EPA administrator criticizes inspector general's conclusions on Scott Pruitt's alleged abuses

Scott Pruitt, the onetime administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was once a potent symbol of corruption within the Trump administration, as well as of its push to roll back environmental protections. With his penchant for first-class flights and other reported excesses — including, most infamously, an ill-fated search for a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel — Pruitt became an increasing problem for a White House that had promised to hold public officials accountable. Trump fired Pruitt just a day after Ingraham's second call for him to do so.

Chief Justice John Roberts Scolds Schumer for ‘Dangerous’ Threat Directed at Conservative Justices

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday criticized Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) over comments the minority leader made in reference to an abortion case currently being debated by the court. “For Justice Roberts to follow the right wing's deliberate misinterpretation of what Senator Schumer said, while remaining silent when President Trump attacked Justices Sotomayor and Ginsberg last week, shows Justice Roberts does not just call balls and strikes,” a spokesperson for Schumer responded. Earlier Wednesday, Schumer appeared to threaten Republican justices.

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  Schumer Claims Conservative Supreme Court Justices Will ‘Pay the Price’ If They Rule against Abortion Advocates

  National Review
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  Supreme Court takes up 1st major abortion case of Trump era

  ABC News Videos

Airstrike in northwest Syria kills 15 ahead of Moscow summit

An airstrike on a rebel-held village in northwest Syria hit a poultry farm where several displaced families were sheltering early Thursday, killing at least 15 people including children while wounding several others, opposition activists said. The activists blamed Russian warplanes for the strike on Maaret Musreen village, which is home to thousands of internally displaced people. The strike came hours ahead of a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the escalation in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, which comes amid a monthslong Russian-backed Syrian government offensive there.

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  Russia says rebel positions in Syria's Idlib have merged with Turkish army posts

  Reuters
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  UN envoy urges 'immediate diplomatic solution' in Syria's Idlib

  AFP

U.S. opposes releasing a dying Bernard Madoff from prison early

The U.S. government opposed Bernard Madoff's request to be freed from prison even if he is close to death from kidney failure, saying he has never accepted responsibility for his massive Ponzi scheme or shown compassion for victims. In a Wednesday night court filing, prosecutors said denying the 81-year-old Madoff's request would uphold victims' and public faith in the justice system. They said Madoff should continue serving his 150-year sentence, to ensure that "one of history's worst fraudsters" faces the consequences of his crimes.

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  Feds: Keep Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff in prison for his 'extraordinarily evil' crimes

  USA TODAY
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  Prosecutors urge denial of early prison release for Bernie Madoff

  MarketWatch

Biden scores major delegate haul on Super Tuesday, NBC News projects

Joe Biden's stunning sweep of most Super Tuesday states has rocketed him to the lead in the all-important delegate count over Bernie Sanders, according to NBC News projections based on early results. The total delegate haul is yet to be determined, because many states have yet to fully report their results. That includes California, the biggest state in the contest with 415 delegates, where Sanders was leading with just over half of the vote counted.

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  Warren persists in Democratic race despite crushing Super Tuesday losses

  The Guardian
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  Biden boom slows Sanders' march on Super Tuesday

  Reuters

South Korea Is Getting An 'Aircraft Carrier' To Compete With China And Japan

Key point: Seoul for years has mulled a purchase of F-35Bs to complement the country's land-based F-35As. South Korea is getting an aircraft carrier. The vessel could help Seoul's navy to compete with its main rivals, the Chinese and Japanese fleets.

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  South Korea reports lowest new infections for a week

  AFP
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  China is recording so few new coronavirus infections that South Korea looks like the new center of the epidemic

  Business Insider

As the coronavirus spreads, one study predicts that even the best-case scenario is 15 million dead and a $2.4 trillion hit to global GDP

While much is still unknown about the virus, a group of Australian experts have estimated that the virus may have severe consequences on global gross domestic product. New modeling from The Australian National University looks at seven scenarios of how the outbreak might affect the world's wealth, ranging from low severity to high severity. In the low-severity model — or best-case scenario of the seven — ANU researchers estimate a global GDP loss of $2.4 trillion, with an estimated death toll of 15 million.

Rand Paul says he'll 'stay here all weekend' to get foreign aid cut included in coronavirus bill

Congress agreed to put a bipartisan emergency spending package to curb the spread of COVID-19 up for a House vote Wednesday, but it may get held up by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who wants to include an amendment to the bill. Paul, a deficit hawk, wants to ensure the U.S. has some way to fund the COVID-19 package, so he's trying to sneak a foreign aid cut in there. Paul is confident he'll get a vote, but he's prepared to stick around in Washington all weekend either way.

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  Congress reaches bipartisan $8 billion spending deal to fight coronavirus

  The Week
• U.S. House to vote on coronavirus funding on Wednesday -

  Reuters

Lawsuit: Dem Donor Linked to Controversial Ukrainian Oligarch

And now a lawsuit filed in Delaware last spring alleges that a South Florida businessman named Uriel Laber played a key role in an alleged scheme by Kolomoisky to steal billions from that bank. Laber strongly denies the allegations. In 2017 and 2018, Laber gave a total of $2,500 to then-candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, now a Democratic member of Congress who flipped a Florida seat previously held by Republicans.

The Best Mowers for Big Lawns

If you have too much lawn for a standard push mower but not enough for a riding mower, consider these capable machines. From Popular Mechanics

Romney Claims Senate Probe into Hunter Biden ‘Appears Political’

Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah) warned Thursday that Senator Ron Johnson's (R., Wis.) probe into the Bidens and Burisma “appears political,” and would not comment whether he would vote for a subpoena that Johnson is planning. Blue Star tried to leverage the Biden name to secure meetings with the State Department during its campaign to rehabilitate Burisma's image.

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  Republicans Dive Back Into Hunter Biden Investigations, Saying Voters Deserve It

  The Daily Beast
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  Trump to Hannity: I’ll Bring Up Hunter ‘All the Time’ Against Biden

  The Daily Beast

Moscow imposes 'high alert regime' to stem coronavirus outbreak

Moscow authorities announced a "high alert regime" and imposed extra measures on Thursday to prevent a spread of the coronavirus in the Russian capital. A document posted on the Moscow mayor's website said that Russians who return from China, South Korea, Iran, France, Germany, Italy and Spain and other states who display possible "unfavorable" signs of coronavirus should self-isolate themselves at home for 14 days. Russia has not reported any confirmed cases of people contracting coronavirus on its territory, although six people who picked up the virus elsewhere have received or are receiving treatment.

Parents charged with murder after 6-year-old kept in closet dies

A mother, father and grandmother in Arizona were charged with murder and child abuse after admitting that a 6-year-old who died was kept in a closet with his brother as punishment for "stealing food," police said Tuesday. Anthony Jose Archibeque-Martinez, 23, Elizabeth Archibeque-Martinez, 26, and Ann Marie Martinez, 50, are being held at the the Coconino County Jail on one count each of first-degree felony homicide and two counts each of child abuse, according to a statement from the Flagstaff Police Department. Officers responded to a call Monday about an unresponsive child at a Flagstaff home, the statement said.

Virus halts pilgrimages to Mecca, Friday prayers in Iran

The coronavirus outbreak disrupted Islamic worship in the Middle East as Saudi Arabia on Wednesday banned its citizens and other residents of the kingdom from performing the pilgrimage in Mecca, while Iran canceled Friday prayers in major cities. The decisions in Riyadh and Tehran affected both Sunni and Shiite Muslims alike. The Saudi move expands a ban last week on foreigners visiting Mecca and Medina, home to the holiest sites in Islam.

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  Is the UK getting close to Saudi Arabia because we are desperate for friends outside the EU?

  The Independent
• 
  Saudi Arabia extends pilgrimage suspension to its own citizens

  Reuters

A California man who self-quarantined after returning home from China amid the coronavirus outbreak said he is '100x more concerned' for his health in the US than he was in China

A Bay Area resident visited Kunming, in China's Yunnan province — about 1,000 miles southwest of Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak originated — on January 25. Seeing how differently the Chinese and US governments handled the outbreak convinced him that he felt safer in China than he does on American soil. A 36-year-old US citizen from Cupertino, California, visited Kunming, China, almost 1,000 miles southwest of Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak originated, on January 25.

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  New Hampshire Coronavirus Patient Breaks Quarantine to Attend Dartmouth Event

  Time
• 
  You Already Live in Quarantine

  The Atlantic

Coronavirus: Republican senator tells Trump to ‘let the professionals do the talking’ after he repeatedly contradicts expert health advice

A senior Republican senator has told Donald Trump to “let the professionals do the talking” after the president repeatedly contradicted medical experts in recent weeks. Mr Trump has sought to downplay the threat posed by coronavirus in the US, even as public health officials have warned of the potential for a serious outbreak. The president has said a vaccine for the virus could be available “relatively soon”, despite experts saying it will take at least a year to produce one, and last week suggested virus cases were “going very substantially down, not up” as officials recorded numbers increasing.

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  The US's top virus expert lowered expectations on a coronavirus vaccine after Trump's health secretary boasted about its development

  Business Insider
• 
  President Trump Contradicts His Own Experts On Coronavirus Response

  CBSTV Videos

Dubai ruler ordered abduction of daughters: UK judge

Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum ordered the abduction of two of his daughters and subjected his former wife to a "campaign of fear and intimidation", forcing her to flee to London with their two children, according to a British court ruling made public on Thursday. Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, 45, fled the United Arab Emirates last April having become "terrified" of her husband, who is also the vice-president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. Soon afterwards, the 70-year-old sheikh applied for their two children -- a son aged eight and a 12-year-old daughter -- to be returned to the Gulf kingdom.

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  The ruler of Dubai threatened to abduct his estranged wife Princess Haya and left loaded guns in her bedroom, according to an explosive court ruling he tried to suppress

  INSIDER
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  Dubai ruler kidnapped and detained two of his daughters, UK court rules

  The Independent

FISA Court Blacklists FBI Agents Involved in Surveilling Carter Page

The chief judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has barred Justice Department and FBI officials under review for wiretapping former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page from appearing before the Court. In a 19-page opinion, Judge James E. Boasberg ordered that “FBI personnel under disciplinary review in relation to their work on FISA applications accordingly should not participate in drafting, verifying, reviewing, or submitting such application to the Court while the review is pending. He added that any “DOJ or FBI personnel under disciplinary or criminal review” are also prohibited from working on FISA applications.

Netanyahu election lead shrinks, raising prospect of another Israel vote

Israel appeared headed into another political stalemate on Wednesday after nearly-complete results indicated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had failed to secure a clear majority for a right-wing bloc in parliament, despite his claim of victory. With 99% of votes counted, Netanyahu's conservative Likud party was seen taking 35 of parliament's 120 seats, down from 36 initially projected after Monday's election. Wednesday's tally suggested that, with like-minded parties, a Netanyahu coalition could now expect to garner only 58.

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  Netanyahu's future still uncertain after Israeli election

  USA TODAY
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  Netanyahu still short of majority after Israel's election

  Associated Press

Progressives Want To Take Down The Electoral College

It seems that there isn't a prominent progressive left in America who hasn't come out in favor of abolishing the Electoral College. The latest is Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who called for an end to our 200-plus-year-old presidential election system on Twitter earlier this month. Sanders didn't explain why he wanted to ditch the Electoral College (it was a tweet after all), but it's interesting that as a senator from a small state, he has benefited enormously from the supposedly “undemocratic” nature of the American political system.

Bethlehem's storied Nativity Church closes amid virus fears

Palestinian officials on Thursday closed the storied Church of the Nativity in the biblical city of Bethlehem indefinitely over fears of the new coronavirus, weeks ahead of the busy Easter holiday season. The spread of the virus across the Middle East has already disrupted worship at other major holy sites. Iran, the epicenter of the virus in the region, announced that it would set up checkpoints to limit travel between major cities and urged citizens to reduce their use of paper money to help slow the outbreak, which has killed at least 107 people in the country.

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  More virus cases linked to UAE Tour as riders face isolation

  Associated Press
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  Concerned by coronavirus outbreak, UAE advises against travel abroad

  Reuters

A worker at LAX contracted coronavirus after screening incoming passengers for the illness

A CDC contractor who screened arriving passengers at Los Angeles International Airport for coronavirus just tested positive for COVID-19, NBC News first reported. The worker reportedly wore the appropriate protective gear while screening passengers — it was not immediately clear whether they contracted the virus through contact with an infected passenger, or if it was a case of community transmission. The US Department of Homeland Security said the worker is self-quarantined at home, and has mild symptoms.