Arrest follows president’s controversial comments at debate: 'Proud Boys – stand back and stand by’
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Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) never wastes an opportunity to roast a CEO.On Wednesday, three pharmaceutical executives, including former Celgene CEO Mark Alles, testified on drug pricing for the House Oversight Committee. While at the company, Alles saw a massive increase in the price of the cancer drug Revlimid -- and Porter broke down just what it got Alles in return.Porter started her takedown by asking Alles if he knew what a Revlimid pill cost in 2005: $215, she reminded him with the help of a whiteboard. And by the time Alles left the company late last year, after its sale to Bristol-Myers Squibb, a single Revlimid pill cost $763. "Did the drug get substantially more effective in that time? Did cancer patients need fewer pills?" Porter questioned, trying to figure out why Celgene upped the price. Alles answered by saying Revlimid proved effective in more patients. "So you discovered more patients who might benefit from paying $763 a pill?" Porter rhetorically responded, outlining how the average senior in her district couldn't even afford one pill.Porter then moved on to tear apart the $13 million Alles made in 2017 as Celgene's CEO. "It's 200 times the average American's income and 360 times what the average senior makes on Social Security," Porter noted. She then reminded Alles just how he made "half a million dollars, personally, just by tripling the price of Revlimid." "The drug didn't get any better, the cancer patients didn't get any better, you just got better at making money," Porter concluded. Watch her questioning below. > Half a million dollars.> > That's the bonus a Big Pharma CEO got for hiking the price of ONE cancer treatment drug.> > How many patients lost their lives because they couldn't afford this medicine? Here's our conversation: pic.twitter.com/mkke6y9tnw> > -- Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) September 30, 2020More stories from theweek.com 3 reasons the stakes for the NBA Finals are extra high GOP Sen. Tim Scott calls for Trump to correct his Proud Boys comments: 'If he doesn't correct it, I guess he didn't misspeak' Trump pummels Biden — and America
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Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said Tuesday that it is halting its operation in India, citing reprisals by the government and the freezing of its bank accounts by Indian authorities. Amnesty International India said it has laid off its staff and paused all its ongoing campaign and research work on human rights, and that Indian authorities froze its bank accounts on suspicion of violating rules on foreign funding.
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A federal judge on Wednesday tossed out a federal rights lawsuit filed by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and blasted her claims that she was the victim of a coordinated and racist conspiracy aimed at forcing her from office. Gardner, the city’s elected prosecutor, claimed in the suit that “entrenched interests” were intentionally impeding her efforts to reform racist practices that have led to a loss of trust in the criminal justice system.
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Presidential candidates to face off for first time in Cleveland and for Biden no news would be good newsAfter months of anticipation, Donald Trump and election rival Joe Biden were scheduled to meet on a debate stage for the first time in Cleveland on Tuesday night, in what could be Trump’s last best chance to turn the presidential race his way and win re-election.Suffering from weeks of negative revelations in the news and terrible poll numbers, Trump needs a big score at the first presidential debate to shift the national conversation away from the sputtering economy, the coronavirus pandemic and his staggering tax avoidance, analysts say.Those factors could see a performance by Trump that is even more aggressive than usual.“Trump will go after Biden hard, to deflect attention away from his own troubles, including the reports on his tax evasion and business failures,” said Brad Bannon, a Washington-based Democratic strategist. “Much of Biden’s support is based on his calm demeanor, which contrasts well with the president’s erratic personality.“So, it’s important for Biden to respond to Trump without losing his cool, and smile while he surgically cuts the president down to size.”Advisers to Biden, meanwhile, say that a great debate result for the Democratic candidate would be for not much to happen at all. The challenge as they see it is for Biden to appear steady and draw a contrast with Trump – and to resist being drawn into a mudfight.Biden himself appears to recognize the dangers of meeting Trump on his preferred turf of insult and mockery.“I hope I don’t get baited into a brawl with this guy, because that’s the only place he’s comfortable,” Biden told donors at a fundraiser in Delaware earlier this month. “This is a guy who is absolutely tasteless. Completely tasteless. So pointing it out doesn’t do much.”The presidential election on 3 November is only 35 days away, and early in-person voting is under way already, while about 10m mail-in ballots have been sent out across the country – a record brought about by the coronavirus crisis.The conventional wisdom about presidential debates is that they do not move the race much – except when they do. Former vice-president Al Gore was dinged for sighing through his first debate in 2000 with George W Bush. An underprepared outing by Barack Obama against Mitt Romney in their first debate of 2012 breathed new life into the challenger’s campaign.But the stakes around the first debate of the 2020 cycle may be unique. The race has proven historically stable throughout the year, according to polling analysts, and big campaign moments including the national conventions and Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as a running mate do not appear to have moved the needle.For weeks, the Trump campaign has been touting the debate as the moment that would at last alter the race, regaling donors with a fantasy of a quick-witted Trump running circles around a somnolent Biden.Trump went so far at the weekend as to demand a “drug test” before the debate of Biden, whom Trump has baselessly accused of taking “performance enhancing drugs”.Biden laughed off the suggestion, but his campaign issued a lacerating response.“Vice-President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words,” a Biden spokeswoman told Politico. “If the president thinks his best case is made in urine, he can have at it.”Biden and Trump are scheduled to participate in three debates total. The 90-minute opener in the series will be held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and be moderated by the Fox News host Chris Wallace, who has proven in the past to be a tough interviewer of the president.On Monday, Wallace said he hoped to be “as invisible as possible” onstage. “If I’ve done my job right, at the end of the night, people will say, ‘That was a great debate, who was the moderator?’” Wallace told Fox.Wallace has picked six subjects for the night: the candidates’ records in office; the supreme court; Covid-19; the economy; “race and violence in our cities”; and the integrity of the election.But a bombshell New York Times report at the weekend showing that Trump paid zero federal taxes in 10 of the last 15 years, and that Trump has hundreds of millions in mysterious debt coming due, could be one of many topics that upend the planned proceedings.Biden is expected to highlight how much of Trump’s wealth was inherited, and to draw a contrast between Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Biden grew up, and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the site of Trump’s most famous golden tower.Biden might also underscore the dangers of a president who denies climate change by pointing to the ongoing wildfire crisis in the west. Facing new sexual assault allegations himself, Trump could seek to revive allegations against Biden.Trump has already signaled that Biden’s family is fair game, with sustained attacks on his son Hunter Biden, whose relationships in Ukraine Republicans tried to use to muddle the impeachment inquiry.But Trump appears to need more political mileage out of the debate than the brief bump that a few sharply delivered attacks might deliver.More than winning an argument, strategists say, the debates are about making an impression on viewers that could nudge a crucial few into one camp or the other.“Trump needs a Biden collapse,” the Republican political consultant Mike Murphy, a frequent Trump critic, said on his podcast. “Because Trump needs something to happen on the 29th that gives him the whole month to work with.”
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ISTANBUL, Turkey—On Sunday afternoon, a video depicting a large convoy of Islamist Syrian rebel fighters yelling enthusiastically as they drove off to war circulated widely on Arabic social media. Fighters in the packed trucks, driving quickly past the group of children filming with their phones, could be heard yelling “Allahu Akbar!” and, “Our leader, 'til the end of time, is our master, Muhammad!”However, what shocked those watching the video weren’t the shouts of the Syrian fighters but rather those of the children filming, who yelled back at the soldiers in a language unfamiliar to most Syrians following their country’s nine-year war. “That’s not Kurdish, right?” said one user in an online group where the video emerged. “If they were Kurds, you think they’d be cheering them on?” responded another with a laugh out loud emoji.Over the next several hours, rumors swirled that the video was shot in Azerbaijan, a small Turkic-speaking nation lodged between Iran and Russia, and that the Syrian rebel fighters had been sent there to prop up the Azeri government in its war against neighboring Armenia that had begun that day. According to high-ranking Syrian rebel sources that spoke to The Daily Beast, these rumors are true. The fighters that appeared in the circulated video were part of a group of 1,000 Syrian rebel soldiers sent in two batches from Turkey on September 22 and 24.“500 Hamza Brigade fighters were flown last Tuesday from southern Turkey to the Azeri airbase at Sumqayit [30 kilometers north of the Azeri capital of Baku]”, according to a source within the Syrian National Army (SNA) rebel outfit who requested anonymity. “Two days later, on Thursday, another 500 fighters from the Sultan Murad brigades rebel faction were similarly flown out to Azerbaijan.”These claims were echoed by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Syrian opposition body that monitors human rights violations in the country. SOHR sources suggest more batches of Syrian rebel fighters are preparing to be deployed to Azerbaijan.The Hamza and Sultan Murad brigades are known within Syrian rebel circles as factions that enjoy especially close relations with Turkey, the last remaining patron of the Syrian opposition. Sayf Balud, commander of the Hamza brigades, however, is also known for his checkered past, in particular, as a former commander within the radical jihadist group ISIS.An ethnic Syrian Turkman from the town of Biza’a in Aleppo city’s northern countryside, Balud originally joined the Abu Bakr Sadiq brigades, a moderate rebel faction near his hometown that received widespread support from Gulf states in the early years of the conflict. However, coming from a small, relatively unknown family, Balud failed to climb the ranks of Syria’s rebel movement as quickly as he would have liked, and as others from more prominent backgrounds regularly did. By early 2013, Balud had joined ISIS, whose ranks were staffed mostly by foreigners who couldn't have cared less about the social status of their Syrian recruits.In July 2013, Balud appeared in an ISIS propaganda video shot in the border town of Tal Abyad after the group successfully captured the city from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). In the video, Sayf appears next to an Egyptian foreign fighter addressing a room full of two dozen captured YPG soldiers, who were assembled before an ISIS camera crew to officially repent for having joined an armed faction that ISIS’ leadership described as being “at war with God.”Over the next several years, Balud’s star continued to rise, as the commander attained a level of status within ISIS that would have been unattainable in other rebel groups. Despite the large-scale defeat of ISIS across northern Syria at the hands of the YPG in 2016 and 2017, the cunning commander was able to leverage his history of fighting against Kurds to re-invent himself as a valuable client for another foreign patron: Turkey.By January 2018, when Turkish backed rebel forces launched “Operation Olive Branch” to take over the Kurdish canton of Afrin located in Syria’s uppermost northwest corner, Balud regularly appeared in the group’s propaganda videos as the official commander of the newly formed Hamza brigades. His status as an ethnic Turkman, a small minority within Syria whose likeness to their Turkish kinsmen across the border has pushed Ankara to grant many coveted privileges such as Turkish citizenship and sensitive leadership positions, further endeared Balud to his new patrons.According to SNA sources, Syrian rebel units now being sent to Azerbaijan by Turkey are almost exclusively led by ethnic Syrian Turkmen. “Sayf Balud is a Turkman. The Sultan Murad brigade’s commander, Fahim Aissa, is a Syrian Turkman, like Balud. Turkey only trusts factions led by Syrian Turkman to carry out these missions. These are sensitive for Turkey politically, and they don’t trust Syrian Arabs to lead them.”Turkey’s intervention in Azerbaijan is indeed sensitive. After a four-year lull in fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, fighting between the two countries erupted anew on Sunday in fighting that killed two-dozen fighters.Historically the Nagorno-Karabakh region has been internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. But in 1991 Armenian factions within the region declared themselves independent. Three years of war over the disputed territory ended in 1994 with a Russian brokered ceasefire. The newly declared Nagorno-Karabakh republic was soon occupied by Armenia, which has since maintained de facto control of the area. With the exception of four days of fighting in April 2016, Sunday’s clashes were the first major instance of renewed combat between both countries over the status of the area. Both sides accuse the other of having initiated the fighting on Sunday.Clashes continue, with dozens more casualties reported. Fighting alongside the Azeri regular forces were 1,000 Syrian rebel fighters, among them former jihadists led by ex-ISIS commander Sayf Balud. All About the OilTurkey's move to send Syrian rebels to face-off against Armenia, a longtime rival of Turkey, is just the latest in a long string of neo-Ottoman foreign adventures undertaken by President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan over the last 6 months. Ankara has deployed both its armed forces and Syrian proxies to crack down on Kurdish PKK and YPG forces in northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan throughout 2020.Turkey has also intervened in western Libya and waters throughout the eastern Mediterranean where its navy has threatened NATO allies France and Greece in an attempt to strongarm both countries and lay claim to gas reserves located within Greece's maritime borders.In Azerbaijan, Turkey is looking to demonstrate loyalty and prop up an oil-rich regime with which it has maintained close military ties since the 1994 ceasefire. Since 2005, they have launched numerous lucrative oil and gas initiatives including a pipeline that exports 1.2 million barrels of Azeri oil per day to the European Union (EU), earning Turkey upwards of $200 million in annual transit fees. In 2006, this cooperation expanded following the launch of the South Caucasus natural gas pipeline that annually exports 8.8 billion cubic meters of much needed Azeri gas to the Turkish market, a net importer of energy.In 2011, Turkey began work on an expansive natural gas production network called the Trans Anatolian Pipeline, which is projected to export 31 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to the EU by 2026. Turkish shareholders, who own a 30 percent stake in the project, stand to make huge profits.Turkey’s push to transform Azerbaijan into a lucrative oil and gas export hub is also motivated by Ankara’s desire to come out from under Russia’s shadow. Turkey depends on Russia for 40 percent of its fossil fuels, a reliance that has forced Ankara to treat Russia as a friendly nation despite the fact that the two countries share almost no common interests.The “Southern Gas Corridor,” a term referring to the various pipelines emerging out of Azerbaijan, has been heavily cheered on by the EU, which also wants to break its dependence on Russian gas. No surprise then that Russia is on the other side in the ongoing dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.Nagorno-Karabakh is now the third theater where Russia and Turkey find themselves supporting opposite sides in an active Middle East conflict zone. In Syria, Russian support for dictator Bashar al-Assad and Turkey’s support for the country’s rebels such as Sayf Bulad and others led to direct conflict between both countries’ armies earlier this year, resulting in the death of dozens of Turkish soldiers. In Libya, the situation is reversed, with Turkey supporting Libya’s government and Russia supporting Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general and rebel leader who has sought to seize control of Libya’s lucrative oil sector and capture the capital of Tripoli.In both conflicts, Sayf Bulad and the Hamza brigades have proven extremely useful to Turkey. Thousands of the group’s fighters, including Sayf Bulad, were deployed to Libya last summer to help repel a major assault launched by Russian-backed Khalifa Haftar and in the bargain reclaim territory previously captured by the general. The Turkish backed authority in Tripoli is now safely guarded against external threats, while Turkish companies are set to gain lucrative contracts in Libya’s oil and gas and reconstruction sectors.Within this context of great power struggles, Syria's rebels, once idealistic and seeking to liberate their country from dictator Bashar al-Assad, have found themselves reduced to pawns compelled to serve as mercenaries and shock troops used by Turkey to advance its foreign policy in a world where Ankara finds itself increasingly isolated. In doing so, they find themselves led by and mixed with fighters from the most vicious jihadist group the world has ever seen.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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Tsikhanouskaya said Macron promised her to help negotiate with the Belarus authorities and secure the release of the political prisoners. "He promised us to do everything to help with negotiations, (during) this political crisis in our country ... and he will do everything to help to release all the political prisoners", Tsikhanouskaya told reporters in English after the meeting in Vilnius.
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Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s pick to replace Justice Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, warned in a private discussion at Notre Dame last year that the judicial nomination process “has gotten very brutal” due to “a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial role.”Footage of the event, which went public Tuesday, shows Barrett and Amul Thapar, a federal appeals judge for the Sixth Circuit who is also on President Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court, discussing their backgrounds and judicial philosophy in a far-ranging conversation.Barrett, already the topic of heavy scrutiny for her family’s involvement in a charismatic Christian group, spoke candidly on the topic of judicial confirmations — referencing comments made by Ginsburg after Justice Kavanaugh’s 2018 hearing, of which the late justice said “the way it was, was right. The way it is, is wrong."“Part of that is because people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial role,” Barrett explained. “If you think that the judge who is going to be confirmed to a court of appeals or to the Supreme Court is going to be imposing his or her policy preferences on you, then it leads to kind of this all in — 'we have to take this person down if we think we're going to disagree with the policy preferences.’”During Barrett's 2017 confirmation hearing for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a line of questioning from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) was widely publicized and condemned in conservative circles for its suggestion of anti-religious animus.“Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that, you know, dogma and law are two different things? And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma,” Feinstein said at the time. “The law is totally different, and I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”Speaking Saturday after Trump officially announced her nomination, Barrett stated that she had “no illusions that the road ahead of me will be easy, for the short term or the long haul,” and said that she would strive to earn the Senate’s support. She also offered a glimpse of her judicial philosophy, echoing the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom she clerked for. “His judicial philosophy is mine too: A judge must apply the law as written," she stated.In her April 2019 discussion at Notre Dame, Barrett spoke at length about her originalist background, and gave insights into how she strives to be impartial in rulings.“I try to put myself in the shoes of the party that I'm going to rule against. And so as I'm writing the opinion, or as I'm trying to decide how I'm going to vote at conference, I imagine that it was my daughter, or me, or my husband that was in that situation, and think, ‘could I still reach the same result?’” she revealed. “. . . Could I respect the reasoning? And am I really doing it in a way that smokes out any kind of policy impulse that I have to go the other way?”While Barrett warned that “judges are humans and they're fallible,” she stated that “everybody has to come up with mechanisms . . . to try to guard against you imposing your policy views on the law.”“Justice Scalia used to say, and it's right — and in my almost two years on the bench, I've already had this happen — if you don't write decisions that you disagree with — the results, Not the reasoning — if you don't reach results that you don't like, you're not a very good judge, you're doing something wrong,” she continued. “Because you shouldn't like the result in every case you decide.”Barrett said that the trend towards politicizing judicial appointments stemmed from a number of different sources.“I think it's really a feature of judges cultivating in some instances, this perception of the judicial role, of the public's perception of this as the judicial role,” she said. “It's not the judicial role, and it's very dangerous. It's dangerous because for our courts to function and fulfill their role in society and to function well people have to respect them. And if everyone thinks that courts are just policymaking arms, then they're not going to be respected, right? It's become a very toxic situation.”
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WHERE AND WHAT IS NAGORNO-KARABAKH? It's a mountainous, forested patch of land that sits inside the territory of ex-Soviet Azerbaijan and is recognised under international law as part of that country. Nagorno-Karabakh survives almost totally on budget support from Armenia and donations from the worldwide Armenian diaspora.
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After weeks and months of President Donald Trump characterizing former Vice President Joe Biden as an senile old man who can’t string two sentences together, his campaign has finally realized that they should start raising expectations for his performance at the first debate this Tuesday night.Apparently, Donald Trump Jr. didn’t get the memo.The president’s eldest son kicked off his Fox & Friends appearance by attacking CNN’s Jake Tapper for not pressing Jill Biden harder on her husband’s history of making “gaffes” during an interview on State of the Union Sunday. “Once a Democrat operative, all of it—always a Democrat operative,” he said, unconvincingly.“Joe Biden can’t remember where he is 50 percent of the time,” Trump Jr. declared. “He forgets the office that he’s running for.” He added, with no sense of irony, “If Donald Trump made one Joe Biden-type error, once, it would be all over! Joe does it every day.”“So that’s why he’s in debate prep,” he continued, mocking his father’s opponent for doing his homework. “He can’t be on the campaign trail because he needs to be able to perform for two hours, despite having done this for 50 years.”Is Trump or Biden More Likely to Keel Over on Debate Night?But he wasn’t done. He called Biden “the guy who’s most inept in terms of speaking, in terms of ability” and telling the Fox hosts, “You would think that after half a century in Washington, D.C., Ainsley, you’d be able to remember your platform, you’d be able to remember a couple talking points and not need a TelePrompter. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”In recent weeks, Trump’s top campaign staff have been doing whatever they can to undo the president’s attempts to lower expectations for Biden’s performance. “Joe Biden is not formidable anywhere else but he is formidable on the debate stage,” campaign manager Bill Stepien told NBC News this month.Communications director Tim Murtaugh went even further, telling Fox News, “Biden spent decades skillfully debating in the Senate, won two debates while running for vice president and just came through 11 debates in Democratic primaries where he defeated two dozen challengers. Joe Biden is a master debater who knows what he is doing.”And yet, like his father, Donald Trump Jr. seems unable to help himself from giving Biden an exceedingly low bar to overcome. At least he didn’t accuse him or anyone else from his family of being on drugs this time.Later in his Fox & Friends interview, Trump Jr. actually seemed to realize what he had done, backtracking a bit to claim, “Joe Biden should be decent in the debate, he’s been doing it for half a century. I’m worried about Joe Biden the other 22 hours of the day where he can’t seem to leave the basement.”The message seemed to be, don’t let a successful debate performance fool you.Jimmy Kimmel on Donald Trump Jr.’s Attempts to ‘Cancel’ Him and Hosting the Virtual EmmysRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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Criticism of the law enforcement response to a protest in Portland, Oregon, late Saturday into early Sunday prompted Gov. Kate Brown to ask authorities to review “any alleged incidents” involving their officers. “Journalists and law enforcement officers have difficult jobs to do during these demonstrations, but I do still believe that we can protect free speech and keep the peace,” Brown tweeted.
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It was the sort of kind, grandfatherly gesture that brings a bit of light and joy to these dark, worrying times. When David Attenborough gave an ancient shark’s tooth to Prince George at the weekend, the little boy’s face lit up with delight. The seven-year-old was thrilled to be told the tooth once belonged to a megalodon, an extinct species of giant shark that could grow to a length of more than 50ft. He was given the tooth when Sir David attended a private viewing of his latest documentary, A Life On Our Planet, with members of the royal family. As any parent knows, tantrums and tears await anyone who has the temerity to try to take back such a precious gift. But that’s exactly what Malta apparently plans to do.
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While Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee reportedly do not intend to boycott the confirmation hearing for President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, the party's senators will likely do whatever they can to slow the process, Politico reports.Some of the tactics available for Democrats, who believe Republicans set a precedent for blocking Supreme Court nominations in the lead up to a presidential election in 2016, that Politico lists include: invoking the "two-hour" rule — which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has already done — slowing down legislative business, objecting to recess, denying a quorum, raising points of order, enlisting the aid of the Democratic-controlled House, and delaying the final committee vote. Politico goes into more detail about each tactic here.Politico also reports that there is broad, overwhelming support for pulling out all the stops among Democrats, including those, like Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who face tough re-elections and may get pulled off the campaign trail during a potentially lengthy process, as well as typically more conservative lawmakers like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.).Jones accused Republicans of a "power grab," so even though Democrats don't have the votes to block the confirmation, "you do what you can to call attention to it." As Manchin put it, since "we don't do anything around here anyway, we've got plenty of time to do meetings." Read more at Politico.More stories from theweek.com Trump literally can't afford to lose the election Trump avoids tax return questions as he brings yet another truck to the White House The bigger truth revealed by Trump's taxes
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Dr. Anthony Fauci is calling for the United States to "double down" on public health measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic and expressing concern over Florida letting bars and restaurants fully reopen.Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke to Good Morning America on Monday after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced last week he would be lifting restrictions on bars and restaurants and allowing them to operate at 100 percent capacity."That is very concerning to me," Fauci told GMA. "We have always said that ... that is something we really need to be careful about, because when you're dealing with community spread, and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together, particularly without masks, you're really asking for trouble."Fauci went on to say that "now's the time" to "double down" on "common sense" public health measures, while the U.S. is reporting an average of about 40,000 COVID-19 cases every day. Fauci had previously stressed the need to get the daily number of cases in the U.S. down to 10,000 a day by September."We're not in a good place with regard to what I had said back then," Fauci said on Monday. "There are states that are starting to show [an] uptick in cases, and even some increase in hospitalizations in some states. And, I hope not, but we very well might start seeing increases in deaths." > FULL INTERVIEW: https://t.co/RBF8en28xI> > -- Good Morning America (@GMA) September 28, 2020More stories from theweek.com Trump literally can't afford to lose the election Trump avoids tax return questions as he brings yet another truck to the White House The bigger truth revealed by Trump's taxes
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This week, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron made the bombshell announcement that the cops who fatally shot Breonna Taylor would not be charged with killing her, calling their use of force in the March raid “justified to protect themselves.”In that justification, he said that one witness corroborated the three officers’ insistence that they knocked and identified themselves at Taylor’s Louisville home while executing a search warrant in connection with a narcotics investigation. It contradicted claims from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenny Walker, and 11 other residents, who said they didn’t hear the cops announce themselves. Instead, Walker thought he was being burglarized and fired a warning shot that triggered a tragic chain of events.But, according to documents and audio obtained by VICE News on Saturday, that sole witness initially told investigators days after the March 13 raid that he didn’t actually hear officers Brett Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly, and Myles Cosgrove announce themselves.The witness—identified by VICE as Aarin Sarpee but by other outlets and public records as Aaron Julue Sarpee—was picking up his daughter from a unit above Taylor’s when the raid took place.It wasn’t until he was interviewed a second time, about two months after the raid by a sergeant in LMPD’s Public Integrity Unit, that Sarpee said he heard police say, “This is the cops.”Sarpee’s flip-flop, the latest twist in a case that has made Taylor an icon in the Black Lives Matter movement, calls into question the strength of Cameron’s case and the grand jury report, which state officials are demanding be made public.“I never had faith in Daniel Cameron to begin with, I knew he was too inexperienced with a job of this caliber. I knew he chose to be at the wrong side of the law,” Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother, said in a Friday statement. “My hope was that he knew he had the power to do the right thing, that he had the power to start the healing of this city, that he had the power to help mend over 400 years of oppression. What he helped me realize is that it will always be us against them. That we are never safe.”On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted only Hankison, though only for recklessly firing shots that endangered people in other units. Mattingly and Cosgrove—the cop who fired the shot that killed Taylor—weren’t charged.Cameron’s charging recommendations were at least partly based on Sarpee’s testimony, since the attorney general said Wednesday that investigators had “an independent witness” corroborate the officer’s account.No Cops Charged With Killing Breonna Taylor“My office was not tasked with determining if this was a tragedy, as it was,” Cameron said Wednesday, admitting that it was unlikely more charges would be laid. “My job was to put emotions aside and investigate facts to see if state law was violated.”Wednesday’s charges came more than six months after a “no-knock” warrant was issued for Taylor’s apartment as part of a controversial narcotics investigation into the 26-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover.According to VICE, LMPD’s Public Integrity Unit first contacted Sarpee a week after the shooting. The officers involved in Taylor’s warrant had previously said Sarpee was outside the apartment upstairs and got in an argument with Hankison as they were banging on Taylor’s door.When Sgt. Jason Vance asked Sarpee if he heard anyone identify themselves as law enforcement, he answered: “No, nobody identified themselves.”At the end of the March 21 conversation, Vance told Sarpee investigators would be calling him again to conduct a formal interview. Investigation notes suggest attempts were made to contact Sarpee but he didn’t speak to the Public Integrity Unity again until May 15.In a seven minute call, Sgt. Amanda Seelye pressed Sarpee on whether he knew the individuals entering Taylor’s home were officers and if he heard them announce themselves.This time, Sarpee said he heard police identify themselves, a change that suddenly corroborated the testimonies of the officers at the scene.“It’s been so long now,” Sarpee told Seelye on the call. “I recall some of it.”Sarpee also told The New York Times that he saw the officers as he stepped out onto the exterior staircase of Taylor’s apartment unit with his 2-year-old. He said that before the officers ordered him to go back inside the apartment, he heard at least three loud knocks on Taylor’s door and heard at least one of the officers scream “Police!” Sarpee, however, insisted to the Times he only heard them say the statement once.Despite Sarpee’s changing story, his claim to have heard police from the front of an apartment doesn’t offer complete clarity on whether Taylor and her boyfriend would have heard it from their bedroom towards the back of their unit.Sarpee did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment. VICE reported that the witness declined to speak with them, saying he had to speak with his lawyer first. The LMPD and Attorney General’s office also did not immediately respond to request for comment.Hankison was fired in June for “extreme violations” of police protocol after “wantonly and blindly” firing 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment–including several shots through the patio door and window, and into a neighbor’s apartment—after Walker fired an initial shot. Mattingly, Cosgrove, and the detective who requested the warrant were put on administrative leave. Six more officers are reportedly under investigation for their role in the raid.Earlier this month, the city of Louisville reached a $12 million settlement with Taylor’s family in their wrongful death lawsuit.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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The dispute over international organisations referring to Taiwan as Chinese has moved from wild bird conservation to climate change, after a global alliance of mayors began listing Taiwanese cities as belonging to China on its website. China has ramped up pressure on international groups and companies to refer to democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as being part of China, to the anger of Taiwan's government and many of its people. This month a Taiwan bird conservation body said it had been expelled from a partnership with a British-based wildlife charity after it demanded the Taiwan group change its name and sign documents stating it did not support Taiwan's independence.
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The family of a Utah man who was shot at nearly 30 times and killed as he ran from police filed a lawsuit Friday against Salt Lake City and its police department. The family of Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal family allege the officers engaged in “gratuitous violence” by shooting at him between 27 and 29 times after he was already on the ground and incapacitated. “Despite the family’s attempts to negotiate, it is apparent that the SLCPD and the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office (are) not interested in real reform,” the family’s attorneys wrote in a statement.
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Stock futures fall as investors eye Israel-Iran conflict: Live updates CNBC View Full Coverage on Google News from "news" - G...