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

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.

Joe Biden is surging but his campaign has one weak spot: Joe Biden himself

Pew Research had shown several times that Democrats on Twitter are more liberal than Democrats overall, and that Twitter Democrats are less supportive of Joe Biden and more supportive of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But pushed by some early wins, and the overwhelming presence of a loud minority on social media, the Sanders train took off in the traditional media too, bringing excitement and panic to liberal and moderate journalists and pundits alike. It was not to be.

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  Biden surges past Sanders in Democratic race as Bloomberg exits

  AFP
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  Super Tuesday shake-up: The suddenly tough road for Bernie Sanders with Joe Biden as front-runner

  USA TODAY

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

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

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

Brexit Bulletin: We Need to Talk About Northern Ireland

Businesses are exasperated over the future of Northern Ireland, one of the most contentious, sensitive and politically toxic elements of Brexit. The future of Northern Ireland is among the thorniest and most difficult challenges of Brexit, with companies still at a loss as to how they'll trade in the region once the Brexit transition period ends in 2021. In law, the U.K. has signed up to enforcing an effective customs border in the Irish Sea, with goods crossing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland requiring new paperwork and potentially paying tariffs.

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
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  Saudi Arabia extends pilgrimage suspension to its own citizens

  Reuters

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

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.

Joe Biden: Not a Socialist, Just a Scoundrel

The youth vote always fails to show up — it will break your heart every time. Senator Sanders didn't lose to Joe Biden — he lost to Tinder, weed, and The Resident. The kids were doing themselves a favor — young people have more of a future for Senator Sanders and his coterie of socialist dingbat malefactors to ruin.

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  Sanders Calls Race Against Biden a ‘Conflict of Ideas’

  Bloomberg
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  Bernie Sanders won Colorado — but the real story is what happened to Joe Biden in the same state

  The Independent

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.”

Coronavirus 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.

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  Your Phone Is a Cesspool of Germs. Here's How to Actually Clean It

  Popular Mechanics
• New Disinfection Spray From Lipidor and Aurena Laboratories

  PR Newswire

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
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  You Already Live in Quarantine

  The Atlantic

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.

Benjamin Netanyahu's Toxic Win in Israel Election

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, who will face a trial for charges of bribery later this month, has managed to get a significant lead in his third electoral showdown. It's not yet clear whether Netanyahu will be able to actually form a government. Since Netanyahu is determined to evade justice, it seems like the country is facing a constitutional crisis of a new scale.

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  Israel’s Political Paralysis Continues

  WSJ
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  Israel's political instability may not end soon

  Reuters Videos

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.

N.H. coronavirus patient breaks isolation, potentially exposing others

The first coronavirus patient in New Hampshire — an employee of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center — defied instructions from public health officials to stay away from other people. In a statement, the state Department of Health and Human Services said the patient attended an invitation-only private event Friday "despite having been directed to self-isolate." The action prompted the state to issue "an official order of isolation to the first patient."

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  New Hampshire Coronavirus Patient Breaks Quarantine to Attend Dartmouth Event

  Time
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  Amazon employee in Seattle tests positive for coronavirus, is in quarantine

  USA TODAY

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.

Elizabeth Warren describes the brutal double standard of discussing sexism in the 2020 race

After dropping out of the 2020 race on Thursday, Warren delivered the brutally honest truth about what it was like to talk about sexism while running for president. While talking about sexism would get her branded a "whiner," ignoring it would leave women thinking "what planet do you live on?" Warren said.

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  Elizabeth Warren Press Conference

  Yahoo Finance Video
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  Why this Nevada teen who voted for Elizabeth Warren is calling on her to 'endorse Bernie Sanders' as she drops out of race

  The Independent

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.