Shreveport

Donald Trump is suddenly scared of Mike Bloomberg — as he should be

Mike Bloomberg probably isn’t going to win the Democratic nomination for president. But he might beat Donald Trump anyway. The reason? Well, there are a couple billion of them — namely, the $2 billion Bloomberg plans to spend on Democrats' behalf.

Dems soften tone after Nadler dust-up

The seven House Democrats prosecuting Trump have adopted a more deferential tone.

Ex-Maryland police officer has been charged with raping and attempting to transmit HIV to a woman he pulled over

A Maryland Grand Jury has indicted former police officer Martique Vanderpool on charges that he raped and attempted to expose a woman with HIV.

A University of Minnesota student was arrested in China and sentenced to 6 months in prison for tweeting cartoons making fun of President Xi Jingping

According to Chinese court documents obtained by Axios, 20-year-old Luo Daiqing was arrested after returning to Wuhan for summer break.

US military investigating after finding Pornhub video of Navy service members shot through peephole

The Navy is reportedly investigating videos found on the website Pornhub that they believe show unsuspecting service members through a peephole in a bathroom.The videos were discovered earlier this month by an agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Series, according to a report by NBC News.

Damaged By Drone Strike: Suleimani's Sainthood Is Now Being Questioned

Iran’s brand is thinning among the Shi’a and Suleimani’s departure creates breathing room for the Shi’a in the region.

Bodies of U.S. firefighters retrieved from Australian air crash site

The bodies of three U.S. firefighters who died in a plane crash earlier this week in Australia's remote bushland while battling a fierce wildfire have been recovered, the police said on Saturday as investigators started probe into the accident. A spokeswoman for Australia's New South Wales state police confirmed the recovery to Reuters in an e-mail. "They have been taken for a post mortem examination to confirm ID," the spokeswoman said.

Before March for Life, Betsy DeVos stirs controversy by comparing 'choice' of slavery, abortion

Before March for Life, Betsy DeVos invoked Abraham Lincoln, suggesting his anti-slavery view is similar to anti-abortion stances. Historians disagree.

Successor to slain Iran general will be murdered if he kills Americans: U.S. envoy

The successor to the Iranian commander killed in a U.S. drone strike would suffer the same fate if he followed a similar path by killing Americans, the U.S. special representative for Iran said, according to the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

Thunberg fires back at Mnunchin after college degree jab

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin said Greta Thunberg can discuss fossil fuel divestment "after she goes and studies economics in college."

Victims' bodies still at New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel months after collapse

* Wind blows tarp off one of two bodies amid ruins * Unstable building to be imploded in MarchThree months after the partial collapse of the Hard Rock hotel construction site on the tip of New Orleans’s historic French Quarter, a macabre reminder of the tragedy that claimed three lives was visible to passersby this week.Among the collapsed building’s twisted remains and rubble, the dangling legs of a wedged corpse were revealed to the public after a tarpaulin sheet covering the body was blown away by wind.The gruesome sight came as city officials are scrambling to dismantle the 18-storey, 350-room hotel, which remains an eyesore and still holds the trapped remains of two workers, Quinnyon Wimberly and José Ponce Arreola.After images of the exposed corpse provoked outrage on social media, city firefighters installed a new tarp on Wednesday afternoon. As of Thursday morning the covering remained intact, as police maintained a heavy presence around the collapsed building.The mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, urged members of the public and the media not to photograph or share images of the body.“To be clear: capturing or sharing images of the victims in such a condition is irresponsible, it is indefensible, and it is not who we are as New Orleanians,” a statement from the mayor’s office read. “We urge news outlets, residents, and social media users to have nothing to do with making a tragic situation needlessly worse.”Cantrell has faced significant criticism for her handling of the saga and it remains unclear if the collapse is being criminally investigated. Last week, city officials announced new plans to implode the building by mid-March, after the firm that owns the site – 1031 Canal Street Development – had lobbied for a gradual demolition process that would have extended into next year.The mayor’s office said on Wednesday that “respectful recovery of the remains” is still a “top priority” but that the building’s continued instability had made recovery “extremely difficult and very dangerous”. One of the bodies is trapped over 11 storeys above street level.A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office declined to comment further on Thursday.The city is preparing for the annual Mardi Gras season, which draws about a million tourists to New Orleans in February and brings in about $400m to the local economy.The collapse has also drawn attention to the plight of the city’s undocumented community after one worker, Delmer Joel Ramírez Palma, was deported to Honduras by federal authorities, having been hospitalized due to injuries sustained during the incident.Ramírez Palma had alerted authorities to dangers in the construction process before the collapse and was interviewed by Spanish language TV in the aftermath. He had lived in New Orleans for 18 years.Several lawsuits have been filed against the project’s developers and contracts, citing allegations of negligence. Plaintiffs include both bystanders and workers injured during the collapse.

Photos show Republican senators passing the time at Trump's lengthy impeachment trial by playing with fidget spinners

Sen. Richard Burr handed out a number of the toys, designed for restless kids, to his Republican colleagues on Thursday.

Mexico sees rise in gangs, vigilantes recruiting children

One day after a vigilante group revealed that it was using children as young as 8 as “recruits” for armed defense patrols, Mexico's president said Thursday that drug cartels too are recruiting ever-younger kids. The whole issue has sparked a debate in Mexico over the use of children in armed confrontations, with rights groups saying the practice threatens not only kids' safety, but their mental health. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that because social programs are giving more youths opportunities to study or work, drug cartels are having trouble finding gunmen, leading them to recruit children.

China Praised By Germany For Transparency in Combating Virus

(Bloomberg) -- China is doing a better job and the world community is more prepared in dealing with the new coronavirus than they were during the 2002 to 2003 SARS episode, Germany’s health minister said in an interview.“There’s a big difference to SARS. We have a much more transparent China,” Jens Spahn told Bloomberg TV on Friday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. “The action of China is much more effective in the first days already.”The World Health Organization on Thursday stopped short of calling the new SARS-like virus from central China a global health emergency.Chinese official have imposed travel restrictions on millions of people as Singapore reported a case of the new virus.Read More:WHO Says Coronavirus Remains Local Chinese Emergency for NowSingapore Reports Virus Case as China Limits Some TravelWuhan Virus Lockdown Casts Cloud Over Industry & Tech HubMapping the Outbreak of China’s CoronavirusGlobal health authorities are also better prepared today, said Spahn.“We learned a lot because of SARS. The WTO has reformed, developed permanent institutions of exchange,” the 39-year-old former under-secretary of finance said. “We know what do. That’s an important signal for people back home too.”G20 health ministers have been rehearsing for emergencies since SARS and Ebola, he added.“Our national health systems in Europe and in the U.S., by the way in many western countries -- we are able to deal with this. As soon as somebody is found with this infection, he’ll be put in an isolated station,” said Spahn.The virus is believed to have emerged last month in a seafood and wildlife market in Wuhan, spreading from infected animals to humans.To contact the reporters on this story: Arne Delfs in Berlin at adelfs@bloomberg.net;Francine Lacqua in Davos, Switzerland at flacqua@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt, Andrew BlackmanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Want To Start A War With America? Go Try To Sink An Aircraft Carrier

Iran and China shouldn't test their luck.

General Says U.S. Troops Deployed to Middle East by Trump Admin. May Be There for ‘Quite a While’

Marine General Frank McKenzie, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, warned troops deployed as part of a recent surge that he was “not sure how long you’re going to stay” in the region.“You’re here because I requested that you come,” McKenzie said to sailors and Marines aboard the USS Bataan amphibious assault ship, according to the Associated Press. “I’m not sure how long you’re going to stay in the theater. We’ll work that out as we go ahead. Could be quite a while, could be less than that, just don’t know right now.”McKenzie was addressing a small contingent of the 20,000 troops who have been deployed to the Middle East in the last eight months due to escalating tensions with Iran.The general told reporters that while Iran is “deterred right now, the nation “continues to pose a very real threat” to U.S. forces and interests. Iran said that they “did not intend to kill” American troops earlier this month, following a retaliatory rocket attack on U.S. military bases in Iraq.“Iran is very hard to read,” McKenzie said. “So I would say the fact that things are quiet for a while does not mean that necessarily things are getting better.”The U.S. caused waves on January 6 following the leak of a draft letter to Iraq’s Ministry of Defense that implied U.S.-led coalition forces were planning to withdraw from the country, only for Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley to then say the letter was a “mistake.”The State Department then confirmed that U.S. forces would stay in Iraq after Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to withdraw U.S. forces from the country.“America is a force for good in the Middle East,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. “Any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership — not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East.”

'End of the world': Wuhan a ghost town under quarantine

Wuhan residents called for help and shared worries of food shortages Thursday, with streets in the virus-hit central Chinese city left deserted after it was put on lockdown. After he bought some, the person behind him in the queue bought the remaining stock in the shop.

'The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions': did Arkansas kill an innocent man?

Revealed: two years after Ledell Lee was executed, damning evidence emerges that experts say could prove his innocenceThe day before Ledell Lee was executed on 20 April 2017, he talked to the BBC from death row. He said that while he could not prevent the state of Arkansas from killing him, he had a message for his executioners: “My dying words will always be, as it has been: ‘I am an innocent man’.”Almost two years after Lee was strapped to a gurney and injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs, it looks increasingly likely he was telling the truth: he went to his death an innocent man. New evidence has emerged that suggests Lee was not guilty of the brutal murder of a woman in 1993 for which his life was taken.The deceased inmate’s sister Patricia Young lodged a lawsuit on Thursday with the circuit court of Pulaski county, Arkansas, petitioning city authorities and the local police department in Jacksonville to release crime scene materials to her family.The ACLU and the Innocence Project, who are investigating the case on the family’s behalf, believe state-of-the-art forensic examination of the materials, including DNA testing and fingerprint analysis, could definitively prove Arkansas did indeed execute an innocent man.An 81-page filing in the lawsuit provides damning new evidence that key aspects of the prosecution case against Lee were deeply flawed. The complaint includes expert opinion from a number of world-leading specialists who find glaring errors in the way forensic science and other evidence was interpreted.The lawsuit also includes a bombshell affidavit from Lee’s post-conviction attorney who admits to having struggled with substance abuse and addiction throughout the years in which he represented him.Lawyers who prepared the filing, led by Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU and the Innocence Project’s Nina Morrison, conclude: “It is now clear that the state’s forensic experts from trial misinterpreted the evidence in plain sight, and their flawed opinions were further distorted by the state in its zeal to convict [Lee] of the crime. The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions about the shaky evidentiary pillars on which the state executed Ledell Lee.”Innocence has always been the achilles heel of America’s death penalty: how to justify judicially killing prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted. The question is far from academic: since 1973 no fewer than 167 death row inmates have been exonerated.The most harrowing question is whether innocent prisoners have been executed before the flawed nature of their convictions emerged. In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest that innocent men have been put to death.They include Cameron Todd Willingham executed in Texas in 2004 for allegedly having caused a fire that killed his three young daughters. After the execution, further evidence emerged that conclusively showed that he could not have set the fire.The Columbia Human Rights Law Review carried out a groundbreaking investigation in which it concluded Carlos DeLuna was innocent when he was executed – also by Texas – in 1989. The six-year study discovered that the convicted prisoner had almost certainly been confused with another man, a violent criminal who shared the name Carlos.Now Ledell Lee looks as though he may be added to the grim rollcall of the wrongly executed. He relentlessly insisted he was not guilty from the moment he was arrested less than two hours after the brutally beaten body of Debra Reese was discovered in her home in Jacksonville on 9 February 1993.The difficulties with the case against Lee began almost immediately. He was picked up nowhere near the crime scene and was not in possession of any possessions that could be linked to the break-in at Reese’s home.The only evidence against him was inconclusive at best. There were two eyewitnesses, but they gave conflicting reports of the suspect’s identification.> In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest innocent men have been put to deathThe crime scene was shocking, with blood splattered over the walls and floor. Yet when Lee was arrested on the same day detectives could find no blood on his clothes or body including under his fingernails and nothing was found in a forensic search of his house.Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that it took two trials to find Lee guilty and sentence him to death. The first trial collapsed after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.The ACLU and Innocence Project took up Lee’s case very late in the day having been asked to get involved shortly before his scheduled execution date. What they discovered when they opened the case records astounded even these experienced death penalty lawyers.Very quickly they established there were major problems with the prosecution case against Lee. One area that especially concerned them was the inadequacy of Lee’s legal representation, both during the second trial in which defense attorneys inexplicably failed to call alibi witnesses that could have placed Lee elsewhere at the time of the murder, and in terms of the help he received at the appeal stage of his case.At one post-conviction hearing, a lawyer working for the state of Arkansas approached the judge and raised concerns about Lee’s attorney, Craig Lambert. “Your honor, I don’t do this lightly, but I’m going to ask that the court require him to submit to a drug test,” the counsel said. “He’s just not with us … His speech is slurred.”In an affidavit obtained since Lee’s execution, signed by Lambert in October, the lawyer admits: “I was struggling with substance abuse and addiction in those years. I attended inpatient rehab. Ledell’s case was massive and I wasn’t in the best place personally to do what was necessary.”Partly as a result of poor legal representation, terrible errors were made in Lee’s defense – both at trial and for years afterwards during the appeals process. The complaint goes into detail about these “deeply troubling” shortcomings.One of the key examples relates to the marks found on the victim’s cheek. The state’s experts mistakenly interpreted the marks as having come from a pattern on a rug in Reese’s bedroom where she had been beaten to death with a wooden tire club.In fact, the filing says, the pattern on the body’s cheek did not match that on the rug. Instead it was consistent with the murderer stomping on Reese’s face directly with his shoe.That is critically significant because the shoes that Lee was wearing that day, which the state used during the trial as evidence against him, were incompatible in the composition of their soles with the injury pattern on Reese’s face.To establish this point, an affidavit is provided by Michael Baden, former chief pathologist for New York who is recognized internationally as a leading forensic pathologist. He concludes: “The soles of Mr Lee’s sneakers have a much more closely spaced pattern than was transferred in the cheek imprint.”That inconsistency is just one of many that were uncovered when Baden and four other specialists were invited to review the case.Lee was executed in a flurry. When the state of Arkansas realized its supply of one of its three lethal drugs, the sedative midazolam, was about to expire at the end of 2017 with no hope of replacing it due to a global ban on medicines being sent to the US for use in executions, it went into overdrive.It announced plans to kill eight prisoners in 11 days.The declaration prompted revulsion from around the US and the world and accusations that the state was engaging in conveyor-belt executions. It was in that climate that attempts by the ACLU and the Innocence Project to have materials gathered at the crime scene of Reese’s murder released for DNA testing fell on deaf ears.Though the lawyers presented a strong argument that DNA testing could be crucial in casting doubt on Lee’s conviction and pointing towards the real killer, a federal district court denied the request on grounds that Lee had “simply delayed too long” in asking for the materials.It is too late now for Lee. But his lawyers hope that it is not too late to get to the bottom of the case posthumously.The city of Jacksonville is in possession of a rich array of crime scene materials including “Negroid” hairs collected from Reese’s bedroom and fingernail scrapings likely to contain DNA from the actual killer – Lee or otherwise.“This evidence can now be tested with state-of-the-art methods unavailable at trial, and compared to Mr Lee’s unique DNA profile,” the filing says.After a welter of legal challenges, Arkansas succeeded in killing four prisoners in one week, including the first double execution held in the US in a single day since 2001. The first of the four to die was Ledell Lee.Should Arkansas now agree belatedly to hand over the crime scene materials for testing, he may yet be proven to have been, just as he always said he was, an innocent man.

'Serious safety risk': Man arrested after pointing laser at planes, temporarily blinding one pilot

Two planes were struck by a laser, temporarily blinding one pilot, as they flew into Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport on Wednesday night.

Bernie Sanders is embracing an endorsement from Joe Rogan, who's getting blasted for his past sexist and racist comments

Some Sanders supporters praised the candidate for reaching across the aisle, while others scorned him for accepting Rogan's support.

Leading white nationalist accused of threats on message app

A leading white nationalist has been indicted and arrested on federal charges that he threatened to rape the wife of a person with whom he was having a dispute. Christopher Cantwell, a New Hampshire resident who rose to prominence in 2017 after a violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is accused of using the Telegram messaging app to make the threat on June 16, 2019. Cantwell pleaded guilty in 2018 to assault after he was accused of using pepper spray against two counterprotesters during a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

Philippine President Duterte threatens to end military deal with U.S.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned the United States on Thursday he would repeal an agreement on deployment of troops and equipment for exercises if Washington did not reinstate the visa of a political ally.

Billionaire Draws Ire For Saying Africa Loves Donald Trump

(Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Next Africa newsletter and follow Bloomberg Africa on TwitterSouth African billionaire Patrice Motsepe told President Donald Trump in Davos that Africa loves the U.S. president. Not everybody in his home country shares that sentiment.“Africa loves America,” Motsepe told Trump at a business dinner during the World Economic Forum this week. “Africa loves you. It’s very, very important, we want America to do well, we want you to do well.”The country’s only black billionaire, and a brother-in-law of President Cyril Ramaphosa, said the success of the U.S. is the success of rest of the world.His comments came just days after it emerged that Trump is considering a proposal to extend travel restrictions to four African nations, including Nigeria, and sparked outrage on local radio stations and social media. South African Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula said on Twitter he doesn’t agree that Africa loves Trump.Others cut Motsepe slack for spending millions to treat South Africans to a football match between Mamelodi Sundowns, which he owns, and Spanish giants Barcelona, and for supporting a concert in Johannesburg where Beyonce and Ed Sheeran performed in 2018. Some comments on Twitter also highlighted the importance of U.S. aid to South Africa.“He was well within his rights to express his views,” Finance Minister Tito Mboweni told reporters on Friday when asked what he thought of the comments by Motsepe, who was part of South Africa’s delegation in Davos. “He doesn’t have the kind of arrogance to speak on behalf of the South African government.”Motsepe capped off the week in which his holding firm announced a multi-million dollar deal to become the largest shareholder in South African retirement services provider Alexander Forbes Group Holdings Ltd. by being appointed to the WEF’s board of trustees.\--With assistance from Paul Richardson.To contact the reporter on this story: Prinesha Naidoo in Johannesburg at pnaidoo7@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Rene Vollgraaff at rvollgraaff@bloomberg.net, Mike CohenFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Why Tsai's Victory In Taiwan Has China Very Worried

Will this imperial Taiwan's security?

Photos from the Lunar New Year show how coronavirus turned China's biggest party into a washout

Here are photos comparing last year's celebration — complete with Chinese lions, historical dances, and family time — to this year.

Protest violence won't work, leading Hong Kong activist says

Escalating protest violence is not the way to bring about change, Hong Kong democracy activist Jason Ng has said, urging demonstrators to embrace non-violent means in the struggle to throw off a feared tightening of Beijing's control. With the movement in a less frenetic and ferocious stage after seven months of unrest, Ng, who is also a lawyer, said people in Hong Kong were taking time to process what had happened and reflect on the way forward. Speaking to AFP in an interview in Barcelona, Ng said he hoped the protests would return to the non-violent ethos that had characterised the Umbrella Revolution, the mass pro-democracy demonstrations of 2014.

Mother says she sang to her three children as she smothered them

A young mother in Arizona has reportedly told police that she killed her three children before placing them in the living room as if they were sleeping.Other family members were in the home at the time.

Two pedestrians killed by snowplow in Kansas

The two victims were struck by a snowplow north of the Kansas State University campus in Manhattan, authorities said.

Only one quarter of Americans trust the US Senate to hold a fair impeachment trial

Republicans are more split than one might imagine: While 42% trust the Senate to do a fair trial, 33% do not.

Belarus' leader blasts Russia for pushing merger of 2 states

The president of Belarus on Friday accused Moscow of pressuring his country to merge with Russia and vowed not to let it happen. The statement comes amid stalled talks on further strengthening economic ties between two countries, seen in Belarus as Moscow's plot to swallow its post-Soviet neighbor.

Virologist who helped identify SARS on coronavirus outbreak: 'This time I'm scared'

Experts are seeing shocking similarities between the coronavirus that has now spread beyond China and the SARS outbreak of 2003.Like the infectious pneumonia that has killed at least 17 people, SARS was caused by a coronavirus that originated in China. But when one of the virologists who helped identify the SARS virus visited Wuhan, where this virus originated, he didn't see nearly enough being done to fight it. People were out at markets without masks, "preparing to ring in the New Year in peace and had no sense about the epidemic," Guan Yi of the University of Hong Kong's State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases told Caixin. Airports were hardly being disinfected, Guan continued, saying the local government hasn't "even been handing out quarantine guides to people who were leaving the city."The city did disinfect the market where the virus has been traced to, but Guan criticized Wuhan for that, saying it hurts researchers' abilities to track down the virus's source. "I've never felt scared," Guan told Caixin. "This time I'm scared."A case involving the coronavirus was identified in Washington state on Wednesday, and cases have also been identified in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. A total of 639 cases were confirmed in China.More stories from theweek.com Trump debuts official Space Force logo — and it's literally a ripoff of Star Trek 14 dead, hundreds injured after 6.7 earthquake in eastern Turkey Donald Trump and the moral decline of the pro-life movement

Italy's Crazy World War II Strategy of "Human Torpedoes"

Was it successful?

China seals off more cities as virus toll climbs

China sealed off millions more people near the epicentre of a virus outbreak on Friday, shutting down public transport in an eighth city in an unprecedented quarantine effort as the death toll climbed to 26. While the World Heath Organization held off on declaring a global emergency despite confirmed cases in half a dozen other countries, China expanded a lockdown now covering some 26 million people and cancelled some Lunar New Year celebrations to prevent the disease spreading further. The virus that emerged in the central city of Wuhan has now infected 830 people, the national health commission said.

Australia's Kangaroo Island is looking for volunteers to feed animals injured in bushfires

Nearly half of Kangaroo Island was burned by the bushfires this month alone. The RSPCA has posted an application form.

Experts fear China virus lockdown is too late

China's bid to contain a deadly new virus by placing cities of millions under quarantine is an unprecedented undertaking, but it is unlikely to stop the disease spreading, experts warn. The contagious virus has already reached elsewhere in China and abroad, and even an authoritarian government has only a small time frame in which trapped residents will submit to such a lockdown, they say.

How Joe Biden went from slumping to surging in Democratic presidential race in Iowa

Iowa resident Carolyn Miller had long harbored doubts about Joe Biden's candidacy, believing the former vice president was too old and too fumbling to beat President Donald Trump in November's election. Then she saw Biden, 77, speak at a community college in Fort Dodge this week. With less than two weeks before Iowa kicks off the Democratic nominating contest on Feb. 3, voters like Miller might explain Biden’s recent surge to the top of opinion polls there.

White House breaks silence on Jeff Bezos phone-hacking scandal, calls Saudi Arabia an 'important ally'

The White House weighed in on reports that Saudi Arabia hacked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone, saying it takes the situation seriously.

St. Louis prosecutor, police at odds again over traffic stop

St. Louis police internal affairs investigators are looking into a traffic stop involving the city's elected prosecutor, the latest episode of a strained relationship between Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and police. Gardner was pulled over at 5:51 p.m. on Dec. 23, more than an hour after sunset, because she was driving in downtown St. Louis without her headlights on. The officer wrote in a memo to his supervisor, obtained and posted by KMOV-TV, that his sole intention was to inform the driver to turn on the lights.

Greta Thunberg says climate demands 'completely ignored' at Davos

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg on Friday said calls to the corporate elite meeting in Davos to immediately disinvest in fossil fuels had been ignored. Of course these demands have been completely ignored. Thunberg was a highlight of the 50th edition of the conference, drawing massive attention including barbs by US Secretary Steven Mnuchin who on Thursday told the teen to go "study economics".

America's B-25G Bomber Was The Air Force's Very Own Flying Tank

And it shot like one too.

New Suspected Coronavirus Cases Pop Up in Two States

Officials across the United States probed potential cases of a new coronavirus on Thursday, while a divided World Health Organization declined to declare the deadly outbreak a health emergency and authorities confirmed the first death outside the virus’ Chinese city of origin.Brazos County, Texas, officials said they had isolated a potential 2019 novel coronavirus patient at home, pending precautionary testing. The individual had recently visited Wuhan, China, where 17 people have died and hundreds more have fallen sick since last month. Texas A&M University confirmed that one of its students was identified as the possible case there and said the “immediate health risk to the campus community” was low.Meanwhile, a sick individual representing another potential case in California reportedly arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Mexico City on an American Airlines flight at about 6:45 p.m. local time on Wednesday. They were taken to the hospital with flu-like symptoms, NBC Los Angeles reported. Six exchange students at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville were under observation because they just returned from visiting Wuhan, where two of them live. None of them had symptoms and they were not quarantined.It’s not yet clear when the results of the evaluation on the suspected cases will be available, but local health authorities in Los Angeles County said it was “very possible” the area will see cases of the virus, since so many people travel from China to Southern California. The LA County Department of Public Health said in a statement that there have been no confirmed local cases of the virus, that “currently the risk of local transmission is low,” and that the county responds to suspected cases by working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “to assess and test.”Coronavirus Patient Had Close Contact With 16 in Washington StateOfficials with the CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast regarding suspected cases.A patient in Washington state was announced as the first official U.S. case of the virus on Tuesday.Also on Thursday, an emergency committee convened in Geneva by the World Health Organization decided against declaring a global health emergency and planned to re-evaluate the issue in 10 days, while acknowledging the “urgency” of the situation. Such a declaration is rare and reserved for “serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected” outbreaks and would have given the organization broader authority to shape global responses to the virus, reported The New York Times. The organization said in a press release that committee members were split, with some believing it was “still too early” to designate the outbreak a global health emergency.Two days earlier, the CDC announced the first U.S. case of the virus in Washington state: a man in his 30s who became ill days after returning from Wuhan, China on Jan. 15. Because of the man’s travel history, officials collected a clinical specimen and sent it to the CDC overnight, where laboratory testing confirmed the diagnosis through a real time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test, also known as rRT-PCR.The CDC said at the time that it was in the final stages of developing a version of the test that would be able to confirm cases outside of CDC facilities. Until those tests are shared with the CDC’s domestic and international partners, they must take place on site in Atlanta. The man in Washington state reportedly had close contact with at least 16 people since returning from China—before he was isolated from the public—and the CDC said Tuesday that it had deployed a team to trace his contacts and “determine if anyone else has become ill.”During a recent update, hospital officials said the Washington patient was resting comfortably, making progress, and being cared for by a group of volunteer nurses.The first death linked to the virus outside of Wuhan was confirmed by provincial authorities more than 600 miles north of that city on Thursday afternoon. The 80-year-old victim had lived in Wuhan—a major port city of 11 million people—for more than two months, according to the health department in the province of Hebei. Wuhan is now under total quarantine.The man’s death marked the 18th fatality caused by the virus, which can infect both animals and people, and cause severe illnesses in the respiratory tract, including SARS. The CDC has confirmed limited person-to-person spread of the virus, but officials have not fleshed out just how easily it is spread. Associated symptoms include fever, cough, and trouble breathing. Roughly 800 people died during a 2003 SARS outbreak.Last Friday, the CDC began entry screening of thousands of passengers at airports in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles—the U.S. airports that receive most travelers from Wuhan, China. Similar screenings were added this week in Atlanta and Chicago.Eric Toner, a senior scientist with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the University’s School of Public Health, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that the current risk to the average person in the United States remained “low” but that screening methods were also “far from perfect.”“The important thing is to identify people as early as possible, get them tested, and get them isolated,” said Toner. “That’s how you control the introduction of a contagious disease into a country.”“But I’d be shocked if we don’t see some more cases,” he added.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.

Family of Kristin Smart, who went missing in 1996, now says there's no news coming soon

Kristin Smart's mother said she was contacted by a former FBI agent, but there is no timeline for an announcement in her case, the family later said.

Inside the mile-long California homeless camp that is tearing a town apart as Silicon Valley house prices soar

Inside the mile-long California homeless camp that is tearing a town apart amid soaring Silicon Valley house pricesOn the outskirts of Santa Rosa, the first real city to emerge as you drive through the rolling wine country north of San Francisco, two new settlements hum with life. On one side of a chain link fence, construction workers raise a new neighborhood of handsome, two-story homes. Rich Bay Area people might eye these as second homes, or rental investments.

Chinese University of Minnesota Student Jailed for Anti-Xi Tweets Has Been Released to Wuhan

A Chinese student of the University of Minnesota sentenced to six months in prison for posting tweets critical of president Xi Jinping has been released to his hometown of Wuhan, which is coincidentally under quarantine due to the recent coronavirus outbreak, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported on Friday.The Tribune received a message from student Luo Daiqing's university email address saying he had been released.University of Minnesota spokesman Jake Ricker told the paper that while Luo had attended for the 2018-2019 academic year, the student was not currently enrolled at the University. Ricker said that while the University had learned of Luo's arrest from a Wednesday report on Axios, the administration would not take immediate public action regarding the situation."I am honestly not sure what a public university can do regarding another country’s legal system," Ricker said. The University of Minnesota's campuses host around 3,100 students from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.Politicians from across the political spectrum condemned China's arrest of the student, including Senators Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), along with Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) in whose district Luo was studying."This is what ruthless totalitarianism looks like," Omar said in a statement. "Luo Daiqing made these posts while he was in the U.S. — attending college in my district. Here in the United States, we believe in free speech.""The Chinese Communist Party ought to release Luo Daiqing immediately, and the University of Minnesota ought to give him a full-ride scholarship,” Sasse said in his statement. “Don’t forget that the Chinese Communist Party has banned Twitter, so the only people who even saw these tweets were the goons charged with monitoring Chinese citizens while they’re enjoying freedom here in the United States. This is what ruthless and paranoid totalitarianism looks like.

GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn questions patriotism of Purple Heart recipient Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) was engrossed in a book during Thursday's impeachment proceedings, but one thing managed to make her look up: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) referring to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, as an "American patriot.""How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America's greatest enemy?" Blackburn tweeted. She did not give any examples of Vindman speaking ill of the United States in front of Russia.Vindman, the director of European Affairs for the White House National Security Council, was on President Trump's July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and became concerned when he heard Trump request an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Vindman is also a veteran who served in the Iraq War, and received a Purple Heart for wounds he suffered in an IED attack.Senators aren't supposed to be using electronics during the trial, but Blackburn tweeted throughout the afternoon and evening. Over multiple tweets, she accused Vindman of leaking sensitive material, being "vindictive," and wanting to "take Trump out." She appears to have a fixation with both Vindman and the idea of him being vindictive; in November, Blackburn tweeted, "Vindictive Vindman is the 'whistleblower's' handler." This remains her pinned tweet.More stories from theweek.com Trump debuts official Space Force logo — and it's literally a ripoff of Star Trek 14 dead, hundreds injured after 6.7 earthquake in eastern Turkey Donald Trump and the moral decline of the pro-life movement

These gun enthusiasts at the Virginia rally carried more firepower than many US troops

"This sends a strong visual message," a man holding a .50 caliber rifle said. Attendees also came with an armored vehicle and a grenade launcher.