News and Headlines: In The News, Politics, World News, Commentary/Opinion.
In The News:
‘Waiting For The Bullets To Stop’: Passenger Describes Tense Moments During Greyhound Bus Shooting
LEBEC (CBSLA) — One of the passengers on the Greyhound bus where one woman was killed in a shooting last week described the terrifying experience of trying to wait out the gunfire in a small, enclosed space like a bus.
Mark Grabban was on the bus that had left Los Angeles for San Francisco late Feb. 2, but had to make an unplanned stop in Lebec after one of the passengers began shooting.
One woman was killed, and five others were wounded. Anthony Devonte Williams, 33, of Maryland, was arrested after passengers managed to take his gun and restrain him.
3 Mexican Women Die Of Cold, 2 Men Rescued In Laguna Mountains After Border Crossing
SAN DIEGO (CBSLA) – Three women died from apparent hypothermia and two men were rescued Monday after the group got lost in San Diego County’s Laguna Mountains after having crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
The five Mexican nationals called 911 at around 2:15 p.m. Monday after getting lost in rugged terrain amid cold, snowy weather near the Cuyapaipe Indian Reservation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports.
A Border Search Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR) team and CAL Fire crews were dispatched to the area, and a little after 5 p.m. Monday, a search helicopter located the group.
Two of the women appeared unresponsive while the third was in-and-out of consciousness, USBP reports.
Judge Voids UNC’s Controversial Settlement Over Confederate Statue ‘Silent Sam’
A judge has overturned a contentious settlement that the University of North Carolina system reached with the Sons of Confederate Veterans over the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam.
The November 2019 deal required the UNC system to give Silent Sam to the group, along with $2.5 million for its preservation and display.
Silent Sam had stood in a prominent location on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill since 1913. The Confederate monument was toppled by protesters in August 2018, amid a wave of similar actions nationally.
Many Confederate monuments were torn down following a weekend of violence in 2017 that began with a white nationalist rally at a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va.
Two-time Emmy-nominated ‘Night Court,’ ‘Sweet Charity’ actress Paula Kelly dies at 77
Kelly died Sunday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to Los Angeles’ Ebony Repertory Theatre.
Kelly earned a best supporting actress Emmy nod in 1984 for portraying public defender Liz Williams on the first season of NBC’s “Night Court” and received another in 1989 for playing a lesbian on the ABC miniseries “The Women of Brewster Place.”
Her other film credits include “The Andromeda Strain,” “Top of the Heap” and “Soylent Green.” Her vast TV credits also include “Santa Barbara,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Kojak” and “The Golden Girls.”
Facebook starts fact-checking partnership with Reuters
Under pressure to remove fake news on its platform ahead of the U.S. presidential elections, Facebook started a U.S. pilot program in December to detect misinformation faster.
The move came after U.S. intelligence agencies said that social media platforms were used in a Russian cyber-influence campaign aimed at interfering in the 2016 U.S. election – a claim Moscow has denied.
A newly created unit at Reuters will fact-check user-generated photos, videos, headlines and other content for Facebook’s U.S. audience in both English and Spanish, the news agency said in a statement.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
2 officers injured, suspect dead in Baltimore shooting
(WMAR-2 News via AP)
One officer was injured in the leg and the other in the stomach, U.S. Marshals Service spokesman David Lutz said in an email. Both officers were transported to a hospital for treatment.
Lutz said the officers with the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force were working on an attempted murder warrant.
Neighbors at the scene of the shooting in the city’s Frankford neighborhood told The Sun that a suspect was shooting back at officers from inside an apartment building. A sheet at the scene covered what appeared to be a body.
Jury finds Mar-a-Lago intruder not guilty of trespassing
(Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File)
However, jurors did find Jing Lu, 56, guilty of resisting a police officer without violence during her Dec. 18 arrest.
The incident marked the second time in 2019 that a Chinese national was charged with illicitly entering Trump’s Florida resort.
Prosecutors told jurors that Lu purposely intruded in a “calculated” and “planned” manner. She has been in custody since her arrest because her visa to remain in the United States has expired.
Lu, testifying through a Mandarin interpreter, said she paid $200 for a Chinese guide to drop her off at various South Florida locations. She said her language barrier prevented her from understanding a security officer’s orders to leave the property.
Air Force nuclear missile base guards relieved amid marijuana investigation
Gen. Tim Ray, the top general in charge of Air Force nuclear weapons, made a “no-notice” visit to the base to address reports of drug use at the base, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
The Air Force indicated it had removed those security team members from their duties, pending an investigation of their alleged marijuana use.
Members of the 90th Security Forces Group have come under scrutiny in the past.
Investigators uncovered an alleged drug ring had emerged within the security force, including six members who were convicted for either using or distributing the hallucinogenic substance LSD. In total, 14 airmen were disciplined following the investigative incident.
Air Force nuclear missile bases in Montana and North Dakota have also reportedly come under scrutiny for reports of misconduct and training failures.
Dolphins shot, stabbed and killed off Florida coast. There’s a $20,000 reward for answers
FLORIDA FISH AND WILDLIFE CONSERVATION COMMISSION
Three Florida dolphins met gruesome deaths and authorities want those responsible found and punished.
Late last week, biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found a dead dolphin from a bullet or sharp object off Naples, NOAA said.
That same week, Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge experts found another dolphin with a bullet in its left side along Pensacola beach.
In May, a dolphin was found dead with a puncture wound in its head off Captiva Island.
Politics:
Common Sense Ep. 6 | Proving Extensive Corruption & Criminal Conduct by the Biden Family Enterprise
Commentary/Opinion:
If any of us took the kind of money Biden and his Family extracted from his public offices, that as Senator and Vice President, we would already be convicted!
The pattern: Biden is named Point Man in Iraq, Ukraine, and China ► Biden fails in his mission for the U.S., yet the Biden Family scores millions upon millions for the
Enterprise.
Who’s REALLY Dividing Us?
Commentary/Opinion:
They tell us that Trump is dividing the country, but is that the truth?
Check out Jason’s take. You just might learn something.Blue Collar Logic.
BUSTED: NH Primary Elections Official Breaks Election Law “I Think Voting Any Democrat is Wise”
(Derry, NH) After a series of Project Veritas investigations conducted across the state of New Hampshire yesterday,
Project Veritas journalists uncovered an election official, Beth Hunter, at the polling location for Ward 01 and Ward 04 in Derry, NH opening up about her political inclinations and illegally influencing voters on Election Day.
According to the state’s law, election officials are prohibited from influencing a citizen’s vote in favor of a candidate or political party.
Does “Capitalism Kill?” NO
Commentary/Opinion:
Young Americans are supporting socialism at an astronomical rate without understanding its major pitfalls.
Our education system is failing at its job of educating the youth on the history of socialism and its failures.
Social media has created an emotional, surface level culture of accepting socialism as being the “moral” thing to do and the “solution.”
Powerful Las Vegas Union Warns Bernie Sanders Will ‘End Culinary Healthcare’
Less than two weeks before the Nevada Democrat Caucus on February 22, the Culinary Union is posting flyers in the back of restaurants, bars, and hotels along the Las Vegas strip to warn their 60,000-strong union worker membership against Sanders, according to the Nevada Independent:
The Culinary Union provides health insurance for about 130,000 of its members and their family members, negotiated plans that Sanders’ Medicare for All agenda would end.
Union bosses have deep-rooted ties to former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
The two political machines worked together in the 2016 Democrat presidential primary to turn out voters where Hillary Clinton won the majority of delegates that year in the state against Sanders.
A copy of the flyer also shows the union bosses’ significant support for mass illegal and legal immigration to the United States — an effort to drive up union membership.
World News:
Fighting escalates in Syria, while Israel to “surprise” Hamas – TV7 Israel News 12.02.20
1) Thousands of Palestinian rallied across the West Bank, as their leader Mahmoud Abbas delivered a condemning speech of rejection to the American peace initiative at the United Nations Security Council.
2) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed last night, in an exclusive interview with Israel’s domestic Channel 20, that Israel was preparing “the surprise of a lifetime” for the Islamist Hamas organization – in light of the continued rocket and balloon terrorism that is directed at Israel from the Gaza Strip.
3) Battles between Turkish and Syrian forces intensify, as the Russian-led offensive continues to push northward in Syria’s war-torn northwestern Idlib province.
Chinese Cities Seize Personal Property to Control Spread of Coronavirus
The move is especially noteworthy because those two cities are key elements of China’s high-tech economic engine.
In both of the big Guangdong cities, legislators approved emergency measures that would enable officials to temporarily seize homes, commercial property, public venues, and vehicles thought to be contaminated, as well as commanding private businesses to produce any materials deemed necessary in fighting the coronavirus.
Shortages of medical equipment and protective gear have been a persistent problem in areas where the virus is spreading, and shortages of food and supplies for quarantined populations are becoming a serious issue.
France: Shock After Infant Murdered by Mother Discovered in Bin
One-year-old baby Vanille was found dead in the city of Angers after a kidnapping alert had been triggered the day before.
The infant’s body was discovered in a garbage bin next to her home, according to prosecutor Eric Bouillard.
The mother of the infant, Nathalie Stephan, had been arrested prior to the discovery of the infant, as she was suspected of kidnapping.
When she later confessed to either strangling or suffocating the child after hours of denials, she led police to the bin in which she had dumped the body of her daughter.
Russia accuses Turkey of breaking Syria deals, rejects Erdogan claim
In one of the strongest signs yet that Syria is placing relations between Moscow, which backs the Syrian government, and Ankara, which backs Syrian anti-government rebels, under increasing strain, the Kremlin, the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian Defense Ministry all accused Turkey of bad faith.
The Kremlin said Turkey had failed to deliver on a promise to neutralize militants in Idlib, something it called unacceptable, the Foreign Ministry reminded Ankara its forces were in Syria without the blessing of the Syrian government, and the Defense Ministry said Turkish troops were seriously aggravating the situation on the ground in Idlib.
The Defense Ministry also flatly rejected an allegation made by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan who said Russian forces and Iran-backed militias were “constantly attacking the civilian people, carrying out massacres, spilling blood”.
WHO says coronavirus cases stabilising in China, but outbreak could go any way
China reported on Wednesday its lowest number of new coronavirus cases in two weeks.
The head of the WHO’s emergency programme, Mike Ryan, also said the stabilisation of new case numbers in China was reassuring, as was the apparently less aggressive and less accelerated behaviour of the virus outside of Hubei province.
Ryan added that it was still too early “to predict the beginning, the middle or end of the epidemic”.
Chinese citizen journalist disappears after exposing horrors of coronavirus the gov’t is trying to suppress
He has a popular legal commentary video blog on the Chinese equivalent of the social media network TikTok, but had his Chinese social media accounts shut down for presenting both sides of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Chen said he felt it was his duty to be on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis, visiting hospitals and exposing footage of dead bodies propped up in wheelchairs or being loaded into vans to be cremated and of sick people cramming into overwhelmed hospitals, desperate for treatment.
“Letting people speak cannot cause deaths,” Chen said in January. “Not letting people speak can cause many deaths.”
2 Russians flee virus quarantine, in dismay at hospitals
MOSCOW (AP) — One patient jumped out of a hospital window to escape her quarantine and another managed to break out by disabling an electronic lock.
Two Russian women who were kept in isolation for possible inflection by a new virus say they fled from their Russian hospitals this month because of uncooperative doctors, poor conditions and fear they would become infected.
Many of those quarantined in different Russian hospitals complained about dire conditions of isolation rooms and lack of cooperation from doctors, uncertain about quarantine protocols.
Commentary/Opinion:
Coronavirus: Death of Dr. Li Wenliang Rocks China
Li, reprimanded with seven other doctors for warning of the outbreak in December, was accused of “spreading false rumors” and “disrupting social order” and, for his brave efforts, was briefly detained, interrogated, and forced to sign an “admonishment notice.” Li undoubtedly contracted the virus treating patients at Wuhan Central Hospital.
The first official announcement of his death, on Thursday night, sparked online outrage.
State media, perhaps to mollify public opinion, then said he was alive but critically ill. When he was pronounced dead for a second time, the announcement was followed by a white-hot uproar.
Chinese censors scrubbed millions of social media postings supporting the young doctor. Li was 34 years old.
Some say that as memory of the disease wilts in the heat of the upcoming summer, the Chinese political system will be able to resist change.
On the contrary, the disease ravaging the country could be, as is now said, China’s “Chernobyl,” the cover up of a disaster eventually leading to the downfall of the regime.
Is Xi that strong? He has defied expectations and accumulated power not seen since the days of Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s crafty successor.
Some analysts compare his position to that of Mao himself. Politically, Xi seems to have “nine lives.”