- PoliticsYahoo News
Warren weighs her options. Endorsing Sanders is probably No. 1.
And even in the state where Warren did best, she still lost to both Biden and Sanders. The fact that it was her home state of Massachusetts added insult to injury. All told, Warren emerged from Super Tuesday — a day when 1,357 delegates were up for grabs — with a gain of just 36 delegates, for a total of around 60, compared with more than 500 for both Sanders and Biden.
- U.S.Reuters
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.
- PoliticsNational Review
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.
- ScienceYahoo News Video
Large asteroid will fly close to, but won't hit, Earth next month: NASA
A large asteroid will fly close to, but won't hit, Earth next month, according to NASA data. CNN reports that the asteroid, predicted to be between 1.1 and 2.5 miles wide, is scheduled to fly past Earth on April 29.
- WorldThe National Interest
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.
- BusinessBusiness 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.
- WorldAssociated Press
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.
- PoliticsThe Week
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.
- PoliticsThe Guardian
Trump calls WHO's global death rate from coronavirus 'a false number'
Donald Trump declared live on television on Wednesday night that he did not believe the World Health Organization's assessment of the global death rate from coronavirus of 3.4%. “I think the 3.4% is really a false number,” he told Sean Hannity, one of his favorite conservative Fox News hosts, in a phone interview broadcast live. “Now, this is just my hunch,” Trump began, before continuing that “based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this, and it's very mild – they'll get better very rapidly, they don't even see a doctor, they don't even call a doctor.”
- PoliticsBloomberg
Biden Revives Campaign With Victories in Super Tuesday Comeback
Joe Biden cemented a remarkable comeback on the biggest primary night of the Democratic presidential campaign with victories in nine states across the country, including upsets in Texas and Massachusetts, even as Bernie Sanders took the biggest prize of the night, California. Biden, whose campaign was faltering just days ago, scored wins in Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama and Minnesota. His victories in Texas and Massachusetts were especially stinging for Sanders, who had supplanted Biden at the top of polls in recent weeks.
- WorldReuters
UK Supreme Court refuses permission for Dubai ruler to appeal publicity ruling
Britain's top court on Thursday refused Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum permission to appeal a ruling allowing publication of two judgments given in a legal battle with his former wife over the wardship of their children. Mohammed has been involved in a dispute with Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, half-sister of Jordan's King Abdullah, over the welfare of their two children since last May. Andrew McFarlane, president of London's High Court Family Division, who has been overseeing the case, has issued two judgments and in January decided these should be made public.
- U.S.Popular Mechanics
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
- U.S.NBC News
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.
HealthAFPCoronavirus lingers in rooms and toilets but disinfectants kill it
New research from Singapore published Wednesday showed that patients with the novel coronavirus extensively contaminate their bedrooms and bathrooms, underscoring the need to routinely clean high-touch surfaces, basins and toilet bowls. The virus was however killed by twice-a-day cleaning of surfaces and daily cleaning of floors with a commonly used disinfectant -- suggesting that current decontamination measures are sufficient as long as people adhere to them. The research letter was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and comes after cases in China where the pathogen spread extensively through hospitals, infecting dozens of health care workers and other patients.
- U.S.Business Insider
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.
- PoliticsAssociated Press
Former Fox White House reporter Wendell Goler dies
Wendell Goler, a longtime White House correspondent for Fox News Channel who reported on government since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, has died at age 70. He died this week of apparent kidney failure, said a former Fox colleague, Brit Hume. Goler was a Fox News original, joining the network at its inception in 1996 and working his way up to senior White House foreign affairs correspondent.
- PoliticsThe National Interest
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.
- U.S.The Daily Beast
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.
- PoliticsThe Week
Pollster declares Democratic race 'pretty much over' after Joe Biden jumps to jaw-dropping lead in Florida
Former Vice President Joe Biden may have just secured his nomination. When several more states vote and provide clarity in the 2020 Democratic primary race on March 17, Florida, the home of the fourth biggest chunk of delegates in the 2020 Democratic primary race, will be among them. Biden's backing is a dramatic increase from the 34 percent he received in late February, and seems to draw directly from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other moderate candidates' supporters.
- WorldBloomberg
Kim Jong Un Opens Door to South Korea Thaw With Virus Letter
Kim sent a “message of comfort to the South Korean people who are battling against the outbreak of COVID-19,” Moon's senior secretary for public communication, Yoon Do-han, told reporters during a briefing Thursday in Seoul. The letter was the latest indication that Kim may be ready to resume geopolitical maneuvering with Washington and Seoul, after focusing in recent weeks on his own efforts to prevent any coronavirus outbreaks in North Korea. On Wednesday, Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, compared Moon's office to a “frightened dog,” in a statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
- PoliticsReuters
'Putin's cook' seeks to distance himself from U.S. election meddling
A Russian businessman dubbed "Putin's cook" for his close ties to Russia's president sought in a court filing on Wednesday to distance himself and his company from accusations by American prosecutors of meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. The filing by Evgeny Prigozhin marked the first time any corporate representative for St. Petersburg-based Concord Management and Consulting LLC had responded directly to accusations by the U.S. prosecutors that it had unlawfully defied subpoenas in a criminal case against it.
- PoliticsThe Guardian
Jeff Sessions’ run-off and a Bush's loss: Super Tuesday races you may have missed
While all the attention of Super Tuesday focused on the presidential nomination race among the Democrats and the fight between the former vice-president Joe Biden and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, other races and dramas across the US also played out. Here are five things you may have missed: A Bush loses in Texas Pierce Bush was aiming to advance in the Republican primary for a Texas congressional seat in Houston. But the grandson of president George HW Bush and relative of president George W Bush and ex-Florida governor Jeb Bush, lost his race – the first Bush to lose in Texas in 40 years.
- U.S.The Independent
10-year-old boy in San Diego surrenders after shotgun standoff with police
A 10-year-old boy surrendered to police Thursday after hiding out in a shed and firing a shotgun at them. San Diego police said the unusual firefight began when the boy's parents called the police because he was having an emotional and mental episode. The San Diego Union Tribune reported gunshots kicked off a nearly two-hour standoff between the boy and San Diego police.
- U.S.Business Insider
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.
- WorldAssociated Press
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.
"No Democrat this cycle did more to boost his political career."
"Yes, Buttigieg will almost certainly run for president again."
"At some point, the fact that a presidential candidate is LGBT will be a footnote rather than a headline."
"Those close to Mr. Buttigieg see no obvious political next step in Indiana."
"Buttigieg could run for president 40 years from now, but likely will not have to wait that long."
