Feedback Friday: Stimulus bill

One topic dominated the first Feedback Friday of the new year – the stimulus bill. Your thoughts on the fight over COVID relief in Washington.

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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

  • Canada urges Biden not to cancel oil pipeline on first day

    Top officials in Canada want a chance to make the case for a long disputed oil pipeline to be built amid reports President-elect Joe Biden will cancel Keystone XL. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Monday he will seek legal damages if reports are true that Biden plans to scrap the pipeline on his first day upon taking office. Biden’s plan is outlined in transition documents seen by Canadian media outlets.

  • 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.

  • More National Guard forces going to Washington, DC

    National Guard personnel are pouring into Washington, DC to enhance security for Wednesday's presidential inauguration. Troops from Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and New York landed at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Monday. (Jan. 19)

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Feds arrest Capitol rioter who allegedly broke into Pelosi's office, stole laptop, wanted to sell it to Russia

    A woman who participated in the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol surrendered to authorities in Pennsylvania on Monday night, the Justice Department said. Riley Williams, 22, was charged with illegally entering the Capitol, violent entry, and disorderly conduct, but the FBI said it is also investigating a tip from the suspect's former "romantic partner" that Williams broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office during the siege, stole a laptop, and "intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service."The transfer of the laptop to Russian intelligence "fell through for unknown reasons," the former partner, identified only as Witness 1, told the FBI, "and Williams still has the computer device or destroyed it." Williams was captured on video urging fellow rioters to go upstairs in the Capitol, toward Pelosi's office, the FBI said. Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, confirmed after the siege that "a laptop from a conference room was stolen," but said "it was a laptop that was only used for presentations."Williams lived with her mother, who identified her as the woman in an ITV video of the Capitol raid, the FBI said. The mother also told authorities that her daughter had taken a sudden interest in President Trump's politics and "far-right message boards." Williams had traveled to the pre-riot protest with her father, but he said they were separated before the Capitol siege, the FBI said, and after they returned to Pennsylvania, Williams deleted her social media accounts, changed her phone number, and fled.More stories from theweek.com 5 more scathing cartoons about Trump's 2nd impeachment Melania Trump released a farewell video. So did Colbert's Late Show Melania Trump. Anthony Scaramucci says even he got an invite to Trump's D.C. sendoff

  • Alexei Navalny calls for sanctions against 'enablers' of Putin regime including Roman Abramovich

    Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who has been jailed for at least a month after returning to Russia over the weekend, has urged Western governments to impose sanctions on key tycoons and allies of President Vladimir Putin including Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich and tycoon Alisher Usmanov. Mr Navalny, who nearly died from a nerve agent poisoning last summer, was detained at a Moscow airport on Sunday and ordered to be kept behind bars at least until mid-February. His close associate Vladimir Ashurkov said in a statement on Facebook on Monday that the Russian opposition leader drew up the list a few days before he came back to Russia from Germany where he was convalescing from the poisoning. “We agreed on a list of people he felt should be sanctioned if the West wanted to get serious about encouraging Russia to cease attacking human rights and to rein in corruption,” Mr Ashurkov said. Mr Ashurkov, who fled to the UK in 2014 following criminal prosecution in Russia, quoted Mr Navalny as saying that “sanctions aren’t working because the West has refrained from sanctioning the people with the money.” “It is not enough to sanction the operatives who just follow orders in arresting and assassinating dissidents,” he said. “The West must sanction the decision-makers and the people who hold their money. Nothing less will make an impact on the behavior of the Russian authorities.” Mr Navalny has suggested targeting some of Russia’s richest men who have enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle in the West while remaining loyal to Mr Putin. The list of eight people put forward by Mr Navalny includes Mr Abramovich, described as “one of the key enablers and beneficiaries of Russian kleptocracy,” banker Andrey Kostin and billionaire and former FC Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov. Mr Ashurkov urged Western government to sanction people on the list unless “Alexei is immediately released.” The West, responding to the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia’s involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine and other events, have sanctioned various Russian government officials and a few businessmen believed to be close to President Putin but never anyone with the international stature of Mr Abramovich or Mr Usmanov.

  • Trouble at home may change Biden's hand in Iran nuke talks

    A lot of the characters are the same for President-elect Joe Biden but the scene is far starker as he reassembles a team of veteran negotiators to get back into the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. President Donald Trump worked to blow up the multinational deal to contain Iran’s nuclear program during his four years in office, gutting the diplomatic achievement of predecessor Barack Obama in favor of what Trump called a maximum pressure campaign against Iran. Down to Trump's last days in office, accusations, threats and still more sanctions by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Iran's decision to spur uranium enrichment and seize a South Korean tanker, are helping to keep alive worries that regional conflict will erupt.

  • Venezuela dispatches oxygen for Brazil's Amazonas, reeling from COVID-19

    Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday that a convoy of trucks carrying emergency oxygen supplies for Brazil's northern Amazonas state, where a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has hit hard, has departed and is set to arrive at the border by Monday morning. Reading from a message sent by Justo Noguera, governor of Venezuela's southern Bolivar state, Maduro said during a state television appearance that the six trucks would arrive at the Santa Elena de Uairen border crossing by morning, where they would be handed over to Brazilian health authorities. From there, the trucks - carrying some 136,000 liters of oxygen, enough to fill 14,000 individual canisters - would take 14 hours to arrive in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, whose hospital system is collapsing due to the pandemic.

  • Capitol rioter threatened to shoot his own children if they reported him, say officials

    ‘If you turn me in, you’re a traitor and you know what happens to traitors...traitors get shot,' he told his children

  • Woman who 'took laptop' from Pelosi's office in Capitol riot 'planned to sell it to Russian spies'

    A woman identified as having taken part in the storming of the US Capitol is accused of stealing a laptop belonging to top Democrat Nancy Pelosi which she hoped to sell to a Russian spy agency, according to the FBI. There is no indication Riley June Williams, a 22-year-old careworker from Pennsylvania, took a laptop from Ms Pelosi's office. The FBI, which is working off a tip, said in the court record the "matter remains under investigation." The complaint, filed late Sunday in US District Court in Washington, sought the arrest of Williams on grounds including "violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds." Relying on several photos and videos of the chaotic January 6 riot, an FBI agent said Williams was seen near the office of Ms Pelosi, US House Speaker. A witness, identified in the court document only as W1 but who claimed to be "the former romantic partner of Riley June Williams," alleged that Williams planned to send the laptop to a friend in Russia to sell it to the SVR foreign intelligence agency. That sale "fell through for unknown reasons, and Williams still has the computer device or destroyed it," the affidavit says.

  • What Biden can and can't get from an evenly divided Senate

    So what does a 50-50 Senate get President-elect Joe Biden? Washington has barely had time to process the implications of Democratic control after two Georgia runoff elections that are delivering the Senate to Democrats. The unexpected new balance of power giving Democrats only the barest control of Congress has big consequences for the president-elect — easy confirmation of his Cabinet most importantly — but the road ahead for his ambitious legislative agenda remains complicated and murky.

  • U.S. teen jailed in Cayman Islands for breaking Covid protocols returns home

    Skylar Mack, 18, was jailed for violating quarantine protocols after isolating for two days and abandoning her tracking device in the Cayman Islands.

  • Indian opposition seeks inquiry into security leak after TV anchor's messages emerge

    Indian opposition parties called on Monday for an investigation into chat messages from a top TV anchor that they said showed prior knowledge of air strikes carried out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government against Pakistan in 2019. Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief of Republic TV network, told the head of a TV ratings agency that India would launch a "bigger than a normal strike" on its arch-rival - three days before Indian combat jets struck alleged militant targets on Pakistani soil. "On Pakistan, the government is confident of striking in a way that people will be elated," a transcript of the messages sent by Goswami said.

  • Indonesia earthquake: Heavy rain hampers search for survivors

    The death toll has now risen to 78 following the powerful tremor on Sulawesi island on Friday.

  • Trump's White House staff and alumni are reportedly using the same excuse to skip his big sendoff

    Anthony Scaramucci was right: The White House appears to be having trouble rounding up a sizable crowd for President Trump's official send-off from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday."In what looks like a desperate attempt to build a crowd for the crowd-obsessed president, an email has been making the rounds to current and former White House officials inviting them, and as many as five plus-ones, to Trump's elaborate exit ceremony," Politico reported Tuesday morning. "The go-to excuse for skipping out has been the 6 a.m. call time at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. But truly, many just don't want to be photographed sending off their former boss."Trump's current staffers have a good reason to avoid their outgoing boss. "Former White House officials and campaign staffers who would typically land plum jobs in corporate America after serving their time are now out in the cold," Politico says. One former White House official who got out early put it this way: "No one wants to touch them, they're just toxic." Another former Trump aide, pointing to the fallout from the Jan. 6 insurrection, was more blunt, telling Politico: "They're f---ed."Trump will be the first president since Andrew Johnson, another member of the tiny impeached president club, to skip the inauguration of his successor. "Johnson snubbed Ulysses S. Grant in 1869," The Washington Post notes. More stories from theweek.com 5 more scathing cartoons about Trump's 2nd impeachment Melania Trump released a farewell video. So did Colbert's Late Show Melania Trump. Anthony Scaramucci says even he got an invite to Trump's D.C. sendoff

  • AP Photos: Snow fills Kashmir resort with tourists again

    Snow lies knee-deep in the pastoral town of Gulmarg, or “meadow of flowers,” on Indian-controlled Kashmir's high plateau. With its blanket of white, the idyllic hill station is seeing tourists again fill its hotels and ski, sledge and trek its Himalayan landscape. The heavy influx of tourists is a dramatic change for the tourism industry in disputed Kashmir, which faced the double whammy of the coronavirus pandemic and harsh curbs on civil rights India imposed in the region in August 2019.

  • 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).

  • What is the presidential pardon and who may Donald Trump pardon before he leaves office?

    The final days of a presidential term normally see an outgoing president issue a series of pardons to those who have had criminal convictions. Rumours are swirling about who Donald Trump may pardon, but what is a presidential pardon and how might Trump exercise this power? What is a pardon? A presidential pardon is a legal act under the constitution that allows president’s to unilaterally set aside a punishment for a federal crime. This can involve commuting a sentence, removing a fine or providing clemency. A president can issue a pardon for any federal crime except impeachment.