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  • Texas attorney general asked Trump administration to revoke COVID relief funds for Harris County

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Trump administration in the spring to revoke millions of dollars in COVID relief for Harris County, which includes Houston, because the funds were earmarked to expand mail-in voting in the 2020 election.

  • Fox News and Newsmax, facing lawsuits, walk back wild fraud claims about voting-machine companies

    Facing the threat of lawsuits for defamation, Fox News and the upstart right-wing network Newsmax have begun broadcasting segments walking back wild election fraud allegations against voting-machine and software manufacturers Smartmatic and Dominion.

  • Distrust of the medical system among Black Americans poses added vaccination challenge for COVID-19

    Despite the fact that 71 percent of Black Americans say they know someone who has either died or been hospitalized after contracting COVID-19, just 42 percent said they planned to get vaccinated for it.`

  • How Biden will deal with the Pentagon's generals

    During his 34-year tenure on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he twice chaired, Biden took a keen interest in military issues, frequently visiting U.S. forces deployed overseas.

  • White House staffers were given departure instructions. Then they were told to disregard them.

    White House staffers received an email Tuesday night with instructions for vacating the building, several outlets, including CBS News and Politico, report.The memo said employees "will start departing" the week of Jan. 4, and it outlined information on everything their final paychecks to cleaning out refrigerators and microwaves.> A snippet: pic.twitter.com/qA0UZOvEUY> > — Weijia Jiang (@weijia) December 23, 2020But then on Wednesday morning, the staffers received another email telling them to disregard the previous message.> Here's text of disregard email to WH staff, per source:> > "Good morning EOP staff,> > Please disregard the below message. Updated information will be shared in the coming days.> > Thank you, White House Management Office" https://t.co/f48qWUHn0l> > — Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) December 23, 2020It's unclear what exactly prompted the change, though there's speculation it's an attempt to appease President Trump, who has not given up his longshot bid to remain in the White House.More stories from theweek.com What would actually happen if Trump tried the 'martial law' idea? A Lincoln Project ad reportedly turned Trump against Mike Pence. Pence is now bending. Senators prepare to override Trump's potential stimulus veto as Democrats push additional payments

  • S. Korea scrambles jets after Chinese and Russian intrusion into air defense zone

    South Korea said on Tuesday it had scrambled fighter jets in response to an intrusion into South Korea's air defense identification zone by 19 Russian and Chinese military aircraft.

  • Police apologize after handcuffing Black man they thought was credit card thief at Virginia mall

    The Virginia Beach Police Department will investigate the actions of the officer who arrested a Black man while he ate with his family at a Virginia mall.

  • Russian lawmakers vote for jail penalties for online slander

    Russia's lower house of parliament approved in its third and final reading on Wednesday a draft law on introducing jail terms for people found guilty of making slanderous comments on the internet or in the media. The bill, which still requires the approval of the upper house and President Vladimir Putin's signature to become law, has drawn criticism from opponents of the Kremlin who say the authorities could use it to jail critics and stifle dissent. Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny suggested that if the bill becomes law, it should be used against the Russian authorities.

  • Family of US student who broke Cayman Islands quarantine urge her release from prison

    A US college student has been jailed for four months in the Cayman Islands after she broke quarantine regulations to watch her boyfriend take part in a jet ski competition. Skylar Mack, 18, pleaded guilty to breaching a 14-day isolation requirement for visitors to the British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. Jeanne Mack, her grandmother, said: "She knows she screwed up. She cries, she wants to come home. "She knows she made a mistake, she owns to up to that, but she's pretty hysterical right now." Ms Mack, a medical student at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, was staying with Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, her boyfriend, a Cayman islands resident and professional jet ski racer. The student said she had tested negative for the coronavirus before leaving the US, and after arriving in the Cayman Islands. As part of the quarantine restrictions she was given an electronic tracking device to monitor her movements. Two days into her stay she abandoned it and went to see the jet ski competition, where she spent seven hours, according to police. She and Ramgeet both pleaded guilty to violating the quarantine requirements and were initially sentenced to 40 hours of community service, and a fine of $2,600. However, prosecutors appealed, arguing the sentence was not harsh enough, and they were then jailed. The judge, Justice Roger Chapple, said: "This was as flagrant a breach as could be imagined. It was born of selfishness and arrogance." He added: "The gravity of the breach was such that the only appropriate sentence would have been one of immediate imprisonment." The Cayman Islands has had just over 300 cases of coronavirus, and two deaths, during the pandemic. It has brought in strict regulations to keep the level of cases low.

  • Why Six Senate Republicans Voted against the COVID Relief Bill

    Congress on Monday night passed a $900 billion coronavirus relief package after months of political gridlock, with the Senate nearly unanimously voting in favor of the measure, save for six Republican senators.The 5,593-page bill handily passed in the House 359-53 before being approved by the Senate 92-6. The six votes against the measure came from Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rand Paul (Ky.) Rick Scott (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wisc.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Ted Cruz (Texas).The six senators were mostly critical of the financial and physical scale of the bill.Paul called the bill a “spending monstrosity” saying “so-called conservatives” who vote for the measure would be no better than socialist Democrats."When you vote to pass out free money, you lose your soul and you abandon forever any semblance of moral or fiscal integrity," he said.He instead supported opening the economy and trimming wasteful spending in the budget in order to stop creating additional debt for future generations.Johnson similarly said in a statement that the government does “not have an unlimited checking account.”"We must spend federal dollars — money we are borrowing from future generations — more carefully and place limits on how much we are mortgaging our children’s future."He clarified that while he supported the sweeping CARES Act in the spring as swift, massive action was needed then to “prevent an economic meltdown,” that this time around he wanted to take a more targeted approach; In September he proposed a smaller $600 billion relief bill.Scott also pushed against the “massive omnibus spending bill that mortgages our kids & grandkid’s futures.”> We must help Americans & small businesses in need but we can’t keep operating this way. > > Once again, in classic Washington style, vital programs are attached to a massive omnibus spending bill that mortgages our kids & grandkid’s futures. Therefore, I can’t support this bill. pic.twitter.com/poShVDXzHb> > -- Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) December 21, 2020He said in a tweet he would not support the bill, adding in a statement that "Washington doesn’t seem to understand that new spending today will be paid for by increased federal debt and result in a tax increase on families down the road." "The easy route is simply to go along as Congress continues to do harm to future generations of Americans, but I will not be a part of it," he said.However, Johnson said that while he was "glad a government shutdown was avoided and that financial relief will finally reach many who truly need it," he was critical of the “dysfunction” of the process."The dysfunction of Washington, D.C. was on full display as Congress combined covid relief with a massive omnibus spending bill three months past the deadline and into the current fiscal year," Johnson said. "This monstrosity was 5,593 pages long, and passed only nine hours after the Senate first saw it.""I simply could not support this dysfunction, so I voted no," he said.Cruz and Lee also pushed back against lawmakers being given just hours to read several thousand pages of legislation.In response to a tweet by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), in which the progressive lawmaker lamented having to vote on the bill without receiving adequate time to review it, Cruz agreed that the process is “absurd.”"It’s ABSURD to have a $2.5 trillion spending bill negotiated in secret and then—hours later—demand an up-or-down vote on a bill nobody has had time to read," Cruz tweeted.> .@AOC is right.> > It’s ABSURD to have a $2.5 trillion spending bill negotiated in secret and then—hours later—demand an up-or-down vote on a bill nobody has had time to read. CongressIsBroken https://t.co/EQp8BfRBHj> > -- Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 21, 2020Lee echoed these criticisms, posting a video to Twitter in which he showed how long it took just to print the bill: three minutes for just the first 100 pages of the massive bill."Because of the length it is impossible that anyone will have the opportunity to read it between now and the time that we will vote," Lee said in the video. "And I am absolutely certain that this has been cobbled together by a very small handful of members of Congress and their staffs and to the exclusion of 98% of members of Congress of both political parties in both houses.""This process, by which members of Congress are asked to defer blindly to legislation negotiated entirely in secret by four of their colleagues, must come to an end," he said.> 1/4 This is the spending bill under consideration in Congress today. I received it just moments ago, and will likely be asked to vote on it late tonight. It’s 5,593 pages long. I know there are some good things in it. I’m equally confident that there are bad things in it. pic.twitter.com/SoWXnEWYfV> > -- Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) December 21, 2020Cruz and Blackburn also criticized some of the funding areas that had made their way into the $1.4 trillion spending bill with which the COVID relief legislation was bundled. Cruz said the bill "advances the interests of the radical Left, special interests, and swamp lobbyists, with funding going towards expanding authority for more H-2B visas for foreign workers while a near record number of Americans remain unemployed[.]" It also sets the stage "for Democrats to implement the ‘Green New Deal' by claiming a ‘need' to meet the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, or zero-emission energy sources,” he said.While Blackburn acknowledged that the legislation had a number of positives, including the development and distribution of vaccines, assistance to schools and help for small businesses, she said it came at too high a cost and included a number of measures she could not support."I cannot support nearly $2.4 trillion in spending that will make recovery even harder," she said in a statement. "I have serious concerns with provisions buried in the 5,593 page bill, such as expanded visas, Pell grants for prisoners, and households with illegal aliens receiving economic impact payments. For these reasons, I voted no on passage of this legislation."

  • The disappointing downfall of Dr. Deborah Birx

    Along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Birx was seen as a potential counter to Trump and those who abetted his worst impulses.

  • Biden delays attorney general appointment

    President-elect is deliberating on his final cabinet positions before taking office

  • Australian writer detained in China sends defiant Christmas message

    SYDNEY (Reuters) -An Australian writer detained in Beijing on spying allegations has told his readers to "pursue democracy, rule of law and freedom" in a Christmas message from prison that said 300 interrogations had not yielded any evidence. Pro-democracy blogger Yang Hengjun, who is facing trial on espionage charges that he denies, has been unable to receive visits from his wife or family since he was arrested in January 2019 after he arrived at Guangzhou airport from New York. Yang said in his message that after "torture, more than 300 interrogations and a lot of verbal abuse, I am now in a place of deeper retrospective and introspective meditation", according to his former teacher, Feng Chongyi, who is based in Sydney.

  • Japanese supreme court grants retrial to 84-year-old known as world's longest death-row inmate

    Japan's highest court has upheld a ruling granting a retrial to a man described as the world's longest-serving death row inmate, a lawyer for the 84-year-old said on Wednesday. Iwao Hakamada has lived under a death sentence for more than half a century, after being convicted of robbing and murdering his boss, the man's wife, and their two teenaged children. Mr Hakamada had confessed to the crime but later recanted in court citing his allegedly brutal police interrogation and planted evidence. In a rare about-face for Japan's rigid justice system, a district court in the central city of Shizuoka in 2014 granted his request for a retrial. The court said investigators could have planted evidence and ordered the former boxer freed. Prosecutors appealed the ruling and won at the Tokyo High Court, prompting Mr Hakamada to move the case to the Supreme Court, which on Wednesday ruled in his favour, backing the retrial.

  • Should You Be Living in a Hotel?

    7 extended-stay accommodations that transform work-from-home into work-from-anywhereOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Russia’s New Territory

    In November, Russia gained a slice of somebody else’s country. It did this not through unidentified troops moving across a border, nor through hybrid warfare. Instead, it negotiated its capture in full view of, and without a single question asked by, the United States or the rest of the world.Fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh preceded the annexation. The mountainous region is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but since a 1994 ceasefire between the two nations has been controlled by ethnic Armenians. The conflict flared up again in September. Two months later came a peace deal, with Russia the winner: It mediated a ceasefire that placed the Kremlin’s ostensibly peacekeeping boots on the ground. America watched idly as this happened.As Armenia’s traditional protector, Russia held the only leverage to convince Armenia to sign this ceasefire. By signing, Yerevan gave up claims to the territories it had occupied within Azerbaijan since 1994 and gained nothing — bar a ceasefire rather than a forced surrender. In return for securing for its ally a marginally smaller humiliation, Moscow gained a present and a presence.In reality — unless America is prepared to engage fully in the peace process — Nagorno-Karabakh is now Russia’s indefinitely. The Kremlin ostensibly controls the territory for five years, with an automatic rollover for an additional five should none of the three parties to the ceasefire object six months before the end of the mandate.Russia certainly won’t. It is now gatekeeper to a region central to Europe’s energy diversification (reducing the role of Russian imports). If the region is strategically important to NATO, that makes it strategically important to the Kremlin.Armenia, for mistrust of Azerbaijan, will want the peacekeepers to stay. The short but brutal conflict has proven conclusively that Armenia cannot win militarily, and that therefore ethnic Armenians must accept either governance by Azerbaijan or the protectorate of Russia. Weak and broken, Yerevan finds it less of a humiliation to accept Russian tutelage in Nagorno-Karabakh, if only to deny an archenemy a complete victory. But this is a longer-term disaster for the Armenians. It means they are effectively trapped in a Russian embrace. They cannot turn west and cannot turn east — either diplomatically or for investment — because the Russians are now in charge.Though traditionally thought of by Moscow as “on the other side,” Azerbaijan — owing to lukewarm support from the United States and EU in recent years — has been steadily deepening diplomatic and economic relations with Russia, in part from necessity and a lack of serious alternatives. Yet now, with Russian military boots on Azerbaijani territory for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow’s leverage has also become economic leverage: By militarily guaranteeing a transport corridor across Armenia — closed before the ceasefire — to Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhichevan, Russia now controls Azerbaijan’s long-sought-after, direct land route from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean and Europe.The West certainly could have seen this coming. This is how it always begins: A toehold soon morphs into a footprint. Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, South Ossetia, Abkhazia — the list of examples goes on. Russian presence becomes Russian control: the only logic of Putin’s neo-czarist ambitions.Indeed, now, only a matter of weeks after troop deployment, the Kremlin is maneuvering: Lines on maps have started to bend and flex. On the Russian Ministry of Defense website, a page shows a map outlining the area where Russian peacekeepers, by the terms of the agreement, are to be stationed and will have jurisdiction within which to operate. On December 13, miraculously, the land they control had expanded. This was changed back to the original on the next day, after Azerbaijani diplomatic pressure. But this activity demonstrates that Kremlin cartographers are getting creative — and very early in this intervention.Rumors now swell of Russian “passportization” in Nagorno-Karabakh. Manufacturing new demographic realities on the ground by granting citizenship has been used to maintain influence in the internal affairs in other post-Soviet nations. Once Russians occupy the area, the Russian state is obliged to step in.It is a classic of the Kremlin repertoire. It preceded the invasion of Crimea. It happened in two regions in Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, again before wars broke out, with Russia coming out as the chief beneficiary. Most recently, passportization has been aggressively deployed in eastern Ukraine, through a helpfully streamlined process. The Kremlin forecasts that there will be over one million Russian citizens bearing newly minted documents by the end of the year. In all of these situations, Russia’s grip is secure.Passportization would mean that a negotiated settlement on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh — what was supposed to be some form of autonomy within Azerbaijan, as in Soviet days — will never materialize. It will instead turn into a Russian-passport protectorate, giving Russia the pretext — or in Moscow’s lexicon, the legal right — to jump into the region were any imagined threat to its “citizens” to emerge.Considering the U.S.-led assistance now poured into Ukraine in the wake of Russian destabilization, it is surprising that more precautionary measures are not being taken in the South Caucasus.Yet time remains for America to step in: The ceasefire shall give way to negotiations for a final peace deal, with much left to decide. The U.S. must fully and comprehensively oppose passportization. American companies should invest in infrastructure and energy projects in the region so as to limit Russia’s room for maneuver. And U.S.-led joint investment initiatives between Armenia and Azerbaijan would help to cut the dependence of both on Russia.It’s time for America to step up diplomatic and economic efforts and reinsert itself in this process. Otherwise, Russia’s empire will continue to expand unchecked.

  • Israel, Arab nations want a say in Biden's Iran negotiations. Here's why his advisers are skeptical.

    Representatives from Israel and several Gulf Arab nations want their countries to have a seat at the table when the Biden administration begins negotiating with Iran next year, Politico reports.Ambassadors to the United States from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain — the countries involved in the Abraham Accords — told Politico they have more at stake than the U.S. and European countries who crafted the original Iran nuclear deal in 2015, and they think the U.S. is in a stronger position now than during the Obama administration. The U.S. would sacrifice leverage by rehashing the old agreement, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said. If regional partners were included in the negotiations, they believe they could help secure a brand new agreement that not only makes it more challenging for Iran to build a nuclear weapon, but also one that targets its ballistic missiles program and use of proxy militias.Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees Biden should not "freeze" the parties out of talks. "After all, what the Biden administration should want is not just an agreement that the Iranians accept, but one that will last," he told Politico.Still, Politico notes, people in Biden's orbit remember Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu working hard to "scuttle the 2015 nuclear agreement, making moves many of them deemed downright insulting" to former President Barack Obama. Therefore, they fear Israel and the Arab states may "act as spoilers" in future talks."Renegotiating everything is just unrealistic to anybody who talks to an Iranian," the official said. "The idea that we have leverage to just start over is nice in theory, but in practice there's no way the Iranians will go for it," one former U.S. official said. "If Biden comes in and that's the stand, the Iranians will be convinced that there's no serious engaging with the U.S." Read more at Politico.More stories from theweek.com What would actually happen if Trump tried the 'martial law' idea? A Lincoln Project ad reportedly turned Trump against Mike Pence. Pence is now bending. Senators prepare to override Trump's potential stimulus veto as Democrats push additional payments

  • Trump news – live: President fleeing to Florida amid Covid veto chaos, as staff begin clearing out for Biden

    Follow the latest updates

  • NBA champion Anthony Davis talks sneakers and need for youth-led social justice movements

    L.A. Lakers superstar Anthony Davis is launching an initiative with eBay called Santa Sneaker Drop, helping sneaker lovers get some of the most exclusive kicks online using augmented reality technology. Davis believes the next generation will continue to lead the movement toward social justice.

  • 35 Outdoor Fire Pit Ideas That Are Lit

    Extend the outdoor season and get ready to smell the campfireOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest