COVID-19 Numbers Spike In 2-Day Total

Allegheny County reported more than 1,600 cases of COVID-19 in 48 hours.

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  • Biden's foreign policy challenges, from Iran's nuclear program to Russian hacking

    These are the issues the Biden administration will be dealing with on the foreign policy front.

  • Florida man arrested while attempting to go to Biden’s inauguration after ‘storming Capitol’

    Judge denies release for 26-year-old accused of taking part in the deadly Capitol attacks then returning to Washington on Inauguration Day

  • UN agency: Libyan navy intercepts over 80 EU-bound migrants

    Libya’s coast guard intercepted on Friday more than 80 Europe-bound migrants in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the North African country, the U.N. migration agency said. The migrants were returned to Libyan soil, said the International Organization for Migration. “So far this year, some 300 people, including women and children, were returned to the country and ended up in detention,” said the IOM.

  • Newly installed senior counterintelligence official names China as top long-term threat

    Counterintelligence official Michael Orlando joins a growing chorus of voices on both sides of the political aisle who point to China as a major national security threat, particularly in terms of technology and cybersecurity.

  • Navalny wants to take on the Kremlin. Are Russians listening?

    Alexei Navalny is back in Russia and calling for protests against Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. But his sway with the Russian public remains modest.

  • Iran, pressured by blackouts and pollution, targets Bitcoin

    Iran's capital and major cities plunged into darkness in recent weeks as rolling outages left millions without electricity for hours. With toxic smog blanketing Tehran skies and the country buckling under the pandemic and other mounting crises, social media has been rife with speculation. Within days, as frustration spread among residents, the government launched a wide-ranging crackdown on Bitcoin processing centers, which require immense amounts of electricity to power their specialized computers and to keep them cool — a burden on Iran's power grid.

  • Biden's acting attorney general signed off on reassigning prosecutor who objected to family separations

    The incident would have made Wilkinson aware families were being separated long before the Texas pilot program for zero tolerance was known to the public.

  • AOC offers National Guard her office to sleep in after they were sent to garage following riots

    Several senators also offered space for guardsmen to use during their breaks

  • Uniformed Man Seen Kneeling at Iraq Vet Beau Biden's Grave During Inauguration

    Beau Biden, who served in the Guard, is buried at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Church cemetery in Greenville, Delaware.

  • Lucas Interior Embraces Color to Modernize Palm Springs Spanish Revival Home

    “The materials and colors took center stage,” said David Lucas when it came to the design of the home.Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Democrats request investigation into Hawley and Cruz's role in Capitol riot

    Seven Senate Democrats filed an ethics complaint against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Thursday, asking the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate whether they coordinated with leaders of the pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" rally that took place immediately before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.In a letter, the Democrats — Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Tina Smith (Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Tim Kaine (Va.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) — said the committee "should also offer recommendations for strong disciplinary action, including up to expulsion or censure, if warranted by the facts uncovered."Prior to the rally and attack on the Capitol, Hawley and Cruz said they would object to the vote counts in several states lost by former President Donald Trump. This "amplified claims of election fraud that had resulted in threats of violence against state and local officials around the country," the letter stated, adding that Hawley and Cruz "touted their plan to challenge the electors to drum up campaign contributions."The Democrats said the question that must be answered is whether Cruz and Hawley "failed to 'put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or government department' or engaged in 'improper conduct reflecting on the Senate' in connection with the violence on Jan. 6."Hawley and Cruz have both defended themselves by saying they believed they were protecting the integrity of the election.More stories from theweek.com 7 brutally funny cartoons about Trump's White House exit McConnell is already moving to strangle the Biden presidency Biden's next executive order will let people stay on unemployment if they quit an unsafe job

  • Biden orders stopgap help as aid talks start

    President Joe Biden plans executive action providing stopgap relief to millions while Congress considers his $1.9 trillion aid package. "If we don't act now, we'll be in a much worse place," says National Economic Council director Brian Deese. (Jan. 22)

  • Maduro sent letter to Iran's leader accrediting US fugitive

    A Colombian businessman was carrying a letter from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accrediting him to Iran's supreme leader when he was arrested on a U.S. warrant last year, according to a new court filing in a politically charged corruption case ratcheting up tensions with the South American nation. Attorneys for Alex Saab made the filing in Miami federal court Thursday just hours after prosecutors in the African nation of Cape Verde said they granted the 49-year-old Colombian house arrest as he fights extradition to the U.S. to face money laundering charges. U.S. officials believe Saab holds numerous secrets about how Maduro, his family and top aides allegedly siphoned off millions of dollars in government contracts amid widespread hunger in the oil-rich nation.

  • Atlanta-area teen stole nearly $1M from Kroger store over 2 weeks, police say

    The teen spent two weeks creating over 40 fake returns in order to obtain over $980,000, police say.

  • Sean Hannity denounces Biden’s first week as ‘disastrous’ before the president completed a full day of work

    ‘The Biden administration is off to a very rocky start,’ Fox News host says

  • Opposition leader urges UN to halt Belarus media crackdown

    The main opposition challenger in Belarus’ disputed presidential election urged the United Nations on Friday to call for a halt to “violence and lawlessness” in the country, including media censorship, internet shutdowns, website blockages and cancellation of accreditation for journalists. Former presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council that since September the situation in her nation “has only worsened” and the media remain under assault from President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.

  • Kenosha killing suspect Rittenhouse's bond terms changed after bar visit

    Attorneys for Rittenhouse did not object to the changes. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two amid protests last year.

  • Hungary PM says too early to talk about lifting COVID-19 restrictions

    Hungary cannot lift restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus until it can carry out a mass inoculation of the people, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday. Orban said the best approach was to authorise the use of several vaccines as competition would force manufacturers to speed up shipments. "We don't need explanations, we need vaccines," Orban said, adding that he hoped Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who is in Moscow for talks on Friday, can secure a deal to buy Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.

  • Order of the Brown Nose

    Britain’s essential fortnightly magazine Private Eye, whose trademark stance of delivering hard news with a witty bipartisan cynicism about politics has no parallel in the U.S., runs a regular feature entitled “O.B.N.” Longtime readers understand this to be the Order of the Brown Nose, an honor given to the most outlandishly, hilariously sycophantic punditry of the moment. If Private Eye were a U.S. publication, its O.B.N. feature would have to be expanded to sprawl across several pages as it considers the media’s bulk delivery of valentines to the incoming administration. Step forward, Eddie Glaude of MSNBC, who on Tuesday night compared Joe Biden to the Lord and said his ascension would comfort the dead: “President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Harris pulled the grief and regret out of the privacy of our hearts,” he said. “I’m reminded of the Psalmist, you know? ‘He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.’ Maybe the dead will speak to us now. Maybe they can rest now.” Close competition came from CNN’s David Chalian: “I mean, those lights that are, that are, just shooting out from the Lincoln Memorial, uh, along the reflecting pool, it’s like almost extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America.” John Harwood of CNBC didn’t wait for Joe Biden to be sworn in before informing us that his presidency would surely go beautifully, observing the morning of January 20 in a tweet that the transition from Donald Trump to Biden meant a journey from “ignorance” to “knowledge,” from “amorality” (he meant “immorality”) to “decency,” from “corruption to “public service” (the Biden family members who have gotten rich selling their connections high-five each other) and from “lies” to “truth.” Hours later, a Biden official hiding under a cloak of anonymity falsely stated that the Trump administration never developed a national vaccination plan and printed it as the truth shortly before Anthony Fauci clarified that there certainly was a vaccination plan and noted that many millions had been given their shots under it. Assessing Biden’s unremarkable inaugural speech, Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC mislabeled it “astonishing,” which is like calling Scranton a megalopolis. “The unity Joe Biden was talking about was both poetic and realistic at the same time,” O’Donnell claimed. “What he did in about 21 minutes was absolutely astonishing under these incredibly challenging circumstances.” Meanwhile, former Democratic campaign operative George Stephanopoulos of ABC News said the address contained “echoes of Lincoln,” and Major Garrett of CBS News said the famously undisciplined speaker sounded “like a priest explaining something from the Bible or something.” Many commentators rediscovered a notion, dormant for the last four years, that the president is ex officio the nation’s father, leaving implied the corollary that America is a family, the directives of whose National Dad we all must follow. Which doesn’t sound like America at all, unless we’re talking about South America. In the Seventies. Byron Pitts, ABC’s national correspondent, said, “I thought from Joe Biden today, certainly he was commander in chief, but he was also papa-in-chief. He gave a speech to comfort the nation.” Surely Biden is more like the nation’s great-grandfather: As of last August, he was older than 96 percent of those alive today, and when he joined the Senate, six of his colleagues had been born in the 1800s. A large majority of American presidents (27) died younger than Biden is now. “It’s a majestic day . . . there’s a cleansing, there’s an air of cleansing about today,” said John King of CNN. That’s a fairly tone-deaf thing to say about a nation in the grip of a pandemic that suffered a greater loss of life to COVID on Inauguration Day (4,448) than it did to terrorists on 9/11, but at least King didn’t go into outright fan fiction as the Daily Beast recently did with (I’m not making this up) a subheadline reading “Pet psychic Beth Lee-Crowther says Joe Biden’s dogs, Major and Champ, told her they are excited to live in the White House. They also say their master will be a ‘great president.’” Why is that last bit in quotation marks? Can we see a transcript? Crowther based her comments on looking at a photo of the dogs from her home in England. So she didn’t even interview them? An intoxicating day for the media, it seems. But the next day the hangover appeared: “Media trust hits new low,” ran a grim report on Axios. For the first time in the history of polling on the question, fewer than half of Americans trust the major media. Most Americans (56 percent) have finally grokked something that is obviously true: that “journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations,” while nearly three-fifths (58 percent) have noticed the equally obvious reason and agree that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.” The media have taken up the cause of fighting “misinformation” as their sworn duty, but their problem is a lack of standing to call out untruths. As one observer quoted by Axios put it, “We don’t have a misinformation problem. We have a trust problem.”

  • Bidens left stuck outside White House on Inauguration Day after ‘petty’ final Trump act

    ‘There was a protocol breach when the front doors were not held open’