- PoliticsYahoo News
Ad targets Susan Collins: 'You’re a senator. Act like it.'
An organization of prominent conservative opponents of President Trump released a new ad on Wednesday targeting Sen. Susan Collins for her party-line votes at the opening of the president's impeachment trial. “Senator Collins, you aren't doing the job we elected you to do,” the 30-second ad, produced by the Lincoln Project, begins. On Tuesday, Collins voted for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's resolution outlining rules for the impeachment trial, and against Democratic amendments to subpoena documents and witnesses from the White House, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.
- U.S.Associated Press
Oklahoma zookeeper sentenced in murder-for-hire plot
A former Oklahoma zookeeper and one-time candidate for governor was sentenced Wednesday to 22 years in prison for his role in a murder-for-hire plot and violating federal wildlife laws. A federal judge in Oklahoma City sentenced 56-year-old Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage — who is also known as “Joe Exotic" — for trying to arrange the killing of a Florida animal sanctuary founder who criticized his treatment of animals. The woman, Carole Baskin, wasn't harmed.
- WorldBloomberg
China Student’s Jailing for U.S. Tweets Shows Beijing’s Reach
The case of a Chinese student jailed for tweets he sent while studying in America underscores that being overseas is no protection from Beijing's censors. Luo Daiqing, who attends the University of Minnesota in the U.S., was sentenced to six months in jail by a district court in November for “provocation” after he posted tweets that “defaced the image of the country's leaders” and had a “negative impact” on society. A Twitter account linked to Luo posted photos showing government slogans printed over a cartoon villain who looks similar to Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to Axios, which first reported the case Wednesday.
- LifestylePopular Mechanics
REI’s January Sale Offers 50% off Cold-Weather Outdoor Gear
Save big on Patagonia, The North Face, Columbia, and more of our favorite outdoor brands. From Popular Mechanics
- WorldThe National Interest
Study This Picture: These Chinese Anti-Ship Missiles Are a Real Big Problem
The Arsenal of Democracy churns out some of the best, most technologically advanced and versatile weapons in service anywhere. China is willing to steal American military technology to help advance its own military research and development programs. The United States on the other hand…well, there is probably not a single Chinese weapon that, in a direct comparison, is better than its American equivalent and that probably won't change for another twenty years.
- U.S.Business Insider
A Michigan state senator who said boys could 'have a lot of fun' with a female reporter has now been accused of sexual harassment
Shutterstock Michigan Sen. Peter Lucido came under fire last week for telling a female reporter that a group of high school boys could "have a lot of fun" with her. Fellow state Sen. Mallory McMorrow filed a sexual harassment complaint against Lucindo on Tuesday, Crain's Detroit Business first reported. McMorrow alleged Lucido suggested she only beat an incumbent senator because of her looks and touched her for a long period of time that made her feel "uncomfortable."
U.S.Yahoo News VideoFeds: White supremacists hoped rally would start civil war
A hidden camera captured members of a white supremacist group expressing hope that violence at a gun rights rally in Virginia this week could start a civil war, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.
- PoliticsThe Independent
AOC criticises Democratic Party: ‘We don’t have a left party in the United States’
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained that the Democratic party does not represent the political left in the United States, calling the organisation a “centre or centre-conservative” party that “can't even get a floor vote” on nationalising health care. She said: “We can't even get a floor vote on Medicare for All — not even a floor vote that might get doubled down. In an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates during an event honouring Martin Luther King Jr Day, the progressive politician said there are “left members inside the Democratic party” — including freshman congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, among others — ”who are working to try to make that shift happen”.
- WorldINSIDER
The brazen (and careless) Russian assassination team behind the Salisbury poisonings has been spotted in Europe, again
PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE OF THE REPUBLIC OF BULGARIA New images have been published of the Russian GRU assassination team working in Europe. A video from a case in Bulgaria shows a man connected to the 2015 poisoning of an arms dealer. The suspects in the Bulgarian poisoning are believed to be part of the same Russian unit that conducted the poison attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Impeachment trial fallout: Trump could get his wish — to hurt Biden
But the fallout could complicate life for Trump's leading Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in the days and weeks ahead — which is exactly what Trump was trying to do when he first launched his Ukraine scheme last summer. As the all-important Iowa caucuses approach, the former vice president appears, at first glance, to be in better shape than his main rivals for the Democratic nomination. Though a new CNN poll shows Bernie Sanders narrowly pulling ahead of Biden for the first time, every other poll released so far this year shows Biden maintaining his longtime national lead by anywhere from 5 to 11 percentage points.
- U.S.Reuters
Arizona mother arrested on suspicion of killing her three children
Police arrested a young mother on Tuesday on suspicion of smothering her three young children to death, one at a time, in the family's Phoenix home, then propping their bodies on a sofa as if they were napping, authorities and court records said. Rachel Henry, 22, was booked into the Maricopa County jail on three counts of first-degree murder after admitting she had harmed the children, Phoenix Police Sergeant Mercedes Fortune said. Court records later showed she was being held in lieu of bail of $3 million.
- WorldBloomberg
Man in Mexico Now Ill After Visiting Coronavirus Ground Zero
A man who fell ill in Mexico on Monday following a December trip to Wuhan, China, is under observation as a potential case of the coronavirus, the respiratory virus that has killed at least 17 people worldwide. The 57-year-old molecular biology professor works for the Instituto Politecnico Nacional university in the city of Reynosa, which borders with the U.S. The man returned to Mexico on Jan. 10 through a Mexico City airport and then flew to the state of Tamaulipas, Mexican authorities said. Tamaulipas State Health Minister Gloria Molina said in a radio interview that the man immediately reported his situation to authorities after feeling sick.
- U.S.Associated Press
Fifth condemned Tennessee inmate opts for the electric chair
A Tennessee inmate has chosen the electric chair for his scheduled execution next month, opting like four other inmates in little more than a year for electrocution over the state's preferred execution method of lethal injection. Nicholas Sutton, 58, is scheduled to be put to death Feb. 20 for the stabbing death of a fellow inmate decades ago while serving a life sentence for his grandmother's slaying. An affidavit signed on Tuesday said he waives the right to be executed by lethal injection and chooses electrocution.
- U.S.The National Interest
See This Nuke? Meet the Most Destructive Nuclear Bomb Ever Made By Man
Maj. Andrei Durnovtsev, a Soviet air force pilot and commander of a Tu-95 Bear bomber, holds a dubious honor in the history of the Cold War. Durnovtsev flew the aircraft that dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb ever. It had an explosive force of 50 megatons, or more than 3,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima weapon.
- WorldBusiness Insider
Jared Kushner reportedly used WhatsApp to chat with Mohammed bin Salman, who may have used the same app to hack Jeff Bezos
JONATHAN ERNST/Reuters New reporting suggests that Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hacked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone through WhatsApp. The news reignites concerns about the top White House aide Jared Kushner's reported WhatsApp communications with the crown prince. There is no reporting to suggest Kushner's phone was hacked.
- U.S.CBS News
Penn State student allegedly assaulted by 4 fraternity brothers
A student has reported an alleged sexual assault by four Penn State fraternity brothers, university police said Tuesday. The warning to the campus said the sexual assault was submitted at 8:31 a.m. and was reported to have happened at an unknown time on January 15 at the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. "The unknown victim, reported to be a student, disclosed to a third party being sexually assaulted by four unidentified fraternity brothers," the alert said.
- U.S.USA TODAY
The night the iguanas fell: Cold snap chills Florida, and lizard meat is up for sale
The forecast verified. Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service in Miami issued an unusual warning about cold-stunned iguanas falling from trees across South Florida. Wednesday morning, reports and photos appeared of the reptiles lying on the ground: "Verification of the @NWSMiami warning," tweeted Eric Blake, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist, who included a photo of a stunned lizard on Virginia Key, Florida.
- U.S.INSIDER
A college student from Iran who waited a year to be granted a student visa to the US was deported when he arrived
Getty Images/Scott Eisen An Iranian college student planning to attend Northeastern University was detained at a Boston airport by immigration officials Monday night. Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein, 24, was detained despite having been approved for a visa by the State Department to attend Northeastern University, The Boston Globe reported. In the wake of escalating tensions with Iran, dozens of Iranian Americans have been detained by US Customs and Border Protection.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Steyer on Trump: As long as he's tweeting at me, he's scared of me
Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer said that President Trump's insulting him was a sign of panic as the Senate impeachment trial got underway. On Wednesday morning, Trump retweeted a comment mocking Steyer over a clip of the candidate attempting to converse with Sen. Bernie Sanders following a campaign event in South Carolina, calling the billionaire “a major loser” who “just doesn't get it. Steyer replied a half hour later, tweeting, “Donald, you're just jealous nobody wants to say hi to you.
- WorldReuters
Macron berates Israeli security men in tussle at Jerusalem church
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - "Go outside," French President Emmanuel Macron demanded in English in a melee with Israeli security men on Wednesday, demanding they leave a Jerusalem basilica that he visited before a Holocaust memorial conference. The French tricolor has flown over the Church of St. Anne in Jerusalem's walled Old City since it was gifted by the Ottomans to French Emperor Napoleon III in 1856. France views it as a provocation when Israeli police enter the church's sandstone complex, in a part of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
- WorldThe Independent
Missing butterfly conservationist ‘may have been targeted by illegal loggers’ in Mexico
Fifty-three police officers have been hauled in for questioning over the disappearance of an environmental activist who ran a butterfly sanctuary in Mexico. Homero Gómez Gonzalez, 50, was reported missing last week amid fears he had been targeted by criminal gangs and illegal loggers in the central state of Michoacán. As the manager of the El Rosario reserve, he has led efforts to preserve the pine and fir forests where the monarch butterfly spends the winter.
- U.S.Associated Press
4 killed in plane crash at Southern California airfield
Four people were killed Wednesday in the crash of a small airplane at a Southern California airfield, authorities said. The plane went down at Corona Municipal Airport, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, police said. Firefighters found the plane burning in brush on the east side of the airport, not far from one end of the runway.
- WorldThe National Interest
Russia's Navy Is Having A Submarine Problem (And There Is No Easy Solution)
Key point: Russia's ballistic missile submarines will be in somewhat better shape in 2030. In March 2017, Russia's new Yasen-class nuclear attack submarine Kazan launched at the northern port city of Severodvinsk. The Russian navy — already badly depleted since the collapse of the Soviet Union — can't quickly replace most of its existing nuclear submarine fleet, which is approaching the end of its collective lifespan.
- WorldBusiness Insider
Scientists want to cut off Wuhan from the rest of the world to fight the spread of the deadly coronavirus gripping the city
NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images A Chinese government scientist said people should avoid coming into and going out of Wuhan to stop a deadly coronavirus from spreading further, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. The pneumonia-like coronavirus that was discovered in Wuhan has killed six people and infected about 300 more in China, Reuters reported, citing Chinese authorities. Health officials confirmed on Monday that the disease could spread from person to person.
- PoliticsNational Review
Arkansas Judge Orders Hunter Biden to Appear before Court in Paternity Case
An Arkansas judge presiding over Hunter Biden's paternity case has ordered the son of former Vice President Joe Biden to appear before the court on January 29 to explain the state of his finances, after missing a deadline to hand over five years of records. Biden “continues to act as though he has no respect for this court, its orders, the legal process in this state, or the needs of his child for support,” wrote Clinton Lancaster, the lawyer for Lunden Alexis Roberts, the mother of Biden's 16-month-old child. Lancaster explained that Biden had failed to reveal addresses, phone numbers, all sources of income, ownership stakes in companies, property deeds, and tax returns.
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