 1 end of the cruise. But passengers who had lined up for a Rome excursion or to disembark at its penultimate stop were told to stay on the ship after medics in full hazmat suits boarded the vessel Thursday morning to check on a female Chinese patient in her fifties who was in the ship’s hospital. The woman, along with her asymptomatic husband and the medical team who treated her during the voyage, are being held in isolation on the ship. Samples from the woman were sent to the Lazzaro Spallanzani infectious disease hospital in Rome to be tested. Citizens of the port town of Civitavecchia have gone to the port to protest the disembarkation of 1,143 passengers whose voyage was scheduled to end in their town. “All the protocols are being followed and we will keep the case constantly monitored,” Civitavecchia’s mayor, Ernesto Tedesco, told worried citizens as he threatened to sue the cruise company if they disembarked before the full test results were back.The Costa company confirmed to The Daily Beast that the couple were among more than 750 Chinese or Hong Kong passengers on the voyage. Of those, 351 embarked on Jan. 25 in Savona along with the sick passenger, while others got on at the ship’s various ports of call in Spain and France. The couple arrived in Italy for the Jan. 25 embarkation on a flight from Hong Kong to Milan’s Malpensa airport, which means if the woman is confirmed to have the virus, health officials will then begin tracing anyone who flew with her, since the virus can be contagious even before symptoms show. A Costa representative would not confirm when the woman first reported being sick.“The situation is under control and at the moment there are no reasons for concern on board,” Italian Coast Guard Commander Vincenzo Leone said in a statement Thursday.Passengers reached by The Daily Beast via social media say they were not told directly that the woman was suspected of carrying the virus, but were told to alert crew members if they were sick with fever or respiratory conditions. Several passengers have tweeted that they should have been told earlier in the voyage that they might be at risk. Many complained that they were not given face masks or rubber gloves to prevent infection.Teens Are Now Claiming They Have Coronavirus for Tik Tok CloutRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/37Lr8ud
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 31, 2020

GOP blocks witnesses in Senate impeachment trial, as final vote could drag to next week



Republicans in the Senate cobbled together enough votes Friday evening to reject Democratic efforts to extend the Trump impeachment trial and call new witnesses, as the final vote on whether to remove President Trump from office is now not expected until next week. 

via FOX NEWS https://fxn.ws/37O1vsX
Read more »

January 30, 2020

As a new form of coronavirus continues to infect a growing number of people around the world, medical professionals, scientists and big tech giants are fighting the spread of another contagion — misinformation. Just like a virus, it can be difficult to contain and many working in medical and scientific fields are using the very tools used to spread misinformation to counter it.

Though so much misinformation is spread on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and hundreds of other scientists and medical professionals who are studying the 2019 Novel Coronavirus, have been utilizing social media to disseminate accurate information in real time, countering conspiracy theories and collaborating for research.

“Today, in this outbreak, we are sharing information almost to the second of its release,” says Crystal Watson, senior researcher and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “That allows a lot more collective thinking and decision making.”

Watson says that social media had made it possible for scientific information to be shared much more quickly. “In prior outbreaks before social media, often we had to wait for a publication in a journal, for example, to learn about some of what was going on,” she says.

Many working in scientific and medical fields started to notice the spread of harmful misinformation at the beginning of the outbreak and experts started using their expertise to help counter it. “I think there’s some [misinformation] that is intentionally harmful, either disseminating information about a false cure, for example, or spreading information that stigmatizes specific groups of people,” Watson says. “So it’s really important that we get on top of that and provide correct information and push it out as best we can.”

Misinformation on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube range from racially driven scapegoating to supposed cures for the virus. One inaccurate Facebook post shared more than 500 times claimed that a vaccine exists for the new form coronavirus, which is false. In fact, there are no vaccines for any of the seven types of coronavirus that humans are susceptible to according to PolitiFact, quoting Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Other false claims have involved inaccurate information about how to protect from the virus, including claims that a Chinese respiratory expert found that saline solution kills the virus, and that people should rinse their mouths out with it.

“That’s the risk that we run here when we deal with misinformation,” says Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s not just ‘oh, who cares what people are saying?’ If it undermines trust, then that’s a big problem.”

Sell has studied misinformation that spread after the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. She says there are similarities in the misinformation spread during that outbreak and the outbreak of the new form of coronavirus known as 2019 Novel Coronavirus, which started in the city of Wuhan in central China. There are now 8,236 total confirmed cases as of Thursday evening, most of which are in China, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have confirmed five cases in the U.S. On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern.

“There’s always overlays of politics,” Sell tells TIME. “Even though you think of [outbreaks] as health events, they’re an opportunity for some people to create discord and to cause people to become fearful and also to criticize different government actions.”

A spokesperson for Facebook tells TIME in an emailed statement that the company has partnered with third-party fact-checkers around the world to add warning labels to posts that contain false information and promote articles that include fact checked information. The company is also sending notifications to those who have already shared false content.

“This situation is fast-evolving and we will continue our outreach to global and regional health organizations to provide support and assistance,” the spokesperson said.

Representatives for Twitter and Google did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment, but a spokesperson for Twitter told The Washington Post that users searching for coronavirus on its platform were met with information from the CDC. Similarly, Google, which owns YouTube, is promoting content that contains accurate and verified information, according to The Post.

“It’s challenging because this information is being churned out very, very quickly,” says Antonia Ho, an infectious diseases physician and clinical senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. “No one is an expert right now… Obviously, this Novel Coronavirus is so new that with all this information coming out, it takes a lot to control, and certainly misinformation may not be noticed until later on just because it takes time to verify.”

Still, Ho tells TIME, social media — Twitter in particular — has been a significant tool for scientists who can counter misinformation with accuracies and research. The sharing of information and updates on Novel Coronavirus by members of the science and medical communities has grown organically, and many scientists, doctors and other experts have accumulated thousands of followers. For example, Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and expert on infectious diseases, tweets daily coronavirus updates and has a following of 44,000.

This sharing of information has also led to increased online interaction among those working on the virus. “There’s often months of delays when people do research… but now this is all coming out on Twitter, and in a way there is a self peer review,” Ho says.

“Scientists who work on this around the world are able to form collaborations and are having really interesting conversations. And there are sensible voices that are emerging. People that you would follow because you know that they’re the expert in so many things,” she adds.

WHO has also launched an initiative to counter misinformation known as the WHO Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN). The initiative shares accurate tailored information with targeted sectors impacted by the coronavirus, including healthcare, travel and tourism, business and food and agriculture.

“The spread of misinformation has been challenging but WHO is prepared for this. While the organization is known for fighting epidemics, it’s also fighting ‘infodemics,'” a WHO spokesperson said in an emailed statement to TIME. “[EPI-WIN] allows the organization to cut through the ‘noise’ by rapidly sending information through existing and trusted sources to the public. It’s like an injection of information.”

Sell says that tech companies have some responsibility to combat misinformation, but that alone is not enough to stop the spread of falsities.

“Being able to talk freely and post freely — those things are important,” Sell says. “An appropriate tech response to dealing with misinformation is critical, but I don’t think it’s sufficient… We would rather ourselves be able to determine what’s true or not true.”


Via Time
Read more »

January 30, 2020

U.S. says first shipments of medicine to Iran delivered via Swiss humanitarian channelZURICH/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A humanitarian channel to bring food and medicine to Iran has started trial operations, the Swiss and U.S. governments said on Thursday, helping supply Swiss goods to the struggling population without tripping over U.S. sanctions. The Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA) seeks to ensure that Swiss-based exporters and trading companies in the food, pharmaceutical and medical sectors have a secure payment channel with a Swiss bank through which payments for their exports to Iran are guaranteed, a government statement said. Three shipments of cancer and transplant drugs have been sent to Iran through this channel and the transaction has been processed, U.S. Special Representative Brian Hook told a press briefing.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2vyeVuJ
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 30, 2020

Iranian factory makes U.S. and Israeli flags to burnBusiness is booming at Iran's largest flag factory which makes U.S., British and Israeli flags for Iranian protesters to burn. The factory produces about 2,000 U.S. and Israeli flags a month in its busiest periods, and more than 1.5 million square feet of flags a year. Tensions between the United States and Iran have reached the highest level in decades after top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3, prompting Iran to retaliate with a missile attack against a U.S. base in Iraq days later.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/36BZBu6
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 30, 2020

Trial Date Set for Jeffrey Epstein Jail GuardsTwo Manhattan jail guards charged with falsifying records after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell will face trial in June, a federal judge ruled Thursday.Tova Noel, 31, and Michael Thomas, 41, who worked inside Metropolitan Correctional Center’s (MCC) Special Housing Unit, are accused of failing to conduct mandated checks on inmates in the hours before the multi-millionaire sex-offender killed himself in August 2019. Both corrections officers have pleaded not guilty.In Manhattan federal court on Thursday, defense lawyers asked to delay the trial until October—a request U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres promptly denied. Torres set a trial date for June 22, despite the protestations of Noel’s lawyer, Jason Foy, who said the schedule would interfere with his family vacation. The defense attorneys also requested a later date because of what they described as “voluminous” discovery materials, including some they said they hadn’t received. “It’s necessary,” Foy told the court. “This isn’t about us laying back and taking our time.”Thomas’ attorney, Montell Figgins, added, “It took the federal government 90 days to investigate … it’s going to take us more than 90 days to do the same amount of work.”Indictment Against Jail Guards Reveals News Details From Jeffrey Epstein’s Final HoursFiggins also told Judge Torres he’d likely file a motion to dismiss the indictment due to selective prosecution, and that he needed to obtain a report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General which, along with the FBI and Bureau of Prisons, was tasked with investigating Epstein’s death in a federal facility.Prosecutors had argued against delaying the trial—previously slated for April—which they said will last a week. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Lonergan said the facts in the criminal case only relate to a 14-hour period of time. “This is a very focused, single-incident indictment,” Lonergan said, adding that broader working conditions at MCC were “just not relevant.”Foy disagreed, saying MCC’s environs and alleged failures in security measures “are directly related” to his client’s case. (Both guards were working overtime shifts, and the union representing the officers told The Daily Beast that MCC is constantly understaffed, forcing some guards to work “mandatory overtime” shifts totaling 16 to 18 hours.)After Thursday’s court appearance, Figgins told reporters that the feds “want to put my client in jail for the same conduct that’s happening with other officers on a daily basis.” He said Thomas is on leave without pay pending an administrative hearing.He said his selective prosecution defense will center around the fact that other corrections officers within the Bureau of Prisons system, outside of the Epstein case, have also fallen short with required checks but without criminal consequences.The Bureau of Prisons allowed guards to work nearly 24 hours straight, creating a system where guards could fall asleep on the job, Figgins claimed; guards might end a shift only to be told they couldn’t go home for another eight hours because of staff shortages. “How can they allow that type of work to go on and not expect something like that [Epstein’s death] to happen?” he said.“Now when a billionaire dies, they want to make [Noel and Thomas] a scapegoat,” Figgins continued. He pointed out Noel and Thomas weren’t the only officers working the night before Epstein died; a lieutenant had to sign off on paperwork for their rounds, and a control room held other guards, too. “Why are these the only people charged?” Figgins asked.Last November, federal prosecutors charged Noel and Thomas each with one count of conspiring to defraud the United States. Noel is also charged with five counts of making false records, while Thomas was slapped with three counts of making false records. According to prosecutors, the corrections officers face five years in prison for each count of the charges.Prosecutors say the guards never conducted their mandated checks on inmates, including Epstein, on the night he hanged himself. “Instead, for substantial portions of their shifts, Noel and Thomas sat at their desk, browsed the internet, and moved around the common area of the SHU [Special Housing Unit],” the indictment alleged. “To conceal their failure to perform their duties, Noel and Thomas repeatedly signed false certifications attesting to having conducted multiple counts of inmates when, in truth and in fact, they never conducted such counts.”Epstein was found dead in his cell around 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10—one month after he was arrested for trafficking minor girls. He’d previously attempted to hang himself on July 23, officials said, but was taken off suicide watch after 24 hours. He was under psychological observation until July 30.  Later in August, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said a jail psychologist removed Epstein from suicide watch. In a letter to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Boyd said “a doctoral-level psychologist” had “determined that a suicide watch was no longer warranted.”According to the indictment, no SHU guards conducted counts from about 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 9 until Epstein’s body was discovered the next morning. Both Noel and Thomas had been working overtime shifts the day Epstein died. A cellmate of the multi-millionaire had been transferred out of MCC on Aug. 9, and “despite the MCC’s psychological staff’s direction that Epstein have a cellmate, no new cellmate was assigned to Epstein's cell,” the indictment stated.Noel worked a shift from 4 p.m. on Aug. 9 to 8 a.m. on Aug. 10, while Thomas started his shift at 12 a.m. on Aug. 10. They were the only corrections officers on duty in the Special Housing Unit from 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Aug. 10, prosecutors say.The guards were collectively responsible for two prisoner checks on Aug. 9, at 4 p.m. and 10 p.m., as well as three checks on Aug. 10, at 12 a.m., 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.When a supervisor who’d just gotten to work responded to an alarm that went off in MCC at 6:33 a.m. on Aug. 10, Noel allegedly announced, “Epstein hung himself.” Noel was said to admit later, “We did not complete the 3 a.m. nor the 5 a.m. rounds.”“We messed up,” Thomas allegedly told a supervisor. “I messed up, she’s not to blame, we didn’t do any rounds.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/37IkMvQ
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 30, 2020

US hits Iran with new sanctions, keeps some waivers in placeThe Trump administration said Thursday that it will continue — at least for now — its policy of not sanctioning foreign companies that work with Iran's civilian nuclear program. Brian Hook, U.S. envoy to Iran, said the U.S. would renew for 60 days sanctions waivers that permit Russian, European and Chinese companies to continue to work on Iran's civilian nuclear facilities without running afoul of U.S. sanctions.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2UaFmkk
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 30, 2020

Get us out of here, plead foreign students at China virus epicenterForeign students stuck in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of a coronavurus outbreak, are launching social media campaigns, making phone calls and writing letters urging their governments to get them out as soon as possible. Governments globally are grappling with the challenge of how to get their citizens out of China's Hubei province, where 60 million residents now live under virtual lockdown. Pakistan said that quarantine regulations prevented it from flying out the more than 500 Pakistani students and their families from Wuhan.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2vxfyol
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 30, 2020

Biden's campaign is reportedly seeking 'election-night alliances' with candidates who may not survive IowaFormer Vice President Joe Biden's campaign might be a little worried about Iowa.The first caucuses of the 2020 primary season are coming up in just four days, but Biden by no means has a lock on Iowa. So Biden's campaign is reaching out to lower-polling candidates in hopes of striking "election night alliances" to pick up their supporters if they don't make it past the first caucus ballots, Politico reports.Tom Steyer, the billionaire who's sitting at an average of 3.6 percent in the polls, was reportedly one of the targets of Biden's campaign. An aide to Steyer confirmed his campaign was approached by "multiple candidates," per Politico. Biden's team similarly talked with entrepreneur Andrew Yang's staffers, sources said. And three Biden staffers also "tentatively floated" a deal with a strategist for Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-Minn.) campaign, The New York Times reported earlier this week. All the campaigns told Politico they'd "rebuffed advances" from other candidates.Biden's second-tier strategy isn't unusual for the Iowa caucuses. The state's system allows people who've supported candidates "who fail to reach 15 percent support in a precinct on the first ballot" to chose someone else for the next ballot, which eventually chooses the state's delegates, Politico writes. Yet it also makes it clear that Biden's campaign knows the Iowa race is far from settled. Read more at Politico.More stories from theweek.com Mitch McConnell's rare blunder John Bolton just vindicated Nancy Pelosi 7 witheringly funny cartoons about the GOP's John Bolton problem




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/36Fkp3N
via Yahoo News

Read more »

January 29, 2020

Americans from China virus zone evaluated at military baseThe 195 Americans evacuated from the Chinese city at the center of the new virus outbreak are undergoing three days of testing and monitoring at a California military base to ensure they do not show signs of the illness, officials said Wednesday. The people flown out of China on a plane chartered by the U.S. government have not been quarantined, Dr. Chris Braden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters after the plane landed at March Air Reserve Base. Authorities said those evacuated, including U.S. consular employees based in the Chinese city of Wuhan and families with children, are technically not required to stay on the base.




from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2RVp4ta
via Yahoo News

Read more »
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Author Name

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *

Powered by Blogger.