Pompeo appeared to coordinate with Giuliani on Ukraine, new documents show

WASHINGTON — “Pls have Mr. G bring the documents,” reads the March 27, 2019, email from a State Department official to someone who worked for “Mr. G.,” better known as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a central figure in the Ukraine pressure campaign that culminated in the impeachment of President Trump. “S is happy to meet with him tomorrow for 10 minutes,” went an email, apparently between State Department officials, the next day (both sender and recipient are redacted, though the title “Office Manager to the Secretary of State” is visible in the sender's signature). “S” was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is suspected by Democrats to have had a more central role in that Ukrainian campaign than has yet been publicly acknowledged.

10,000 mourn victims of racist shooting rampage in Germany

Around 10,000 protesters marched through the central German town of Hanau on Sunday to mourn the nine people who were killed by an immigrant-hating gunman four days ago. These days and hours are the blackest and darkest our town has ever experienced during peace times,” Hanau mayor Claus Kaminsky told the somber crowds, according to the German news agency dpa. But, he said, those who want to pull apart society won't succeed, “because we are more and we will prevent that.

The coronavirus death toll is still rising, but US interest in the outbreak is plummeting

Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty Images Google Trends data show that Americans are losing interest in the coronavirus, even though the death toll continues to rise in mainland China and other countries. The World Health Organization said Monday that the epidemic peaked and plateaued in China between January 23 and February 2. Cases have been reported in 34 countries outside of China, with the most severe outbreaks in Italy, Iran and South Korea.

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  Xi says China facing 'big test' with virus, global impact spreads

  AFP
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  Asian Markets: South Korea Plunges More than 3%; Airlines, Smartphone Industry at Risk

  FX Empire

‘Senator Sanders, I’m Sorry’: Chris Matthews Apologizes for Nazi Analogy

Facing outrage over comparing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' Nevada Democratic caucus victory to France falling to the Nazis in World War II, Chris Matthews addressed the controversy at the top of his Monday night broadcast. “As I watched one-sided results of the caucus in Nevada, I reached for a historical analogy and used a bad one,” the veteran MSNBC personality said. “Senator Sanders, I'm sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an elected result in which you were a well-deserved winner,” Matthews continued.

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  Host compares Bernie Sanders win in Nevada to Nazi invasion

  Yahoo News Video
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  Bernie Sanders takes the lead at the Nevada caucus

  Yahoo Finance Video

'Miracle' rescue: California couple found alive after disappearing on Valentine's Day hike

The rescue of a married couple in their 70s who had been lost in the woods for more than a week is being hailed as a miracle by authorities in Northern California, who had given up hope of finding them alive. Carol Kiparsky, 77, and her husband, Ian Irwin, 72, were located in a densely forested area near a bay about 30 miles north of San Francisco on Saturday, two days after the Marin County Sheriff's Office had switched from search mode into a recovery mission. The Palo Alto couple had been missing since leaving their vacation cottage and getting lost on a Valentine's Day hike.

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  Missing Elderly Hikers Lost in Calif. Forest Since Valentine's Day Are Found Alive

  People
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  Artisense Group Stated "No Rose, Just Mask" on Valentine's Day

  PR Newswire

Bloomberg pays $2,500 a month to grassroots campaigners

Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg's efforts to take social media by storm by paying people to post about him may not be working out, according to the L.A. Times.

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  It looks like people with no real interest in Bloomberg are signing up to be grassroots campaigners because he pays $2,500 a month

  Business Insider
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  Twitter suspends 70 pro-Michael Bloomberg accounts citing its 'platform manipulation' rule

  USA TODAY

Iran Prepares to Suffer the Wrath of the Coronavirus

The spread of coronavirus has rapidly come to the Middle East after almost two months of being mostly contained in China, where it has killed more than two thousand people. Iran's leadership has responded by either ignoring the crisis or denying that it exists, even as all of Iran's neighboring countries have closed the borders that they share with Iran and began to institute checks on Iranians traveling abroad. The reaction of Middle Eastern states reveals a lack of coordination in responding to the emerging crises and also creates questions about what kind of impact a virus can have on a region that has deep divisions and smoldering conflicts.

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  Coronavirus Outbreak: Death toll in Iran is now at 50, news agency says

  KTRK – Houston
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  Coronavirus Cases Soar to Alarming Numbers in Italy, South Korea and Iran with Hundreds Infected

  People

Probe into abuse at America's oldest deaf school finds 'appalling truths'

An investigation into inappropriate conduct at America's oldest school for deaf people corroborated multiple allegations of sexual and physical abuse that stretched decades, school officials said. In a report, officials at the American School for the Deaf, in West Hartford, Connecticut, said Friday that the allegations involved former dorm supervisors, a maintenance worker, a dean and the school's longtime executive director. "The results of this investigation reveal startling and appalling truths," Executive Director Jeffrey S. Bravin and Catherine Burns, president of the board of directors, said in the report.

Seven killed, 150 injured in riots in Indian capital

At least seven people were killed and around 150 were injured in clashes between opposing groups in the Indian capital, a police official told Reuters on Tuesday, the deadliest riots in the city since protests against a new citizenship law began over two months ago. "Seven persons, including one head constable of Delhi police, have died," said Anil Mittal, a police officer, adding around 150 persons were injured in the violence on Monday. The clashes erupted in a northeastern district of the city between thousands of people demonstrating for and against the new citizenship law.

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  Trump, first lady stroll the grounds of iconic Taj Mahal

  Associated Press
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  Violence breaks out in India's capital over new citizenship law ahead of Trump visit

  Reuters

Senate FISA Abuse Investigation to Focus on Mystery Source Who Contradicted Steele Dossier

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) on Sunday told Fox News the Senate's investigation into FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will focus on interviews the agency conducted with a Russian source who contradicted much of the information in the Steele dossier. The first thing I want to do is call the people who heard from Russian sub-source that this dossier is a bunch of bar talk and hearsay,” Graham said on Fox's Sunday Morning Futures. I want to find out when did [former FBI director James] Comey and [former FBI deputy director Andrew] McCabe understand it was not reliable and start from there.

Man drives Jeep off 6-story roof of Los Angeles-area garage

A man drove his Jeep off the the sixth floor of a Los Angeles-area parking garage early Sunday and was taken to a hospital in critical condition, authorities said. When officers arrived shortly after midnight, they found the destroyed vehicle up against a McDonald's restaurant across the street from the garage in Santa Monica, police said. Firefighters extricated him from the wreckage and took him to a local trauma center, where he was listed in critical condition, the Santa Monica Fire Department said.

China said it would relax its lockdown of Wuhan's 11 million residents, only to immediately reintroduce it

Wuhan announced on Monday that some people who are deemed healthy will be allowed to leave the city, whose transport links have been severed since January 23. China's decision to lock down Wuhan and nearby cities is the largest quarantine in human history, with the World Health Organization calling it an unprecedented step that's it's not sure will work. The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, relaxed the unprecedented quarantine restrictions on its 11 million citizens on Monday, only to almost immediately reverse that decision and reimpose the lockdown of the city.

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  WHO experts visit Chinese virus epicentre

  AFP Relax News
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  The Coronavirus Is Starting to Go Global

  Bloomberg

Fox Business host blames stock market plunge on Bernie Sanders

Fox Business host Charles Payne is attributing Monday's massive stock market drop — which is widely considered to be connected to the deadly coronavirus outbreak — to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). According to Payne, Sanders' recent presidential primary win in Nevada is what caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to tumble to its biggest one-day point drop in three years, rather than the deadly COVID-19 outbreak that has claimed over 2,600 lives and continues to surge in new countries. Sanders decisively won the Nevada Democratic caucuses Saturday, boasting high numbers in the Democratic primary's most diverse contest thus far.

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  Equities Plunge, Coronavirus Spreads, A Major Correction Has Begun

  FX Empire
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  The Dow tumbled more than 1,000 points and marked its third-worst point drop in history — here’s how the stock market tends to perform after big drops

  MarketWatch

Nine of the World’s Most Beautiful Outdoor Saunas

From Seattle to Oslo, these outdoor saunas take relaxation and high-design to the next level Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

China sentences Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years

A Chinese court has sentenced Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison on charges of illegally providing intelligence abroad in a case that has rattled relations between Beijing and Stockholm. Gui, one of five Hong Kong-based booksellers known for publishing salacious titles about Chinese political leaders, was snatched by Chinese authorities while on a train to Beijing in February 2018, the second time he disappeared into Chinese custody. The court in the eastern city of Ningbo said Gui was convicted on Monday and that he had his Chinese citizenship reinstated in 2018, but it was not immediately clear if he had given up his Swedish nationality.

NASA space telescope spots a double star system with an alter ego

A volatile double star system appears to change its behavior rapidly and unpredictably like a cosmic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The pair consists of a neutron star — an extremely dense remnant of a supernova explosion — and a smaller, sunlike star. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation's Karl F. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers found that this binary star system switches between two alter egos every few years.

South Korea to launch mass coronavirus testing, U.S. pledges $1 billion for vaccine

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - South Korea aims to test more than 200,000 members of a church at the center of a surge in coronavirus cases while the United States pledged $2.5 billion to fight the disease, as it spreads rapidly beyond China's borders to Europe and the Middle East. Countries around the world are stepping up efforts to prevent a pandemic of the flu-like virus that originated from China late last year and has now infected more than 80,000 people, 10 times more cases than the SARS coronavirus. The U.S. and South Korean militaries said on Monday they may cut back joint training due to mounting concerns about the spreading coronavirus, in one of the first concrete signs of the virus's fallout on global U.S. military activities.

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  WHO Head Warns of ‘Potential Pandemic’ after Initially Praising China’s Response to Coronavirus

  National Review
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  Coronavirus outbreak not a global pandemic yet: WHO

  Yahoo Finance Video

Bloomberg Killed the Best Chance at Justice for the 9/11 Attacks

If it wasn't for Mike Bloomberg, the alleged perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack in American history would likely have been convicted of mass murder by now. According to all the evidence available both at the time and in the nine years since Bloomberg's intervention, a federal court almost certainly would have convicted the five co-defendants. All that was why Eric Holder, then the attorney general, announced in November 2009 that the Justice Department would bring criminal charges against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ammar al-Baluchi, Ramzi Binalshibh, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who—then as now—were detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Pacific NW winds shut interstate, fell tree that crushes man

High winds wreaked havoc on the Pacific Northwest on Sunday, closing a stretch of an interstate freeway in Oregon and toppling a large tree that crushed a man sleeping in an apartment complex in Washington state. The man was critically injured in Renton, Washington, after a tree fell on a six-unit apartment building during a morning of high winds and heavy rain. Elsewhere, Interstate 84 was closed in both directions between Pendleton and La Grande in northeast Oregon, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) east of Portland, because of a downer power line.

Iran is closing schools, scrambling for hospital places, and spraying disinfectant in the subway as coronavirus deaths and cases spike

reported. These figures have been questioned, however, with one lawmaker from the city of Qom telling the semi-official ILNA news agency that at least 50 people had died in that city alone, The Guardian, AFP and AP reported. ILNA's editor also told AFP: "The rest of the media have not published this figure, but we prefer not to censor what concerns the coronavirus because people's lives are in danger."

Trump Admin. Considers Booting Chinese Reporters in Response to ‘Egregious’ Expulsion of WSJ Journalists: Report

The Trump administration is considering whether to expel Chinese journalists in response to China's own expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. A meeting will be held at the White House on Monday to discuss the administration's options. The meeting will be led by deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who himself was a Journal reporter based in Beijing.

World is on the brink of a coronavirus pandemic, warn virologists, as four more cases emerge in Britain

Four new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the UK on Sunday, as experts warned of an impending pandemic with parts of Italy in lockdown after a massive rise in the number of new infections there. The new British patients had all been passengers on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship and were in quarantine in The Wirral when they fell ill, having returned from Japan on Saturday. Of the four people who tested positive for coronavirus, two patients are in the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, one is in the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and a fourth was taken to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, NHS England said.

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  A U.S. Woman Who Traveled on the Westerdam Cruise Ship Does Not Have Coronavirus After All, CDC Says

  Time
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  Two more Japan officials aboard ship contract coronavirus

  AFP

Two-Thirds of the World’s Most Polluted Cities Are in India

Several Chinese cities, including Beijing, have dramatically improved their air quality in recent years, while Indian metropolises remain some of the world's worst polluted, according to a new report. Beijing -- once infamous for its toxic haze -- has reduced smog levels and dropped down a list of the world's most polluted cities, falling to 199 from 84 three years before, according to the 2019 World Air Quality Report published Tuesday by IQAir AirVisual. In contrast, India still dominated its list of the smoggiest urban areas, accounting for 14 of the top 20.

'It's my guilty pleasure': Sen. Chuck Schumer confirms spending $8,600 on Junior's cheesecake

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer admitted Sunday that he has dropped almost $9,000 on his favorite cheesecake over the years. Holding a platter of the rich dessert aloft at a news conference, Schumer responded to a New York Post report that said Federal Election Commission filings reveal he spent $8,600 on cheesecake from Junior's, a restaurant that boasts it has the best cheesecake in New York, over the course of a decade. "Guilty as charged," the New York Democrat confessed.

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  Yes, Chuck Schumer has spent more than $8,600 on cheesecake. He's 'guilty as charged.'

  INSIDER
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  Schumer is 'guilty' of spending thousands on cheesecake

  Reuters Videos