Iran's president: Trump doesn't want war ahead of 2020 vote

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that he doesn't believe the U.S. will pursue war with his country, because it will harm President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection bid. Rouhani said that Trump knows that war with Iran will “ruin" his chances of winning the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The Iranian leader added that war would be harmful to U.S. interests and those of its regional allies, as well as Iran.

'Housing is not the end': Former homeless struggle to adapt

At the University of Southern California, she studies public policy alongside some of the most privileged students in the world. At home in South Los Angeles, Ruiz, 25, struggles to adapt. Ruiz has experienced homelessness for much of her life, cycling first through the foster care system in Los Angeles, then the criminal justice system.

Biden says he'd 'disown' anyone who made online attacks like Bernie Sanders' supporters

Associated Press/John Locher Former Vice President Joe Biden told NBC's "Meet The Press" he'd "disown" anyone who behaved online like Bernie Sanders' supporters. Sanders recently came under fire after some of his purported supporters bombarded leaders of the Culinary Workers Union with abusive and sexist messages after the union criticized "Medicare for All." Sanders himself has denounced the attacks and suggested they were not truly coming from his own supporters.

Inside the Family's Manhattan Apartment

undefined Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

Police allegedly held a black student at gunpoint. Now the governor wants an investigation

The governor of Illinois on Thursday called for an investigation into allegations that police held a black college student at gunpoint after misidentifying him as a suspect. Gov. J.B. Pritzker's statement comes after Jaylan Butler, 20, sued the six officers involved for unlawful searches and seizure, excessive force and false arrest on a Sunday night last February. Butler, a swim team member at Eastern Illinois University, said he was walking back to the team bus near a rest stop off Interstate 80 when patrol cars pulled up to him.

• 
  Black college swimmer on team trip had gun pointed at head by police

  NBC News
• 
  Black College Swimmer Files Lawsuit Against Illinois Police Who He Claims Held Him at Gunpoint

  Time

I Am Watching China Wage a 'People's War' Against Coronavirus (65,000 Cases and Growing)

The policy of quarantining Spring Festival returnees for 14 days has extended through most of China as coronavirus surpasses 65,000 cases. At a news conference held by the State Council Information Office, He Qinghua, deputy director of the Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control, announced that Beijing would be imposing 14-day quarantines on anyone who comes into the capital from anywhere. Because the origins of so many hundreds of thousands of individuals entering the city are “unclear,” Beijing has to implement such a policy to meet its own needs, He said.

Israel says Hamas used 'attractive' women in thwarted cyberattack

Israel's military said on Sunday it had thwarted an attempted malware attack by Hamas that sought to gain access to soldiers' mobile phones by using seductive pictures of young women. The phones of a few dozen soldiers were affected, but the military "does not assess that there has been a substantial breach of information", said Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an army spokesman. Conricus said this was the third attempted malware attack by Hamas in less than four years, but that the latest effort indicated the Islamist group, which controls the Gaza Strip, had improved their capacity to wage cyber-warfare.

• 
  Israeli army says Hamas militants ‘catfished’ soldiers with photo-sharing app to hack phones

  The Independent
• 
  Israeli army: Hamas hackers tried to 'seduce' soldiers

  Associated Press

Buttigieg: I won't 'take lectures on family values' from Rush Limbaugh

Former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg had a simple response on Sunday when asked about conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh's questioning whether Americans are ready to support a gay candidate for president.

• 
  Pete Buttigieg said he's 'not going to take lectures on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh,' after the conservative personality made comments about his sexuality

  Business Insider
• 
  Buttigieg Responds To Limbaugh's Homophobic Remarks: 'I'm Proud Of My Marriage'

  HuffPost

Costa Rican police find six tonnes of cocaine in biggest ever haul

Police in Costa Rica have found almost 6 tonnes of cocaine in a shipping container, leading to the country's biggest ever drug seizure. The drugs, which weighed 5,800kg, were discovered on Friday evening in Limón in a container of flowers due to be sent to Rotterdam, Holland, according to the Costan Rican national newspaper La Nación. In a press conference on Saturday afternoon, interior minister Michael Soto Rojas confirmed it was the largest ever drug seizure in Costa Rica.

Judge sets Tuesday phone hearing in Roger Stone case

The judge handling the criminal case that set off a white-hot, national political controversy last week — the prosecution of President Donald Trump's longtime adviser Roger Stone — has ordered both sides to take part in a telephone hearing Tuesday to discuss the status of the case. U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the unusual Sunday order after the entire four-person prosecution team withdrew from the case following Attorney General Bill Barr's intervention to rescind their recommendation of a seven-to-nine year sentence for Stone. The move set off a furor inside and outside the Justice Department, with Barr facing accusations he was politicizing the department by seeking to favor Trump's friends.

• 
  Fearful of Trump's Attacks, Justice Dept. Lawyers Worry Barr Will Leave Them Exposed

  The New York Times
• 
  Over 1,100 Former Justice Department Officials Call for Attorney General Barr's Resignation

  Time

Man who left puppy to drown in cage sentenced to 1 year for animal cruelty

A New Jersey man who tried to leave an 8-month-old puppy to drown in a cage was sentenced to a year in state prison Friday. Aaron Davis, 36, was convicted of fourth-degree animal cruelty in December after leaving the pit bull in a cage along the rising tide of Sandy Hook Bay in July 2018, according to the Monmouth County Prosecutor. Luckily, a passerby noticed the crate in the early morning hours and climbed down a rocky barrier to save the puppy, who was later named River.

Biden Vows to Emulate Bill Clinton With Comeback Primary Wins

Joe Biden brushed off weak showings in the first two 2020 Democratic nominating contests and vowed to be the party's presumptive front-runner by the end of March. Bill Clinton lost his first eight, 10, 12 primaries and caucuses before he won one,” Biden said Sunday on NBC's “Meet the Press. We're just getting to the meat of getting to the number of delegates you need to be able to win this election.

Mississippi braces for flooding amid cresting river

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency Saturday amid predictions that a river running in the area around the state capital of Jackson could burst its banks and spark widespread flooding. Forecasters believe the Pearl River will crest at 38 feet (11.6 meters) Sunday evening to levels not seen in decades, following days of torrential rains across the Southeast. Reeves said the state should prepare for “the third worst flood” in its history.

Chinese President Xi knew severity of coronavirus weeks before going public; 40 Americans on cruise ship infected

President Xi Jinping on Sunday published a timeline of his actions to combat the coronavirus racing through China as the Communist Party worked to tamp down criticism of the government's handling of the crisis. The latest revelation comes as a U.S. health official said at least 40 Americans on a cruise ship in Japan are infected with the deadly new virus. “I issued demands during a Politburo Standing Committee meeting on Jan. 7 for work to contain the outbreak," Xi said in the speech.

• 
  Why Xi's 'defensive' coronavirus speech could backfire

  The Week
• 
  Xi Details Early Hands-On Approach in Virus Fight, Risking Anger

  Bloomberg

Remember When Iran Took Out Saddam Hussein's Navy In One Day—With American-Made Jets?

Key Point: In Operation Morvarid (“Pearl”) not only did they hope to take the Iraqi radars out of the picture but also Baghdad's vital oil infrastructure. On September 22, 1980 Saddam Hussein launched Iraq into a full-scale invasion of Iran—hoping to capitalize on Iran's instability due to the Iranian Revolution. Khorramshahr and Abadan, two major Iranian port cities just across and downstream the Shatt-al-Arab river from the major Iraqi oil-exporting port of Basra, were priority targets.

India women facing sedition charges over school play get bail

Two women held for two weeks by Indian police on sedition charges over a school play which allegedly criticised a contentious citizenship law have been granted bail, officials said Sunday. Teacher Fareeda Begum, 50, and parent Nazbunnisa, 36, were arrested on January 30 for helping the children stage the play at Shaheen Public School in Karnataka state. The play depicted a worried family talking about how they feared the government would ask millions of Muslims to prove their nationality or be expelled from India.

Mark Zuckerberg admits Facebook was ‘slow to understand’ election interference

Facebook is taking down more than a million fake accounts a day to counter a massive upsurge in malicious material in the web, Mark Zuckerberg told an international security forum, and disclosed that more than 50 information operations aimed at elections have been uncovered since the 2016 US presidential race. There are continuing investigations into claims that Donald Trump was the Muscovian candidate at the election and a Kremlin campaign, including a disinformation drive, helped put him in the White House. The founder and chief executive of Facebook acknowledged at the Munich Security Conference that social media companies including his own had been “slow to understand Russian operations”.

• 
  Treat Facebook like something between a newspaper and telco: Zuckerberg

  Reuters Videos
• 
  Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg 'happy to pay more tax in Europe'

  The Independent

'Trump is deciding who is American': how the new travel ban is tearing families apart

Millions of Africans now banned: 'We are not criminals' Trump's January order builds on the 2017 travel ban that has continued to target five Muslim-majority countries, and significantly restricts permanent residency for nationals from Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Myanmar. It also blocks people from Tanzania and Sudan from obtaining green cards through the “diversity visa” lottery. Just like the 2017 restrictions, it blocks permanent immigration from the targeted countries, making limited exceptions if applicants prove that denials would cause “undue hardship” and that granting them visas would support “national interest”.

A cruise ship passenger tested positive for coronavirus after hundreds of other passengers disembarked and dispersed all over the world

Associated Press/Heng Sinith Health officials said Saturday that they've found a coronavirus case among the hundreds of passengers who disembarked a cruise ship in Cambodia, The New York Times reported. The Westerdam cruise ship spent weeks stranded at sea after five ports rejected it over coronavirus fears. Now, more than 1,000 passengers from the ship have proceeded to destinations around the world, and health officials are struggling to determine how to handle the situation.

• 
  Granite Bay couple evacuated from coronavirus-quarantined ship

  KCRA - Sacramento Videos
• 
  Cruise ship coronavirus rings alarm bells; recession looms for Japan, Singapore

  Reuters

‘We’d be f—ed’: Texas Dems sweat a Bernie Sanders ticket

Bernie Sanders' staying power atop the 2020 field has Democratic insiders in Texas on edge: They're worried nominating the Vermont senator would kneecap their hard-fought campaign to flip the Texas state house. Putting a self-proclaimed democratic socialist at the top of the ticket would squander a prime opportunity to seize statehouse seats — and congressional districts — that have long been out of reach, robbing the party of a hand in next year's crucial redistricting process, more than a half-dozen Democratic candidates, activists and political consultants said in interviews. "There is overall uncertainty which is growing.

Hitler's Submarines Almost Launched A Missile Attack On America

Key point: Most Allied commanders were skeptical that there was a genuine threat to the continental United States—save for certain leaders of the U.S. Navy. In the closing weeks of World War II in Europe, American intelligence determined that a detachment of German submarines had been dispatched to launch a cruise missile attack on the East Coast of the United States. The U.S. Navy deployed forty-six ships and dozens of aircraft to annihilate the incoming submarine wolf pack.

• 
  This U.S. Nuclear Submarine Smashed Into an Underwater Mountain (And Survived)

  The National Interest
• 
  See This Submarine? Iran Would Use It To Try and Sink the U.S. Navy

  The National Interest

Questions over fate of Saudi crew in Yemen jet crash

The fate of the crew of a Saudi warplane that crashed in Yemen remained uncertain Sunday after Iran-linked Huthi rebels claimed to have shot down the aircraft. The Riyadh-led military coalition fighting the rebels said the two officers ejected from the plane before it crashed in northern Al-Jawf province Friday but that the rebels opened fire at them "in violation of international humanitarian law". "The joint forces command of the Coalition holds the terrorist Huthi militia responsible for the lives and wellbeing of the Tornado air crew," the coalition said in a statement released by the official Saudi Press Agency late Saturday.

• 
  Saudi fighter jet crashes in Yemen, rebels say they downed it

  AFP
• Despite Yemen violence spike, Saudi says talks with Houthis progressing

  Reuters