- WorldAssociated Press
Duterte says Philippines can survive without America
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday said Filipino forces can fight insurgents and Muslim extremists without American military help, in a defense of his recent decision to terminate a U.S. security pact. Duterte also said in a speech that he would stick to a decision made early in his presidency, when he was enraged by then President Barack Obama's criticism of his deadly anti-drug crackdown, that he will not travel to the United States. The brash Philippine leader has often criticized U.S. security policies while praising China and Russia since taking office in mid-2016 for a six-year term.
- WorldThe Daily Beast
Iran Can’t Hide Its Coronavirus Explosion, But It’s Trying Hard—and Putting the World in Danger
Iran's deputy health minister was drenched in sweat at the press conference on Monday where he vehemently denied Tehran was covering up the extent of the coronavirus outbreak. The irony of Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi's case would be funny almost, were Iran's conspicuous bungling of the coronavirus threat not a menace to the whole region and, indeed, to the world. As The Daily Beast's partner publication, IranWire, revealed in an exclusive report Thursday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has tried to address the epidemic by telling doctors to shut up about it, much as Chinese authorities in Wuhan did, disastrously, when the disease was just starting to spread last December.
- U.S.Time
A Wrongfully Convicted Kansas Man Who Spent 23 Years in Prison Is Awarded $1.5 Million
A Kansas man who spent over two decades in prison for a double murder he didn't commit will be awarded $1.5 million for his wrongful conviction, according to the Kansas State Attorney General's office. Lamonte McIntyre was convicted and sentenced to two terms of life in prison for the murders of Donald Ewing and Doniel Quinn back in 1994. According to the Associated Press, documents made public during the 8-year fight to free McIntyre allege that the prosecutor in the case intimidated witnesses who told her that McIntyre did not look like the shooter after they saw him in person.
- PoliticsBusiness Insider
Bernie Sanders just unveiled how he'll pay for his biggest plans, from Medicare for All to erasing student debt
Sanders released a list on Monday evening outlining how he'd pay for his largest campaign plans, ranging from Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and student debt erasure. In a recent interview on CBS News, Sanders said the plan would cost $30 trillion over a decade. Sen. Bernie Sanders released a list on Monday evening outlining how he'd pay for his biggest plans, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and the elimination of $1.6 trillion in American student debt.
- LifestyleNBC News
Man gets life for kidnapping stepdaughter, holding her captive for 19 years
An Oklahoma man convicted of kidnapping his stepdaughter as a child and holding her in captivity for nearly 20 years has been sentenced to life in prison, prosecutors said Tuesday. Henri Michelle Piette was found guilty in June by a federal jury of kidnapping and traveling with intent to engage in a sexual act with a juvenile following a seven-day trial that detailed the horrific conditions Rosalynn McGinnis endured. Piette repeatedly raped and abused her and fathered her nine children during the nearly two-decade ordeal, which began when Piette kidnapped her in 1997 when she was 12 years old.
WorldAFPPutin reveals plan to use body double
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday revealed there was a secret plan to use a double to make public appearances for him, while insisting he vetoed it -- and that he is the real Putin. Putin's comments showed that a conspiracy theory widespread on the internet that the Russian strongman has been impersonated over the years or even replaced by a lookalike is not entirely without basis. TASS state news agency showed Putin a list of popular Russian-language Internet searches including "Putin double proof".
- WorldThe National Interest
Boom: The Army Just Invented a Newer, Deadlier Artillery Round
Washington, D.C.) The Army Research Laboratory is now engineering new rocket, missile and artillery rounds able to destroy groups of mobile enemy fighters, incinerate armored vehicles and eliminate structures with a single munition -- at all much longer ranges than currently deployed weapons can fire. The ARL is currently immersed in cutting edge research, using 3D printing, to develop new metal alloys, weapons casings and design geometries to increase range and lethality for the Army's emerging Long Range Precision Fires program; “Additive manufacturing (3D printing) can take weight out of certain components, create complex geometries inside things and create complex fragmentation patterns,...
- PoliticsThe Week
Bloomberg once said Social Security is a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff's
Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg twice compared Social Security to a Ponzi scheme when he was in office, CNN reports, which is a far cry from his current stance as a Democratic presidential candidate. Nowadays, Bloomberg has vowed to to strengthen entitlement programs, but he used to see them as a major hurdle in the effort to shrink the United States' deficit. During appearances on his old radio program "Live from City Hall," which were reviewed by CNN's KFile, Bloomberg made the Ponzi scheme comparison once in 2006 and again in 2009.
- WorldReuters
China to Russia: End discriminatory coronavirus measures against Chinese
China's embassy in Russia has demanded authorities in Moscow end what it said are discriminatory anti-coronavirus measures against Chinese nationals, saying they are damaging relations and alarming Chinese residents of the Russian capital. The complaint, detailed in an embassy letter to the city's authorities and published by Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta late on Tuesday, deplored what it called "ubiquitous monitoring" of Chinese nationals, including on public transport in Moscow. Russia, which enjoys strong political and military ties with Beijing, does not currently have any confirmed cases of coronavirus, but has temporarily barred many categories of Chinese nationals from entering the country.
PoliticsYahoo News VideoTrump ignites backlash with demand Supreme Court justices recuse themselves from cases affecting him
President Trump has lashed out at two liberal Supreme Court justices and demanded they recuse themselves from cases related to his administration in an extraordinary attack on the judicial system.
- PoliticsINSIDER
Rush Limbaugh is under fire for claiming the coronavirus is a 'common cold' being 'weaponized' to bring down Trump
As the World Health Organization tells countries to prepare for infections, the popular conservative host Rush Limbaugh on Monday revealed to listeners what he claimed to be the "truth" about the "overhyped" coronavirus. "It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump," Limbaugh said. "Yeah, I'm dead right on this.
- U.S.Associated Press
Mexico president ties shootout dead to drug consumption
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador suggested Wednesday without offering evidence that most of those who die in Mexico's cartel- and gang-fueled firefights are high on drugs or intoxicated, prompting criticism and questions about whether the claim was accurate. Speaking to journalists in his morning news conference, López Obrador said rising drug consumption rates must be reversed if the country is to guarantee peace and security after years of rising, record-setting homicide statistics. “Just so you have the number, 60% of those who lose their life each day, 60% of those killed in clashes, it is shown that they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but primarily drugs,” the president continued.
- WorldNational Review
Iran to Sentence Citizens Who “Spreads Rumors” about Coronavirus to Flogging, Three Years in Prison
An Iranian parliament spokesman on Wednesday announced that anyone found to be “spreading rumors” about the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak will be sentenced to one-to-three years in prison and flogging, Iran state news agency IRNA reported. Norouzi said the prison sentence and flogging is based on “on the Islamic penal code,” and 24 people have been arrested already on suspicion of “spreading rumors” about the illness. Iran has reported 139 cases of coronavirus infections throughout the country, with an epicenter in the city of Qom, a destination for Shi'ite Muslim religious pilgrims.
- U.S.NBC News
Supreme Court rules Mexican parents can't sue Border Patrol agent who killed their son
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the parents of a 15-year-old boy cannot sue the federal agent who fatally shot him by firing across the border separating the United States and Mexico — a case that inflamed tensions over border security. The ruling was a defeat for the parents of Sergio Hernández Güereca, who was on the Mexico side when he was killed in 2010 by a Border Patrol agent who fired from the U.S. side of the boundary separating El Paso, Texas, from Juarez, Mexico. The teen, a Mexican national, was playing with three friends in the concrete culvert that separates the two cities.
- PoliticsThe Daily Beast
Whoopi Goes Off on Bernie’s Castro Remarks: ‘There’s Nothing Groovy About a Dictatorship!’
The women of The View continued to rail against Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday, this time taking issue with the democratic socialist senator doubling down on his praise of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's literacy program. There is nothing groovy about a dictatorship,” host Whoopi Goldberg exclaimed at one point. Sanders has come under fire, including by many Democrats, for telling 60 Minutes that it was “unfair” to say “everything is bad” with Castro's regime.
- WorldBusiness Insider
Italy sealed off entire towns and canceled major events after 400 coronavirus cases and 12 deaths made it the most infected country outside of Asia
Italy is scrambling to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus within its borders as cases of COVID-19 soar. Italy has the most cases outside of Asia. The country has put almost a dozen towns under lockdown, canceled major sporting events, and debated closing its borders with neighboring countries.
WorldAFP'Never before': Shock, fear as India's capital reels from deadly riots
In front of him was a stick-wielding mob of up to 500 men, cheering loudly and throwing flaming tyres into his shop as deadly sectarian violence swept India's capital. The market in Gokulpuri was just one of many poor, congested neighbourhoods in northeast Delhi ransacked by rampaging mobs on Monday and Tuesday as battles broke out between Hindus and Muslims. The clashes followed renewed protests on Sunday against a contentious citizenship law brought in by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government that critics say is anti-Muslim.
- PoliticsThe Independent
'This might be bad': US officials finally admit Coronavirus will be a pandemic with schools and businesses forced to close
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has outlined on Tuesday what schools and businesses would need to do if the coronavirus reaches pandemic levels, which officials say is likely. "It's not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters, according to the New York Times. Public officials do not know if the spread of the virus will be mild or severe, she added, but Americans should prepare for it to disrupt their daily lives.
- U.S.Reuters
U.S. brewery shooting could spur gun debate in presidential race
A Molson Coors Beverage Co employee has shot five co-workers to death before taking his own life at the company's beer-brewing complex in Milwaukee, the latest episode in a rising tide of gun violence already reverberating in the U.S. presidential race. "This is a tragic day for our city, this is a tragic day for our state," Mayor Tom Barrett said outside the landmark facility known to locals as the old Miller brewery. Some 1,400 employees work at the Molson Coors campus, which consists of about 20 buildings, and most were forced to remain holed up inside for several hours as police methodically swept the facilities to secure the property.
- PoliticsCBS News
Bloomberg unveils TV ad slamming Trump for coronavirus response
Mike Bloomberg's campaign unveiled a national ad Wednesday for cable and broadcast slamming President Trump for his response to the spread of the coronavirus and highlighting Bloomberg's own managerial experience as the former mayor of New York City. "Health experts warn the U.S. is underprepared. Managing a crisis is what Mike Bloomberg does," the 30-second ad says.
WorldAFP Relax NewsJapan woman tests positive for virus after 'recovery'
A woman in Japan who contracted the new coronavirus and was released from hospital after recovering has tested positive again, officials said Thursday. The case is the first time a patient apparently cleared of the virus has subsequently tested positive for it, a local official in Osaka said. The woman in her 40s was first confirmed as infected with the coronavirus on January 29.
- U.S.Associated Press
Louisiana governor: Judge should resign after racial slurs
Gov. John Bel Edwards called Wednesday on a Louisiana judge to step down after she admitted to using racial slurs in angry text messages. LeBlanc, who is white, now admits sending the text messages after previously denying she sent them.
- WorldNBC News
Map: Confirmed coronavirus cases, worldwide
Health officials worldwide are working to contain cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus that originated in China. This map will be updated when more information is available. As of Feb. 26, COVID-19 cases were confirmed in China and more than 35 other countries.
- PoliticsThe Week
Moderate Democrats need to answer for the cost of their welfare plans
The latest Democratic presidential debate, this time in South Carolina, was probably the worst one so far. The CBS moderators could not control the candidates, and they all constantly talked over each other. The moderators and other candidates attacked Bernie Sanders over the question of how he would pay for his welfare programs — but the argument was an incomprehensible mess.
- WorldBusiness Insider
Iran says it won't quarantine any towns or cities, despite recording the most coronavirus deaths outside of China
Associated Press Criticism of Iran's handling of the crisis has been extremely strong, with some accusing the government of a cover-up. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday said he was "deeply concerned" that Iran "may have suppressed vital details about the outbreak." "All nations, including Iran, should tell the truth about the coronavirus and cooperate with international aid organizations," Pompeo said.
