“They’re putting us at risk,” the asylum-seeker said. “After all we’ve been through.”
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2018 FIFA World Cup live Football scores of all matches, latest news and updates, upcoming matches list, photo galleries, videos, stats, squads, venues on ...
US President Donald Trump moved to quell fears about the novel coronavirus after the first death on US soil was confirmed Saturday. The US fatality occurred in Washington State's King county, which includes Seattle, a city of more than 700,000 people, said health officials. The victim was not immediately identified, but Trump told reporters that the victim was a woman in her late 50s.
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Conservative activists are enthusiastically taking up Republican President Donald Trump's re-election rallying cry that his Democratic adversaries are pursuing a radical socialist ideology that will ruin the United States. Conservative students, right-wing media personalities and pro-Trump fundraisers and fans have gathered just outside Washington this week for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that appears to have crystallized Republican messaging for the election. Its theme was "America vs. Socialism," taking aim at the candidates competing for the Democratic Party's nomination to challenge Trump in the Nov. 3 election, especially Senator Bernie Sanders, the current front-runner and a self-described democratic socialist.
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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's borders with Europe were open Saturday, making good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent as thousands of migrants gathered at the frontier with Greece. Erdogan’s announcement that Turkey is allowing refugees and migrants to exit the country marked a dramatic departure from current policy and an apparent attempt to pressure Europe. It came amid a military escalation in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province that has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians to flee fighting between advancing Syrian government forces backed by Russia and rebel fighters supported by Turkey.
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There’s one big issue that Bernie Sanders has reversed himself on — and it could complicate his path to the nomination. The issue is the role of so-called superdelegates at the Democratic convention. These are the elected officials and party leaders who are automatically seated but whose votes only come into play after the first ballot.
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South Korea urged citizens on Saturday to stay indoors as it warned of a "critical moment" in its battle on the coronavirus after recording the biggest daily jump in infections, as 813 new cases took the tally to 3,150. South Korea is grappling with the largest outbreak of the virus outside China, as a new death took the toll to 17, amid a record daily increase in infections since the country confirmed its first patient on Jan. 20. It was a "critical moment" in reining in the spread of the virus, he said, adding, "Please stay at home and refrain from going outside and minimize contact with other people."
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A Colorado man whose seven-year-old son was repeatedly abused before being found encased in concrete in a Denver storage unit has been sentenced to 72 years in prison for the death.Leland Pankey received the sentence on Friday, with one count of child abuse landing him 48 years in prison and 24 years for tampering with the body.
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Turkey will allow up to one million Syrian refugees to pass through its territory to reach Europe ahead of a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive on the last rebel-held territory in the war-torn country."We have decided, effectively immediately, not to stop Syrian refugees from reaching Europe by land or sea," a Turkish official told Reuters. "All refugees, including Syrians, are now welcome to cross into the European Union."Footage of Syrian refugees boarding boats attempting to reach the islands of Greece was broadcast on CNN Turkey, while a reporter for Middle East Eye shared a picture of a bus placed by Greek authorities in front of its Pazarkule border crossing with Turkey, to prevent refugees from entering.Syria's offensive on Idlib province, targeting the last remnants of the rebellion including several Al-Qaeda groups, has forced one million people to flee their homes. International aid groups have struggled to provide food and shelter to refugees, some of whom have frozen to death after repeated cold winter nights.The Turkish army, stationed along the country's border with Syria, has repeatedly come into conflict with Syrian government forces. Syria killed 33 Turkish soldiers on Thursday in a series of air strikes.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone conversation Friday told Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who backs Syrian government forces, that any Syrian military position was a legitimate target for Turkish forces. Erdogan is scheduled to speak with President Trump on Friday regarding the attacks on the Turkish military and the refugee issue.The nine-year Syrian civil war has produced one of the world's largest refugee crises, with millions of migrants fleeing to Europe throughout the conflict.
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(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration is testing existing “off-the-shelf” drugs to combat the coronavirus, a cabinet official said Saturday.A national lab in Tennessee recently made “an important discovery” involving existing drugs, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.“The scientists at our Oak Ridge National Laboratory were able to look at the protein strains and determine -- perhaps, it’s still early -- that we can find some off-the-shelf drugs that can help us not only cure the disease but stop the spread of the infection,” Brouillette said.Brouillette was responding to a question about what his agency is doing to help combat the virus, which has caused markets to plunge and killed nearly 3,000 people across the globe. In the U.S., where 22 cases have been reported, the virus has killed one person -- a woman from Washington state -- and more cases are likely, President Donald Trump said Saturday.In addition to the laboratory tests, Brouillette said he’s harnessing the power of his agency’s “super computers” as well as artificial intelligence capabilities to assist organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and the World Heath Organization to conduct modeling on the virus.“We want to know how far is this going to spread and at what point might it peak,” he said.To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Natter in Washington at anatter5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Matthew G. Miller, Virginia Van NattaFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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A cruise ship turned away from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands after a crew member tested positive for flu has docked in Mexico and passengers will be allowed to disembark as long as "health standards" are met, the country's president said Thursday. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters that the Meraviglia, which has been anchored off Cozumel island in the Caribbean since Wednesday, "is being allowed to dock" and those aboard may be allowed off. The operator, MSC Cruises, lashed out at authorities for refusing to allow it to dock at its previous destinations for "acting out of fears" over the new coronavirus.
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President Trump announced late Friday that he is nominating Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) to be his next director of national intelligence. That’s despite the former Texas prosecutor withdrawing his nomination last year.Ratcliffe, a large Trump donor, dropped out of the nomination process in July 2019, blaming unfair media coverage. But The Daily Beast reported that before Racliffe announced his withdrawal, an email revealing his alleged involvement in a contentious whistleblowing case made its way to the White House. On Friday, Trump tweeted that he “would have completed [the] process earlier” but “John wanted to wait until after IG Report was finished,” an apparent reference to the inspector general’s report on how the FBI handled its counterintelligence probe of Trump campaign associates.“John is an outstanding man of great talent!” he wrote.Just last week, Trump appointed U.S. Ambassador to Germany and longtime Trumpworld loyalist Richard Grenell, who has no intelligence experience, as his acting DNI. A former intelligence official told The Daily Beast at the time that the announcement “blindsided” career officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.Ratcliffe, who himself has little national security experience, is in for a rocky confirmation process. His nomination last year drew swift opposition from Senate Democrats and lukewarm support from key Republicans.Senate Intelligence chair Richard Burr told White House officials Ratcliffe, a outspoken supporter of the president, was too partisan, The New York Times reported. On the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called him “a three-term tea party congressman who, when he goes on television, appeals to the president’s sense of stridency and partisanship.”Even if there’s little chance Ratcliffe will be confirmed by the Senate, his nomination allows Grenell to continue to serve past March 11, University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck pointed out on Twitter. Federal law also stipulates that an acting DNI can stay in place for another 210 days after the Senate either rejects a nomination or the nominee withdraws.Grenell was brought in last week to replace acting DNI Joseph Maguire, whom Trump replaced over what he felt was disloyalty by one of Maguire’s aides, according to multiple reports. The aide had briefed the House Intelligence Committee that Russia was once again interfering in the election in Trump’s favor.After former DNI Dan Coats announced his resignation last summer, Trump tweeted that he intended to nominate Ratcliffe to replace him, a move that surprised White House aides, who had not vetted the congressman, The Washington Post reported. Ratcliffe, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, had been a vocal critic of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and had seized on text messages between FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok as evidence of bias within the FBI. He even claimed to have seen texts between the pair that suggested the existence of a “secret society” working against Trump—an easily debunked conspiracy theory that he played a part in spreading far and wide.But Ratcliffe’s nomination fell apart in just a few weeks. An investigation by The Washington Post found he had embellished how many immigrants he rounded up in one day as a U.S. attorney. Another investigation found he’d embellished his national security credentials by claiming he’d prosecuted two major terrorism cases, despite court records showing he had no involvement.His July 2019 withdrawal prompted Trump to complain he was being treated unfairly.“Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people,” Trump said at the time. “John has therefore decided to stay in Congress where he has done such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our Country.”Trump said last year it didn’t bother him that Ratcliffe lacked much national security expertise. “I think he would’ve picked it up very quickly,” he said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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Get the results in the crucial early voting state * South Carolina Democrats vote as Biden looks for win to boost flagging campaign * Help us cover the critical issues of 2020. Consider making a contributionSouth Carolina is the first state in the deep south to cast its vote in the primary race, where African American voters form a majority of the electorate. Democrats and Republicans will be voting, but because Donald Trump faces no serious opposition, all eyes will be on the Democratic contest.default What is a primary?The primaries and caucuses are a series of contests, in all 50 US states plus Washington DC and US territories, by which the party selects its presidential nominee. Most US states hold primary elections, in which voters go to a polling place, mail in their ballots or otherwise vote remotely. A handful of states hold caucuses – complicated, hours-long meetings, which continue until one candidate emerges as victor. And the process is different for Democrats and Republicans. Why is the South Carolina primary important?The goal for the candidates is to amass a majority of pledged delegates whose job it is to nominate the candidate at the party’s convention. In all states, delegates are awarded proportionally among top winners.To become the Democratic presidential nominee, the candidate must secure 1,991 pledged delegates before the Democratic Party’s convention in Wisconsin in July. If there is no outright majority then so-called super delegates, unpledged senior party members, could decide who secures the presidential nomination.There are 54 delegates in play in South Carolina. Only 101 so far allotted after the first three primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. South Carolina serves as a launchpad for the vital Super Tuesday election in just three days time, when 16 states and territories will vote and over 1,300 delegates, around a third of the total in the entire election, will be up for grabs. Sanders so far leads the pack with 45 delegates. He is followed by former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg on 26, while Biden lags behind with 15. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren holds 8 with Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar on 7.
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As more cases of the flu-like respiratory illness are reported across the US, Mike Pence - recently appointed by Donald Trump to lead the administration's response - has insisted the government is in control of the virus despite thousands of people under medical monitoring and officials' scepticism of the vice president's abilities to handle the outbreak.Market analysts predict record lows for the Dow Jones, seeing one of its worst weeks since the financial crisis, amid fears of a global pandemic, as the president downplays the threat and his allies claim that criticism of the response has been "weaponised" to attack Trump.
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Sentencing for a man convicted of two murders who prosecutors dubbed “The Boy Next Door Killer” was delayed Friday over a defense motion that seeks a new trial because the prosecution failed to share information that would have compromised the credibility of a detective who was a key witness in the case. A jury recommended the death penalty for 44-year-old Michael Thomas Gargiulo, who was found guilty in August of the home-invasion murders of two women, one of whom was about to go on a date with actor Ashton Kutcher.
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The saga of doomsday couple Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell—from the missing kids to the dead spouses—has been one strange twist after another. But even those who have been following along may be shocked by a series of newly emerged text messages.The messages, obtained by East Idaho News, start with Vallow informing her then-husband Charles’ grown children that their father had “passed away” the day before.Of course, Charles Vallow had not simply passed away. He was shot dead on July 11 by Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, who told police it was a case of self-defense. But Lori refused to tell her stepsons that, or provide them with any useful information, the text messages reveal.“Hi boys. I have very sad news,” she wrote. “Your dad passed away yesterday. I’m working on making arrangements and I’ll keep you informed with what’s going on. Im still not sure how to handle things. Just want you to know I love you and so did your dad!!”The sons pressed for more information over the course of the afternoon, but received nothing in response.“Lori it’s been 3 hours. You’re not that busy. I don’t care what you’re doing,” one wrote.She replied, “I'm sorry you are so upset. I’m so upset too... I’m waiting to hear back from the Medical examiner to make sense out of all this for myself. Please be patient with me. It’s a crushing situation all around.”It’s not clear why she would have needed to hear from the medical examiner to make sense of Charles’ death; police have said she was there when Cox shot her husband, in front of 17-year-old Tylee and 7-year-old J.J.—Lori‘s two children who are now missing.Doomsday Writer Claimed Dead Wife Helped Him Find New OneThe increasingly exasperated sons pressed for funeral arrangements and explanations. None came. “Okay Lori. It’s been 3 days. You let us know our father passed away over a text message,” one wrote to her. “We need any information you have. What happened, when did it happen, how did it happen. Where is he now. Are there any funeral plans and can [we] be a part of it...“This isn’t a nonchalant topic you can just throw a text at and be done with it.”Lori’s response was that “these are your dads wishes.”“He and I discussed this a lot over the years we have been together. My plan is to have him cremated as he wished and then take all 5 of you kids to Hawaii to spread his ashes. He did not want a funeral. He wants a celebration of his life,” she wrote.One of the sons told East Idaho News that he and his brother figured out which mortuary had their father’s body and just showed up, but the funeral director was just as tight-lipped as their stepmother.“He was very shaky and nervous. We asked him for information, and he said something like, ‘I can’t tell you that. It was requested that I tell you nothing,’” the son said.Idaho Doomsday Couple Found in Hawaii—Without Missing KidsThe sons arranged a memorial service for their dad. Lori didn’t show up.At the time Charles was shot dead, he and Lori were estranged. She had begun reading the writings of Chad Daybell, a prolific Idaho-based author of apocalyptic novels for Mormon audiences, and she got involved with Preparing a People, a community of doomsday preppers where Daybell was a prominent voice.According to a divorce petition Charles Vallow filed in February 2019 and later withdrew, she had become “obsessive about near-death experiences and spiritual visions” and claimed to be “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020.” He also claimed she threatened to kill him if he interfered with her plans.By July, Charles was living in Texas and Lori was in Arizona with Tylee and J.J., who was adopted and autistic. Charles traveled to see the children and, according to Lori, got into a physical confrontation with her, forcing Cox to rush to her rescue and shoot him.After Charles was killed, Lori moved with Tylee and J.J. to Idaho, where Daybell lived with his wife of nearly 30 years, Tammy. By October, Tammy was dead, too.Doomsday Writer Claimed Dead Wife Helped Him Find New OneDaybell said she felt sick, went to bed and never woke up. He declined an autopsy, and authorities listed the cause of death as natural. Two weeks later, he married Lori in Hawaii—where she had once lived with Charles and where she supposedly had planned to scatter his ashes.It does not appear that Tylee and J.J. were at the wedding. In fact, no one has seen Tylee since a family trip to Yellowstone National Park in early September, and J.J. has not been seen or heard from since Sept. 23.He stopped going to school, Lori got rid of his service animal, and some of the children’s belongings were put in a storage bin. According to Idaho police, Lori and Chad lied to neighbors about whether she even had children, or where they were.Alerted by extended family, police in Rexburg, Idaho turned up in December to check on the children. A police narrative included in court documents says Lori claimed J.J. was with a friend in Arizona and then called the friend in an unsuccessful effort to get her to lie.When cops returned the next day to probe further, Lori and Chad were gone. After they surfaced in Hawaii, an Idaho judge issued a court order demanding Lori return within a few days and produce the children.She didn’t show, and the judge signed an arrest warrant—allowing Hawaii police to take her into custody. Held on $5 million bail, she agreed Wednesday to waive extradition and return to Idaho to face charges of child desertion, contempt of court, and promoting criminal behavior.Through their Idaho attorney, both Vallow and Daybell have denied wrongdoing. In court in Hawaii on Wednesday, Vallow’s lawyer said the only reason she didn’t comply with the court order was because the judge planned to put the children in foster case—though he also provided no details about their whereabouts.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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* Top Republican on Fox News defends Trump and Mike Pence * Vice-president leading coronavirus containment effort in US * Whistleblower: US coronavirus staff were untrained and unprotectedDonald Trump could “personally suck” the coronavirus “out of every one of the 60,000 people in the world, suck it out of their lungs, swim to the bottom of the ocean and spit it out, and he would be accused of pollution for messing up the ocean”, a top Republican has claimed.Former Republican Arkansas governor and ex-presidential candidate Mike Huckabee made the outlandish statement on Twitter on Thursday night and on Fox News’ Fox & Friends show on Friday morning.> Mike Huckabee says Trump "could personally sick the virus out of every one of the 60,000 people in the world, suck it out of their lungs, swim to the bottom of the ocean and spit it out, and he would be accused of pollution for messing up the ocean." pic.twitter.com/X7xbC5ebDz> > — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 28, 2020According to the World Health Organization (WHO) more than 82,000 cases of the coronavirus have in fact been confirmed worldwide, with about 2,800 deaths. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 60 confirmed cases in the US.In the US, Huckabee’s widely ridiculed comment followed the publication of a column for Fox News in which he took aim at criticism of Trump’s choice of Vice-President Mike Pence to lead US containment efforts.Critics have said Pence’s religious faith, plus the decisions he took as governor of Indiana on scientific and public health matters, make him a poor choice to lead efforts undermined by budget cuts and poor organization.Huckabee said Pence was “a proven leader who knows how to get people with different perspectives working together effectively” on public health matters including the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) outbreak of 2014.“Instead of calling for bipartisan cooperation in this life-or-death effort,” he wrote, “liberals reacted with collective outrage, even going so far as to ridicule the vice-president’s Christian faith as a way of suggesting that he’s not qualified for the role.“Numerous media outlets have also published and broadcast one-sided reports trashing Pence’s handling of an HIV outbreak as governor of Indiana, but such criticisms are both inaccurate and irrelevant.”The outbreak in question happened in 2015. Pence declared a public health emergency but many said faith-driven cuts to sexual health programs made the situation worse.Huckabee, the father of the former Trump press secretary Sarah Sanders, is not the first rightwing commentator to claim Democrats and the media are using concerns over the coronavirus outbreak to attack and undermine the president.Earlier this week, the conservative shock jock and presidential medal of freedom honoree Rush Limbaugh claimed “the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump” and said “the coronavirus is the common cold”.Some experts have criticised media coverage of the outbreak as inaccurate and potentially alarmist.According to the Guardian’s guide to the coronavirus, sufferers report “coughs, fever and breathing difficulties. In severe cases there can be organ failure. As this is viral pneumonia, antibiotics are of no use … Recovery depends on the strength of the immune system. Many of those who have died were already in poor health.”The outbreak began in China. The WHO has not yet declared it a pandemic but international markets, trade, travel and sporting events have been severely affected. In the US on Friday the Dow Jones Index plunged again, at the end of the markets’ worst week since the financial crisis of 2008.In Geneva, a WHO spokesman said: “The outbreak is getting bigger. The scenario of the coronavirus reaching multiple countries, if not all countries around the world, is something we have been looking at and warning against since quite a while.”
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Health officials reported the first U.S. drug shortage tied to the viral outbreak that is disrupting production in China, but they declined to identify the manufacturer or the product. The Food and Drug Administration said late Thursday that the drug's maker recently contacted officials about the shortage, which it blamed on a manufacturing issue with the medicine's key ingredient. The FDA previously said it had reached out to 180 drug manufacturers and asked them to check their supply chain and report any potential disruptions.
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Days out from Super Tuesday, when voters in 14 states will cast ballots in the Democratic primary, a professor who predicted the past nine elections says that the United States may well be staring down its first brokered convention in nearly 70 years.It’s a prospect that has stirred considerable consternation among Democratic Party officials and voters, many of whom have said their primary concern is beating Donald Trump in November — even as an enthusiastic debate over the future of democratic politics has raged on the campaign trail.
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Police in Milwaukee on Thursday identified the five brewery employees shot and killed by a co-worker who later took his own life in the latest spasm of gun violence plaguing U.S. workplaces and schools. The motive for the carnage was unclear a day after the shooting at the landmark Molson Coors Beverage Co complex shook Wisconsin's largest city. "Reasons for this are still under investigation," Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales said.
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Bernie Sanders announced a “universal child care” proposal at the end of his wide-ranging 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper. The plan would guarantee “every child in America free full-day, full-week, high-quality child care from infancy through age three,” and the campaign estimates that it would cost taxpayers 1.5 trillion dollars over ten years. But aside from being prohibitively expensive and distressingly vague, the plan looks an awful lot like social engineering.Start with the price tag. After failing to explain how he would pay for his expansive agenda — “I can't rattle off to you every nickel and every dime,” Sanders told Anderson Cooper in a disastrous moment of candor — the Sanders campaign released a partial list of pay-fors the day after the interview, laying out the cost of the senator’s major proposals alongside the tax hikes a Sanders administration would pursue to finance its domestic agenda. The campaign pegged the child-care proposal at a $150 billion annual price tag, more expensive than current federal outlays on unemployment insurance and the SNAP program combined.Add the child-care initiative to the bevy of programs Sanders has already promised to enact as president, and the fiscal feasibility of a child-care proposal grows more uncertain.The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released their analysis of Sanders’s universal child-care plan yesterday, and raised concerns that the Sanders campaign was overestimating federal receipts from its proposed “tax on extreme wealth”:> Based on the work of economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the Sanders campaign estimates this wealth tax would raise $4.35 trillion. This would be enough to finance Senator Sanders's $1.5 trillion universal child care and pre-K plan, his $2.5 trillion housing plan, and $350 billion of his Medicare for All plan (note that our analysis previously assumed he would dedicate $800 billion, not $350 billion, to Medicare for All).> > In our assessment, however, Senators Sanders’s wealth tax is likely to raise significantly less than advertised due to high levels of tax avoidance and the erosion of taxable wealth over time. We believe the wealth tax is likely to raise roughly $3.3 trillion. Assuming the proceeds are distributed evenly, that would leave the universal child care and pre-K plan nearly $400 billion short.As a point of reference, that $400 billion shortfall is larger than the sum total currently allotted to all federal welfare programs combined.While Sanders’s innumeracy was perhaps to be expected, the senator’s defense of the child-care plan on the merits was surprising. For a candidate with well-documented disdain for corporate America, it was strange to see how much of Sanders’s child-care proposal was concerned with the “career outcomes” of “mothers” who — heaven forfend — make “career sacrifices in order to care for their children.” The Sanders campaign presents female labor participation growth as one of the central selling points for its child-care scheme: “Mothers,” the campaign proclaims, “are 40 percent more likely than fathers to report a negative impact on their career outcomes due to child care considerations,” making the institution of a government-funded child-care scheme a “moral responsibility.” The campaign presents the welfare of the children whose stay-at-home parents enter the workforce as an ancillary concern.The Sanders campaign hardly seemed to consider — or, worse, seemed to have considered and proceeded to ignore — the possibility that those mothers making “career sacrifices” might want to raise their own children. As a 2015 Gallup poll found, 56 percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 said they would rather remain at home than enter the workforce, if given the choice. Instead, the socialist appears eager to incentivize more mothers to join the workforce, whereupon they will be presumably “exploited” by the “greedy” corporations the senator has spent a lifetime deriding.Most alarming is the power the senator’s plan vests in the federal government to insert itself into the child-rearing process. Sanders proposes a one-size-fits-all, government-funded child-care model, with no provision for those parents who wish to remain at home. If the Sanders campaign were simply concerned about the costs associated with raising children — both in the home and at a day-care center — it could have proposed a subsidy that also conferred benefits to stay-at-home parents or to relatives providing child care. But the social-engineering component of the plan is unmistakable, as Sanders would essentially create a scheme to augment the “career outcomes” of mothers who might otherwise raise their children at home, thereby boosting enrollment in government-funded child-care centers. Of course, all of those child-care centers will be subject to “quality standards” concocted in Washington.The implications of Sanders’s child-care agenda are clear enough. Right in the heart of the proposal, the Sanders campaign acknowledges that “ages 0 through 4 are the most important years of human life intellectually and emotionally.” Parents ought to be the ones to impart their values to their children in such a formative window, not a Sanders-administration functionary.
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Idaho lawmakers moved forward Thursday with legislation banning transgender people from changing the sex listed on their birth certificates despite a federal court ruling declaring such a ban unconstitutional. Ohio and Tennessee are the only other states in the country where transgender people cannot change their birth certificates, according to a law firm that has challenged the practice in court. In Idaho, this is another effort by the conservative state to target the population as Republicans in the House a day earlier advanced legislation to keep transgender women from competition.
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Kevin Richardson, a member of the Central Park Five, has hit out at Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s presidential run and his blocking of a multimillion-dollar settlement over the group’s wrongful persecution.Mr Richardson, one of the five teenagers wrongfully convicted for the shocking assault of Trishia Meili in 1989, was reported to have criticised Mr Bloomberg at an event outside his campaign office in Manhattan.
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Abortion opponents who've become used to giving orders to Kansas lawmakers on the exact wording of new restrictions are stymied now that they face compromising to get a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution on the ballot. After falling short in a House vote three weeks ago, abortion opponents have pressured a dozen members who voted no, moderate Republicans and Democrats who are Catholic or who represent relatively conservative or heavily Catholic districts. Kansans for Life, the state's most influential anti-abortion group and a GOP power-broker, has for years told lawmakers what proposals to pursue and has watched them approve the group's language and echo its talking points.
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(Bloomberg) -- A 35-year-old man was confirmed as the first coronavirus case in Mexico, the country’s deputy health minister said on Friday. A second case was verified by a state health official.The first patient has a mild case and has been put in quarantine along with family members in the country’s Institute of Epidemiological Diagnosis and Reference for further testing, deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said at the National Palace.The man is a resident of Mexico City who took a trip to Italy in February. The case is Mexico’s first, and the second known instance in Latin America after Brazil confirmed a case on Wednesday.“We have the capacity to deal with the situation,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said at his morning press conference.The man traveled to Bergamo, Italy, for a conference, where he had direct contact with an infected Italian national who normally lives in Malaysia.The second case, in the northern border state of Sinaloa, is a 41-year-old man who also traveled to Italy, said Efren Encinas Torres, the state’s health minister in an interview on Radio Formula. That patient is in isolation, as is a colleague he traveled with, who has not presented any symptoms.Local health officials sent details to the national agency for confirmation.“We see the state laboratory’s confirmation as valid, but nevertheless we will verify it in our own laboratory,” Lopez-Gatell said.Separately, Lopez-Gatell said that a cruise ship that had been stopped in Cozumel on suspicion of possible infection had no cases aboard and that passengers would be allowed to disembark.Worldwide, more than 83,000 cases have been confirmed and deaths from the virus have topped 2,800 people. On Friday, Iran, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the U.K. all reported new infections. Nigeria confirmed the first infection south of the Sahara desert.The Mexican peso fell 0.7% to end the day at 19.6437 per dollar, its weakest close since October 2019. Mexico’s benchmark Mexbol stock index plunged 2.6% after the coronavirus news.(Adds details about second case in lead and sixth paragraph. A previous version added case details, worldwide numbers and stock move.)To contact the reporters on this story: Justin Villamil in Mexico City at jvillamil18@bloomberg.net;Lorena Rios in Mexico City at lriost@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Carolina Wilson at cwilson166@bloomberg.net, Nacha Cattan, Dale QuinnFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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In Donald Trump’s America, very few national figures are as loyal to the president as Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and father of the former White House press secretary.And, as criticism has mounted regarding Mr Trump’s reaction to the deadly coronavirus, Mr Huckabee got a chance to display that obedience once again — and took the bait, hook line and sinker, by delivering a bizarre defence of the man.
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A new report shows that right-wing extremists were responsible for 330 murders in the United States in the past decade, or 76 percent of all domestic extremist-related murders in that time.The annual Murder and Extremism report published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) shows that out of the 42 extremist-related murders in the US in 2019, 38 were committed by individuals subscribing to various far-right ideologies, including white supremacy.
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Turkish official says 33 of its soldiers died in Ankara’s worst day of the conflict in neighbouring Syria so farDozens of Turkish soldiers are reported to have been killed in an airstrike in Syria’s Idlib province, in a dramatic escalation in the battle for control of the country’s last opposition stronghold.Military sources among moderate and jihadist rebel factions fighting in the northwestern province bordering Turkey said up to 70 Turkish soldiers died on Thursday night after a precision strike hit a two-storey building in the village of Balioun.A Turkish convoy, part of reinforcements sent to the area to aid rebel groups earlier this month, was subjected to heavy shelling on Thursday morning. The soldiers had taken cover in Balioun, basing themselves in the local council building.Nearly a million civilians have been displaced in Idlib near the Turkish border since December as Russia-backed Syrian government forces seized territory from Turkey-backed Syrian rebels, marking the worst humanitarian crisis of the country’s nine-year war.Rahmi Dogan, governor of Hatay province on the border with Idlib, confirmed at least 33 Turkish military personnel had died as ambulances streamed from a Syrian border crossing to a hospital in the nearby town of Reyhanli on Thursday night.Turkish officials have blamed the Syrian regime for the attack, but several sources in Idlib and unverified footage of the nighttime strike suggested it had been carried out by the Russian air force, which has helped Damascus conduct a ferocious three-month-old offensive on Idlib.Although Ankara and Moscow share important trade, energy and defence links, the relationship has already been sorely tested by the recent violence in Syria, where they back opposing sides.Turkey responded with airstrikes on “all known” Syrian government targets, said the country’s communications director Fahrettin Altun early on Friday, according to state-run Anadolu news agency. Altun said authorities had decided to “respond in kind” to the attack.“All known targets of the regime have come and will continue to come under fire from the air and ground,” Altun, said in a statement.“We urge the international community to fulfil its responsibilities” to stop the regime’s “crimes against humanity”, he said. “We cannot stand by and watch as past events in Rwanda, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are repeated today in Idlib.”Turkey’s activities on the ground in Syria would continue, he added.The US state department has said it is very concerned about the attack and that “we stand by our Nato ally Turkey”.The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan chaired an emergency security meeting overnight, Turkish officials briefed reporters that Ankara had decided it would no longer stop Syrian refugees from reaching Europe by land and sea – a move calibrated to win EU and Nato support for its operation in Idlib.Turkish police, coastguard and border security officials have already been ordered to stand down, Turkish officials added.Almost one million people are camped out in desperate conditions on Idlib’s border with Turkey in winter weather as they flee the swift advance of Bashar al-Assad’s army and allied militias backed by Russian airpower.Turkey has expressed unwillingness to take in any more Syrians on top of the 3.6m refugees it already hosts. In an effort to secure its southern border, Ankara took the unprecedented step of sending thousands of troops and convoys of equipment to Idlib in the past three weeks, leading to direct clashes with regime forces for the first time.While Idlib province and the surrounding countryside are technically protected by a de-escalation deal brokered in 2018, the agreement broke down last year after control of most of the area was wrested from more moderate rebel groups by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate.Despite warnings from the UN and aid agencies that fighting in Idlib would put 3 million civilians at risk, Damascus launched an attritional and then full-scale campaign on the province, arguing that HTS was not covered by the de-escalation deal.Turkey has helped rebels to retake one town but had already lost 17 military personnel in the campaign before a strike on Thursday morning killed three, and the evening strike killed at least 22, marking the biggest single day of losses for the country’s forces.Turkish attempts to broker a ceasefire, and growing international calls for a halt to the violence, have so far been met with indifference from the Kremlin. Erdoğan has vowed Ankara will not take the “smallest step back” in the standoff with Damascus and Moscow over Idlib, giving the regime until the end of the month to pull back.US senator Lindsey Graham called on Thursday for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Idlib and called on Donald Trump to help stop the violence against civilians there.“The world is sitting on its hands and watching the destruction of Idlib by Assad, Iran, and the Russians,” Graham, a Republican and an ally of Trump, said in a statement.“I am confident if the world, led by the US, pushed back against Iran, Russia, and Assad that they would stand down, paving the way for political negotiations to end this war in Syria.”Kay Bailey Hutchison, the US ambassador to Nato, said Thursday’s events should show Turkey “who is their reliable partner and who isn’t” and prompt it to drop its purchase of a major Russian missile defence system, which Washington says threatens the western alliance.
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