| UN: 2019 most violent year for ex-rebels since Colombia deal Posted: 02 Jan 2020 04:30 PM PST  The U.N. secretary-general says 2019 was the most violent year for former fighters from Colombia's largest rebel group since it signed a peace deal with the government in 2016. Antonio Guterres said in a report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Thursday that 77 members of the former rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, were killed up until Dec. 26, compared with 65 in 2018 and 31 in 2017.
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| Kim Jong Un Gives Up On Trump, Prepares to Endure U.S. Sanctions Posted: 02 Jan 2020 03:47 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Kim Jong Un is giving up on hopes that U.S. President Donald Trump will lift sanctions anytime soon.Alongside the North Korean leader's latest saber-rattling this week was a stunning admission: Efforts to engage the U.S. had failed. Kim's plan now is to find a way to survive under crushing economic sanctions while building an even stronger nuclear deterrent to force Washington to compromise."We can never sell our dignity, which we have so far defended as something as valuable as our own lives, in the hope of a brilliant transformation," Kim said, according to excerpts from an unusual seven-hour speech this week to party leaders in Pyongyang. "The DPRK-U.S. standoff, which has lasted for generations, has now been compressed into a clear standoff between self-reliance and sanctions."While Kim blamed the crisis on what he called American treachery, his remarks were an implicit acknowledgment that his decision to play down his nuclear program in a bid for sanctions relief didn't work. North Korea still languishes under the same international blockade it did in 2018, when Kim announced he was prioritizing the economy over weapons development, halted missile tests and held the first of three unprecedented meetings with Trump.Kim's latest plan sounds a lot like a return to his "Byungjin Line" of 2013, which called for paying equal attention to developing North Korea's economy and solidifying its status as a nuclear-armed power. This time, Kim made party leaders pledge to carry out a policy called "the offensive for frontal breakthrough," a strategy that he said would require political, diplomatic and military action. The nation must "tighten our belts," he said.The shift illustrates the limits of Kim's historic diplomatic gains, including more than a dozen meetings with heads of state and government since making his first trip abroad in March 2018. Although his rekindled ties with Cold War-era allies such as China and Russia have provided some promise of tourist cash, food aid and diplomatic support, he can't escape the most biting American, South Korean and United Nations sanctions without Washington's blessing."This was Kim clearly rejecting the Trump administration's proposal offering North Korea a bright future for its economy," said Shin Bum-chul, who studies inter-Korean relations at the Asan Institute for Policy studies and is a former researcher in South Korea's defense ministry. "Instead, it's seen as North Korea deciding to strive for independent economic growth, which would serve as grounds for becoming a legitimate nuclear state."New WeaponKim's new military threats -- declaring the end of his testing freeze and pledging to "shock" the U.S. over sanctions -- could also jeopardize what diplomatic space he has secured for himself. Besides provoking Trump, Kim could anger Chinese President Xi Jinping if he raises the threat of another war on the Korean Peninsula or conducts tests that send radiation wafting across the border.Kim had already begun to escalate tensions since Trump walked out of their last formal summit in February, carrying out a record-breaking barrage of ballistic missile tests last year. His speech promised to soon debut a "new strategic weapon," which non-proliferation experts say could be anything from a nuclear-armed submarine to a more advanced form of intercontinental ballistic missile.Even though sanctions have helped push North Korea's economy into its worst downturn since a historic famine in the 1990s, the regime has continued to make nuclear advances. Kim might believe he has found enough holes in the sanctions regime to push off negotiations with the U.S., a former UN official told Bloomberg News in November.The renewed emphasis on self-reliance -- a concept central to the "Juche" ideology of Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung -- may help stoke nationalistic fervor to ride out a prolonged recession. Still, any demand for belt-tightening risks fomenting dissent, especially among Pyongyang elites who have reaped many of the gains from Kim's experiments with market reforms.'Gamble'Kim has gone back and forth on the need for austerity since vowing shortly after taking power in 2011 that the people would "never have to tighten their belt again.""It's a gamble," Robert Carlin, a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center's 38 North Program who who has made more than 20 trips to North Korea, told reporters Tuesday. "Kim has been, in effect, loosening -- helping them loosen -- the belt over the past several years, and now to tighten it up again is going to cause, at least cause grumbling, if not worse, among some in the population, maybe some in the leadership."That danger may help explain recent efforts by North Korea's omnipresent state propaganda machine to portray Kim as a commanding figure in the mold of his revered grandfather. Marathon state television coverage of Kim's speech, which he delivered seated behind a large and ornate wooden desk raised above the gathering, demonstrated his control over the ruling party.White HorseThat was followed by the release of a video Thursday of Kim riding a white horse through the snows of Mt. Paektu, a sacred site where the regime says Kim Sung Il led guerrillas against the Japanese.In the speech, Kim indicated that sanctions have forced him to shift his approach."Nothing has changed between the days when we maintained the line of simultaneously pushing forward the economic construction and building of nuclear force and now when we struggle to direct our efforts to the economic construction due to the U.S.'s gangster-like acts," Kim told party leaders. "There is no need to hesitate with any expectations of the U.S. lifting sanctions."\--With assistance from Jon Herskovitz.To contact the reporters on this story: Brendan Scott in Singapore at bscott66@bloomberg.net;Jihye Lee in Seoul at jlee2352@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net, Karen LeighFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Rockets Strike Near U.S. Forces at Baghdad Airport Posted: 02 Jan 2020 03:43 PM PST  Unknown militants have fired three rockets at Baghdad International Airport close to part of the airport that houses U.S. military forces and Iraqi partners.Local sources told The Daily Beast that the attack consisted of three Katyusha rockets which hit the outer limits of the airport near a base which housed the advisory units for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.Several sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that Mohammed Rida al-Jabri, a senior member of Iraq's Iranian-backed militia force, the Popular Mobilization Forces, was killed outside Baghdad airport late Thursday along with an unknown number of guests. It's unclear yet whether al-Jabri and his associates were killed in the reported Katyusha rocket strike or as part of a separate incident.Iraqi officials reportedly closed the airport following the attack and locals reported that U.S. military helicopters could be seen flying overhead afterwards. Social media users posted a number of pictures and videos purporting to show a burning vehicle outside the airport perimeter late Thursday. The incident comes amid a series of rocket attacks against U.S. military facilities in Iraq that have ratcheted up tensions between American forces and Iranian-backed militias in the country. The attacks started this summer as Iran mounted a pushback campaign against the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" policy against Tehran, an effort that U.S. officials say included covert attacks against Gulf oil shipments and an increase in Iranian missile and drone attacks against energy facilities in Saudi Arabia.Thursday's attack closely resembles a similar incident in mid-December when rocket fire aimed at Baghdad International Airport injured five members of Iraq's Counter Terrorism Service, a special operations unit which has fought closely and trained alongside American commandos. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Iraqi TV: Iran's Gen. Soleimani killed in Baghdad strike Posted: 02 Jan 2020 03:27 PM PST ![Iraqi TV: Iran's Gen. Soleimani killed in Baghdad strike]( "Iraqi TV: Iran's Gen. Soleimani killed in Baghdad strike") Iraqi TV and three Iraqi officials said Friday that Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, has been killed in an airstrike at Baghdad's international airport. The officials said the strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.
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| US starts sending asylum seekers across Arizona border Posted: 02 Jan 2020 02:30 PM PST  The U.S. government on Thursday began sending asylum-seekers back to Nogales, Mexico, to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles (563 kilometers) away in Juarez, Mexico. Authorities are expanding a program known as Remain in Mexico that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait out their immigration court hearings in Mexico. Until this week, the government was driving some asylum seekers from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, so they could be returned to Juarez.
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| Argentine president expresses doubt over mysterious prosecutor death Posted: 02 Jan 2020 02:28 PM PST  Argentine President Alberto Fernandez said on Thursday he doubts that a prosecutor who died two days after accusing former president Cristina Kirchner of a cover up in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center committed suicide. Nisman was appointed special prosecutor into the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) headquarters, which left 85 dead and 300 wounded. The timing and circumstances of his death were suspicious: it came just days after he directly accused then-president Kirchner and some of her top aides of covering up Iran's alleged involvement in the bombing.
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| UN council to hear latest on offensive in Syria's Idlib Posted: 02 Jan 2020 02:19 PM PST  The U.N. Security Council is going to receive a closed briefing on the ongoing offensive in the last rebel stronghold in Syria at the request of France and the United Kingdom. Vietnam's U.N. Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy, the council president for January, told a news conference Thursday that U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo and U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock will report to the council Friday on the current situation in Idlib province.
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| Q&A: How climate change, other factors stoke Australia fires Posted: 02 Jan 2020 01:41 PM PST  Australia's unprecedented wildfires are supercharged thanks to climate change, the type of trees catching fire and weather, experts say. "They are basically just in a horrific convergence of events," said Stanford University environmental studies director Chris Field, who chaired an international scientific report on climate change and extreme events. Q: Is climate change really a factor?
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| 'What the hell were you thinking?': Trump berated White House staff for not telling him Putin was trying to call him Posted: 02 Jan 2020 01:06 PM PST  During a meeting with a foreign leader, Trump berated an adviser who told him that Putin had called days before. "Are you kidding me?" Trump said.
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| Fox News Anchor Leland Vittert Seems to Push for War in Iran: ‘Bullies Understand a Punch in the Nose’ Posted: 02 Jan 2020 12:40 PM PST  Fox News anchor Leland Vittert on Thursday seemed to repeatedly suggest to Defense Secretary Mark Esper that the U.S. should consider military action against Iran, comparing the Middle East regime to schoolyard bullies who only understand a "punch in the nose."Amid flaring tensions that culminated with Iran-backed militia and protesters storming the U.S. Embassy in Iraq earlier this week, Esper announced that the U.S. will deploy hundreds of soldiers to the area. He also warned on Thursday that Iran may be planning more attacks on the United States in the Middle East.During an appearance on Fox News' America's Newsroom, Esper reiterated President Donald Trump's message that the United States will issue a "severe response" if Iran continues with its "bad behavior" in the region, adding that it was "time that Iran started acting like a normal country.""It's a long list of bad behavior, and I'm glad you brought that up," Vittert, filling in for anchor Bill Hemmer, replied. "It's like a sandbox in grade school. Sometimes bullies don't understand sanctions, tough talk, deployment, airstrikes against proxies. Bullies understand a punch in the nose.""Is there a time that the Iranian bullies and the ayatollahs need a punch in the nose to their leadership, that goes beyond merely sanctions and rhetoric?" Vittert further asked.After the defense secretary said he wouldn't speculate on the next steps while insisting that "we retain the right of self-defense" and that America needs to "stand up to Iran," Vittert pressed Esper again on the need for military action."I get the demand, sir, but it appears the Iranian regime is not really listening," the Fox anchor said. "They still have [hostage] Robert Levinson. As you noted, they attacked the Saudi oil facilities and there was not a military response. They shot down the U.S. drone, and there was not a military response rate. So far there's only been a military response against their militia in Iraq. Is the idea here that only the loss of U.S. life will result in a U.S. military response?"Esper responded that the international community needs to come together to help the United States with its "maximum pressure campaign" and that it's time for Iran to sit down and talk. Moments later, Vittert again brought up a military response, noting there were past instances when Iran backed down amid American military action in the region."Are you worried that the only way they will back down this time and act like a normal country is with an overwhelming U.S. military action?" Vittert wondered, prompting Esper to answer, "Well, it's up to them to decide."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Backlog of toxic Superfund cleanups grows under Trump Posted: 02 Jan 2020 11:45 AM PST  The Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund cleanup projects in at least 15 years, nearly triple the number that were stalled for lack of money in the Obama era, according to 2019 figures quietly released by the Environmental Protection Agency over the winter holidays. The accumulation of Superfund projects that are ready to go except for money comes as the Trump administration routinely proposes funding cuts for Superfund and for the EPA in general. The four-decade-old Superfund program is meant to tackle some of the most heavily contaminated sites in the U.S. and Trump has declared it a priority even while seeking to shrink its budget.
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| Trump gently warns Turkey's Erdogan against Libya intervention Posted: 02 Jan 2020 11:43 AM PST  President Trump would like to suggest Turkey stay out of Libya.On Thursday, Turkey's parliament approved a measure to send troops to Libya to support its government in its ongoing civil war. Trump called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later that day and, as a White House call readout said, "pointed out that foreign interference is complicating the situation in Libya."Both Trump and Erdogan "stressed the importance of diplomacy in resolving regional issues" in Thursday's call, per the readout. But that contrasts what Turkey's parliament agreed to on Thursday: Sending Turkish troops to support Libya's United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord. Strong opposition parties voted against the accord, arguing that "Turkey should not get sucked into a murky quagmire," Al Jazeera writes.There are no details yet about how many troops will end up in Libya, or when and where they'll be specifically be sent. But it does mark "the latest example of Turkey's growing self-confidence as a regional power," The New York Times says. Erdogan "has long held ambition for a kind of restoration of the Ottoman Empire," the Times continues, and Libya's current government would be more supportive of his "leadership in the Muslim world."More stories from theweek.com The booming stock market shows America is diseased Trump gave 'clear direction' to hold Ukraine aid, says White House official in uncovered documents Trump's 'greatest honors' include a bill by Bernie Sanders and John McCain, signed into law by Obama
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| Libya to mobilize civilians after news of Turkish deployment Posted: 02 Jan 2020 11:10 AM PST  Libya's forces based in the country's east say they have called on citizens to take up arms against Turkish troops if they deploy to fight against them in the country's ongoing civil war. The statement came soon after Turkey's parliament authorized the deployment of troops to Libya to support their rivals, the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. In a statement Thursday on Twitter, the self-styled Libya National Army, led by commander Gen. Khalifa Hifter, said it was the people's "duty" to fight to protect the homeland.
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| Co-creator defends suspected UAE spying app called ToTok Posted: 02 Jan 2020 11:02 AM PST  If the popular ToTok video and voice calling app is a spying tool of the United Arab Emirates, that's news to its co-creator. Giacomo Ziani defended his work in an interview with The Associated Press and said he had no knowledge that people and companies linked to the project had ties to the country's intelligence apparatus, despite a recent report in The New York Times. Millions downloaded the ToTok app during the several months it was available in the Apple and Google stores.
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| It's Time to Face the Truth on North Korea Posted: 02 Jan 2020 10:49 AM PST  "North Korea is a weak regional state. While Kim does have the ability to defend his territory and could inflict a serious blow to any who might attack him, he has virtually no ability to project power abroad nor to sustain an attack on his neighbors. Kim is keenly aware of these core realities. Armed with this understanding, what course should America pursue?"
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| Conservatives seek immediate purge of voters in Wisconsin Posted: 02 Jan 2020 10:30 AM PST  A conservative law firm on Thursday asked a judge to find the Wisconsin Elections Commission in contempt and impose $12,000 a day in fines until it immediately purges more than 200,000 voters from the rolls, a move Democrats are fighting in the key battleground state. A judge last month ordered the purge of voters who may have moved and didn't respond within 30 days to notification sent by the elections commission in October. The bipartisan commission has deadlocked twice on attempts by Republicans to do the purge immediately while an appeal to the court order is pending.
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| A U.S. Invasion Of Iran Would Be Suicidal Posted: 02 Jan 2020 10:00 AM PST  Iran has more than geography going for it.
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| Attack on US Embassy in Iraq shows Trump is failing. He walked into Iran's trap. Posted: 02 Jan 2020 09:54 AM PST  Trump's policies have been devastating to US interests. He should have stayed in the Iran nuclear deal and made full use of sanctions and diplomacy.
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| Poll: White evangelicals distinct on abortion, LGBT policy Posted: 02 Jan 2020 09:29 AM PST  The findings point to an evangelical Protestant constituency that's more firmly aligned with President Donald Trump's agenda than other Americans of faith. White evangelicals were also more likely than members of other faiths to say religion should have at least some influence on policymaking. Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the late Rev. Billy Graham and one of Trump's most stalwart evangelical allies, pointed to the president's record on abortion as a key driver of support from his religious community.
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| Life After Corbyn? The Politicians Vying to Become Labour Leader Posted: 02 Jan 2020 09:21 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. Labour Party is looking for a new leader after Jeremy Corbyn announced his plan to resign in the wake of the heavy election defeat last month.His successor will have the task of uniting a party that has become bitterly divided over Corbyn's socialist policies and accusations of antisemitism. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair -- the only person to lead Labour to an election victory in 45 years -- has urged a wholesale change of approach.Despite his failure to win at national level, Corbyn's popularity among grassroots party members will be a key factor in deciding who takes his place. Here are some of the potential candidates:Keir Starmer, 57: The Arch RemainerCorbyn's Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer has said he is "seriously considering" a leadership bid, and is the early front-runner according to a YouGov poll of Labour party members published on Jan. 2. He's on 36%, comfortably ahead of Rebecca Long Bailey.Starmer hasn't always been loyal to the current leader -- particularly when it comes to the question of the U.K.'s relationship with the European Union. He backed Corbyn's rivals in the 2015 and 2016 leadership contests and is one of the party's most vocal Remainers.While he has been accused of being out of touch with working class Leave voters in northern England, he's arguably closer to them than Corbyn, who was privately educated. He told the BBC in December that he'd never been in an office until he left university, because his father worked in a factory and his mother was a nurse.Starmer has positioned himself as a middle-ground candidate who is neither Corbynite or Blairite, but has also warned the party not to "oversteer" after the election defeat, arguing Labour should "build on" Corbyn's anti-austerity message and radical agenda. Starmer has an impressive legal career behind him, and was knighted for his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions."We need the Labour party as a trusted force for good," Starmer told Sky News on Thursday.Rebecca Long Bailey, 40: The Chosen OneIf you were going to build a new Labour leader from scratch, Rebecca Long Bailey would probably tick most of the boxes: a young, female, strong media performer who hails from a northern constituency with a safe majority.Crucially, she's also loyal to the current leadership, even standing in for Corbyn at Prime Minister's Questions in June. With the party's membership still remaining firmly to the left of Labour's MPs, this could prove key in gaining her the support needed to win the contest. In YouGov's poll of Labour members, she was second behind Starmer, on 23%.Laying out her vision, she said the next leader should be a champion for "progressive patriotism" and admitted that trust in Labour's policies was an issue among voters. Significantly, though, she retained a core theme that defined Corbynism -- returning wealth and power to "the people of Britain."Long Bailey is close friends Angela Rayner, and has said she'd back Labour's education spokeswoman to be deputy leader. There have been suggestions they could be the party's next power duo, akin to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, or indeed Corbyn and John McDonnell.Jess Phillips, 38: The Corbyn CriticKnown for her blunt and witty speeches, Jess Phillips has said she may put her name forward. Despite sharing many of the same left-leaning views as Corbyn, she's been a vocal critic of the leader, saying he wasn't capable of winning a majority for Labour. For that reason she's proved divisive -- hated by many Corbyn supporters who saw her as undermining his efforts.Phillips, from Birmingham in central England, is characteristically a lone wolf and something of a contrarian. While backing a second Brexit referendum, she declined to join the People's Vote campaign, and she's on friendly terms with Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg.The 38-year-old Phillips has "got what it takes," Mitcham and Morden MP Siobhain McDonagh wrote in the Sunday Times. "She connects with people like no other."Yvette Cooper, 50: The InquisitorAfter Jeremy Corbyn's election as leader in 2015, Yvette Cooper stepped back from front-line politics for the first time in nearly 17 years. But the decision didn't keep her away from the spotlight as she won a vote of MPs and became chairwoman of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, where her forensic scrutiny gained plaudits from both sides of the aisle.In the chamber, too, Cooper has distinguished herself with eloquent contributions testing the government. She tabled what became known as the "Cooper Amendment" in January, depriving the Treasury of tools in the event of a no-deal Brexit, and inflicting an embarrassing defeat on Theresa May's government.One of the many Labour MPs who arrived in Westminster after the party's 1997 victory, she held senior positions in the governments of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But a record of experience is a record to scrutinize, and members may see Cooper as too aligned to the 'New Labour' period of the party's history, which Corbyn railed against.Cooper argues Labour needs to take an entirely new path, telling the BBC "both the left and right of this party are seen as internationalist, not patriotic," and this is costing the party support -- particularly among older voters.Clive Lewis, 48: Loyal SoldierShadow cabinet minister Clive Lewis was the second Labour MP to officially declare he's running for leader, laying out his pitch in the Guardian newspaper to give the party's membership more say over Labour's policies and selection of election candidates.On the left of the party, Lewis said in his 2015 victory speech that the ideology of former Prime Minister Tony Blair was "dead and buried, and it needs to stay that way." Later that year, Corbyn credited Lewis for getting his nomination for the leadership "off the ground," the New Statesman magazine reported. He quit Corbyn's frontbench team in early 2017 over the party's Brexit policy, before being welcomed back a year later.Before becoming an MP, Lewis worked as a BBC journalist and served as a soldier in Afghanistan for three months. At the 2017 Labour Party conference, he was criticized for using a misogynistic phrase. He later apologized for his "unacceptable" language.Emily Thornberry, 59: Corbyn's NeighborEmily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, was the first to publicly state her intention to run for leader. Writing in the Guardian newspaper, she underlined one of her key strengths: the fact she has a direct record against Boris Johnson. Describing her time opposite Johnson as his shadow while he was foreign secretary, Thornberry said she "took the fight to him every day and pummeled him every week... He hated it, especially coming from a woman."A strong media performer with experience in both Ed Miliband's and Corbyn's senior leadership teams, Thornberry pushed hard for Labour to back holding a second referendum on Brexit.Old gaffes may come to haunt her, however. She was forced to resign her shadow cabinet post in 2014 after tweeting a picture of a white van and English flags which was seen as mocking working-class voters -- the very people Labour needs to win back.She represents Islington South, neighboring Corbyn's district, and members may question whether another Londoner is the right choice to win back nationwide support. Thornberry said members shouldn't judge candidates on "where they live in our country" but instead on whether they have the "political nous and strategic vision" needed.Lisa Nandy, 40: Cheerleader for TownsLisa Nandy is emerging as one of the "soft-left" front-runners, telling the BBC she's "seriously" thinking about running because Labour's "shattering defeat" left towns like Wigan, where she's been the MP since 2010, feel like "the earth was quaking."A former charity worker, Nandy is media-friendly and her northern roots will be seen as an advantage as Labour seeks to re-engage with traditional voters who abandoned the party in the general election. She co-founded the Centre for Towns, a think tank that aims to revive smaller urban areas.A Corbyn opponent, Nandy quit as Labour's energy spokeswoman in 2016 to join an attempt to overthrow him, and served as co-chair in Owen Smith's failed leadership campaign. She campaigned against Brexit in the 2016 referendum, but since then has argued the EU divorce must be delivered and voted for Johnson's deal in October. She voted against it when it was put before Parliament again in December, because she says Johnson's no longer interested in making cross-party compromises to improve the bill.Angela Rayner, 39: The One With the Back StoryRayner was at the forefront of the party's election campaign, regularly facing the cameras and leading rallies across the country. Known for her no-nonsense interview style, her backers think she will appeal to traditional supporters Labour has lost in recent years.In her shadow cabinet role, she spearheaded Labour's plans for a National Education Service, which the party hoped would do for education what the National Health Service did for health. She also has a back story unlike almost any other British politician serving today, after leaving school at the age of 16 while pregnant.Given she's on good terms with the leadership but also not a fully-fledged member of the hard-left faction of the party, she might be a compromise candidate who can unite Labour's ideological wings. However, it appears more likely Rayner will run for deputy leader, after her friend, flatmate and leadership front-runner Long Bailey pledged to support her in that role.David Lammy, 47: The InfluencerA Member of Parliament since 2000, David Lammy has grown in prominence as a key voice for justice for victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. The 2017 disaster claimed the lives of 72 people, including his friend Khadija Saye, an artist, and he has criticized the government response. Also a staunch proponent of staying in the EU, Lammy stood unsuccessfully to be Labour's candidate in the 2016 London mayoral elections.Lammy's social media influence is unparalleled among the leadership hopefuls. Of the current batch of MPs, only the leaders of the two main parties and their immediate predecessors have more Twitter followers than the north London lawmaker. Part of the reason for his strong online following is his combative style, which has seen him take on everyone from TV presenters to U.S. President Donald Trump.Lammy said after the election he was "thinking about" running for leader. He has since written an article for the Observer newspaper calling for "civic nationalism" to counter what he called Boris Johnson's "ethnic nationalism."Ian Lavery, 56: The ChairmanIan Lavery is currently Chairman of the Labour Party and a keen defender of Corbyn's controversial leadership. As a former president of the National Union of Mineworkers, the pro-Brexit Lavery could well win the backing of the key trade unions.However, the 56-year-old's majority in the northeast England district of Wansbeck was cut to just 814 votes in the election, which could deter some members from supporting him. Lavery has also faced questions about a redundancy payment he received from the NUM upon leaving in 2010 to become an MP, as well as assistance the union provided toward his mortgage. He's denied any financial irregularities.The Sunday Times has reported Lavery is waiting for Long Bailey to set out her vision before deciding whether to run.To contact the reporters on this story: Greg Ritchie in London at gritchie10@bloomberg.net;Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.net;Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Alex MoralesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Michael Bloomberg has an emoluments problem Posted: 02 Jan 2020 09:13 AM PST  A President Michael Bloomberg would have a lot of divesting to do.Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York City and current Democratic presidential candidate, has several business stakes in China, which translate into a sizeable amount of revenue for Bloomberg LP. And as The Washington Post reports, those holdings pair up nicely with his relatively soft — and sometimes even complimentary — takes on China's leadership.While Bloomberg has stepped down from running his company as he campaigns for the presidency, he still has an 88 percent ownership stake in Bloomberg LP. The company brought in $10 billion in annual revenue in 2018, of which a full 1 percent came from China. Another 4 percent came from Hong Kong. That's a total of $500 million from the country — a number that might surpass the Trump Organization's entire revenue for 2018.Even before Bloomberg's possible nomination, his investments in China seem to be taking a toll. He's called China's Vice President Wang Qishan "the most influential political figure in China and in the world" who has led China "through a period of extraordinary growth," the Post notes. And when asked about ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Bloomberg said he believed China's President Xi Jinping "is not a dictator" and "has to satisfy his constituents or he's not going to survive."Bloomberg has said he'll either sell his company or put it in a blind trust if he's elected. But President Trump has come under fire for potential emoluments clause violations even though he's also put the Trump Organization in a revocable trust under his son's purview, posing a perhaps even bigger problem for Bloomberg down the road.More stories from theweek.com The booming stock market shows America is diseased Trump gave 'clear direction' to hold Ukraine aid, says White House official in uncovered documents Trump's 'greatest honors' include a bill by Bernie Sanders and John McCain, signed into law by Obama
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| Austria Grabs Climate Lead as Kurz Takes Power With Greens Posted: 02 Jan 2020 09:06 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Austria's new government plans to push the boundaries of conventional economic, energy and tax policies in its bid to radically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.The conservative People's Party and the environmentalist Greens on Thursday laid out their policy blueprint for their new coalition under Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, 33, who's expected to be sworn in for a second term next week. The 300-page document pledges a range of measures to put the Alpine country on a path to become climate neutral by 2040 while keeping the federal budget in check and lowering taxes on workers.The coalition agreement, hashed out over months of negotiations, aims to use the shift to cleaner technologies to create jobs and boost the economy to position Austria as "a pioneer in Europe for climate protection." It's a marked shift for Kurz, who is seeking to return to power after his previous alliance with the far-right Freedom Party collapsed in the fallout from a lurid influence-peddling scandal.Pending approval by Green party members at a conference Saturday, Austria will become a test bed for some of the most ambitious policies in Europe to protect the environment. The new government plans to raise the price of carbon pollution, offer financial incentives to boost energy efficiency and expand nationwide public transportation. It also pledged to lower taxes on middle-income workers and refrain from increasing federal debt."We deliberately combined the best of both sides," Kurz said. "The negotiations were demanding because these were very different worldviews. But we've chosen to structure a new way forward."Amid increasingly frequent droughts and wild fires, Greens have gained traction as climate change climbs the agenda of voters. The movement, which emerged some four decades ago, is now active in more than 90 countries and helped propel Ursula von der Leyen to the role of president of the European Commission.Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen became the first politician from Austria's Greens to be voted head of state in a national election in 2016. Joschka Fischer was previously the highest profile Green politician to serve in office, as Germany's foreign minister from 1998 to 2005."The coalition aims to be a role model for Europe," said Werner Kogler, leader of Austria's Greens who'll become vice-chancellor. The key to the government will be implementing market-based environmental policies , he said.Austria's coalition offers a potential template for politicians across the continent searching for a formula to repel the threat of right-wing populism. Von der Leyen, a member of Angela Merkel's party in Germany, unveiled a plan to decarbonize the European economy, and the next government in Berlin could see a similar alliance as the Greens supplant the ailing Social Democrats as the natural partner for the conservative Christian Democrats.A government focus on climate change could help Austria get back on track to achieving its Paris Agreement targets for cutting harmful emissions. Despite its wealth of hydropower resources, the country's efforts to tackle global warming rank only 38th worldwide, according to this year's Climate Change Performance Index.Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine AG and oil refiner OMV AG could be among the companies most effected by higher prices on carbon-dioxide emissions. Airline passengers face a new 12-euro ($13) surcharge on flight tickets, while tickets on the country's railroad will become cheaper.The administration expects to spend billions of euros remaking transportation networks, bolstering light rail and guaranteeing affordable nationwide public options. New government vehicles will need to be emissions free by 2027. Internal-combustion engines for car-sharing, rental and taxi fleets will be restricted from 2025.(Adds Kurz comment in fifth paragraph, policy details throughout)\--With assistance from Tereza Elisabeth Pusca.To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at jtirone@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter, Iain RogersFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| UN official equates Chelsea Manning incarceration to torture Posted: 02 Jan 2020 09:01 AM PST ![UN official equates Chelsea Manning incarceration to torture]( "UN official equates Chelsea Manning incarceration to torture") A United Nations official says the continued incarceration of former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning for her refusal to testify to a grand jury amounts to torture. Nils Melzer, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on torture, released the letter to U.S. officials in support of Manning on Thursday. Manning was subpoenaed last year to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, but she says she opposes the grand jury system on general principle and won't testify.
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| Texas judge: Hospital can remove baby from life support Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:46 AM PST  A Texas judge on Thursday sided with a hospital that plans to remove an 11-month-old girl from life support after her mother disagreed with the decision by doctors who say the infant is in pain and that her condition will never improve. Trinity Lewis had asked Judge Sandee Bryan Marion to issue an injunction in Tarrant County district court to ensure that Cook Children's Medical Center doesn't end her daughter Tinslee Lewis' life-sustaining treatment. Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group that is advocating for Tinslee, said the girl's mother will appeal the judge's decision.
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| Hanukkah stabbing suspect questioned in prior Monsey attack Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:34 AM PST  The man charged in the machete attack on a Hanukkah celebration north of New York City had been questioned by local authorities in connection with an earlier stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man in the same town, police said Thursday. Grafton Thomas faces state and federal charges in Saturday's Hanukkah attack, which wounded five people at a rabbi's home in Monsey, New York. Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said police questioned Thomas based on video evidence that suggested a Honda Pilot may have been involved in the November stabbing.
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| Watch: North Korea state TV broadcasts Kim Jong-un riding white horse into the mountains Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:29 AM PST ![Watch: North Korea state TV broadcasts Kim Jong-un riding white horse into the mountains]( "Watch: North Korea state TV broadcasts Kim Jong-un riding white horse into the mountains") North Korea's Kim Jong-un has been spotted riding his white horse into the mountains once again. Similar trips have preceded major policy decisions, and experts think 2020 could herald a return to long-range missile launches or other weapons tests. Kim says North Korea has a "new strategic weapon", and insists there is no longer reason for Pyongyang to be bound by a self-imposed suspension on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests - the strongest indication yet that the North could resume the major testing it suspended over two years ago in the run-up to diplomacy talks with the U.S. Yet President Donald Trump said he felt assured that Kim would stay true to his promises to denuclearise.
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| US expects more attacks from Iran-backed groups: Esper Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:20 AM PST  The Pentagon warned Thursday that the Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah group that stormed the US embassy in Baghdad would carry out more attacks on US facilities -- and would regret it. Esper said there were "some indications out there" that groups may be planning additional attacks, and that the US would respond accordingly. The protestors, many from Kataeb Hezbolla, were angered by weekend air strikes by US forces that killed 25 of their supporters, said by Washington to be retaliation for rocket attacks on December 27 that killed a US civilian contractor.
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| Thursday evening news briefing: Prime Minister heckled out of town as wildfires grip Australia Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:17 AM PST ![Thursday evening news briefing: Prime Minister heckled out of town as wildfires grip Australia]( "Thursday evening news briefing: Prime Minister heckled out of town as wildfires grip Australia") PM called an 'idiot' as bushfire crisis grips Australia The Australian prime minister was heckled out of a fire-ravaged town in New South Wales, as a mass evacuation of the region got under way ahead of worsening conditions. You can watch video of the moment Scott Morrison insisted a woman shake his hand as she criticised him over the government's response to the crisis during a visit to Cobargo on the south coast. The prime minister was soon ushered to his car by minders when other residents began shouting at him. Anger over the government's handling of the crisis has grown since the outbreak of wildfires, which have so far killed at least 17 people and destroyed 1,400 homes. These numbers reveal the scale of the unfolding catastrophe. Meanwhile, smoke from the bushfires has created a haze across New Zealand thousands of kilometres away, with normally white glaciers turning a shade of caramel, according to social media posts. The acrid-smelling smoke first appeared in the country early Wednesday when in many areas the sun appeared as a red or golden orb. Click here to see pictures and satellite images of the wildfires. For holidaymakers set to travel Down Under, here's the advice on how it affects travel insurance. Northern Rail to lose franchise, minister reveals Grant Shapps is set to strip Northern Rail of its franchise, saying "frustrated commuters will not have to wait long" before action is taken. The Transport Secretary described services on the route as "really bad" and claimed passengers have "had a nightmare on that line" since 2016. The introduction of new timetables in May 2018 saw up to 310 Northern trains a day cancelled, with figures from the Office of Rail and Road showing only 56 per cent of Northern services were on time in the last quarter. Click here to watch Mr Shapps explain his plan. It comes on the day rail fares were increased for passengers across the country. MC Beaton: The worthy successor to Agatha Christie MC Beaton, who died this week, never referred to herself as a novelist: that was too pretentious a term for somebody who wrote light-hearted murder mysteries. The creator of the phlegmatic PC Hamish Macbeth and amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin preferred to call herself an entertainer. Grab a cup of tea and sit down to read Jake Kerridge's tribute to the writer who many people have never heard of, but has sold 21 million copies of her books around the world. And here is The Telegraph's obituary of the prolific author snubbed by critics but adored by fans. News digest NYE crash | Killed BA flight attendant was two weeks into dream job Carlos Ghosn | Turkey arrests pilots over ex-Nissan boss' escape flight Safety rankings | British Airways dropped from top 20 in annual list Term-time holidays | Number of children taken out of school soars 30ft deep | Huge tumbleweeds bury cars and close motorway - video Video: Military chief among dead in helicopter wreck Taiwan was plunged into mourning today after its top military official died alongside seven others in a helicopter crash in a mountainous area near the capital, Taipei, in the north of the island. Pictures released by emergency authorities showed the chopper's mangled wreckage, blades shattered into pieces, where it had crashed into a forest shrouded in mist. Out of the 13 on board, five miraculously survived. Comment Asa Bennett | How can Keir Starmer save Labour after selling out? Benedict Allen | British legends rekindled my passion for exploring Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Beware temper of the wild bull market Robin Pagmenta | 2020 will be year of deepfakes and electric cars Charlie Morgan | Are Leicester Tigers doomed to relegation? World news: The one story you must read today... Indonesia floods | Tens of thousands of people were evacuated in Indonesia's capital Jakarta today after flash floods and landslides killed up to 26 people amid some of the heaviest rain in more than 20 years, with more deluges forecast. The flooding caused chaos in parts of Southeast Asia's biggest city with video showing buildings collapsing. Editor's choice Getting on the ladder | Would you buy your first home with a sibling? Here's how to do it Make it stretch | How to turn 14 days of annual leave into 34 days of holiday Uncrowded beauties | Forgotten corners of Britain you should visit in 2020 Business and money briefing Top funds for 2020 | The American and Chinese trade dispute, star manager Neil Woodford's fall from grace and Brexit left investors with a lot to deal with in 2019. So where should they put their money this year? Telegraph experts predict which funds could have a stellar 2020. Industrial recession | Factories suffer steep drop in demand Travel drama | 'Cancelled flight meant no holiday and a £1,344 bill' On top of markets | Live stocks and shares updates 24 hours a day Sport briefing Nigel Wray retires | Saracens chairman Nigel Wray, who was at the heart of the club's salary cap scandal, has retired with immediate effect. The multimillionaire entrepreneur entered into co-investments with several of the club's leading players before his side was docked 35 points and fined £5.4m for salary cap breaches over a three-year period in November. Read what he said was behind the decision. ATP Cup | Tim Henman shrugs off poor air quality fears in Sydney Rory Burns | Doubt for second Test after injury in football warm-up Decade's first world champion | Peter Wright wins darts crown Tonight's TV Imagine: Lenny Henry: Young, Gifted and Black, BBC One, 11pm | The best Imagine films go beneath the surface and that's certainly the case with this enthralling documentary on comedian Sir Lenny Henry. Read on for more. And finally... Intergalactic proportions | Disney's UK-based subsidiaries spent £1.5bn over the past six years on making the five latest Star Wars movies, according to research by The Telegraph. But the media giant, which bought Star Wars owner Lucasfilm for $4bn (£3bn) in 2012, has reaped record rewards from its investment.
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| The UN is in financial distress, and the US still owes $491 million for 2019 Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:05 AM PST  The United Nations (UN) is running out of money, compounded by the fact that the U.S. — its biggest contributor — still hasn't paid all of what it owes for 2019.
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| Israeli court declines to rule on Netanyahu's eligibility Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:04 AM PST  Israel's Supreme Court on Thursday declined to weigh in on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can return to his post now that he has been indicted, postponing any ruling on his political future until after March elections. Judging Netanyahu ineligible would have triggered a major political crisis and exacerbated already strained ties between the government and the judiciary. Netanyahu was indicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
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| Elite Iraqi troops secure US embassy after attack Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:02 AM PST  Elite Iraqi troops deployed to secure the US embassy Thursday, a day after a pro-Iran mob laid siege to it in dramatic scenes that overshadowed months of anti-government grassroots protests. The unprecedented attack on the American mission in Baghdad -- in which intruders threw rocks, laid fires and graffitied walls -- sparked fears of a wider proxy war between Iran and the United States, both of them close allies of Iraq. Supporters of Iraq's powerful Hashed al-Shaabi military force laid siege to the embassy in outrage at US air strikes that killed 25 of their fighters, but pulled back on Wednesday after an order from the group.
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| One Certainty for 2020: Conservatives Will Lose Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:00 AM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- A presidential election year has kicked off with both parties navigating new ideological crosscurrents. Two Bloomberg Opinion columnists, Ramesh Ponnuru and Michael R. Strain, met recently to discuss the state of the country's politics.Ramesh Ponnuru: The last time we conversed here, Mike, you were lamenting that the Republican Party had become more Trumpified than ever while the Democrats were lurching toward their own form of unproductive populism. Does the year's end find you just as gloomy?Michael R. Strain: I'm more gloomy, to be honest. Republicans in the House did not cover themselves in glory during the serious business of impeachment. Take Representative Debbie Lesko of Arizona, who went so far as to deny that President Donald Trump asked Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, despite the overwhelming evidence that he did exactly that. (Her office later clarified her statement.) The U.S. intelligence community does not believe that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election, but that has not stopped prominent GOP officials from suggesting the opposite.On economics, the party has not moved any closer to embracing its traditional commitments to free trade and the importance of personal responsibility since we last conversed.The Democrats, meanwhile, continue to insist that everything in economic life is awful. Animated by populism, Senator Elizabeth Warren wants divide the nation along class lines. For example, by soaking the top 0.06% with a wealth tax that is both bad policy and, as I've argued in my Bloomberg column, unethical. At the same time, the Democrats want to vastly expand the entitlement programs enjoyed by the upper middle class, including free college and child care.It's possible the Democrats will nominate Biden, so there is hope that at least one of the major party candidates in 2020 won't be a populist.How's your mood?RP: A little cheerier than yours! Warren has ended 2019 on the downslope. I continue to be more bullish than most political journalists about Biden's chances of winning the nomination. And my sense is that Democrats, or at least Democratic politicians and strategists, have grown more appreciative of the unwisdom of outlawing private health insurance.And while Republicans are all-too-loyal to Trump, their ideological Trumpification still seems to me to be an inch deep. The congressional party and the governors are, in the main, still free-traders. There are very few apologists for Russian President Vladimir Putin in their ranks.I have a friendlier disposition toward populism than you, too — although I am not sure that "populism" is a useful term. I think Republican politicians and thinkers are starting to come to grips with serious problems that need addressing for the good of the country and their own coalition. I would emphasize "starting," as I agree that the solutions self-described populists have put forward are mostly nonsense. But the Republicans of 2014 hadn't really even acknowledged the problems in blue-collar America, and you have to start somewhere.How's that for a glass half-full?MRS: I'd say it's closer to glass one-quarter full. But I admire your optimism. I agree with you that Trumpification is an inch deep. But if the president wins re-election — which at this point seems likelier to me than not — support for it will deepen. And Trump would have won after having been impeached, which will deepen partisan division in the country.I also agree that populism's success at turning the GOP's focus (or, at least, its rhetorical focus) on the problems of the working and middle classes is a positive development. Yet I have the familiar but serious concern that a particular manifestation of this focus has been to stoke hostility toward immigrants and racial animosity. If I have to choose between those features and a party too focused on its donor class, I'll take the latter seven days a week.How to be cheerful? I suppose 2019 could have been worse! Trade conflicts with China and Mexico could easily have been more aggressive and economically destructive, for example. But that is a low bar for holiday mirth.RP: Trump's re-election would probably, as you say, exacerbate some of the disturbing tendencies on the right. But I would not take it as a given. At the moment George W. Bush remains the only Republican president to be re-elected, and the only Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote, since the Cold War ended. Yet "compassionate conservatism" has disappeared without a trace. Which is to say: Whether Trump's second term would solidify his ideological legacy would depend on how it went.I have, like you, written a lot in criticism of the president's trade policies. But while these policies have inflicted some harm on the economy – and, because of that net harm to the economy overall, the acute harm they have inflicted on particular businesses (those subject to retaliation, for example) is unjustifiable – it hasn't been severe. The economy remains pretty strong, and it is possible that continued wage growth, particularly among low-wage workers, will over time weaken a resentment-based politics. Come to think of it, I got that idea from one of your columns.So like Bing Crosby, let's finish the Christmas season by counting our blessings.To contact the authors of this story: Ramesh Ponnuru at rponnuru@bloomberg.netMichael R. Strain at mstrain4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a senior editor at National Review, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and contributor to CBS News.Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the editor of "The U.S. Labor Market: Questions and Challenges for Public Policy."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| One Certainty for 2020: Conservatives Will Lose Posted: 02 Jan 2020 08:00 AM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- A presidential election year has kicked off with both parties navigating new ideological crosscurrents. Two Bloomberg Opinion columnists, Ramesh Ponnuru and Michael R. Strain, met recently to discuss the state of the country's politics.Ramesh Ponnuru: The last time we conversed here, Mike, you were lamenting that the Republican Party had become more Trumpified than ever while the Democrats were lurching toward their own form of unproductive populism. Does the year's end find you just as gloomy?Michael R. Strain: I'm more gloomy, to be honest. Republicans in the House did not cover themselves in glory during the serious business of impeachment. Take Representative Debbie Lesko of Arizona, who went so far as to deny that President Donald Trump asked Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, despite the overwhelming evidence that he did exactly that. (Her office later clarified her statement.) The U.S. intelligence community does not believe that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election, but that has not stopped prominent GOP officials from suggesting the opposite.On economics, the party has not moved any closer to embracing its traditional commitments to free trade and the importance of personal responsibility since we last conversed.The Democrats, meanwhile, continue to insist that everything in economic life is awful. Animated by populism, Senator Elizabeth Warren wants divide the nation along class lines. For example, by soaking the top 0.06% with a wealth tax that is both bad policy and, as I've argued in my Bloomberg column, unethical. At the same time, the Democrats want to vastly expand the entitlement programs enjoyed by the upper middle class, including free college and child care.It's possible the Democrats will nominate Biden, so there is hope that at least one of the major party candidates in 2020 won't be a populist.How's your mood?RP: A little cheerier than yours! Warren has ended 2019 on the downslope. I continue to be more bullish than most political journalists about Biden's chances of winning the nomination. And my sense is that Democrats, or at least Democratic politicians and strategists, have grown more appreciative of the unwisdom of outlawing private health insurance.And while Republicans are all-too-loyal to Trump, their ideological Trumpification still seems to me to be an inch deep. The congressional party and the governors are, in the main, still free-traders. There are very few apologists for Russian President Vladimir Putin in their ranks.I have a friendlier disposition toward populism than you, too — although I am not sure that "populism" is a useful term. I think Republican politicians and thinkers are starting to come to grips with serious problems that need addressing for the good of the country and their own coalition. I would emphasize "starting," as I agree that the solutions self-described populists have put forward are mostly nonsense. But the Republicans of 2014 hadn't really even acknowledged the problems in blue-collar America, and you have to start somewhere.How's that for a glass half-full?MRS: I'd say it's closer to glass one-quarter full. But I admire your optimism. I agree with you that Trumpification is an inch deep. But if the president wins re-election — which at this point seems likelier to me than not — support for it will deepen. And Trump would have won after having been impeached, which will deepen partisan division in the country.I also agree that populism's success at turning the GOP's focus (or, at least, its rhetorical focus) on the problems of the working and middle classes is a positive development. Yet I have the familiar but serious concern that a particular manifestation of this focus has been to stoke hostility toward immigrants and racial animosity. If I have to choose between those features and a party too focused on its donor class, I'll take the latter seven days a week.How to be cheerful? I suppose 2019 could have been worse! Trade conflicts with China and Mexico could easily have been more aggressive and economically destructive, for example. But that is a low bar for holiday mirth.RP: Trump's re-election would probably, as you say, exacerbate some of the disturbing tendencies on the right. But I would not take it as a given. At the moment George W. Bush remains the only Republican president to be re-elected, and the only Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote, since the Cold War ended. Yet "compassionate conservatism" has disappeared without a trace. Which is to say: Whether Trump's second term would solidify his ideological legacy would depend on how it went.I have, like you, written a lot in criticism of the president's trade policies. But while these policies have inflicted some harm on the economy – and, because of that net harm to the economy overall, the acute harm they have inflicted on particular businesses (those subject to retaliation, for example) is unjustifiable – it hasn't been severe. The economy remains pretty strong, and it is possible that continued wage growth, particularly among low-wage workers, will over time weaken a resentment-based politics. Come to think of it, I got that idea from one of your columns.So like Bing Crosby, let's finish the Christmas season by counting our blessings.To contact the authors of this story: Ramesh Ponnuru at rponnuru@bloomberg.netMichael R. Strain at mstrain4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a senior editor at National Review, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and contributor to CBS News.Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the editor of "The U.S. Labor Market: Questions and Challenges for Public Policy."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Egypt mob sexual attack on New Year's Eve sparks controversy Posted: 02 Jan 2020 07:41 AM PST  A video from Egypt showing a woman enduring a mob sexual assault on New Year's Eve was deemed authentic by the country's police Thursday. The viral video has reignited long-running controversy over rampant sexual harassment in Egypt. Cases of mob violence against women have been caught on tape since the 2000s.
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| Attack on US Embassy exposes widening US-Iraq divide on Iran Posted: 02 Jan 2020 07:36 AM PST  The New Year's Eve attack on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad has exposed a deepening divide between the United States and Iraq over Iran's role there, even as the Pentagon embarks on a more aggressive mission to counter Iranian influence across the Mideast. "The game has changed," Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday, telling reporters that violent acts by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq — including a rocket attack on Dec. 27 that killed one American — will be met with U.S. military force. Esper said they are "defensive support" that can be used if there is more trouble in Baghdad or elsewhere in the region.
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| Democrat Julián Castro drops out of 2020 presidential race Posted: 02 Jan 2020 06:19 AM PST  Former Obama housing secretary Julián Castro, the only Latino in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, ended his campaign Thursday after a yearlong run in which he pushed his rivals on immigration and took big swings in debates but struggled to break through with voters. Castro, who launched his campaign last January, dropped out after failing to garner enough support in the polls or donations to qualify for recent Democratic debates. A former San Antonio mayor who later became President Barack Obama's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Castro had stalled for most of his campaign, hovering around 1% in polls, and never came close to raising money like his better-known challengers.
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| 4 lies about America's perpetual wars Posted: 02 Jan 2020 06:10 AM PST  American policy in the Greater Middle East is a wasteful and pointless mess that's depleting American resources, endangering American lives, and making a mockery of American ideals.If you doubt it, just open your eyes to the evidence. Go ahead and peruse the Afghanistan Papers, The Washington Post's exhaustive reporting on the lies that three administrations have told the American people about the prospects for success in what is now easily the nation's longest war. Or read coverage of the chaos in Libya nine years after we intervened to topple its government. Or inform yourself about the crimes committed by Saudi Arabia, with our backing and support, in Yemen. Or follow the news of how our efforts to thwart Iran's ambitions in Iraq have inadvertently sparked a spasm of anti-American outrage that led our heavily fortified embassy in Baghdad to be overrun by protesters.How long will our country expend its blood and treasure attempting to impose its will on this part of the world? The answer should be that we'll stay not one day longer than it takes to extract our forces from the region. America is long overdue to come home from its three-decade-long Mideast misadventure.This isn't a call for the "isolationism" that all-purpose interventionists are always warning against. It's a call for sobriety and clear-sighted honesty about America's vital interests and a tough-minded evaluation of whether our actions from North Africa to South Asia in the 30 years since the first Gulf War have furthered those interests.Those who favor keeping or expanding our presence in the region make a series of assertions, every one of which collapses on closer inspection.1\. "We need the oil." This may have been a compelling argument when we first inserted large numbers of American forces into the region to defend Saudi oil fields from Saddam Hussein's army in the wake of the Iraqi dictator's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But things have changed dramatically over the past three decades. Over the past 10 years, U.S. oil imports from OPEC have plunged by about 75 percent, down to just 1.5 million barrels a day in March 2019, a 30-year low. The change is driven by multiple factors, including a surge in U.S. oil production. But whatever the cause, it severely undermines the most ruthlessly "realist" case for continuing to meddle in the Middle East.2\. "American forces are needed to impose stability/counter Iranian aggression in the region." Since 2001, the U.S. has been playing a game of Whack-a-Mole with the Taliban in Afghanistan. We've overthrown the government of Iraq, empowering Iran by eliminating its strongest regional rival and sparking an insurgency and civil war that gave birth to the Islamic State. We've encouraged the so-called "Arab Spring," which ultimately precipitated the Syrian Civil War, over half a million deaths, and a refugee crisis that has helped fuel a surge of right-wing populism across Europe. We've toppled the government of Libya, which spread chaos and provoked another refugee crisis across North Africa. We've intervened in Yemen, producing a humanitarian crisis and immense human suffering. And we first struck and then deliberately scuttled a nuclear deal with Iran.The indisputable fact is that the United States has been the primary source of regional instability in the Greater Middle East for nearly two decades now. As for Iran, it's hard to see how a country 6,000 miles from the U.S. homeland with an economy a tiny fraction of ours should be viewed as a serious threat to our vital interests. Israel faces a very different situation, but it is heavily armed and receives a large sum of American aid every year. It is quite capable of defending itself.3\. "Our military presence in the region is necessary to defend democracy." The problem with this rationale is that our definition of democracy is hopelessly contradictory. We usually intend it to mean "help the locals adopt American-style political and economic reforms and join the liberal international order." But of course democracy also means national self-determination, as our own Declaration of Independence makes clear. But what if the people in a given country choose something other than the American-endorsed path? Or what if they're too divided to make any clear choice at all? And what about if our very presence in the region, intervening militarily wherever and whenever we wish, skews the domestic conversation about which path to take, inflaming national pride, making it harder for liberal reformers to gain popular support and empowering anti-liberal zealots who are able to rally opposition under the banner of anti-Americanism?That's exactly what's been happening in the region over and over again for the past two decades. And it's not at all difficult to understand why. All we need to do is make a minimal effort to imagine ourselves in the place of those living in the Middle East. How would Americans respond if an outside power of enormous strength reserved the right to launch missile attacks on American citizens on American soil whenever they wished? Would we respond with passivity and expressions of gratitude toward our overseers? Of course we wouldn't. We'd become angry and resentful, especially when the air strikes, however well-intentioned, accidentally killed innocent bystanders. We'd feel humiliated, outraged at being put in a position of such profound subservience, and tempted to follow local leaders who promised to rid us of our overlords.4\. "Withdrawal will make us look weak." Since the end of the Cold War, foreign policy thinking in the nation's capital has degraded. Often it deploys childishly simple dichotomies, like the Manichean alternatives of "strength" and "weakness": Either we stay in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen indefinitely, or we will look weak, which would be catastrophic because all our opponents understand is strength.Tell it to Ronald Reagan, who governed at a time when politicians and policymakers were still capable of thinking strategically, beyond one-dimensional displays of brute force and in light of the country's vital interests. That's why the Reagan administration responded to the terrorist bombing that killed 241 soldiers and civilians at a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 by withdrawing American forces. At the time, the only group of commentators who objected to the move, claiming it would be interpreted as a highly dangerous sign of weakness by America's adversaries, were neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz, who favored a foreign policy of reflexive bellicosity.Today, such knee-jerk hawkishness is the default position of leading members of the foreign policy establishment from both parties. But that doesn't mean it makes any more sense now than it did in the early 1980s. Reagan and his advisors concluded that maintaining troops in Lebanon wasn't worth the cost or the risk, so the administration pulled them out. They were right to do so.Our rivals and adversaries in the world will say anything they want about anything we do. The trick is to formulate policies that make sense for the United States, with sense defined in terms of the country's vital interests. And in 2020, it's abundantly clear that it's no longer in our interests to keep attempting to micromanage the Greater Middle East.More stories from theweek.com The booming stock market shows America is diseased Trump gave 'clear direction' to hold Ukraine aid, says White House official in uncovered documents Trump's 'greatest honors' include a bill by Bernie Sanders and John McCain, signed into law by Obama
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| 3 big ways that the US will change over the next decade Posted: 02 Jan 2020 05:42 AM PST  The U.S. has just entered the new decade of the 2020s.What does our country look like today, and what will it look like 10 years from now, on Jan. 1, 2030? Which demographic groups in the U.S. will grow the most, and which groups will not grow as much, or maybe even decline in the next 10 years? I am a demographer and I have examined population data from the U.S. Census Bureau and from the Population Division of the United Nations. Projections show that whites will decline; the number of old people will increase; and racial minorities, mainly Hispanics, will grow the most, making them the main engine of demographic change in the U.S. for the next 10 years and beyond. 1\. There will be more of usThe U.S. population today, at the start of 2020, numbers just over 331 million people. The U.S. is the third largest country in the world, outnumbered only by the two demographic billionaires, China and India, at just over 1.4 billion and just under 1.4 billion, respectively. Ten years from now, the U.S. population will have almost 350 million people. China and India will still be bigger, but India with 1.5 billion people will now be larger than China, with 1.46 billion. 2\. The population will get older.The U.S. is getting older and it's going to keep getting older.Today, there are over 74.1 million people under age 18 in the U.S. country. There are 56.4 million people age 65 and older. Ten years from now, there will almost be as many old folks as there are young ones. The numbers of young people will have grown just a little to 76.3 million, but the numbers of old people will have increased a lot – to 74.1 million. A lot of these new elderly will be baby boomers. For example, take the really old folks – people over the age of 100. How many centenarians are in the U.S. population today and how many are there likely to be 10 years from now? According to demographers at the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of centenarians in the U.S. grew from over 53,000 in 2010 to over 90,000 in 2020. By 2030, there will most likely be over 130,000 centenarians in the U.S.But this increase of centenarians by 2030 is only a small indication of their growth in later decades. In the year of 2046, the first group of surviving baby boomers will reach 100 years, and that's when U.S. centenarians will really start to grow. By 2060 there will be over 603,000. That's a lot of really old people.I sometimes ask my undergraduate students how many of them have ever actually seen a person 100 years old or older. In my classes of 140 or more students, no more than maybe six raise their hands. Lots more college students will be raising their hands when they are asked that question in 2060. 3\. Racial proportions will shift.In 2020, non-Hispanic white people, hereafter called whites, are still the majority race in the U.S., representing 59.7% of the U.S. population. In my research with the demographer Rogelio Saenz, we have shown that the white share of the U.S. population has been dropping since 1950 and it will continue to go down.Today, after whites, the Hispanic population is the next biggest group at 18.7% of the U.S., followed by blacks and Asians.What will the country look like racially in 2030? Whites will have dropped to 55.8% of the population, and Hispanics will have grown to 21.1%. The percentage of black and Asian Americans will also grow significantly.So between now and 2030, whites as a proportion of the population will get smaller, and the minority race groups will all keep getting bigger. Eventually, whites will become a minority, dropping below 50% of the U.S. population in around the year of 2045. However, on the first day of 2020, whites under age 18 will already be in the minority. Among all the young people now in the U.S., there are more minority young people than there are white young people.Among old people age 65 and over, whites are still in the majority. Indeed white old people, compared to minority old people, will continue to be in the majority until some years after 2060.Hispanics and the other racial minorities will be the country's main demographic engine of population change in future years; this is the most significant demographic change Americans will see. I've shown above how much older the U.S. population has become and will become in the years ahead. Were it not for the racial minorities countering this aging of the U.S. population, the U.S. by 2030 and later would have become even older than it is today and will be in 2030.[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter. ]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Is 75 the new 65? Wealthy countries need to rethink what it means to be old * Six charts that illustrate the divide between rural and urban AmericaDudley L. Poston, Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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| How the Trump Administration is Using ‘Force Protection’ to Fight Iran Posted: 02 Jan 2020 05:32 AM PST  The United States is stumbling into a war with Iran, but the legal authorizations to fight it are lagging behind.
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| Trump Bet He Could Isolate Iran and Charm North Korea. It's Not That Easy. Posted: 02 Jan 2020 05:05 AM PST  President Donald Trump entered the new year facing flare-ups of long-burning crises with two old adversaries -- Iran and North Korea -- which are directly challenging his claim to have reasserted American power around the world.While the Iranian-backed attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad seemed to be under control, it played to Trump's longtime worry that American diplomats and troops in the Middle East are easy targets and his longtime position that the United States must pull back from the region.In North Korea, Kim Jong Un's declaration on Wednesday that the world would "witness a new strategic weapon" seemed to be the end of an 18-month experiment in which Trump believed his force of personality -- and vague promises of economic development -- would wipe away a problem that plagued the last 12 of his predecessors.The timing of these new challenges is critical: Both the Iranians and the North Koreans seem to sense the vulnerability of a president under impeachment and facing reelection, even if they are often clumsy as they try to play those events to their advantage.The protests in Iraq calmed on Wednesday, and Kim has not yet unveiled his latest "strategic weapon." But the events of recent days have underscored how much bluster was behind Trump's boast a year ago that Iran was "a very different nation" since he had broken its economy by choking off its oil revenues. They also belied his famous tweet: "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea."Today the most generous thing one could say about those statements is that they were wildly premature. Many foreign policy experts say he fundamentally misjudged the reactions of two major American adversaries. And neither seem to fear him, precisely the critique he leveled at Barack Obama back in the days when Trump declared America's toughest national security challenges would be solved as soon as a president the world respected was in office.The core problem may have been Trump's conviction that economic incentives alone -- oil profits in Tehran and the prospect of investment and glorious beach-front hotels in North Korea -- would overcome all other national interests. He dismissed the depth of Iran's determination to reestablish itself as the most powerful force in the region. He also underestimated Kim's conviction that his nuclear arsenal is his only insurance policy to buoy one of the last family-controlled Stalinist regimes."After three years of no international crises," Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Tuesday, Trump is "facing one with Iran because he has rejected diplomacy and another with North Korea because he has asked too much of diplomacy.""In neither case has Trump embraced traditional diplomacy, putting forward a partial or interim pact in which a degree of restraint would be met with a degree of sanctions relief."Trump does not engage with such arguments. He simply repeats his mantra that Iran will never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons and that North Korea -- which already has fuel for upward of 40, much of it produced on Trump's watch -- has committed to full denuclearization, even though that overstates Kim's position.Trump's top national security officials, starting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, offer a somewhat more nuanced view, saying that over time Iran will realize it has no choice but to change its ways, and expressing optimism that "Chairman Kim will make the right decision and he'll choose peace and prosperity over conflict and war."Increasingly, though, such lines sound like a hope, not a strategy. That is Trump's fundamental problem as he enters 2020. He does not have a comprehensive plan to unite the nation's estranged allies into a concerted course of action.The absence of a common approach is hurting the most in Iran. When Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal -- declaring it a "terrible" piece of Obama-era diplomacy because it did not create permanent restraints on Iran's ability to produce nuclear fuel -- his aides sounded confident that Europe, China and Russia would follow suit. They did not.Europe has flailed in its efforts to counteract U.S. sanctions against Iran, but has insisted that the deal remains in place, even though both Washington and Tehran are violating key aspects of it.Russia and China have taken the next step. Last week they opened joint naval exercises with Iran in the Gulf of Oman. The exercises were not militarily significant, and the three nations have plenty of differences. But to the Iranians, the military drills symbolized having two nuclear-armed superpowers on their side.Vice Adm. Gholamreza Tahani of Iran was quoted in the Financial Times declaring that "the most important achievement of these drills" was the message "that the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be isolated."It is possible that the Trump administration's strategy will still bear fruit: Pompeo was doing everything he could in recent weeks to express support for Iranians who were mounting protests inside their own country. But the history of past protests -- most notably in 2009 -- offers little hope that they can threaten the government. Hundreds of protesters appear to have been killed by internal security forces this time.The Iranians have a fine sense that "maximum pressure" campaigns work in both directions. They are vulnerable to cutoffs in oil flows. But the United States is vulnerable to highly public attacks on troops and tankers.The attack on the outer walls of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, even if short-lived, was clearly intended to send a shiver down the spine of Trump's political aides, who remember well that a hostage crisis led to President Jimmy Carter's reelection defeat 40 years ago.In recent months, Iran has repeatedly mounted a strike and pulled back, including its attacks on oil tankers, an American drone and Saudi oil facilities.The Iranians have made clear what Trump needs to do to reopen negotiations: Essentially, return to the deal struck with Obama, largely by lifting sanctions Trump imposed starting in May 2018. There are signs Trump is eager to resume talks, including his effort to lure President Hassan Rouhani to the phone when the Iranian leader was in New York in September for United Nations meetings.That diplomatic initiative will doubtless continue in secret. But the Iranians have found new leverage in the ability to turn anti-Iran protests in Iraq into protests against U.S. troops there, complete with Iran's signature "death to America" street chants.On Tuesday, Trump revived an old talking point, emphasizing that he did not want a war but warning Iran that any conflict "wouldn't last very long."North Korea is a harder problem because there Trump had initiated a bold and imaginative diplomatic process with Kim. By breaking the mold and agreeing to meet the North Korean leader face to face, he would be the first American president to do so since the end of the Korean War.But he made key mistakes. He failed to get a nuclear freeze agreement from the North in return for the meeting, meaning that the country's nuclear and missile production continued to churn along.And Trump's team, internally divided, could not back itself out of the corner the president created with his vow of no serious sanctions relief until the arsenal was disbanded. Trump did cancel joint military exercises with South Korea -- over Pentagon objections -- but that was not enough for Kim.But perhaps Trump's biggest miscalculation was over-relying on the personal rapport he built with Kim, and overinterpreting the commitments he received from the young, wily North Korean leader.That continues. At a news conference on his way to a New Year's Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club, the president focused on their relationship, as if Kim's declaration that he was no longer bound by any commitment to cease missile and nuclear testing did not exist. "He likes me, I like him, we get along," Trump said. "He's representing his country, I'm representing my country. We have to do what we have to do."Then he misrepresented the agreement he reached with Kim during their meeting in Singapore in June 2018, describing it as if it were a real estate deal. "But he did sign a contract," Trump said of the vague declaration of principles they agreed on.In fact, it was not a contract, it had no binding force, and it referred to the "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." That phrase means something very different in Pyongyang than it does in Washington: It means the North expects the United States to pull back its own nuclear-backed forces, including submarines and ships that can deliver such weapons to the peninsula.So now Trump finds himself awaiting a new missile test.It may be a solid-fuel, intercontinental missile, according to some experts, to show that the North has finally mastered a weapon that can be rolled out and launched with little warning. And it may carry some kind of payload to demonstrate that the country now knows how to make a warhead that can withstand re-entry into the atmosphere, a difficult technology.But buried in Kim's New Year's statement was a suggestion of what he really had in mind: talks with the United States about the "scope and depth" of the North's nuclear force. That means he really is not interested in denuclearization at all. He is interested in arms-control talks, like the United States conducted for decades with the Kremlin.And arms control, of course, would achieve what Kim, his father and his grandfather all sought: that insurance policy for the family.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Trump's Iran and North Korea strategies are both falling apart, and it couldn't come at a worse time for him Posted: 02 Jan 2020 04:32 AM PST  Trump claimed he would face down America's foes, but as 2020 begins Iran is ramping up its aggression and North Korea remains armed and dangerous.
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| 3 women investigated for causing deadly blaze at German zoo Posted: 02 Jan 2020 04:03 AM PST  Three women are under investigation in Germany for launching paper sky lanterns for the new year which apparently ignited a devastating fire that killed more than 30 animals at a zoo, officials said Thursday. The three local women — a mother and her two daughters, ages 30 to 60 — went to police in the western city of Krefeld on New Year's Day after authorities held a news conference about the blaze, criminal police chief Gerd Hoppmann said. The women are being investigated on suspicion of negligent arson, prosecutor Jens Frobel said.
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| Can The Low-Carbon Diet Cure Our Climate Crisis? Posted: 02 Jan 2020 04:00 AM PST  In Alaska, the glaciers are melting. In California, wildfire season is now longer than it's ever been. In New York City, rising sea levels are threatening to vanquish lower Manhattan. Ditto for Miami, New Orleans, and other cities around the U.S. and the world. We're in the midst of a climate crisis. But even as we rally, protest, and make the switch to reusable tote bags and metal straws, it seems as if our efforts are futile in the face of climate-change deniers and the nation's reliance on carbon. The American Psychological Association has even coined a term for the feelings of "loss, helplessness, and frustration" people experience in response to the catastrophe: Ecoanxiety. But there is one way that we can actually make a big positive impact, and it's actually very simple. We can stop eating so much meat. Today, more and more people are adjusting the way they eat not to improve the health of their bodies, but to improve the health of the planet. Sometimes called the "low-carbon diet," this approach involves cutting down on meat and dairy, as well as eating locally and seasonally and reducing packaging and food waste. Experts say these actions can lower our personal carbon footprint and, collectively, slow the speed of climate change. In his 2019 book We Are The Weather: Saving The Planet Begins At Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer argues that eating a plant-based diet is "one of the four highest-impact things an individual can do to tackle climate change." The three others are avoiding air travel, not owning a car, and having fewer children; so diet may be the simplest adjustment an individual can make. But why, exactly, does eating meat harm the environment? As the New York Times explains, there are four major reasons: when forests are cleared for livestock, carbon is released into the atmosphere; cows, sheep, and goats release methane as they digest their food; animal manure also releases methane; and fossil fuels are used to transport food, operate machinery, and create fertilizer. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock accounts for 14.5% of the world's greenhouse gasses each year — roughly equal to the emissions caused by trains, planes, cars, and ships. A 2019 study published in Science found that we get 18% of our calories and 37% of our protein from animal products, but livestock takes up 83% of our farmland and generates almost 60% of food emissions. Beef is responsible for far more greenhouse gases than other animal products, followed by lamb, farmed crustaceans, cheese, and pork. Fish, poultry, and eggs have a lesser impact, but still way more than vegan fare, such as tofu and nuts.The environmental impact of animal food products is so great that even small steps can make a difference, especially if enacted on a wide scale. Nina Gheihman, a PhD candidate in Sociology at Harvard University whose research focuses on veganism and who works with the meal delivery service Fresh N' Lean, tells Refinery29 that while policy changes such as a nationwide carbon tax are definitely a good thing, we shouldn't discount the collective power of consumers' food choices. This doesn't have to mean the total elimination of animal products, she adds. "Right now, everyone is where they are on the spectrum [of animal product consumption], and it's about moving towards reducing that consumption," she says. "If 90% of people begin eating more vegan meals, that would have a much bigger impact than a small number of people becoming fully vegan." She adds that reducing your meat consumption is better for the planet than switching from beef to chicken: "Instead of replacing one meat with another but still eating meat every single day, only eating meat two or three times a week will have a bigger impact."Some millennials and Gen Z, however, are ditching meat altogether, for the sake of the planet. Natasha Jokic, 23, went vegetarian in 2015, after learning about the environmental impact. "I used to be one of those people who would be like, 'But bacon! How could you ever give up meat?'" she says. "Then in college, I was studying political science and hearing more and more about environmental degradation, and I started realizing there's no real way to justify eating meat." At first, she began reducing her meat intake without eliminating it entirely, but then had a revelation over a pork burrito. "I realized, I no longer enjoy this, I no longer think it's right. And then I stopped."Likewise, Dena Ogden, 36, who lives in a small town in Washington, decided to stop buying and eating beef — unless there's a burger at a friend's BBQ. "There's an old quote along the lines of, No one can do everything, but everyone can do something, and my spouse and I both just felt like this is one way we can contribute and reduce our footprint," she explains. The change has been a relatively easy one: swapping beef burgers for vegetarian patties and using turkey sausage instead of beef, for example. "I can't say that I consciously miss red meat, although I imagine at some point I'll make an effort to find substitutes for my favorite comfort foods, like French dip sandwiches," Ogden says.Thanks to climate activists such as Greta Thunberg, 16 — who famously convinced her whole family to go vegan and was named TIME magazine's 2019 Person of the Year— there's a growing awareness of the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet, and a growing field of companies contributing to the solution. Isabelle Steichen, co-founder and CEO of the vegan food company Lupii, says the planet played a major factor in her decision to become vegan. After moving to the United States from France in 2013, she says she became really aware of the scale of animal agriculture here compared to Europe, and going vegan just made sense to her for "both the environment and animal ethics." Still, Steichen stresses that she doesn't expect everyone to join her. > "If 90% of people begin eating more vegan meals, that would have a much bigger impact than a small number of people becoming fully vegan."> > Nina Gheihman"Every little step and every conscious decision matters," she says. "A big reason why people fall off veganism is that they think it's either everything or nothing." Case in point: a 2014 study of over 11,000 Americans found that 84% of vegans and vegetarians abandon that diet. "But I don't think it's binary at all," Steichen adds. "Every consumer choice you're making has a reaction, and if we all cut out one animal-based meal a week, that's a huge impact we can make, collectively." Steichen has a good point. Despite the anecdotal evidence from friends and influencers who reside on the coasts and sing the praises of ditching meat, the numbers of vegans and vegetarians in the United States have barely shifted from the late '90s. Even as "vegan" options proliferate in groceries around the country and meatless Impossible burgers can be found at Burger King, a 2018 Gallup poll found that only 5% of Americans claim vegetarianism, down from 6% in 1999. That same survey found that a mere 3% of Americans say they're vegan, up from 2% in 2012.For many, reducing meat is more realistic than veganism, especially considering that American culture (outside of major cities such as New York and Los Angeles) isn't really set up for a completely plant-based diet. Happy Cow, a Yelp-like service for vegans and vegetarians, shows 1,569 vegan restaurants in the United States — but while there are 349 in California, South Dakota has only one. Where your meat comes from also plays a factor — chicken from your local farmer's market has a lower carbon impact than factory-farmed chicken shipped to a supermarket. That farmer's market chicken is more expensive, but it's also both higher quality meat and better for the environment, says Gheihman — and while you can certainly spend a lot of cash on plant-based meat alternatives if you want to, vegan staples such as tofu, lentils, beans, and grains are reliably lower-priced than meat. "Plant-based diets are actually cheapest, so if people do eat more plant-based meals, they can then afford higher-quality meat — they just can't eat that meat three times a day," she explains. In fact, in many cultures around the world, low-income people eat a mostly plant-based diet. > "No one can do everything, but everyone can do something."If you don't have the time to cook a meal at home, of course, finding low-cost vegan or vegetarian fast food can be difficult — a burger and fries at New York vegan favorite By Chloe is definitely more expensive than the same meal from the McDonald's dollar menu. But if you're going to the supermarket and have time to cook, plant-based meals such as rice and beans, lentil stew, or tofu and veggie stir-fry can be less expensive than making a similar meal with meat. This also isn't an all-or-nothing scenario. Even taking five minutes to pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch instead of buying a beef burger off the dollar menu is a positive change.Proponents of a low carbon diet are encouraged by the growth of animal product alternatives, such as the rise of plant-based milks and meat substitutes. Beyond Meat, which names addressing climate change as one of four main factors in its mission statement, pictures its target customer as the "conflicted carnivore," says a spokesperson. "We want to enable consumers to continue eating the food they love, but in a way that's better for their health and better for the environment. We're not sitting here saying, 'Don't eat meat,' but we're trying to provide another option." Dean Foods, America's largest milk producer, recently filed for bankruptcy, which the company blamed on "accelerated decline in the conventional white milk category" — meaning dairy milk sales have fallen as plant-based milks have become more popular. "That happened because consumers stopped buying the product," says Steichen. "To me, that's proof that it very much matters what you do at an individual level. At the end of the day, you have a lot of power because you're the person who's purchasing the product." There are also some changes you can make to your diet that don't have anything to do with meat. In 2007, restaurant company Bon Appetit Management Company launched a Low Carbon Diet program to reduce the food service sector's contribution to climate change. Their "five staples of a low-carbon diet" are: 1) don't waste food; 2) make "seasonal and regional" your food mantra; 3) move away from beef and cheese; 4) don't buy air-freighted food; and 5) if it's processed and packaged, skip it. Buying seasonal food from local suppliers cuts down on transportation emissions that result from, for example, flying grapes from Chile to the United States. Reducing packaging not only cuts down on the trash you're sending to the landfill, but also minimizes the energy that it takes to create that packaging in the first place. Finally, processed foods, such as ones containing high-fructose corn syrup, take more energy to create. These adjustments might add dollars to your grocery bill and therefore not be doable for everyone, but as milk and meat alternatives become more ubiquitous (read: cheaper), these products will become more accessible. And as the effects of climate change start to impact our everyday lives, we'll all eventually have to change our daily habits.For those interviewed here, changing their diet was one of several reductions in their carbon footprint. Along with eliminating red meat, Ogden's family recycles, shops second-hand, and plans to switch to an electric vehicle when they need to replace a car; Steichen composts; Jokic avoids single-use plastics. Again, many of these changes require either time or financial resources — a reusable water bottle is more expensive than a plastic one, and visiting a local recycling center or compost drop-off often requires you to carve out an hour of your weekend. But while it may be harder for some than others, the vast majority of us can do something to help the planet. As Gheihman puts it, "Everybody has not only an opportunity, but also a responsibility to reduce their carbon footprint. And three times a day, you can make an impact, just by choosing one food versus another."Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
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| What Democrats Can Do After the Senate Acquits Trump Posted: 02 Jan 2020 03:30 AM PST ![What Democrats Can Do After the Senate Acquits Trump]( "What Democrats Can Do After the Senate Acquits Trump") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Here's a message to Democrats and all patriots: Don't give up when the Senate acquits Donald Trump. File suit right away to prevent him from going to any foreign government to fix the election. The House bill of impeachment makes clear that Trump used the power of his office — indeed, compromised his obligation to defend the country — when he held up aid to Ukraine to extract a partisan advantage in 2020. As federal citizens, we have a right under the First Amendment to a free and fair election, without the highest government officer of the land using corrupt means to help his re-election.The lawsuit to stop Trump from continuing this course of action would not seek retroactive relief. This would not be a damages claim, but an order to stop him in the future.A plaintiff in a lawsuit has a right to seek prospective injunctive relief to stop a pattern of corrupt activity from continuing. Any threat to interfere with rights under the First Amendment is usually "irreparable injury," which justifies issuing an injunction.To say the least, there is a pattern of conduct by Trump to justify such action.Ever since the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, the federal courts have claimed an inherent equitable power to restrain violations of the Constitution. There is a controversy over whether the courts have the inherent power to award damages as well, but that would not be relevant in a suit to stop Trump from continuing the acts that led to his impeachment.Nor does the case seek to enforce 52 U.S. Code 30121, which prohibits foreign governments from making contributions. It is arguably not the right of citizens to enforce that spending restriction. But the quid pro quo the president sought from Ukraine was not about money; it was for a much darker and more sinister way of assisting him in return for the release of U.S. military assistance, which had been allocated to help the country defend itself from Russia.Trump is likely to try some such tactics again. In 2016 he said he would not accept the outcome of any election he did not win. He made an unprecedented and frivolous threat to imprison his rival if he won — something that even Vladimir Putin is too discreet to say. He also invited the Russians to hack the emails of his opponents. He can and should be imputed with knowledge — at least for civil purposes, unlike the criminal standard used by special counsel Robert Mueller — to show that he sought or would have accepted the assistance of the Russians in 2016.So the case for an injunction — based on civil, not criminal law standards — is strong, even overwhelming. Apart from a pattern showing he is more than ready to act outside the law, there is Trump's brazen defense of his shakedown of Ukraine — saying he's not asking for a quid pro quo when it's right there in black and white in the White House's own doctored transcript. The objections to a claim for injunctive relief are feeble. It matters less, for example, that the impairment of the First Amendment right is small, when there is no legitimacy to the governmental act being challenged.Let the president deny there was a quid pro quo? Fine, because this opens him up to discovery and a deposition. Let the president claim executive privilege? Also fine, because there is no executive privilege to engage in a criminal act. Nor would the "political question" doctrine bar relief, because of improper second-guessing of U.S. foreign policy. It's not "foreign policy" if the president is shaking down a foreign leader to kick in to his re-election. Likewise, it is not a matter of "zoning policy" when a Chicago alderman wants a bribe to make a change.The "political question" doctrine is a bar only if the Constitution were to commit the right to extortion and bribery to the exclusive discretion of the president. Well, it doesn't.In 1952, the Supreme Court enjoined President Harry Truman from seizing a steel mill despite a serious claim that it was a matter of national security. Trump's squalid quid pro quo is a much easier case by comparison.Impossible to supervise? No, the order would also bind those around Trump: If they looked the other way, they would be in contempt, too. This is a White House where we can count on leaks aplenty.Nor do we have to look far for a plaintiff: All readers who are U.S. citizens entitled to vote have standing to bring an action protecting their right to participate in free and fair elections, without interference by foreign powers. It's a representational injury — a right not to be a victim of election-type racketeering.The attorneys general of the various states — California, New York and others — would have standing to protect the voting rights of their citizens. Indeed, they have a good record in suing Trump. The Democratic National Committee has associational standing to protect the party's candidates running in the presidential primaries who may be affected, or the party's eventual nominee.As Chief Justice John Marshall might have told us, the federal courts have inherent equity power to stop a president from committing high crimes and misdemeanors that also violate our constitutional rights — even though Congress alone can remove him from office. The misconduct to be enjoined here is of a different kind from what Richard Nixon committed during Watergate. By the time of the Nixon impeachment hearing, he had already been re-elected. There was no danger posed from another Watergate break-in, or even another cover-up.But the 2020 election is still to come, and when the Senate acquits him, Trump is free to commit yet another enormity like the shakedown of Ukraine. The impeachable offense could happen again and again.To contact the author of this story: Thomas Geoghegan at geogh711@gmail.comTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Thomas Geoghegan is a labor lawyer in Chicago. He is the author of "Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| What Democrats Can Do After the Senate Acquits Trump Posted: 02 Jan 2020 03:30 AM PST ![What Democrats Can Do After the Senate Acquits Trump]( "What Democrats Can Do After the Senate Acquits Trump") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Here's a message to Democrats and all patriots: Don't give up when the Senate acquits Donald Trump. File suit right away to prevent him from going to any foreign government to fix the election. The House bill of impeachment makes clear that Trump used the power of his office — indeed, compromised his obligation to defend the country — when he held up aid to Ukraine to extract a partisan advantage in 2020. As federal citizens, we have a right under the First Amendment to a free and fair election, without the highest government officer of the land using corrupt means to help his re-election.The lawsuit to stop Trump from continuing this course of action would not seek retroactive relief. This would not be a damages claim, but an order to stop him in the future.A plaintiff in a lawsuit has a right to seek prospective injunctive relief to stop a pattern of corrupt activity from continuing. Any threat to interfere with rights under the First Amendment is usually "irreparable injury," which justifies issuing an injunction.To say the least, there is a pattern of conduct by Trump to justify such action.Ever since the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, the federal courts have claimed an inherent equitable power to restrain violations of the Constitution. There is a controversy over whether the courts have the inherent power to award damages as well, but that would not be relevant in a suit to stop Trump from continuing the acts that led to his impeachment.Nor does the case seek to enforce 52 U.S. Code 30121, which prohibits foreign governments from making contributions. It is arguably not the right of citizens to enforce that spending restriction. But the quid pro quo the president sought from Ukraine was not about money; it was for a much darker and more sinister way of assisting him in return for the release of U.S. military assistance, which had been allocated to help the country defend itself from Russia.Trump is likely to try some such tactics again. In 2016 he said he would not accept the outcome of any election he did not win. He made an unprecedented and frivolous threat to imprison his rival if he won — something that even Vladimir Putin is too discreet to say. He also invited the Russians to hack the emails of his opponents. He can and should be imputed with knowledge — at least for civil purposes, unlike the criminal standard used by special counsel Robert Mueller — to show that he sought or would have accepted the assistance of the Russians in 2016.So the case for an injunction — based on civil, not criminal law standards — is strong, even overwhelming. Apart from a pattern showing he is more than ready to act outside the law, there is Trump's brazen defense of his shakedown of Ukraine — saying he's not asking for a quid pro quo when it's right there in black and white in the White House's own doctored transcript. The objections to a claim for injunctive relief are feeble. It matters less, for example, that the impairment of the First Amendment right is small, when there is no legitimacy to the governmental act being challenged.Let the president deny there was a quid pro quo? Fine, because this opens him up to discovery and a deposition. Let the president claim executive privilege? Also fine, because there is no executive privilege to engage in a criminal act. Nor would the "political question" doctrine bar relief, because of improper second-guessing of U.S. foreign policy. It's not "foreign policy" if the president is shaking down a foreign leader to kick in to his re-election. Likewise, it is not a matter of "zoning policy" when a Chicago alderman wants a bribe to make a change.The "political question" doctrine is a bar only if the Constitution were to commit the right to extortion and bribery to the exclusive discretion of the president. Well, it doesn't.In 1952, the Supreme Court enjoined President Harry Truman from seizing a steel mill despite a serious claim that it was a matter of national security. Trump's squalid quid pro quo is a much easier case by comparison.Impossible to supervise? No, the order would also bind those around Trump: If they looked the other way, they would be in contempt, too. This is a White House where we can count on leaks aplenty.Nor do we have to look far for a plaintiff: All readers who are U.S. citizens entitled to vote have standing to bring an action protecting their right to participate in free and fair elections, without interference by foreign powers. It's a representational injury — a right not to be a victim of election-type racketeering.The attorneys general of the various states — California, New York and others — would have standing to protect the voting rights of their citizens. Indeed, they have a good record in suing Trump. The Democratic National Committee has associational standing to protect the party's candidates running in the presidential primaries who may be affected, or the party's eventual nominee.As Chief Justice John Marshall might have told us, the federal courts have inherent equity power to stop a president from committing high crimes and misdemeanors that also violate our constitutional rights — even though Congress alone can remove him from office. The misconduct to be enjoined here is of a different kind from what Richard Nixon committed during Watergate. By the time of the Nixon impeachment hearing, he had already been re-elected. There was no danger posed from another Watergate break-in, or even another cover-up.But the 2020 election is still to come, and when the Senate acquits him, Trump is free to commit yet another enormity like the shakedown of Ukraine. The impeachable offense could happen again and again.To contact the author of this story: Thomas Geoghegan at geogh711@gmail.comTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Thomas Geoghegan is a labor lawyer in Chicago. He is the author of "Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Sanders and Trump surge, Biden rebounds in fundraising race Posted: 02 Jan 2020 03:00 AM PST  Bernie Sanders announced Thursday that his campaign had raised an impressive $34.5 million in the final three months of last year, solidifying him as the quarter's top fundraiser in the crowded Democratic presidential field. Former Vice President Joe Biden rebounded from a summer slump to take in a respectable $22.7 million over the same period. Each of the three candidates celebrated his latest fundraising for different reasons.
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| Trump has created a foreign student crisis Posted: 02 Jan 2020 03:00 AM PST  A company that spurned talent it badly needed couldn't thrive. The same is true for a country.But that isn't stopping the Trump administration from blithely driving foreign students into the open arms of other countries with its ill-advised immigration policies.For three years in a row, the number of new foreign students enrolling in American universities has fallen. In the 2015-16 academic year, 300,743 new foreign students enrolled. That number dropped to 269,383 in 2018-19, a decline of 10.4 percent as per the data of Open Doors, the Institute of International Education's (IIE) annual report that tracks university enrollments. Nor is the situation likely to improve in the academic year currently underway given that a snapshot survey of 500 universities by the IIE this fall found declining enrollment — although full stats won't be available until later in 2020.When enrollments initially started plummeting, many people blamed external factors like better educational opportunities at home or Saudi Arabia's decision to yank government scholarships from Saudi students studying abroad rather than this administration's anti-immigration agenda. While other things might have had an effect on the margin, if they were the main cause, then other countries would be experiencing a decline too. The opposite is the case.National Foundation for American Policy's Stuart Anderson points out that Canada has been attracting a record number of international students in recent years. In 2017, it experienced a 20 percent spike and then another 16 percent the following year, a phenomenon that Canadians call the "Trump bump." Meanwhile, Australia experienced a whopping 47 percent increase in new foreign students between 2015 and 2018.In particular, America is losing Chinese students while Australia is gaining them. One likely reason is that Trump has called them all spies (an absurd accusation given that that 9 out of 10 would prefer to stay on and work in America rather than return to the communist dictatorship) and threatened to ban them from the country in a naked bid to force Beijing to succumb to his trade demands. Trump didn't make good on that threat but, in 2018, he capped their visa stay to one year at a time rather than allowing them to stay for the maximum time allowed. This not only made Chinese students feel unwelcome in the United States but also made it more precarious for them to pursue an education here lest they lose their visas before finishing their program.In addition, his travel ban has of course barred foreign students from Iran and various Muslim countries.He has also proposed rules that would make it easier to brand foreign students as being "unlawfully present" and to ban them from the country for 10 years. The courts have put this rule on hold for now but the uncertainty can hardly make American universities attractive.Trump has also doubled down on sting operations to crack down on visa fraud. Last year ICE arrested 250 foreign students, mostly from India, whom it lured into the University of Farmington, a fake university that it set up in metro Detroit. For tuition fees much lower than normal, this university handed these students transcripts to satisfy the terms of their visas and, more importantly, obtain CPT (Curricular Practical Training) status. This status lets the foreign students sign up for a paid internship off campus and offset their steep tuition costs, a tempting deal because it enables them to work for more than 20 hours and get off-campus jobs. Many foreign students quit legitimate universities to join this fake one only to get caught in ICE's dragnet.But it's not just draconian enforcement tactics that are turning away foreign students. The administration's immigration policies are also making an American education an unattractive value proposition compared to other countries.Trump is doing everything in his power to make it more difficult for foreign students to work in America after they graduate, making the high-cost of an American education a bad investment. Right now, international students in highly coveted STEM fields can obtain something called the Optional Practical Training visa to work in the country for 36 months after graduation. This allows them to recover some of their tuition costs before returning home. Trump is proposing rules to cut this back dramatically.Likewise, his administration is also making it more difficult for foreign techies to work in the country long-term by rejecting new H-1B visa applications at a historically high rate. And he is making it much more difficult for those who have these visas to renew them.This is the exact opposite of what Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said the country should be doing when he ran for the presidency in 2012. He had promised to staple green cards — not just H-1Bs — to the diplomas of foreign graduates, especially in STEM fields, because it made no sense for America to lose American-trained talent to other countries. Instead, it is Canada that is running with Romney's suggestion. It is handing foreign graduates from Canadian universities many additional points when they apply for permanent residency so that they just stay in Canada rather than return to their native countries.Turning away foreign students is particularly stupid — not only because we need their skills but also their tuition dollars. Over 66 percent of them, especially undergraduates, pay top dollars for their education from out-of-pocket or through outside sources, allowing universities to subsidize tuition costs for American students. Many international graduate students, meanwhile, provide teaching and research services in exchange for a tuition reprieve, especially in STEM fields, something that allows universities to offer a more cost-effective education than if they had to hire faculty for the same jobs.Furthermore, foreign students contribute $37 billion to the American economy and create or support 450,000 jobs, according to the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers, an outfit that promotes the professional development of American college officials. Indeed, without them, the shortage of Americans in STEM fields would become even more acute because there wouldn't be enough people to train Americans, generating a downward spiral of STEM scarcity.But the most vital contributions of international students are intangible. Had it not been for them, America may not have spearheaded the IT revolution. That's because 57 percent of Silicon Valley's STEM workers were born outside the country and many of them came to the United States as students and stayed on. Many iconic IT companies such as Microsoft and Google are currently being headed by foreigners who came to America as graduate students.Instead of draining the swamp, Trump is draining talent from America that other countries are eagerly sucking up. This is a formula for making them great, not America.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com The booming stock market shows America is diseased Trump gave 'clear direction' to hold Ukraine aid, says White House official in uncovered documents Trump's 'greatest honors' include a bill by Bernie Sanders and John McCain, signed into law by Obama
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| North Korea Starts the New Year With a Threatened Bang Posted: 02 Jan 2020 02:43 AM PST  No, North Korea didn't launch an ICBM on December 25, as predicted by some observers disturbed by its recent hints about a "Christmas present" for the U.S. But we shouldn't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. Pyongyang, after all, marked the culmination of its highly anticipated end-of-year deadline with a strident threat to demonstrate a new "promising strategic weapon system."
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| Cyber attacks and electronic voting errors threaten 2020 outcome, experts warn Posted: 02 Jan 2020 02:00 AM PST  Key Democrats and election analysts say more needs to be done to ensure safe elections free from 'foreign malicious actors'Potential electronic voting equipment failures and cyber attacks from Russia and other countries pose persistent threats to the 2020 elections, election security analysts and key Democrats warn. In November significant electronic voting equipment problems occurred in an election in the vital battleground state of Pennsylvania, sparking a lawsuit by advocacy groups charging the state is using insecure electronic voting machines.Other key states like Florida and North Carolina which experienced voting problems in 2016 and Georgia which had serious equipment problems in 2018, are being urged to take precautions to curb new difficulties in 2020, say election analysts.The Brennan Center's electoral reform program last month released a study that stressed testing backup systems and electronic voting equipment before the primaries and next November's general election was needed to reduce risks of cyber attacks and equipment failures, and offered guidance about ways to recover from attacks or malfunctions.In response to these and other threats, Congress in December added $425m for election-related spending, including security measures, to a massive $1.4tn spending bill for 2020.But Democratic senators such as Mark Warner and Ron Wyden, who backed other election security bills that passed the House but were blocked by Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, still see the need for more election security measures next year, including permanent security funding and other steps to ensure safe elections.In advocating for more funding and legislation, Warner and other election security specialists cite intelligence warnings that the Kremlin will try to disrupt the election in 2020, as it did in 2016 when cyber attacks and social media campaigns sowed dissension and helped Donald Trump become president."The intelligence community has warned us that Russia will try again in 2020, and we have to be prepared," Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, told the Guardian."After months of pressure, Republican leaders in Congress have finally acknowledged that states need more resources to combat this threat – but additional money is no substitute for a permanent funding mechanism for securing and maintaining elections systems, and comprehensive legislation to protect our elections – both of which the White House and GOP leadership have been blocking for two years now," Warner added.> Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting processWarner's concerns were underscored in November when seven top agency officials, including the heads of the FBI and CIA, issued a joint statement predicting Russia, and other countries intend to meddle in the 2020 elections via cyber attacks or social media."Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions," the joint statement said.The threat of more cyber attacks, plus disinformation and social media operations to sway public opinion, has prompted the federal government to work closely with officials in all 50 states, the statement said.A Senate intelligence committee report in mid-2019 concluded that Kremlin hackers manipulated election systems in all 50 states, and succeeded in breaching systems in two Florida counties and another state, although vote totals were apparently not affected.Looking ahead at other potential election security problems, Wyden voiced concern that the $425m allocated for 2020 election administration could be used for other purposes than security measures since it was written without tight spending guidelines."While I appreciate the intent, the funding in this spending bill will most likely lead to a massive giveaway to companies that make insecure voting machines," Wyden told the Guardian. "Not only does this bill let states use federal money to buy insecure machines, it actually says money can go to office chairs, printers or anything related to running an election."Wyden added: "Congress must pass legislation to secure our entire election system, from voter registration systems and e-poll books, to voting machines and election night reporting websites."By way of example, Wyden and election security analysts note that e-poll books, which are used in numerous states such as North Carolina and Georgia to track registered voters and speed up voting, still lack national standards and could be vulnerable to attacks or failures.Likewise, the recent Brennan report cited growing usage of e-poll books as one of several potential trouble spots for the 2020 elections, and suggested that more advance planning is warranted to ensure safe elections in November. The study estimates 41 states will be using e-poll books next November."I think the period between now and next November is crucial for preparing for potential problems," said Larry Norden, the director of Brennan's electoral reform program.Norden cautions e-poll books pose a "new threat, (since) they've become so much more widespread in the last few years."Similarly, new questions are being raised about the safety of some electronic voting equipment given problems in 2019 and 2018, respectively, in Pennsylvania and Georgia.A lawsuit was filed last month to block Pennsylvania from certifying electronic voting equipment that Philadelphia has purchased, after the same machines encountered significant problems in November in undercounting votes in nearby Northampton County.The equipment was made by Nebraska based ES&S, which boasts about 50% of the national voting machine market and has been cited before for malfunctions. In Georgia in the 2018 elections, for instance, old voting machines made by ES&S were involved in counting votes in a race where reportedly about 80,000 votes were strangely not cast, sparking ongoing litigation.More recently in Georgia tests of new e-poll books in six county elections in November revealed software glitches in a few of the counties, delaying voting and spurring the use of paper records instead to check in voters.In light of the multiple concerns, Norden stressed the primaries next year "should be watched carefully so we can learn from any problems during them. They should be used as an opportunity to be better prepared in November."Norden added that "This is probably going to be the highest turnout election in most people's lives which adds to the complexity," of protecting election security.
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| Egyptian journalist says his home raided, brother arrested Posted: 02 Jan 2020 01:28 AM PST ![Egyptian journalist says his home raided, brother arrested]( "Egyptian journalist says his home raided, brother arrested") An Egyptian journalist known for his critical views of the government said on Thursday that police raided his parents' house the previous night and arrested his brother. Mohamed el-Garhy tweeted that the police came to the home of his parents, who live in a village northeast of Cairo, and asked his father for his whereabouts. In recent years, authorities have jailed dozens of Egyptian reporters and occasionally expelled some foreign journalists from the country.
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