Incoming White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says the president-elect will allow his attorney general to investigate independently. She also discusses Cabinet nominees and how the administration will work with Republicans in Congress.
White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, threatened to fire doctors if they disclosed any information to the public, reported the Washington Post.
The Army general in charge of getting COVID-19 vaccines across the United States apologized on Saturday for “miscommunication” with states over the number of doses to be delivered in the early stages of distribution. Perna's remarks came a day after a second vaccine was added in the fight against COVID-19, which has killed more than 312,000 people in the U.S. Governors in more than a dozen states have said the federal government has told them that next week’s shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be less than originally projected. Perna acknowledged the criticism and accepted blame.
Pentagon officials have been left "stunned" after acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered a "Pentagon-wide halt to cooperation" with President-elect Joe Biden's transition, Axios reports.Miller, according to the report, on Thursday night ordered officials to cancel transition meetings that had previously been scheduled, "which stunned officials throughout the Pentagon." Officials reportedly were not clear on what led to the decision, and Axios says a top Biden official wasn't aware of the order.A senior Defense Department official told Axios this was a "simple delay of the last few scheduled meetings until after the new year," saying they had "fewer than two dozen remaining meetings on the schedule today and next week" and staff was "overwhelmed by the number of meetings." The official added, "With the holidays we are taking a knee for two weeks. We are still committed to a productive transition."But Axios writes that officials "across the Defense Department" were shocked by the move, which comes after President Trump delayed the official beginning of Biden's transition while refusing to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. Read more at Axios. More stories from theweek.com 7 feel-good cartoons about the COVID vaccine breakthrough 5 insanely funny cartoons about Trump's election-fraud failure Trump's ultimate self-own
"I'm f---ing hitting people with the car," the officer says, before backtracking after another officer appears to inform him that the camera is on.
It is often considered the most secretive and ruthless of all spy networks, emerging briefly from the shadows to confront Israel's enemies before vanishing once more. But a wave of nail-biting spy thrillers on streaming websites, as well as last month’s high profile assassination of an Iranian scientist, have placed Mossad firmly in the public eye. Former spies in the elite intelligence service say it is always on the lookout for recruits as it adapts to new dangers in the region, and that television programmes such as Apple TV's "Tehran" and Netflix's "The Spy," are fuelling applications. “When people see the James Bond movies, or Tehran, they want to be a part of it,” former Mossad agent Avner Avraham, who says it was 007 that first drew him to the service, told the Daily Telegraph. “You can travel, the government pays you, it's fun, it's sometimes dangerous and you are very proud to serve your country...and so people want to join," said Mr Avraham, who worked as a Mossad officer for 28 years. “Tehran” in particular has some parallels with events unfolding in the real world today, as it features a young, female undercover Mossad agent on operations in the Iranian capital. On November 27, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was gunned down near Tehran in an ambush that seemed to have been plucked straight from the script of the Israeli spy series, which was first broadcast on public network Kan.
The prime minister says there will be "more than enough" COVID-19 vaccines for every New Zealander. Spare doses will go to Pacific nations.
As the coronavirus spread throughout the U.S., bigotry toward Asian Americans was not far behind, fueled by the news that COVID-19 first appeared in China. The information quickly got distorted in the U.S., spurring racist memes on social media that portrayed Chinese people as bat eaters responsible for spreading the virus, and reviving century-old tropes about Asian food being dirty. Fueling the fire, President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as “the China virus.”
We can’t wait to check inOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest
Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, the freshly pardoned former national security adviser who has since dove into a conspiratorial rabbit hole, has once again called for the military to step in and overturn the 2020 election results.In a Friday appearance on the right-wing network Newsmax, Flynn insisted that he's "not calling for" martial law — something he has endorsed in the past. He'd simply like President Trump to order the military to "rerun an election" in swing states, earning condemnation from current and former military officials alike.In response to a clip of Flynn's Newsmax appearance, retired Gen. Tony Thomas reminded Flynn that he knows better than to make such wild claims. "You know that leveraging the military to 'rerun elections' is a totally inappropriate role for the profession," the former commander of the United States Special Operations Command tweeted. "Stop!"> Mike, stop. Just stop. You are a former soldier. You know that leveraging the military to “rerun elections” is a totally inappropriate role for the profession. You are also undercutting the extraordinary trust and confidence America has in their military. Stop!> > — Tony Thomas (@TonyT2Thomas) December 18, 2020Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville didn't single out Flynn directly, but did decry his actions with a Friday statement. "There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election," the leaders affirmed.Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a similar point last week. "We have established a very long 240-year tradition of an apolitical military that does not get involved in domestic politics," Milley told NPR amid right-wing calls for the military to overturn the election.More stories from theweek.com 7 feel-good cartoons about the COVID vaccine breakthrough 5 insanely funny cartoons about Trump's election-fraud failure Trump's ultimate self-own
Although the legislation has not been released yet, the deal is expected to include direct payments of $600 for qualifying Americans.
It was only on Wednesday that Boris Johnson was accusing Sir Keir Starmer of being the Grinch who stole Christmas. After the Labour leader questioned whether the Prime Minister was “blundering into another major error” by allowing people a five day festive reprieve from the coronavirus restrictions, Mr Johnson bullishly replied: “I wish he had the guts to say what he really wants to do which is to cancel Christmas.” Yet as the Prime Minister metamorphosed from Santa to Scrooge before the public’s eyes on Saturday, many could have been forgiven for wondering why he didn’t have "the guts" to pull the plug when, by his own admission, he was puzzled back in November as to why Tier 3 “wasn’t delivering the results in Kent”. The claim appeared to cast doubt over Mr Johnson’s insistence that the sudden seasonal U-turn had been sparked by “transmissibility” data on a new variant strain of Covid that only emerged on Friday. The last time the Prime Minister was at the Downing Street lectern he was offering us Miracle on 34th Street. What was this, Pinocchio’s Christmas?
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, incoming second gentleman Doug Emhoff, will receive their vaccinations the week after the Bidens.
A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far. The crisis fueled by the powerful painkiller fentanyl could have been far worse if it wasn't for the nearly 3,000 times Narcan was used from January to the beginning of November to save someone from the brink of death, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday. The data reflects the number of times people report using Narcan to the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project, a city-funded program that coordinates San Francisco’s response to overdose, or return to refill their supply.
The U.S. government at the federal, state, and local levels is using Chinese drones that the Chinese Communist Party is exploiting for espionage. That is the public conclusion of a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. Citing “security concerns,” other departments have all-but-explicitly publicly made the same claims, and some have begun to take steps to limit the purchase of Chinese drones.Drones made in China and operated by Americans map U.S. infrastructure, agriculture, railroads, government buildings, power plants, disaster-relief operations, and the movements of law-enforcement officers. The data collected in those drone flights are believed to be sent back to China, where there is no divide between civil and military sectors. The Commerce Department’s listing on Friday of one major Chinese drone company on the U.S. entities list makes it difficult for U.S. companies to buy its products and underscores the growing sense of urgency to end their access to the United States. But it is time to go further. The U.S. government at all levels should immediately stop purchasing Chinese drones and end Chinese drone companies’ access to the U.S. commercial market.The U.S. dependence on Chinese drones and the parts that go into drones is unsustainable. While there are U.S. companies waiting to meet demand if Chinese drones are excluded from the American market, there are still too few of them to meet the U.S. government’s needs, and some American drone companies still rely on cheap Chinese parts. This is one of the arguments against cutting off access to the Chinese drone market. But the risks to national security are too great to move slowly, and so in addition to cutting off access to the Chinese drone market, the U.S. should also expand existing Pentagon efforts to build an American and American-ally drone-manufacturing base that does not rely on Chinese-made parts. One can easily see how a national emergency or a conflict over the defense of democratic Taiwan could require ramping up the scale of production of drones. Depending on China for that should be out of the question.Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord has been a champion for strengthening American sovereignty by developing an industrial base for critical technologies in the U.S. and in allied countries. At a recent Hudson Institute event with me, she touted the Pentagon’s Trusted Capital Marketplace, which would expand the options for secure drone manufacturers. This initiative should become a top national-security priority across the U.S. government and private sectors.It’s important to counter companies such as Da Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Company (DJI), a Chinese-owned drone behemoth headquartered in Shenzhen, China. It dominates the American drone market. Its low cost has boxed out the American and ally market, giving it a nearly two-thirds share in the United States and Canada.But DJI is more than just a market leader. Like other Chinese technology programs and companies such as Huawei, it also enables Chinese espionage and the Chinese surveillance state, specifically of the Xinjiang concentration camps.An August 2017 Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau memorandum says: “The Chinese government directorates most likely receiving the data from DJI’s cloud are the offices responsible for defense, critical infrastructure, traffic controlling, and cyber offense . . .” Officials said they have “moderate confidence” that the DJI’s commercial drones and software are “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.” The flurry of other agency actions to slow the use of DJI drones suggests that officials now have more than “moderate” confidence this is occurring.Other government agencies, such as the Department of Defense -- with few exceptions for some applications -- have stopped using Chinese drones. As of this fall, the Department of Justice has also banned DOJ funds from being used to purchase them. The largest agency that uses drones is the Department of Interior. The DOI has more than 800 drones, all of which are either made in China or have Chinese parts. They use these drones for search and rescue, fighting wildfires, and dealing with other natural disasters that may threaten life or property. In October, the Wall Street Journal reported that the DOI was grounding its entire fleet of aerial drones, citing a national-security risk from Chinese manufacturers.We are aware of some of DJI’s ghastly cooperation inside of China. In 2017, just when U.S. officials were sounding alarm bells, DJI signed an agreement with the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Public Security Department (XARPSD) to deploy DJI drones for “stability maintenance” and “counter-terrorism.” This summer, drone footage went viral on American social-media platforms that showed a DJI drone monitoring Chinese paramilitary police escorting Uyghur Muslims -- shackled and blindfolded -- at a train station in Xinjiang, a city notorious for its “re-education camp” where the Chinese government engages in rape, abortions, forced sterilization, torture, and other means of religious and cultural genocide.DJI was also eager to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This spring, it gave away free drones to 43 law-enforcement agencies in 22 U.S. states to outrageously enforce government social-distancing guidelines. That’s right: The Chinese company that enabled China’s government to monitor Chinese Muslims for compliance in concentration camps sought to enable U.S. governments to monitor Americans’ behavior for compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic.Some members of Congress have been tracking the issue and trying to legislatively mandate that the U.S. government stop using Chinese drones and end its dependency on Chinese component parts for the drone market. Last year, Senator Rick Scott (R., Fla.) and Representative Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) led a bipartisan coalition to introduce the American Security Drone Act. If enacted, it would, among other things, prohibit federal departments and agencies from buying any foreign commercial off-the-shelf drone or unmanned-aircraft system manufactured or assembled in countries identified as national-security threats.For unclear reasons, and despite a bipartisan consensus that helped place drone-security provisions in the House version of the recent defense bill, the Senate stripped them out. The final bill sent to President Trump’s desk leaves the problem unaddressed. So DJI drones are still free to flood the U.S. market and send their images and data to the Chinese Communist Party. The bipartisan coalition focusing on this issue should expand and Congress should focus on the issue in the new year. In the meantime, with only a few weeks left of the Trump administration’s term, Trump should issue an executive order addressing the national security risks of Chinese drones, and in particular DJI drones. The sooner we can get Chinese drones off the market, the safer we’ll be.
Sources say as {President Trump’s time at the White House dwindles down, he stays cooped up in the “presidential man cave” of the Oval Office, avoiding talks about the future.
Pope Francis on Sunday appeared to add his own thumbs-down to widespread criticism of an unorthodox nativity scene in St. Peter's Square, telling visitors to instead visit a nearby exhibition of traditional crèches. At his last Sunday blessing and address before Christmas, Francis also said the holy day that marks the birth of Jesus had been "kidnapped" by consumerism. Speaking from his window overlooking the square, Francis twice urged people to visit an outdoor exhibit under the square's colonnade where 100 small traditional nativity scenes are on display.
The Trump administration has notified Congress that it intends to shut the last two remaining US consulates in Russia. The State Department told lawmakers last week that it would permanently close the consulate in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok and temporarily suspend operations at the consulate in Yekaterinburg, just east of the Ural Mountains. The notice was sent to Congress on December 10 but received little attention at the time. That was three days before it was made public that Russian was suspected of a hack into US government and private computer systems that has raised grave cybersecurity fears. It comes as Mr Trump has been urged to condemn Russia's apparent involvement in the massive cyberattack, which is believed to have gone undetected for nine months. Last night, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, said: “The news of the significant and far-reaching cyber-attacks targeting United States government agencies and corporations is further disturbing evidence that malign actors, including Russia, remain intent on undermining our national security and democracy. “Sadly and alarmingly, the Trump Administration has for four years turned a blind eye to Putin’s attacks on our American democracy, including his ongoing efforts to attack our election systems and undermine faith in our democratic institutions. “The era of impunity for our adversaries’ assault on our democracy is over.”
Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison bought 98% of the island of Lanai in 2012 for an estimated $300 million.
First, Theresa Pirozzi’s 85-year-old dad got sick and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Now, instead of getting ready for Christmas, Pirozzi is anxiously awaiting updates from the hospital where both of her parents are in intensive care with the coronavirus. The couple are emblematic of the crisis deepening at an alarming rate in California, where hospitals are being stretched to their limits as the virus explodes across the state.
Donald Trump discussed the possibility of imposing martial law to overturn the election with Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, it was reported in the US. According to the New York Times, the president asked Mr Flynn to expand on the idea at a White House meeting on Friday. The meeting was the latest surreal twist in Mr Trump's relentless - and up to now unsuccessful - attempt to reverse his crushing defeat by Joe Biden. Mr Flynn, who was pardoned by Mr Trump after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI during its investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, has emerged as one of the most outspoken supporters of the claim that Mr Biden's victory was "rigged". Undeterred by court after court rejecting legal bids to overturn Mr Trump's defeat and the Electoral College confirming Mr Biden's victory, Mr Flynn proposed more drastic measures on the conservative political website, Newsmax.
