COVID-19 in Wisconsin: 1,518 new cases

State health officials said there were at least 1,518 new positive coronavirus cases in Wisconsin on Thursday.

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    Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler approved an operation to capture or kill murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to U.S. intelligence released on Friday as the United States imposed sanctions on some of those involved but spared the crown prince himself in an effort to preserve relations with the kingdom. Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote opinion columns for the Washington Post critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's policies, was killed and dismembered by a team of operatives linked to the prince in the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi government, which has denied any involvement by the crown prince, issued a statement rejecting the U.S. report's findings and repeating its previous statements that Khashoggi's killing was a heinous crime by a rogue group.

  • Costco lifts minimum wage above Amazon or Target to $16 per hour

    The membership-only retailer's move comes as U.S. President Joe Biden plans to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, and a week after rival Walmart Inc raised its hourly wage to an average of $15. Costco's Chief Executive Officer Craig Jelinek made the announcement at a U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing on worker wages at large companies.

  • Mark Meadows on the future of the Republican Party

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  • Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Liz Cheney ‘a fool’ for criticising Trump

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  • Experts notice pandemic's mental health toll on German youth

    Pollina Dinner returned to school in Berlin for the first time this week after two months of lockdown. The 9-year-old third-grader was thrilled to see her classmates and teachers again but frets about the coronavirus pandemic's effect on her life. Psychiatrists, psychologists and pediatricians in Germany have voiced growing alarm that school closings, social restrictions and other precautions are magnifying the fear, disruption and stress of the pandemic among Germany’s 13.7 million children and teenagers, raising the prospect of a future mental health crisis.

  • UK top court says IS schoolgirl can't return

    The UK’s top court has unanimously ruled that a British-born woman who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State should not be allowed to return.The Supreme Court said on Friday (February 26) Shamima Begum cannot come back to Britain to challenge the government taking away her citizenship because she poses a security risk.She left London in 2015 when she was 15 years old and went to Syria via Turkey with two school friends, where she married an IS fighter. Since that time she gave birth to three children, all of them died.Now aged 21, Begum is being held in a detention camp in Syria.President of the UK Supreme Court Robert Reed said on Friday "The right to a fair hearing does not trump all other considerations, such as the safety of the public".It was stated that Begum can still pursue her appeal against the revoking of her citizenship, but she cannot do that in Britain.This decision overturns a ruling made by the Court of Appeal last year saying she could only have a fair appeal if she were allowed back to the UK.The case has provoked heated debate in Britain, pitting those who say she gave up her right to citizenship by traveling to join IS against those, including Human Rights groups who argue she should not be left stateless but rather face trial in Britain.

  • McConnell to support Trump if party picks him as its 2024 nominee

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who excoriated former President Donald Trump over the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot less than two weeks ago, said on Thursday that he would "absolutely" vote for Trump if he became the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. McConnell, who Trump blasted last week as "a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack," said he expects to see an open contest for the Republican White House nomination in 2024 but showed no hesitation in backing Trump when asked whether he would vote for him as nominee.

  • Tourists can 'golf quarantine' in Thailand

    Thailand has a new attraction to tout to tourists: 'golf quarantine.'International visitors can now chip away at their two weeks in isolation on the putting green, as part of a new program devised by the government to boost its ailing tourism sector.Heo Kwang-eum is a businessman and one of the dozens of South Korean visitors taking up the offer, at a resort an hour north of Bangkok."I'm grateful to the Thai government for starting this program. We are at the starting point. From my four-day experience (of isolating in a hotel room), it would be torture if we stayed in a room and did nothing for two weeks."Visitors undergo three tests throughout their stay.The package costs around $2,240 - a reasonable price for these golfers compared with the cost of a regular quarantine, cooped up in a hotel room.Ku Jung-keun is the general manager of the Artitaya Country Club."The golf quarantine offers three safe tests and time to enjoy golfing. Doctors provide daily health check-ups for the guests too while they are staying here, and it's not an expensive program."With bars and other resort facilities closed, there's no prospect to thrash out the missed birdies, bogeys and shanks of the day. But spirits remain high.[Visitor Heo Kwang-eum, saying:] "It's huge, the golf course is almost over one square kilometre with 36 holes. Think of 41 Koreans golfing as you roam around the field, served by over 100 employees. It's like emperor's golfing. As you know, it's extremely hard to go golfing in Korea these days because of the crisis. Here it's a golf paradise."

  • Deb Haaland, seeking to be first Native American Cabinet member, grilled on energy stances in confirmation hearing

    Haaland defended not only President Biden's efforts to stop drilling on public lands but also her public statements opposing fossil fuel extraction.

  • Students from Rep. Madison Cawthorn's college said he used 'fun drives' to corner women with sexual advances, report says

    Two former resident assistants told BuzzFeed News they warned women in their dorms not to go on drives with Cawthorn because "bad things happened."

  • FBI pinpoints a single suspect in the death of US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick

    Federal investigators zeroed in on the assailant after video footage showed the suspect attacking officers with bear spray, The Times reported.

  • Teen in hospital for sledding injury dies after dad died visiting her, Ohio mom says

    “Her daddy got to heaven just before she did.”

  • She taught piano to kids in NC for years. Then her daughter accused her of sex crimes.

    This is the shocking story of the alleged sexual abuses that led to the January arrest of Sandra Hiler — aka Charlotte piano teacher Keiko Aloe — as told by her 21-year-old daughter.

  • Biden Fires a Warning Shot at Iran

    After only a month in power, President Biden has used lethal military force in reaction to Iranian-sponsored attacks on Americans in Iraq. The strike, said to be by F-15 jets, apparently attacked buildings owned by Iraqi Shiite militia groups along the Iraqi-Syrian border. It’s worth pausing to note that those Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups and not the government of Iraq control that part of the border. In other words, Iran and its proxies control a route from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon, where the largest Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, is situated. The borders have been erased. The Biden strike is a message to Iran, a warning shot against continuing attacks by the militias Tehran backs. According to press reports, Biden was presented with a range of options and chose one of the softest — a limited strike inside Syria rather than Iraq. There is a logic to this choice. First, U.S. attacks inside Iraq would likely complicate life for Prime Minister Kadhimi, whom we are generally supporting, and spur the forces hostile to any U.S. presence — not least the Iranian-allied militias — to demand that all U.S. forces be expelled. Second, should further Iranian-sponsored attacks require Biden to hit Iranian-backed forces again, this limited strike allows him to say he tried patience and restraint and they failed. But the strike inside Syria and at Iranian proxies may also send messages Biden does not intend: that the United States will never hit Tehran’s proxies inside Iraq and that it will never hit Iran. If that’s what the Iranian regime infers, they will have the militias strike again and again; they will not be deterred because they will see the attacks as nearly cost-free. The law of averages suggests that sooner or later these continued attacks will kill Americans. That’s when the president will face the need to punish Iran and truly establish deterrence; merely attacking its proxies will be inadequate. One of the key functions of the Shiite militias in Iraq is to allow Iran to attack U.S. forces while, by absorbing any penalty, keeping Iran safe. If there are a series of attacks, harming Americans and eventually killing one or more, the kind of limited response from the United States that we saw this past week will not be enough. That does not mean World War III and it does not mean American bombers over Tehran, but it does mean that Biden must contemplate striking Iranian assets rather than expendable proxy groups. Meanwhile, there was zero progress on the nuclear-negotiations front this past week. On the contrary, Iran did not agree to attend the EU-sponsored talks that the United States has agreed to attend, it limited International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors’ access to Iran, and it threatened to enrich uranium to 60 percent. Nuclear power requires enrichment to no more than 5 percent; the only use for uranium enriched to 60 percent is in preparing a nuclear weapon. The very least that can be said about President Biden’s second month in power is that we are seeing any dreams of a quick return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, and a quick resolution to U.S.-Iranian confrontations dissolve before our eyes. The president’s refusal, thus far, to lift any sanctions and his willingness to use force against Iranian proxies suggest a more realistic assessment of Iran than many feared. No doubt there will be many deep discussions, even debates, within the administration over what the next move should be. The administration’s willingness to return to the JCPOA if Iran went back into compliance with it has not moved the Islamic Republic an inch. Similarly, the administration’s reversal of the designation of the Houthis in Yemen as a terrorist group, and its decision to halt the sale of “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, were met with zero flexibility by the Houthis — who have carried out additional terrorist attacks since the policy changes. Down the road the administration faces an even greater challenge than what to do about attacks on Americans in Iraq. President Biden has already decided that they will be met with force, and one must assume that if the attacks continue and escalate, the counter-attacks will as well. But what about Iran’s expulsion of nuclear inspectors, which violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the “Additional Protocol” to the JCPOA (that allowed snap inspections)? What about enrichment to 60 percent, if that indeed occurs? How far down the road toward building a nuclear weapon will the administration be willing to let Iran go? That’s a hypothetical question today, but if Iran keeps going it will soon be keeping U.S. officials up at night. Biden is the fifth American president in a row, by my count, to say Iran would never be permitted to build a nuclear weapon. Unless Iran changes course he could be the first to have to prove it.

  • Residents of an Indian slum thought they were getting vaccinated like everyone else but were unknowingly part of a clinical trial

    After a white van advertised COVID-19 vaccines to a central-Indian slum, many of its residents feel duped after finding out they were in a trial.

  • Ted Cruz rants about comedians, late-night TV, and mask-wearing before shouting at people to 'just have fun' in wild CPAC speech

    "Orlando is awesome. It's not as nice as Cancún, but it's nice," Cruz said, referring to the scandal he sparked by leaving Texas for Mexico.

  • Ben Affleck says his divorce from Jennifer Garner and other 'life experience' shaped him into a better actor

    In a new interview as part of The Hollywood Reporter's Actor Roundtable series, Affleck spoke about Garner and the three kids they share.

  • Ted Cruz's colleagues mocked him by putting memes of his Cancun trip in the Senate gym locker room: 'Bienvenido de Nuevo, Ted!'

    Those who turned up to the Senate gym Wednesday morning were welcomed by color printouts of Cruz's Cancun trip that read "Bienvenido de Nuevo, Ted!"

  • Prince Harry knew he and Meghan Markle had something 'pretty special' by their second date. Here's a complete timeline of their relationship.

    The couple's royal love story began in 2016 when they were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend.