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In The News:
Massachusetts prison officers who allegedly beat handcuffed inmate, destroyed evidence, are arrested
According to the indictment, the alleged assault took place in June 2019 when Bourget dropped his knee on an inmate’s head while he was handcuffed and restrained in the mental health housing unit.
Bourget also allegedly hit him with a protective shield, causing bodily injury.
Bourget, a senior correctional officer at FMC Devens, was indicted on two counts of deprivation of civil rights under color of law, the DOJ said.
Lavorato, a lieutenant, was also indicted on obstruction of an official proceeding and destruction and falsification of records in a federal investigation.
Lavorato is accused of obstructing the investigation by “purposely failing to timely and accurately report the nature and extent of [the] inmate’s injuries and intentionally concealing the existence of a video recording of the incident in an official report.”
5-year-old dies after drinking mom’s meth-laced bong water. Instead of taking child to hospital, mom watched her hallucinate for hours. Now, she’s under arrest.
Authorities arrested the child’s mother and two other people in connection with the child’s December death.
According to court documents, Alvarado and her cousins watched the child hallucinate for several hours and did not call for help because they were worried about legal trouble.
Instead, the family reportedly tried home remedies and prayer to bring the child out of her drugged state.
When the child stopped breathing, Alvarado and her cousins reportedly took the child to an unnamed family member’s home, where an oxygen machine was present.
Illegal immigrant who admitted to stuffing ex-girlfriend Valerie Reyes in suitcase pleads guilty in death
He is expected to be sentenced to at least 30 years in prison on May 21, police said.
The body of the 24-year-old Reyes, of New Rochelle, N.Y., was found inside a suitcase in a wooded area in nearby Greenwich on Feb. 5, 2019.
An autopsy determined she died of asphyxiation, but the medical examiner did not say whether she died before she was crammed in the suitcase.
Federal authorities said Da Silva Rojas, who was living in the country illegally, told authorities during a videotaped interview at the New Rochelle Police Department that Reyes fell to the floor and hit her head after they had sex.
Report: 63 of largest U.S. cities don’t have enough money to pay their bills
Twelve of the largest cities in the U.S. counted surpluses in 2019, while 63 cities don’t have enough to pay their bills, according to the 4th annual “Financial State of the Cities” report published by the nonprofit educational organization, Truth in Accounting (TIA).
Irvine, California, has the best city finances in the U.S., the report found, with a $380.4 million surplus.
On the opposite coast, New York City reported the worst municipal finances in the U.S. for the third consecutive year.
Every taxpayer in New York City would owe $63,100 in order to pay off the city’s debt and bills.
The top five “Sunshine cities” reporting surpluses are Irvine, California, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, North Carolina, Fresno, California, and Plano, Texas. The worst five “Sinkhole cities” whose cities can’t pay their bills are New York City, Chicago, Honolulu, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.
Barr delivers ominous warning, says China wants to own the world
Barr made his remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, reminding his audience that the Communist Party remains in control of the Chinese economy and is “authoritarian through and through.”
U.S. officials say Chinese leaders are working toward being the geopolitical, economic and military world leader by the year 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China.
“China wants the fruits of America’s brainpower to harvest the seeds of its planned economic dominance,” said John Demers, the assistant attorney general for the National Security Division.
FBI Director Chris Wray also spoke at the event, telling the audience that as he spoke the FBI had at least 1,000 open investigations of Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property.
New Yorkers No Longer Allowed to Enroll in Trusted Traveler Programs: DHS Secretary
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is no longer allowing New Yorkers to enroll in Global Entry and other trusted traveler programs, DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf announced on Wednesday.
The move stems from New York state’s recently passed law that lets illegal immigrants apply for driver’s licenses without providing a social security number.
New Yorkers won’t be allowed to enroll or re-enroll in the Trusted Traveler Programs run by Customs and Border Protection, including Global Entry.
New York residents can’t join or stay in the programs “because we no longer have access to make sure that they meet those program requirements, so we need to do our job,” Wolf added.
Public school teacher tweets it’s ‘awesome’ cancer-stricken Rush Limbaugh ‘is dying’ — and gets placed on leave for it
Donovan — who ran twice as a Republican for state assembly in the 1980s — wants Sarandos disciplined, WISN reported.
“It would be easy enough to dismiss ill-written, juvenile nonsense like this were it not for his role in teaching our city’s young people,” Donovan said in a news release, WISN said.
“He is supposed to be an example of the inclusive, tolerant, and respectful spirit of the Milwaukee Public Schools.
He is clearly nothing of the sort.”
Politics:
Women of color bolt Warren’s Nevada campaign in frustration
The six staffers have left the roughly 70-person Nevada team since November, during a critical stretch of the race.
Three of them said they felt marginalized by the campaign, a situation they said didn’t change or worsened after they took their concerns to their superiors or to human resources staff.
The turmoil in Warren’s Nevada operation comes ahead of the state’s Feb. 22 caucuses.
Nevada is important not only because of its early spot on the nominating calendar but because it is the first chance for candidates to prove that their appeal extends beyond white voters who dominate the Democratic electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The Treasury Dept. has provided highly sensitive information about Hunter Biden and associates to GOP senators
For months now, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), chairman of the Finance Committee, and Ron Johnson (Wis.) chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have been conducting an investigation into “potential conflicts of interest posed” by Biden’s business dealings.
The two senators have been sending letters to numerous departments and agencies in Washington — including the State Department, the Treasury, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Archives and the Secret Service — requesting information to aid their investigation.
According to Wyden, their requests to the Treasury Department have been met with cooperation.
Yahoo News reports that Grassley and Johnson have sought “some of the most sensitive and closely held documents in all of federal law enforcement — highly confidential suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by financial institutions with FinCEN, an agency of the Treasury that helps to police money laundering.”
Key witness told Team Mueller that Russia collusion evidence found in Ukraine was fabricated.
Gates’ account is backed by several Ukrainian officials who stated in interviews dating to 2018 that the ledger was of suspicious origins and could not be corroborated.
If true, Gates’ account means the two key pieces of documentary evidence used by the media and FBI to drive the now-debunked Russia collusion narrative — the Steele dossier and the black ledger — were at best uncorroborated and at worst disinformation.
His account also raises the possibility that someone fabricated the document in Ukraine in an effort to restart investigative efforts on Manafort’s consulting work or to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.
EXCLUSIVE: Paul Gosar On His Resolution To Censure Nancy Pelosi
The district Gosar represents is home to the family of Kayla Mueller, who was brutally murdered by ISIS in 2015.
Kayla’s parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, were guests of the president Tuesday night during his State of The Union address, and Gosar told the Daily Caller that Pelosi owes the Mueller family an apology.
“She should apologize to the family and all Americans,” Gosar told the Caller. “I want Speaker Pelosi to know that she can tear up paper all she wants, but she can’t tear up President Trump’s accomplishments and she can’t tear up the memory of Kayla Mueller.”
Gosar argued that the speaker’s actions brought shame to the House and to the country as a whole.
Trump Declares Victory in Speech After Acquittal
“It started from the day we came down the elevator … and it never really stopped. We’ve been going through this now for over three years,” he said.
“It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops. It was leakers, it was liars. It should never happen to another president again, ever.”
The moment was not a news conference or a speech, Trump said. “It’s a celebration,” he said. “We went through hell, unfairly. We did nothing wrong.”
He held up a newspaper with the front page headline: “Trump acquitted,” triggering another lengthy round of applause.
Earlier Thursday, Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
He held up newspapers with front page stories about the acquittal in front of an audience that included lawmakers from both sides, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Pelosi targeted in ethics complaint for ‘mutilating’ government record
Pelosi has tried to justify her stunt, saying she was tearing up a bunch of lies.
But Gaetz is citing a federal law forbidding the destruction of federal documents that carries the possibility of three years in prison upon conviction.
He wrote on Wednesday to the House Committee on Ethics, chaired by Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida.
“I write to request that the House Committee on Ethics open an investigation into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s flagrant violation of decorum, as defined in clauses 1 and 2 of House Rule XXIII (‘Code of Official Conduct’), and request a criminal referral for her potential violation of 18 U.S.C. paragraph 2071 (concealment, removal, or mutilation of documents), following President Trump’s recent State of the Union Address on February, 4, 2020,” Gaetz wrote.
“Her unseemly behavior certainly warrants censure.”
DNC chair calls for recanvass of Iowa caucuses
“Enough is enough,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez tweeted Thursday afternoon.
“In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results,I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.”
Before Perez’s announcement, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were virtually tied at 26 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting.
Buttigieg led in percentage of state delegate equivalents by just one-tenth of a percentage point, but Sanders led in the popular vote by more than 2,500 votes.
World News:
Terror plagues Israel, as tensions escalate on numerous fronts – TV7 Israel News 06.02.20
1) Tensions have escalated over the course of the past 24 hours, as violence has turned deadly on multiple fronts of the Jewish State.
2) In spite of the near-daily rocket and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip toward Israel’s southern communities; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government remains intent on trying to reach a truce arrangement with the Jihadist organizations in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave.
3) The Israeli Air Force reportedly conducted an aerial strike on both Syrian army positions and Iranian-backed militia fighters, in a suburb of Damascus.
China plans to reduce tariffs by 5 percent Feb. 14
Overall, 1,700 U.S. products being exported to China will be affected. The cuts are expected to go into effect Feb. 14.
The products impacted by the additional 10 percent tariff include some American automobiles, beef, poultry and soybeans.
China’s Ministry of Finance said the decrease was an effort “to promote the healthy and stable development” of economic and trade relations between the U.S. and China.
Burglar sentenced to at least 34 years for ‘sadistic’ murder of woman, 89
Dempster, who said he had been drinking gin and smoking crack beforehand, sexually assaulted the elderly woman, who was less than 5ft tall and had osteoporosis, and battered her around the head and body, inflicting fatal injuries.
The judge, Mr Justice Edis, appeared emotional as he praised Woolmer’s family for their dignity in sitting through proceedings.
“You seemed to have killed her for pleasure in your drunken state, the murder involved sexual or sadistic conduct. You are a very dangerous man.”
Woolmer’s lifeless and bloodied body was found, semi-naked, in her bed, by her sister and a close friend who were concerned when she failed to answer the door for her morning newspaper.
Chinese doctor who raised early alarm on coronavirus — and was reprimanded by police — just died of the virus
(Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
A few days after Li posted about the illness in the online group. he was called in by Wuhan police and questioned about his knowledge of the situation, and made to sign a document acknowledging the misdemeanor of disrupting the social order and spreading online rumors.
Wuhan officials had already become aware of the outbreak when Li posted about it, but it wasn’t until the day after Li’s post that officials announced it and notified the World Health Organization.
Li was hospitalized Jan. 12 and officially diagnosed with coronavirus Feb. 1. He reportedly contracted it from one of his patients, who he didn’t know had coronavirus.
Commentary/Opinion:
AOC vs Rush … Dave’s Analysis Begins at 1:56
A Real Low Point for Classless Democrats • Tucker Carlson Tonight
Tammy Bruce, President of Independent Women’s Voice, joins Tucker Carlson on Fox News to weigh in on what happened at the State of the Union.