City council passes bill to help restaurants stay afloat amid pandemic

Restaurant owners say the Philadelphia's continued restrictions on restaurants for indoor dining is crushing.

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  • Clinton and Pelosi suggest Trump may have been on phone with Putin during Capitol siege

    Nancy Pelosi called pro-Trump rioters ‘Putin puppets’ and the Capitol siege a ‘gift’ to the Russian president

  • Honduran Migrant Traveling to U.S. Claims Biden Is ‘Going to Help All of Us’

    A Honduran migrant worker claimed that a migrant caravan was headed to the U.S. because incoming president Joe Biden would give migrants “100 days” to arrive at the country, in an interview with CNN. Biden may seek to enact a 100-day moratorium on deportations, however transition team officials have cautioned that the president-elect will not be able to overhaul immigration policy immediately upon taking office. Even so, a group of about 3,000 migrants from Honduras clashed with Guatemalan security forces on Sunday during their trek north to the U.S.-Mexico border. One migrant claimed the caravan was heading north because Biden had promised to help them, in a CNN interview later reposted by The Hill. Honduran migrant: President-elect Biden is "going to help all of us." pic.twitter.com/LkrVCsXcSb — The Hill (@thehill) January 18, 2021 “I just want patience and prayers that we can get to the U.S. because they [will] have a new president, Biden,” the migrant said. “He’s going to help all of us, he’s giving us 100 days to get to the U.S. and give us [legal] papers, so we can get a better life for our kids, and for our families.” Meanwhile, Guatemala deemed the attempted crossing illegal. “Guatemala’s message is loud and clear: These types of illegal mass movements will not be accepted, that’s why we are working together with the neighboring nations to address this as a regional issue,” the office of Guatemala’s president said in a statement on Sunday.

  • Boy Killed By Father After Vaccination Dispute in Heartbreaking Murder-Suicide in SF

    A boy who was killed in an alleged murder-suicide by his father has been identified as 9-year-old Pierce O’Loughlin. Family tragedy: The boy and his father, Stephen O'Loughlin, 49, were both found dead at their home on Scott Street, Marina District in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon, SF Chronicle reports. The boy’s mother, Lesley Hu, asked authorities to check on her son after learning that he did not show up for school that day.

  • Russia says all Azeri captives returned under Karabakh deal

    Armenia has returned all Azeri prisoners who were captured during last year's conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, but the process with Armenian prisoners has been held up, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday. The six-week conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh was brought to a halt in November by a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement under which Azeri and ethnic Armenian forces were expected to exchange all captives. Armenia has said that many of its prisoners of war remain in Azerbaijan, a problem it has raised with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk group.

  • Texas man who stormed Capitol accused of threatening to shoot kids if they turned him in

    Court documents recounted the man's telling his children that he would consider them "traitors" if they contacted authorities.

  • Pakistan PM angry over reports TV anchor knew about strike

    Pakistan’s prime minister reacted angrily Monday to media reports of a text exchange between an Indian TV anchor and a former media industry executive that suggests a 2019 Indian airstrike inside Pakistan was designed to boost Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chances for reelection. Imran Khan took to Twitter to respond to Indian media reports of an exchange on the WhatsApp messaging service between popular Indian TV anchor Arnab Goswami and Partho Dasgupta, the former head of a TV rating company.

  • Hunter Biden: the president-elect's second son who was the target of Donald Trump's attacks

    Joe Biden’s second son was a primary target for attacks by Donald Trump during the bitter 2020 presidential campaign. Indeed, it was Trump’s accusations of impropriety on behalf of Hunter Biden that led him to threaten to withhold $391 million (£289 million) in military aid to Ukraine unless they investigated the Biden family’s business dealings. That threat led to the first impeachment of Trump. Born in 1970 to Joe and his first wife Neilia, Hunter’s early life was marred by tragedy. When he was just two years old, he was seriously injured in a car crash that killed his mother and younger sister, Naomi. Family tragedy would strike again in 2015, when his older brother Beau, who served as the Attorney General for the state of Delaware, died of brain cancer aged just 46. Unlike his father and brother, Hunter Biden has attempted to stay away from front-line politics. After graduating from Yale Law School, he joined MBNA Bank, which provided significant contributions to his father’s political campaigns. After a brief stint as a lobbyist, he was appointed by George W Bush to the board of directors of Amtrak, the state-owned railway network company. Live US news updates as Trump leaves office and Biden prepares to be sworn in

  • Russia's second vaccine '100% effective', watchdog tells media

    A candidate COVID-19 vaccine known as EpiVacCorona, Russia's second to be registered, proved "100% effective" in early-stage trials, Russian consumer health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has told local media. The data, based on Phase I and II trials, were released before the start of a larger Phase III trial which would normally involve thousands of participants and a placebo group as a comparison. "The effectiveness of the vaccine is made up of its immunological effectiveness and preventative effectiveness," the TASS news agency reported, citing Rospotrebnadzor.

  • Pence tried to contact Capitol officer Eugene Goodman to thank him

    The officer who may have saved the life of Vice President Mike Pence could now be giving him the side-eye. The cop hailed as a hero for leading a crowd of insurrectionists away from the Senate floor and potentially saving hundreds of lawmakers’ lives has, perhaps, left the vice president on read. Vice President Mike Pence has reportedly reached out to thank Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman for his heroism on Jan. 6, but they have yet to connect.

  • Guatemala forces stall migrant caravan with tear gas, batons

    Guatemalan police and soldiers launched tear gas and wielded batons and shields against a group of Honduran migrants that tried to push through their roadblock early Sunday. A group of about 2,000 migrants had stopped short of the roadblock the night before.

  • Congresswoman's spokesman quits less than 2 weeks into term

    The spokesman for Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert has quit less than two weeks after she was sworn into office, saying he felt like he need to due to the insurrection at the nation's Capitol.

  • "MyPillow guy" says he'd welcome suit from voting machines maker

    Mike Lindell says it would help him prove to the world his belief that the recent presidential election was rigged. He also says some major retailers are dropping his company's products.

  • Factbox: Biden's Cabinet appointees get their day in Congress

    U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office on Wednesday with only a few of his top chosen deputies in place. The Democrat's Cabinet appointees are awaiting approval by the Senate, who are set to hold their first confirmation hearings on Tuesday. Biden's pick for Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, will meet with the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT).

  • Pfizer vaccine may prevent transmission of coronavirus to others, Israeli study suggests

    Pfizer vaccine recipients are unlikely to transmit the virus to others, according to the author of an Israeli study. Participants in the survey developed up to 20 times more antibodies within a week of receiving the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The survey, which reviewed data from 102 of about 1,000 of the Sheba Medical Centre’s medical staff who have received both shots, showed that only two subjects have developed low amounts of antibodies - one of the subjects suffered from a compromised immune system. There was no explanation for why the second person did not develop antibodies, and the hospital said it was investigating the matter. The rest - 98 per cent - have developed levels of antibodies that were even higher than patients who have recovered from a serious coronavirus-induced condition, the hospital said in a statement released on Monday.

  • After seeing floods, Indonesian leader visits quake zone

    Relief workers struggled Tuesday to clear the rubble of collapsed buildings on an Indonesian island where a strong earthquake killed at least 90 people and left thousands homeless. The 6.2 magnitude earthquake on Friday was one of a series of recent disasters to hit Indonesia. President Joko Widodo, who traveled to a flood-hit region of Borneo island on Monday, visited the quake-hit areas of West Sulawesi province on Tuesday to reassure people that the government’s response is reaching those in need.

  • Qatar's foreign minister wants Gulf Arab nations to talk with Iran: Bloomberg

    "This is also a desire that's shared by other GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries," he told Bloomberg TV https://bloom.bg/369WLz9 in an interview. The Qatari foreign minister added that his government was supporting ongoing discussions between Iran and South Korea to secure the release of an oil tanker seized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard early this month.

  • Biden’s Foolish Sabotage of the Keystone Pipeline

    Joe Biden has not yet been sworn in, but already, he is at war with American energy — which is to say, at war with American prosperity. Biden has promised to sabotage the Keystone XL pipeline, a privately financed, multi-billion-dollar project already under way, and “cancel it on his first day,” according to a briefing document cited by the BBC. The Keystone pipeline would, if it were allowed to, carry crude from the oil sands of Alberta to Nebraska, where the pipeline would link up with the existing distribution network to send that oil on to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. This would benefit Canadian producers and their investors, American refineries and their large, excellently paid work forces — those good, high-paying, blue-collar jobs Biden talks about — and, most important, American consumers, who would have access to yet another source of fuel at attractive prices from a nearby friendly country. This sort of thing is the point of international economic cooperation. The notional case against Keystone is environmental in the main part, and in the lesser part an issue of Indian lands and rights. The environmental case is unsound: Canada has ratified the Paris agreement and takes environmental issues relatively seriously. Innovation and technological improvements have substantially reduced the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with Canadian tar-sands productions — by 30 percent since the 1990s, as the Canadian government calculates. Of course, it matters relatively little whether a gallon of gasoline in the tank of a Cadillac Escalade in Houston is refined from Canadian tar-sands oil or from West Texas oil — the relevant emissions come overwhelmingly from the point of combustion. Of course there are environmental challenges associated with the oil sands, as there are with any usable source of energy, including wind and solar. These are regulatory and practical challenges that are perfectly manageable. (Which is not the same thing as a guarantee that U.S. or Canadian authorities, or businesses, will manage them perfectly — that kind of oversight is hard work and a serious business.) The same is true of “fracking” and other petroleum-extraction practices. There are many reasonable ways to manage tradeoffs between economic development and environmental priorities — if environmentalists were interested in reasonable tradeoffs, which they aren’t. Biden, already looking over his shoulder at a restive progressive caucus, apparently intends to buy environmentalists off with other people’s money. Why? Fossil fuels, far from being the great villain of the climate story, have been the main source of greenhouse-gas reductions in the United States over the past several decades, as relatively clean-burning natural gas displaces relatively dirty coal in electricity generation. But that is not the kind of intelligent tradeoff that interests American environmentalists, who are moralists and romantics and committed to the notion that hydrocarbon fuels are, simply, evil — and that they must be fought on every front. Hence, the American Left’s comprehensive and total war on any and all infrastructure associated with our most abundant energy sources — not only oil pipelines but natural-gas pipelines, too, along with rail-shipping facilities, refineries and other plants, and West Coast export depots intended to help U.S. producers in Asian markets. If it produces, consumes, moves, or processes oil or gas, the American Left opposes it. If Joe Biden is interested in improving the employment and wage outlook for middle-class Americans, he ought not make our industrial, chemical, manufacturing, transportation, and electricity sectors hostage to the narrow-minded concerns of a small group of fanatics. There is a worrying Hayekian lesson in this, too: It is impossible for American businesses to make big, long-term investments in a political environment in which every project is up for renegotiation — or summary economic execution — every time the White House changes hands. Why invest in building and moving physical goods, and taking on the political risk that goes along with such investments, when you could join the booming financial sector and put your money into the money business? This is not to sniff at finance or other work in the service economy, but, surely, in a continental nation as vast as ours, with an economy as complex as ours, it shouldn’t be possible for one man serving a short term in a temporary elected office to undo years of work and billions of dollars in investment. This is pure foolishness, and it will cost us. Joe Biden is getting ready to get off to a poor start. And if he thinks that he can buy off the green lobby by sacrificing Keystone, he is mistaken. Their ambitions are bigger and broader than that, and they will not be easily satisfied: L’appétit vient en mangeant. If you were wondering who actually has Joe Biden’s ear, now you know.

  • Venezuela's Maduro sends oxygen to Brazil amid virus spike

    Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has authorized the dispatch of oxygen to Brazil to help its South American neighbor treat people sickened amid another wave of the coronavirus, despite frosty relations between the two governments and Venezuela's own lack of hospital supplies. Maduro approved departure for a convoy of six tanker trucks loaded with oxygen in a national broadcast Sunday on state TV. It's destined for the city of Manaus in the northern state of Amazonas.

  • Woman arrested at DC checkpoint after telling police she is an officer and cabinet member

    Police announce second arrest at security perimeter set-up to protect Joe Biden’s inauguration

  • Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny jailed for 30 days

    Russian state prosecutors have jailed Alexei Navalny for 30 days, as the Kremlin critic appeared in front of a hearing he labelled as "the highest degree of lawlessness" on Monday (January 18). Navalny was detained the previous evening at a Moscow airport when flying home for the first time since he was poisoned last summer. In a video posted on social media from inside the police station, Navalny also hit out at President Vladimir Putin. “I have seen a lot of times the mockery of justice, but it looks like the old man in his bunker is so scared of everything, that the criminal procedures' code has been blatantly torn up and thrown into the garbage. The thing which is happening here is simply impossible. This is the highest degree of lawlessness.” Upon the announcement of Navalny's remand in pre-trail detention, he urged the people to take to the streets. Around 200 of his supporters gathered outside the police station in temperatures of minus 18 degrees Celsius and demanded he be set free, a Reuters witness said. The foreign ministers of Germany, Britain, France, and Italy had earlier called for Navalny's release, while the U.N. human rights office said it was "deeply troubled" by his arrest. One of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's top aides Jake Sullivan also joined the calls for Moscow to free Navalny. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brushed off any criticism of the actions damaging Russia's image, saying the country isn't just "young ladies going to a ball." “You can feel the joy of their carbon-copy comments. Joy, because it (Navalny returning) apparently help the Westerns politicians to think that they now can distract (their citizens) from the deepest crisis the liberal system has found themselves in." The head of Cinema for Peace, the activist group that brought Alexei Navalny to Germany for life-saving treatment after his poisoning has also spoken out. Jaka Bizilj simply called it a "crime" that Russia had detained the Kremlin critic on his return to Russia.