Fun4U: October 2020

Saturday, 31 October 2020

Michigan Senate candidate John James is proof all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk

OPINION: James is fashioning himself as a moderate who believes in bipartisanship. The problem is when it comes to the party of Trump, you can’t play it both sides. John James is a Black man who has a shot at becoming the next U.S. Senator from the great state of Michigan.

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Body-camera footage released of Wallace killing; family says officers were improperly trained

The footage from body-worn cameras that was taken as police responded to a call about Walter Wallace Jr. shows him emerging from a house with a knife as relatives shout at officers about his mental health condition, a lawyer for the man's family said Thursday.

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Man falls through New York City pavement into 'rat-filled chasm'

A man was trapped in a hole teeming with rats for half an hour after a New York City pavement collapsed from under him last Saturday. Leonard Shoulders dropped almost 15 feet into the sinkhole and was unable to cry for help out of fear the rats would get in his mouth. “Rats crawling on him. He can’t move. He just… it was so bad,” the victim’s brother Greg White told NBC News. “He didn’t wanna yell ’cause he was afraid there was gonna be rats going inside his mouth.” Mr Shoulders plunged more than 12 feet into the vault, breaking his arm and leg, when the ground gave way beneath him while he waited for a bus in the Bronx. “He went down feet first," Mr White added. “He was just standing and the sidewalk just — It was like a suction. Like a sinkhole. He just went down."

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UPS locates mysterious Tucker Carlson package presenter claims contains 'damning' material about Biden family

‘UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right’

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Rudy Giuliani wants Twitter CEO jailed over limitations on unverified Hunter Biden story

'Maybe he’s working for the Chinese,' former mayor baselessly claims

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U.S. Senate leader says coronavirus aid bill should advance in early 2021

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday said that any new coronavirus aid package should be considered in early 2021, possibly closing the door to such legislation shortly following the Nov. 3 elections. In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, McConnell said, "I think that will be something we’ll need to do right at the beginning of the year, targeted particularly at small businesses that are struggling and hospitals that are now dealing with a second wave of the coronavirus." McConnell, who has resisted considering a comprehensive aid package being sought by Democrats, added, "We probably need to do another package," but said it would have to be "more modest" than the $3-trillion measure the House of Representatives passed in mid-May.

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The Electoral College can pick a president who got fewer votes. Here's why and how.

The 2020 presidential election again highlights one of the most confusing and controversial parts of the U.S. elections: The Electoral College.

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Op-Ed: The immorality of sentencing a 15-year-old to prison forever

The Supreme Court needs to state again that a child cannot be sentenced to life without parole unless a trial court determines that child is beyond rehabilitation.

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The Papers: 'National lockdown looms' and Stiles tributes

Several of Saturday's papers lead with reports that nationwide restrictions will be introduced.

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Championship leaders Reading beaten at Coventry

Leaders Reading fall to their first Championship defeat of the season as Coventry pick up their first league win in seven attempts.

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Wilson beats Trump to clinch Championship League title

Kyren Wilson claims his first title on English soil after defeating world number one Judd Trump 3-1 in the final of the Championship League in Milton Keynes.

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Kyle Rittenhouse extradited to Wisconsin following terse ruling from Illinois judge accusing him of asking the court to 'ignore binding Illinois law'

Rittenhouse, charged in Wisconsin with first-degree homicide over the shooting of three people at Kenosha protests, had been fighting his extradition.

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UPS locates mysterious Tucker Carlson package presenter claims contains 'damning' material about Biden family

‘UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right’

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FBI Investigating Hunter Biden for Money Laundering: Report

The FBI opened an investigation into Hunter Biden and associates in 2019 on suspicion of money laundering, a Justice Department official told Sinclair Broadcasting.The criminal investigation is ongoing, the DOJ official said.The revelation comes after Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, came forward with a trove of documents regarding the Biden family's dealings with now-defunct Chinese energy firm CEFC. While Joe Biden has denied that he has ever spoken with Hunter regarding the latter's overseas business dealings, Bobulinski claims the former vice president is lying.> EXCLUSIVE: Tony Bobulinski tells @WeAreSinclair he was questioned by six @FBI agents, with counsel present, for five hours on October 23, listing him as a "material witness" in an ongoing investigation focused on Hunter Biden and his associates. His cell phones were examined. pic.twitter.com/5lPzRTREJN> > -- James Rosen (@JamesRosenTV) October 29, 2020Additionally, Bobulinski told Sinclair that he was interviewed by FBI agents for five hours last Friday and was listed as a "material witness" for the agency.The interview "was a very cooperative deep dive into all the facts across that time period" during which Bobulinski conducted business with members of the Biden family, Bobulinski said.The New York Post reported earlier this month that it was given materials purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop. While a subsequent Fox News report revealed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was subpoenaed by the FBI in connection with a money laundering investigation, the Thursday report by Sinclair marks the first confirmation that Hunter Biden himself is the subject of an ongoing criminal probe.The Biden campaign has not denied the veracity of any of the materials revealed by the Post or Bobulinski. However, the campaign has stated that "Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever."

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US sells oil seized from Iran to Venezuela for $40 million

The United States said Thursday that it had sold Iranian oil seized on its way to Venezuela for more than $40 million.

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Body-camera footage released of Wallace killing; family says officers were improperly trained

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Popular Thai pro-democracy figure charged over flash mob rally

One of Thailand’s most popular anti-establishment politicians has been charged for his role in an illegal flash mob protest last year, in a move that is likely to fuel the current wave of pro-democracy protests. Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, 41, a charismatic billionaire and founder of the dissolved Future Forward party, is accused of five public assembly violations linked to the rally in Bangkok's central shopping district last December, Krisadung Nutcharat, his lawyer, said on Thursday. The charges include failing to notify police of a public gathering, blocking a sky train station, using a megaphone without permission and holding a rally close to a royal residence. Four other people from his Progressive Movement Group and Move Forward Party face similar charges. All five deny any wrongdoing. Mr Thanathorn has been an outspoken advocate of the protest movement that has gripped the Thai capital, Bangkok, since June, and he recently condemned a short-lived emergency order aimed at keeping demonstrators off the streets. During last year’s elections, he and his pro-democracy Future Forward Party, proved to be enormously popular with young, first-time voters, and garnered the third-largest share of seats.

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Record turnout in Texas' largest county could be crucial to flipping a usually red state

Election officials in Harris County tripled the number of early-voting sites, expanded their hours and added drive-thru voting.

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‘I’m getting my money!’ Florida shopper denied refund returns with a crowbar, cops say

A Florida shopper wouldn’t take no for an answer, and things got a little out of hand.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis had trouble voting because someone had falsely submitted a change of address under his name

Anthony Guevara, 20, was charged with altering a voter registration without consent and unauthorized access of a computer, in connection to the case.

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Op-Ed: The immorality of sentencing a 15-year-old to prison forever

The Supreme Court needs to state again that a child cannot be sentenced to life without parole unless a trial court determines that child is beyond rehabilitation.

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Woman Beheaded in French Knife ‘Terror’ Attack at Church, 3 Dead

Three people have been killed—including one elderly woman and another person by decapitation—and several others injured in a suspected terror attack inside the Notre-Dame basilica in the French city of Nice. The knife-wielding assailant, who was wounded by police gunfire, allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” several times, including while he was being detained, in what has come to be known as a battle cry for Islamic extremists in Europe.The city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, wrote immediately after the killings that “everything suggests a terrorist attack,” and said the unnamed suspect had been arrested and taken to a hospital in the city. The Paris’ anti-terror prosecutors office said it has opened an investigation. Italian police said late Thursday that the killer is a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant who was smuggled to the Italian island of Lampedusa in September. After he completed the mandatory two-week COVID-19 quarantine, he left the migrant camp and made his way to France. Authorities have his details and fingerprints as part of the immigration process and are working with French police. “The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained. He is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” Estrosi told reporters at the scene. Although a motive has not been confirmed by officials, the mayor expressed his wish to “wipe out Islamo-fascism” from the country.French President Emmanuel Macron declared a state of emergency and ordered security to be strengthened at places of worship across the nation. On Wednesday night, Macron had put France back into lockdown because of its out-of-control resurgence in coronavirus cases. Hours after the attack, he visited the basilica and met with security and rescue personnel.The Nice slashings occurred on the same day that an assailant was shot dead by police near another French city, Avignon, after he reportedly waved a gun at officers, and also as a guard was reportedly attacked outside the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.Local reports in the French Riviera city say the elderly woman and a man who died were attacked inside the heart of the Nice basilica. The BBC reports a woman who fled to a nearby cafe was stabbed many times and died at a hospital, and that a witness at the scene managed to set off an alarm on a “special protection system” set up by city officials. One eyewitness told the BBC: “We heard many people shouting in the street. We saw from the window that there were many, many policemen coming, and gunshots, many gunshots.”In July 2016, Nice was the scene of unthinkable carnage when an armed French delivery driver attacked a waterfront Bastille Day fireworks party with a truck, killing at 84 people, including 10 children. France has been under high alert for terrorist acts in recent weeks as 14 people suspected of murdering 12 Charlie Hebdo staffers, a female police officer, and four men in a Jewish supermarket in 2015 in retaliation for the publication of cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad went on trial.As the courtroom proceedings opened, two people were stabbed near the publication’s old offices in Paris on Sept. 25 in what the French interior minister then declared was “clearly an act of Islamist terrorism.”The Nice attack also comes less than two weeks after the beheading of middle-school teacher Samuel Paty in Paris after he had shown his students cartoons published by the satirical magazine.Estrosi said the two attacks were similar. “The methods match, without doubt, those used against the brave teacher in Conflans Sainte Honorine, Samuel Paty,” he said.Family of Moscow-Born Teen Who Beheaded Teacher Were from Chechnya Where Charlie Hebdo Cartoons Are DemonizedPresident Macron delivered the eulogy at Paty’s funeral, and said France would not abandon its right to free speech. “We will continue, Professor. We will defend the freedom that you taught so well and we will promote secularism, we will not renounce caricatures, drawings, even if others retreat,” Macron said. “We will continue the fight for freedom and the freedom of which you are now the face.”Macron’s comments have drawn sharp criticism in the Islamic world with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for a boycott of French goods. In response, Charlie Hebdo published a caricature of Erdogan in his underwear lifting a Muslim woman’s skirt on Wednesday, drawing scorn from Erdogan for what he referred to as a “a grave insult to my prophet.”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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White House coronavirus adviser Dr Birx boycotting Covid task force over misinformation

Dr Birx has travelled to 40 states in a personal bid to advise officials on Covid

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Friday, 30 October 2020

Jerry Falwell Jr. is suing Liberty University after his forced resignation over sex scandal

The former president was ousted earlier this year and now hints he was victim of political retribution.

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2 grand jurors in Breonna Taylor case say charges should have been filed against other Louisville officers

Two anonymous grand jurors say more Louisville police officers should face criminal charges in Breonna Taylor's death.

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Biden Can’t Repeat Gore’s Mistake and Let the Supreme Court Overrule Democracy

Democratic senators should have refused to participate in the absurdly rushed effort to pack Amy Coney Barrett on to the Supreme Court in the midst of the election, instead of giving Republicans’ partisan power play the veneer of legitimacy.But that ship has sailed and now, with Justice Barrett officially on the court, a new potential challenge to the Constitution looms as the GOP is banking on its newly super-packed Supreme Court majority to reinstall Trump in the White House if he stands to suffer a narrow loss in one or more swing states.Now voters, and Joe Biden, may have to decide whether to accept an effort by the Supreme Court to decide who will sit in the White House in 2021 by preventing all duly cast ballots from being counted. Trump’s second Supreme Court appointee, Brett Kavanaugh, openly threatened to do just that on Monday, even as Trump’s last minute addition to the court, Amy Coney Barrett, headlined another White House superspreader event to celebrate her mid-election installation and provide Trump with campaign propaganda in the process.We’ve been here before—just ask Al Gore. Joe Biden and his Democratic Party must make clear, now, that they will not let the court’s conservatives steal a second presidential election for the Republican Party. Voters should make it crystal clear that the nation will not accept a second attempt to undermine the electoral process, and with it our democracy.On Dec. 8, 2000, the Supreme Court’s then five-justice right-wing majority directed Florida to stop a state-wide recount of certain ballots ordered by the Florida Supreme Court in the face of the razor-thin outcome of that state’s vote in the presidential election voting, which was to be determinative of the outcome in the Electoral College. On Dec. 12, the same right-wing majority issued a decision effectively handing the election to George W. Bush by effectively barring the completion of the recount, thereby preventing the nation from learning which candidate had actually received the most votes.The reasoning of the majority in Bush v. Gore was so embarrassingly flimsy, and transparently partisan, that the opinion openly cautioned lower courts to avoid relying upon it in future cases. This, they said, was a one-off.Many questioned why Al Gore accepted—and urged voters to go along with—the literally anti-democratic outcome decreed by the court. Yet, by the time the justices had taken it upon themselves to hand the presidency to their favored candidate it was too late; by having chosen to participate in the Supreme Court litigation, Gore had conceded that the five right wing justices had the power to decide the election, even if it meant preventing all of the votes from being counted.In fact, Gore’s decision to actively participate in the Supreme Court challenge to the counting of votes in Florida had been reasonable, under the circumstances. At the time, few could have anticipated that a majority of the Supreme Court’s justices, whatever their political preferences, would ultimately choose to use their unelected positions to undermine democracy so brazenly, and thereby risk undermining the legitimacy of the court itself in the process. But, having gotten away with their audacious gambit in 2000, undermining elections and suppressing votes has since become ever more integral to the GOP playbook for retaining power as the party’s voter base ages and shrinks.Indeed, the packed Supreme Court, and lower federal appellate courts, have proven to be key to that strategy, including in recent weeks as they have ruled in favor of GOP vote-suppression strategies with ever greater frequency.Thus, unlike in 2000, if the Supreme Court gets a hold of a contested election, there is little doubt what it will do. There is now every sign that the GOP is planning for a Bush v. Gore sequel with a starring role for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump has openly entreated to stand ready to intervene on his behalf.Indeed, four of the five members of the court’s pre-Barrett five-member reactionary majority have already more than hinted that they are poised to do just that. Last week, the court came one vote short of imposing an emergency stay upon a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of voters to have ballots postmarked by election day, but received by Nov. 6, counted. The Pennsylvania state court decision was grounded in the Pennsylvania state constitution, and it is well-established that a state’s highest court—not the U.S. Supreme Court—is the last word on interpreting that state’s constitution and laws.The background for the decision is a novel, and frankly absurd, argument being advanced by the GOP (and vaguely adverted to by Justice Rehnquist in an opinion in Bush v. Gore that was adopted by only three justices) that, because the U.S. Constitution states that state “Legislature[s]” determine “Times, Places, and Manner” of federal elections, state courts are implicitly barred from interpreting state constitutions in ways that vary from the literal meaning of those laws, including to favor voter access to the polls. Conservatives claim to favor interpreting the Constitution in conformity with its original understanding, and there is no reason to believe that the Framers meant to cut state courts out of the business of interpreting state election laws by using the term “legislature” in this way.The Supreme Court’s 4-4 vote against a stay of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision was not accompanied by an explanation. Nonetheless, simply by means of their votes, four members of the court appear to have signaled their sympathy to the GOP argument, and while the court denied an emergency stay, it remains free to take up the case again. Indeed, their separate concurrences in a decision issued on Monday night voiding an extension on the time to receive mail ballots in Wisconsin, Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch expressly adopted this radical theory, with Kavanaugh stating that “a state court may not depart from the state election code enacted by the legislature.”Furthermore, there is every reason to expect that newly minted Justice Barrett is poised to join the four other most right-wing justices’ position, potentially by ordering Pennsylvania not to count absentee ballots received after election day (which are highly likely to favor Biden), even though doing so will violate the state’s constitution. Indeed, in anticipation of the new justice favoring its position, the GOP has already filed a new set of papers asking the court to take up the merits of the Pennsylvania case before election day.Those hoping for a resuscitation of the challenge to the Pennsylvania court decision had reason to be heartened by Monday night’s Supreme Court ruling, which rejected a trial court order requiring Wisconsin to count ballots mailed by election day, but received within six days thereafter. In his opinion justifying the Supreme Court’s action, Kavanaugh adopted Trump’s mendacious rhetoric about the purportedly inherently suspicious nature of mail ballots, referring to the “chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.” Yet, as Justice Kagan stated in dissent, “there are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted”, and there is nothing “chaotic” or “suspicious” about counting all ballots executed and mailed before election day.The possible revisiting of the Pennsylvania case, which has implications for the potential counting of late-received ballots in other states, is only one of several gambits the GOP might attempt to reinstall Trump before a ready and waiting, right-wing Supreme Court majority, if the opportunity presents itself.So then what can the majority of the voting public, the majority of which is almost certain (once again) to vote against Trump, do to prevent another such blatant undermining of democracy? Some of the potentially necessary steps are obvious, and untroubling; others may be more difficult to accept, but could nonetheless prove essential to the preservation of the nation’s democracy.First, and most importantly, Democratic voters need to vote in sufficient numbers not only to win, but to win decisively, in swing states. The millions of dollars that the GOP has been spending in pre-election vote suppression litigation has not only been focused on winning the election for Trump, which appears to be highly unlikely in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at this point, given Trump’s position in the polls, but also to keep the margins of a Biden win as tight as possible. This is because it will only be possible for the GOP to move the election into the courts if, as in 2000, the vote count is very close in one or more states that can determine the outcome in the Electoral College.Accordingly, as Greg Sargent has observed, the GOP hopes of undermining democracy in the courts “could end with a relative whimper” if the vote count, particularly the early reported count, is decisively in Biden’s favor—a result that appears to be increasingly likely (albeit not certain).Second, people must be prepared to take to the streets to make clear that another judicial attempt to undermine democracy will simply not be accepted by the majority of the nation’s citizens.It is possible that, after election day, we have a contest that Biden on the road to winning once all the votes are counted, including those cast by mail but not yet counted in a state like Pennsylvania. Under those circumstances, the GOP may make their play for a Supreme Court intervention, in the form of a preemptive stay that threatens to void all or part of the vote count, like the stay Bush obtained in 2000.In the face of such GOP entreaties to the court, citizens will need to take to the streets in massive numbers to demand that every vote be counted, and make clear that a repeat of the judicial intervention to thwart democracy will neither be tolerated nor accepted.If the court receives a strong message that another attempt to install an unelected president in office not only stands unaccepted by the majority of citizens, but also that the court’s legitimacy and authority could be heavily damaged in the process, some members of the court’s reactionary majority may choose to step back from the brink and refuse to intervene in a presidential election again.Finally, if the court’s majority does make the reckless choice to take up a GOP attempt to undermine the vote count, Joe Biden will have a potentially momentous decision to make: whether to accept the court’s authority to do so. He should not.If the court takes up a GOP challenge to counting potentially decisive votes after the election in a swing state, Biden should refuse to participate in the litigation, thereby definitively challenging the authority and the legitimacy of the court in taking it upon itself to select the president.Critics may argue that, by taking such a dramatic step, Biden could lose his chance of prevailing before the Supreme Court.Yet, unlike in 2000, if the court accepts a case that could end up determining the outcome of the election, there is little basis for doubt regarding the likely outcome. If five or six of the court’s right-wing justices choose to cause the court to intervene, they will almost certainly ultimately also vote in favor of reinstalling Trump, no matter how tenuous the legal rationale that may be required to reach that result. Accordingly, Biden will not be foregoing much of anything by refusing to participate.Others will argue that a choice by Biden to directly challenge the Supreme Court’s authority will instigate a constitutional crisis. Yet that gets the situation backwards; it is the GOP and the Supreme Court’s reactionary justices that have brought the nation to the brink of such a crisis, and it will take the nation over the edge if they attempt to install yet another president who may not have won the election.Therefore, a decision by Biden not to accept a Supreme Court intervention to frustrate the counting of citizens’ votes would not undermine the constitutional order. To the contrary, it would avoid placing an unearned veneer of legitimacy upon an improper challenge to democracy, thus avoiding a repeat of Democratic senators’ erroneous decision to participate in the Coney Barrett confirmation hearings, which gave that court-packing exercise an equally undeserved appearance of regularity.Indeed, defying the Supreme Court’s gerrymandered right-wing majority, and refusing to recognize its authority to reinstall Trump, could ultimately prove to be the only means of preserving our democracy.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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SpaceX delayed its NASA astronaut launch because a red 'nail polish' material was plugging part of its rocket engines

SpaceX's Crew-1 launch is now set for November 14 after the company checked tiny holes in its rocket engines for bright-red lacquer.

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Trump rushes struggling GOP senator at rally: 'You got one minute, they don't want to hear this'

President hurried Arizona Senator Martha McSally before calling up three politicians from other states - plus Nigel Farage - to address the crowd

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Lawyer for China exec accuses RCMP of lying about her arrest

A lawyer for a senior executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei on Wednesday accused a Canadian police officer of lying about why he didn’t arrest her immediately at Vancouver’s airport two years ago. Richard Peck told Constable Winston Yep during cross-examination that he did not believe Yep was honest when he told the British Columbia Supreme Court this week why the arrest happened only after Canada Border Services Agency officers questioned Meng for three hours. Yep is the first in a series of witnesses called to testify at the request of lawyers for Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. to face fraud charges.

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Plaintiffs appeal Virginia judge's decision to remove Robert E. Lee statue on Richmond's Monument Avenue

The Supreme Court of Virginia has been asked to intervene in the planned removal of the Robert E. Lee statue on Richmond's iconic Monument Avenue.

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A North Carolina pastor is accused of peeing on a woman while she was sleeping on a Delta flight

"I jump up and I seen his private area out and I screamed and that woke everybody up," Alicia Beverly told a local news outlet on October 14.

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The White House is rolling its eyes at the big 'Anonymous' reveal

The White House is just as impressed with the revelation of "Anonymous" as everyone else.On Wednesday, former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor revealed he was the one who wrote a New York Times op-ed and a subsequent book detailing how he was part of a "quiet resistance" within the Trump administration. It wasn't exactly a surprising announcement considering Taylor had already spoken out against Trump, including at the Democratic National Convention two months ago.As White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany made clear in a Wednesday statement, the Trump administration doesn't really care either. McEnany called Taylor a "low-level, disgruntled staffer" and slammed the Times' "appalling" decision to grant him anonymity.> In a statement, @PressSec calls former DHS Chief of Staff, who just revealed himself as "Anonymous," a "low-level, disgruntled former staffer" who is a "liar and a coward." pic.twitter.com/m0aopRyfSi> > -- Sara Cook (@saraecook) October 28, 2020White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah had a more succinct reaction to the news.> I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly tipped backwards.> > To paraphrase Andy Warhol: In the future, everyone will be a Senior Admin Officials for 15 minutes. ✌️ https://t.co/2quOGWkaHg> > -- Alyssa Farah (@Alyssafarah) October 28, 2020And Axios' Jonathan Swan, known for his tough questioning of Trump, outlined how Taylor's resistance didn't seem to be much of a resistance at all. > Turns out the NYT oped page gave an enormous "Resistance" platform to a staffer whose agency green-lit the Trump administration's most hardline immigration moves, including family separation, during his tenure. https://t.co/TFSj9bBQ4N> > -- Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) October 28, 2020More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

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The Papers: Labour in 'crisis' as Corbyn suspended

The papers cover the fallout from Jeremy Corbyn's suspension from Labour over an anti-Semitism report.

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Greenwald resigns from The Intercept over Biden article

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald said Thursday he had resigned from The Intercept after the US investigative media outlet refused to publish his article critical of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

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‘White racist cops got my own dad’: Walter Wallace’s young son speaks out

An investigation has been opened into the police shooting of Walter Wallace who died in Philadelphia on Monday afternoon

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USPS admits delivery times are plummeting, says there's no "constitutional right" to timely delivery

USPS data shows that less than 70% of first-class mail arrived on time on Wednesday — and only 42% in Philadelphia

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Walmart is removing guns and ammo from shelves and display cases in all stores as a precaution amid 'civil unrest'

Guns and ammo will no longer be on display at Walmart but still be available for purchase upon request in stores where they are sold.

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'Safer than your local grocery store': How the Pentagon kept the virus at bay as the White House struggled

The contrast between the chaos the pandemic has wreaked on the White House and the limited impact it has had on the health of the 25,000-strong Pentagon workforce, which has rigorously followed CDC guidelines, could not be more pronounced.

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About That ‘Uncoverable’ Biden Story

Journalists claim they can’t cover the New York Post’s Hunter Biden email scoop because the underlying evidence has yet to been verified. Also, they won’t look for any verifying evidence because there isn’t enough evidence.It’s quite the conundrum.Because other than the now-corroborated emails, the laptop, the on-the-record source who was a CEO of a Biden corporation, a trove of text messages and documents, and a lack of denials, the Hunter Biden email story reminds me of the “Russian collusion” story. Surely it deserves a modicum of scrutiny and follow-up.Anyone who watched Tony Bobulinski’s interview on Tucker Carlson’s show this week -- apparently it pulled over 5 million viewers -- was confronted with a seemingly credible character. Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden in 2017, and that the former vice president was intimately involved in the family business. Maybe someone will ask the candidate about this. Because Biden, widely seen as the frontrunner, has on numerous occasions emphatically denied any knowledge of what Hunter was doing. So even if he didn’t benefit from his son’s leveraging of the family name to strike deals with Chinese Communist energy interests, it is still newsworthy.Bobulinski alleges that during a meeting with Joe Biden’s brother, he asked how the former vice president gets away with this sort of thing: “I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying how are you guys getting away with this? Aren’t you concerned? He looked at me, and he laughed a little bit, and said ‘plausible deniability.’”Perhaps my favorite part of yesterday’s interview, though, was learning that Adam Schiff’s ugly and mendacious habit of smearing anyone he disagrees with as a Russian asset is what allegedly helped spur Bobulinski, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant, to come forward.Hunter’s ex-business partner, in fact, confronted Rob Walker, a Biden “family representative” about it.“If [Schiff] doesn’t come out, on record, I am providing the facts,” Bobulinski said in a recording.“Ah, Tony, you’re just going to bury all of us, man,” responded Walker, which sounds odd coming from someone charged with representing a supposedly completely innocent venture.To put all of this context as a journalistic matter, the week before the Post broke the Hunter Biden story, every major news network was reporting on surreptitiously taped conversation in which the First Lady was grousing about Christmas decorations.Indeed, these are just allegations. Some of them more compelling than others. We still know very little, for example, about potentially damaging emails that purport to show Biden helping his son while he was vice president — namely, by meeting with a Burisma energy executive on behalf of Hunter at the White House.In a strange way, the lack of coverage has perpetuated the story, not only through the Streisand effect, but because suppressing it -- the New York Post’s Twitter account is still frozen -- allows the imagination to run wild. While no conservative pundit has penned 8,000 words of Chait-style crackpottery pondering whether Joe has been Chinese asset since the 1980s, some have certainly jumped the gun.Does it matter? Yesterday, a number of journalists were retweeting an Axios interview in which Senator Ted Cruz, asked about the “Hunter Biden stuff,” said the story won’t move a single vote. Perhaps that’s true. It’s also irrelevant. The journalist’s job is to provide transparency, not to worry about elections or be society’s hall monitor.It is certain -- and, boy, am I sick of framing coverage in this way, but what can you do? -- that if a credible witness and former business partner of one of Donald Trump Jr.’s companies came forward to offer specific accusations and evidence that the president was profiting off of business dealings his shady son was striking with authoritarians, teams of investigative journalists would be descending on every tangential character as if they were a defunct Chinese bank account.And the assertion made by many reporters that journalistic ethics prohibit them from even mentioning these allegations is a new and concocted standard. There are thousands of allegations against Republicans reported without verification. Not one outlet had a problem referring to the recent Atlantic piece citing unnamed sources who claimed Trump belittled soldiers, even though the story came from one writer at a partisan outlet. Allegations by whistleblowers are covered all the time, whether they have been fully vetted or not. Major outlets were eager to amplify not only the uncorroborated accusations of Christine Blasey Ford, but a host of other very obviously dubious claims about Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.But much of the reticence about investigating the Hunter Biden story is in reaction to the fallout from the Hillary Clinton email scandal. No matter what evidence emerged, political media were never going to repeat 2016. One assumes even good reporters don’t want to be perceived as tipping the election (which speaks to the poor health of journalism).Lest we forget, as with this Biden story, the Clinton email scandal was newsworthy. There was, after all, an open FBI investigation into the frontrunning presidential candidate of the United States because of her reckless and potentially criminal behavior. It was Hillary who initially set up a secret server to circumvent transparency, likely to hide favor-trading related to her foundation, and sent unsecured classified documents through that illegal server, although she almost surely knew it threatened national security. As the New York Times reported at the time, the chance that her correspondences were being captured by foreign powers was extremely high. It was Hillary’s staff that destroyed evidence related to that server -- or as James Comey noted in his testimony, they “cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” Any government employees conducting themselves in a similar manner would have been sent to jail.I’m not in the habit of defending Comey, but he saved Clinton by letting her and her staff slide on richly deserved charges. The letter Comey sent to Congress informing them that the bureau had found a cache of new evidence relating to a criminal investigation was Clinton’s fault, not his. It was her top aide and confidant Huma Abedin who failed to inform the FBI about her laptop. And it was Abedin’s then-husband who used that computer to court teenage girls. Comey had an ethical obligation to inform Congress when he was apprised that new evidence had been found -- as he had promised to do under oath during his testimony. If he didn’t, and the story leaked, as it surely would have, the perception would have been that he was attempting to cover up the potential wrongdoing of one of the candidates.Or, in other words, he would have been doing exactly what most of the political media are engaged in right now.

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Supreme Court issues flurry of last-minute election orders

Wisconsin, no. That’s how the Supreme Court has answered questions in recent days about an extended timeline for receiving and counting ballots in those states. At first blush, the difference in the outcomes at the Supreme Court seems odd because the high court typically takes up issues to harmonize the rules across the country. A big asterisk: These cases are being dealt with on an emergency basis in which the court issues orders that either block or keep in place a lower-court ruling.

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SpaceX delayed its NASA astronaut launch because a red 'nail polish' material was plugging part of its rocket engines

SpaceX's Crew-1 launch is now set for November 14 after the company checked tiny holes in its rocket engines for bright-red lacquer.

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Lindsey Graham Is Being Boosted by a Tea Party Group That Has Always Hated Him

It’s no secret that Sen. Lindsey Graham is in the fight of his political life in the closing days of his campaign to win reelection to the U.S. Senate.“I’m getting overwhelmed,” Graham begged on-air with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last month, as his Democratic rival Jaime Harrison brought in a record-shattering $57 million in donations to unseat him. “Help me—they’re killing me money-wise. Help me.”But with ersatz ally President Donald Trump nowhere to be seen, a group that once despised Graham—and whose most prominent members have spent months propping up bizarre conspiracy theories, posting wildly racist content on social media, and undermining confidence public health guidelines in the midst of the pandemic—are coming to the rescue.The question is, does Graham want their help?“This is not a time for us to be squabbling over differences of opinion,” Pressley Stutts, chair of the Greenville Tea Party, said at an event on Wednesday afternoon, before introducing nearly a dozen grassroots conservative leaders “to stand tall” with Graham.“Sen. Graham is in the race of his life,” said Stutts, introducing conservative activists who lambasted Harrison—or “Harris,” as several of them called him—for being a “Marxist-Leninist” who would impose socialism on South Carolina.Sam Manley, a conservative podcaster, put the stakes of the race directly: “If you ever vote your way into socialism, you’ll have to shoot your way out.”This ringing endorsement for Graham’s re-election—which included Michael LaPierre, who tried to primary Graham this year—amounts to a cease-fire between the Palmetto State’s most well-known elected official and a coterie of some of his most dedicated trolls. During the Tea Party wave in 2010, Graham—once seen as one of the most mainstream members of the Republican Party—became one of the movement’s most loathed “RINOs,” or Republicans In Name Only. Leaders of the state’s Tea Party chapters attempted to recruit then-Gov. Mark Sanford to primary Graham after he voted to confirm Justice Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and one speaker at a Greenville Tea Party rally that year made accused Graham of “trying to sell out your own countrymen” to avoid being outed.For his part, Graham once relished his battles with the state’s most conservative activists, calling the inter-party skirmishes “more fun than any time I’ve been in politics,” but with polls showing Graham in a statistical dead heat with Harrison, the senator is scrambling to resolve those well-documented problems with voters who have largely moved from the Tea Party to Team MAGA—even though the group’s brand of politics couldn’t be less in sync with Graham’s own.Stutts, the group’s chair, is a longtime critic of vaccinations, and has publicly discouraged people from wearing face masks during the coronavirus pandemic and spread the conspiracy theory that billionaire Bill Gates is working to reduce the human population.Why Hasn’t Trump Come to Lindsey Graham’s Rescue?Stutts has even claimed in an April interview that a potential vaccine for COVID-19 could possibly “contain a microchip” for the government to track its citizens.“Even if it doesn’t contain a microchip, I could foresee the day, because right now you have to show your ID or your passport and here in South Carolina, we have to get that real ID just to fly commercially,” Stutts said on a conservative YouTube vlog at the time. “And I can see the point where they're going to say, okay, show me your vaccination papers next.”At one Greenville Tea Party event in 2018, Stutts even hosted a talk with Jennifer Smith, who described herself as a “naturopath,” who referenced the baseless theory that vaccines cause autism and said that she did not get her newborn son vaccinated for Hepatitus B because he was “not a promiscuous homosexual” or an IV drug user.Among the group’s other featured speakers at recent events include John Guandolo, the leader of a Dallas-based anti-Muslim group who was forced last year to pay $600,000 in a civil lawsuit for assaulting a county sheriff after the man confronted him about passing around hate literature at a meeting of the National Sheriffs’ Association.The group has also held protests against social distancing rules in South Carolina, which Graham has said are critical to stopping the spread of the virus, despite rising rates of infection in the state.“Tired of putting up with an onerous and inept government?” the group posted on Facebook in September. “Join us September 15th and let your voice be heard, too. Our legislators need to know that we've had enough! Show up. Stand up. Speak up! It's your family that has been negatively affected… ThugArmy mount up!!”Greenville Tea Party members and business partners have made even more extreme claims. Dan Harvell, a taxpayer advocate who spoke at Wednesday’s event and said that he was supporting Graham for the sake of “the traditional American values that we will have for our children,” has posted memes claiming that Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president, slept her way to becoming San Francisco’s district attorney, and has called former first lady Michelle Obama a “race-baiter.”The Graham campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether he disavowed the support of the Greenville Tea Party and its members, and neither did the group. But state Democrats called the dynamic of Graham playing along with a group he once despised the latest in a long arc of allowances the senator has made under Trump.“This is yet another demonstration of the extreme lengths Sen. Graham is going to in order to save his flailing campaign,” said Manuel Bonder, coordinated campaign spokesperson for the South Carolina Democratic Party. “Instead of scrambling to consolidate his support amongst fringe conspiracy theorists who know he is a hypocrite, Sen. Graham should focus on leading South Carolina through this crisis and delivering the relief working families and businesses desperately need.”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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Jack Dorsey says the New York Post Twitter account will remain locked until it deletes the original tweet featuring its Hunter Biden story

Dorsey spoke during a committee hearing on Section 230, the law that states tech firms cannot be held liable for content published on their platforms.

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Trump retakes Iowa, gains in Florida in last Quinnipiac poll before election

President Trump has received a dose of good polling news days ahead of the election — but it may not be enough to turn the tide.In polls wrapping just a week before Election Day, Democratic nominee Joe Biden has posted no new gains in the swing states of Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, a Quinnipiac University survey out Thursday reveals. Meanwhile Trump's support has grown in Florida, Iowa, and Pennsylvania — and enough so in Florida and Iowa to be well in contention of winning.In Florida, Biden has 46 percent to Trump's 42 percent, the poll of likely voters showed. That's a 6-point loss for Biden and a 2-point gain for Trump from Quinnipiac's poll earlier this month, in which Biden posted a massive 11-point lead. Biden also lost 4 points in Iowa as Trump gained 2, enough to give the incumbent a narrow 47-46 lead. Biden meanwhile maintains a solid 51-44 point lead in Pennsylvania and a 48-43 lead in Ohio, where Trump slid 4 points since earlier this month.Analysts say a loss in Florida for Trump will likely cost him the whole election, but Biden has enough support in the Midwest to override a Florida slump. A CNN poll out late Wednesday — its last before election day — gives Biden a 12-point lead over Trump nationally, also a gain of 4 points for Trump from CNN's previous poll.Quinnipiac surveyed between 1,186 to 1,324 likely voters from Oct. 23–27 in each of the states, with margins of error between 2.7 and 2.9 percentage points.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

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Hackers breach Trump campaign website, threaten to release 'evidence' of crimes

The Trump campaign's website was briefly hacked late Tuesday, with the culprits posting a typo-riddled message on the site threatening to release "evidence" of the president's "criminal involvement" in a supposed scheme to sway next week's election. The hackers, whose identity was not immediately known, only managed to crack into the Trump website's "about" page. The rest of the website ...

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Nice stabbings: Pictured, the church worker among three killed in suspected terror attack

Reports that Nice attacker passed through Lampedusa spark political row in Italy Leo McKinstry: The Nice attack is an appalling assault on Western civilisation Malaysian ex-PM tweets that Muslims have 'right' to kill French people after deadly attack Rakib Ehsan: The vilification of Macron by Muslim countries is disturbing A woman has been decapitated, and two others have been killed, during a knife attack inside the Notre Dame Basilica church in the French city of Nice. The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, tweeted that the incident is a "terrorist" attack. Here's what we know so far: At least three people, two women and a man, have been killed, including one woman who was decapitated. The man is reportedly the sexton of the church. The man, a sacristan at the church, has been named locally as 45-year-old, father of two Vincent L. The suspected attacker has been identified as Brahim Aoussaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant who arrived in France from the Italian island of Lampedusa in October. He is reportedly unknown to French security services. Nice mayor Christian Estrosi said it was a terrorist attack, and that the "Islamo-fascist" assailant "didn't stop shouting Allahu Akhbar even under medication" after being shot and arrested. France raises its alert status to "terror attack emergency" - PM Castex. President Emmanuel Macron has delivered a defiant message to the French people, saying the attacks would not force France to "give up our values". A Saudi citizen has also been arrested in Jeddah for stabbing a security guard outside the French consulate with "a sharp tool".