News and Headlines: In The News, Politics, World News, Commentary/Opinion.
In The News:
‘Watch This,’ Man Tells Family Before Allegedly Slashing Throat Of Young Boy Playing Video Games
Family members later told Tennessee River Valley News that the child’s grandfather and aunt responded to the violence by holding Sadler at gunpoint until the authorities arrived.
He allegedly threatened others during the chaotic ordeal. When Lewis County deputies arrived on scene, Sadler allegedly refused to drop the knife and a deputy tased him.
Meanwhile, the child was taken into town to meet an ambulance at a local grocery store, according to the news outlet. He was brought to a local hospital where he was then transported to another for treatment of his injuries.
The young victim is expected to survive and is reportedly now in stable condition.
Lawyer is accused of recruiting clients into prostitution ring he ran from his home
Gillespie ran unsuccessfully to be the Orange-Osceola public defender as a Republican in 2004.
The Orlando Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation cited evidence that Gillespie “would initiate women he represented on criminal charges into prostitution or exchange sex acts for legal fees.”
The agency began investigating after a former law firm employee said she had helped Gillespie recruit women and girls into sex trafficking, according to an arrest warrant cited by the Orlando Sentinel.
Son Admits to Killing Mother in Chula Vista Home: Police
A woman who screamed while on the phone with 911 dispatchers Monday night was found in her Chula Vista home with stab wounds and her son was arrested in connection to her death, according to police.
The mother, who was later identified as 56-year-old Gloria San Miguel, called 911 at around 7 p.m. and spoke with dispatchers briefly before she began to scream over the phone, Lt. English said.
Officers responded to the scene in the 900 block of Merced River Road encountered a man covered in blood standing in the driveway of the home with a framed picture in his hand.
Woman was stabbed several times after car crash in Saginaw Township, police say
Hicks was behind the wheel driving eastbound on State Street around 5 p.m. Monday while the suspect argued with her, police say.
She lost control of the vehicle near the 6200 block, crashing into a telephone pole.
Both she and the man left the car and the suspect stabbed Hicks several times before leaving, police allege.
Police apprehended the man within minutes.
Northern California Burglary Suspect Charged With Looting During Emergency
Criminal penalties for common shoplifting and theft are greatly enhanced under California’s looting law, officials said, with violations punishable by incarceration for up to three years and a fines up to $10,000.
The charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of six months in county jail.
Neil Bruce Waldron, 51, of Covelo, was arrested Friday by deputies who responded to a reported burglary at a clothing store in Covelo, Mendocino County Sheriff Sgt. Joseph DeMarco said Monday.
Girl, 4, Shot and Killed in Northeast Philly Home; 4 People Questioned
Police learned of the shooting around midnight after family members took the girl to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital with a gunshot wound to her stomach and 911 was then called from the hospital, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said.
The girl, who wasn’t immediately named, died around 12:15 a.m. Tuesday, police said.
The girl’s parents, another man and another woman were home at the time, police said.
“The investigation has determined that it is extremely unlikely that the victim shot herself,” police said in a Tuesday afternoon news release.
Inside the home, investigators recovered a .357 revolver from a living room sofa, police said. The gun was loaded with five bullets and police found a spent bullet casing nearby.
9 shot, 3 fatally Monday in Chicago
Adobe Stock photo
A 30-year-old man was hit in the shoulder, and a 27-year-old man was struck in the arm and shoulder, Chicago police said. They were both taken to the same hospital in fair condition.
Three hours earlier, a man was killed in a shooting in Lawndale on the West Side. The 30-year-old was found about 6 p.m. in the 4000 block of West Lexington Street with multiple gunshot wounds, police said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and pronounced dead.
About the same time on the Far South Side, a man was found fatally shot in a backyard in West Pullman. A man in his 20s was found about 6 p.m. in the 12000 block of South Parnell Avenue with a gunshot wound to the head, police said. He died at the scene.
Monday’s shootings come after a weekend were 28 people were shot, five of them fatally, citywide.
Coronavirus updates: FDA approves first at-home coronavirus test
Developed by LabCorp, the test involves a nasal swab that can be self collected and then sent to one of the company’s labs for analysis.
Test kits will be available first to health care workers and other first responders, said LabCorp, and should be available ton consumers in most states in the coming weeks.
Only 6 percent of Florida jobless claims paid, 3 percent of small business loans approved
DEO said as many as 800,000 applications, including some that could be duplicate claims, are waiting to be processed, and there could be tens of thousands more who have been foiled in their attempts to file claims after the DEO was overwhelmed and its system paralyzed by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of Monday, according to DEO’s website, the 40,193 applicants who have received payments amount to 6.2 percent of applicants who have managed to file – the nation’s lowest and slowest rate of claimant processing, according to The Associated Press.
Florida’s $50 million Small Business Emergency Bridge Loan program unveiled March 17 to help struggling operations to meet payroll and other expenses during the crisis ran out of money last week.
AG Barr Says DOJ May Go After Governors Who Persist With Strict Lockdown Rules
Barr has been vocal about some lockdown measures infringing on Americans’ constitutional rights, including bans on attending church and purchasing firearms.
President Donald Trump’s administration issued new guidelines last week for states to begin lifting their lockdown measures once they meet certain coronavirus milestones.
“We have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that’s reasonably safe,” Barr said, according to Bloomberg.
“To the extent that governors don’t and impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce — our common market that we have here — then we’ll have to address that.”
Protests against coronavirus lockdown orders spread in North Carolina, Missouri: ‘My rights are essential’
The protests in Raleigh, N.C. and Jefferson City, Mo., are the latest in a series of protests across the country against state lockdown orders – fueled by tweets of support from President Trump and the economic unease caused by the coronavirus.
Holding handmade signs with slogans like “My Rights Are Essential” and “ReOpenNC,” hundreds of people marched through downtown Raleigh while chanting “Freedom Now.”
Most of the people at the protest were not wearing masks and were ignoring orders to maintain social distancing practices.
Missouri files suit against China for ‘enormous’ consequences of coronavirus ‘deceit’
EXCLUSIVE: Missouri became the first state to file a lawsuit against China on Tuesday, accusing the country of being responsible for the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and seeking damages to make up for “the enormous loss of life, human suffering, and economic turmoil” resulting from the disease.
The suit in the Eastern District of Missouri follows at least seven federal class-action suits that have been filed by private groups, with one filed in Florida saying that China knew “COVID-19 was dangerous and capable of causing a pandemic, yet slowly acted, proverbially put their head in the sand, and/or covered it up in their own economic self-interest.”
It also comes on the heels of 22 Republican lawmakers on Monday requesting that the Trump administration bring a case against China to the International Court of Justice (ICIJ) for the country’s actions during the pandemic.
Study: Up to 442K People in LA Already Have COVID-19 Antibodies; Death Rate Much Lower Than Feared
Researchers from the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles County Health Department announced the results of the first stage of a multi-stage blood testing of 893 LA residents and found that as many as 442,000 are believed to have the antibodies to COVID-19.
That means they were exposed to the virus and didn’t know it. More testing is required, but Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force said in yesterday’s briefing that antibodies mean immunity 99% of the time.
What that means is more people will be freed from lockdowns and be able to go back to their normal lives. It also means that the death rate is much lower than feared.
Fire Insurance | Full Measure
California’s big power company PG&E is paying victims more than $13 billion dollars for deadly California wildfires sparked by its faulty power lines.
Now, as in other part of the U.S., the shape of where California residents are able to rebuild and live is changing, based on risks of whether they could suffer a repeat disaster.
Lisa Fletcher has the story.
Trump to temporarily suspend immigration as coronavirus precaution
President Trump will be temporarily suspending immigration in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S.
Politics:
Congress, Trump in tentative deal on $500B virus relief bill
McConnell will seek to clear the bill through the GOP-held Senate during a Tuesday afternoon session, which would take unanimous agreement among all senators.
“We have a deal and I think we’ll pass it today,” Schumer said.
Schumer said post-midnight talks among leaders of both parties and top Trump administration officials produced a breakthrough agreement on the package.
Trump said he supports the measure, tweeting, “I urge the Senate and House to pass the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act with additional funding.”
”𝑳𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎.” – 𝑵𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒚 𝑨𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆
Americans are losing their jobs since the virus rocked the economy. Nancy Pelosi blocks funding for people to keep getting paychecks.
Video: Bringing Supply Chains Home & Making China’s Leaders Pay for Coronavirus Pandemic
Commentary/Opinion:
How would the “Chinese Government COVID 19 Accountability Act,” recently proposed by Congressman Greg Steube, help America recover from the coronavirus pandemic?
How is COVID 19, or CCP virus, waking Americans up to the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party?
And is China now undercutting produce prices in the US?
In this episode, we sit down with Florida Republican Congressman Greg Steube, who serves on the House Judiciary, Oversight and Reform, and Veteran’s Affairs committees.
A Top Republican Senator Is Pushing One of the Biggest Jobs Programs in History
“The plan is really simple,” Hawley told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview. “It’s to try to rehire every person who has lost their job because of this health emergency and because of the government shutdown to deal with the health emergency.
And it’s to try to protect every job in this country for the duration of this crisis.”
Although straightforward, the plan would amount to one of the biggest bailouts ever devised—a similar plan is projected to cost Denmark 13 percent of its GDP over three months.
Hawley’s support for it, then, marks yet another case where the novel coronavirus has pushed a Republican leader to think outside the box economically, marking a change that is likely to last after the crisis is over.
GOP Rep Blasts House for Adjourning With No Discussion of Small Business Funding
Rep. Brian Mast (R., Fla.) ripped Democratic leadership for adjourning the House of Representatives almost immediately Tuesday without allowing Republican lawmakers to speak about the need for more small business relief.
“Some of my colleagues asked to speak here, asked to be recognized, asked to talk a little bit about what’s going on here, express some of the urgency that we get to work here in the House of Representatives,” Mast said in a Facebook video recorded on the House floor.
Senate Democrats voted to block emergency funding that would have saved the Paycheck Protection Program before it ran out of funds. It was originally allocated $350 billion as a cornerstone of the $2 trillion relief bill signed in March.
Tucker: Some lockdown lawmakers want to stamp out dissent
Commentary/Opinion:
Expressing your views about the decisions that politicians make is protected under the Constitution.
FISA Questions | Full Measure
Commentary/Opinion:
The Justice Department recently announced it uncovered more problems with the integrity of FBI wiretaps on American citizens.
That after serious abuses were exposed in the FBI’s wiretapping of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign volunteer.
Amid the scandal, some Democrats and Republicans are pressing to eliminate the secretive court put in place decades ago to fix previous abuses by U.S. intel officials.
Today, George Croner is defending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA court.
He’s a FISA expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and was a lawyer at the National Security Agency.
World News:
Dutch Supreme Court expands euthanasia law for dementia patients
Previously, doctors were required by law to have patients reconfirm their wish to be euthanized.
The Dutch court’s ruling stemmed from the case of a nursing home doctor who was acquitted of murder in a lower court, for euthanizing a 74-year-old woman in 2016 based on a written directive she gave previously while still lucid.
The woman said she didn’t want to be in a nursing home and wanted doctors to euthanize her when it was the “right time.”
Trudeau: Canadian planes sent to China to pick up medical supplies returned empty
“Unfortunately, the planes had to take off in this situation without receiving their cargo deliveries,” Trudeau said during his daily Covid-19 update.
“We have been fighting in a very competitive international environment where everyone is looking for PPE.”
The prime minister described “severe restrictions” on the ground in China in terms of how long an airplane can stay in airports before they are forced to leave — full or not.
He said supply lines and truck shipments to China’s airports are “difficult and interrupted by checkpoints and quarantine measures.”
Trudeau did not specify whether the recent introduction of tougher export controls in China have been contributing to the hold ups.
Israel forms unity government; Allegedly strikes Iranian-proxies in Syria – TV7 Israel News 21.04.20
1) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Parliament Speaker Benny Gantz sign an agreement for a new government in Jerusalem, ending 483 days of political deadlock.
2) The State of Israel has marked today its national Holocaust Memorial Day – during which Israelis commemorate the six million Jews that systematically killed by Nazi Germany during World War Two.
3) Israel reportedly strikes Iranian-proxy installations in Syria’s Palmyra Desert – during an official visit by the Iranian Foreign Minister in Damascus.
China doles out vouchers to encourage shoppers to spend again
Although the country’s shopping malls and restaurants have largely reopened their erstwhile customers are proving reluctant to return as they worry about both their physical and economic health, against a backdrop of rising unemployment.
Now local authorities and businesses are looking for creative ways to stimulate demand.
Some cities are encouraging two-and-a-half-day-long weekends to boost spending, with Communist party officials told to set an example by going shopping and eating out.
“China’s consumer recovery will shed some light on what may happen in the rest of the world as the outbreak eventually peaks and recedes,” said Ned Salter, head of equities research at Fidelity International in a note.
Video: Russian fighter jets stalk US warship before F-16 chases them off
NATO’s Allied Air Command Facebook account shared a video of the encounter as the Belgian pilot flew up on the pair of Russian fighter jets circling the airspace above missile destroyer USS Donald Cook as it sailed in the Baltic Sea.
NATO’s Allied Air Command Facebook account shared a video of the encounter as the Belgian pilot flew up on the pair of Russian fighter jets circling the airspace above missile destroyer USS Donald Cook as it sailed in the Baltic Sea.
In the video, the Belgian F-16 comes up on the wing of one of two Russian SU-24 fighter jets, both of which appeared to armed. As the Belgian fighter continued to chase the first pair of SU-24s, what appeared to be a SU-27 and SU-30SM could also be seen flying alongside the Belgian fighter.
China ups ante in South China Sea with new names for islands it claims
The provocative moves come as Beijing faces diplomatic pushback from some of its Southeast Asian neighbors against its sweeping assertion of sovereignty across the resource-rich sea.
It also takes place as the China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia pressure other claimants, even as they grapple with the global coronavirus pandemic. Most recently, China has deployed a survey vessel and escort ships near an oil field off the coast of Malaysia.
Vietnam, which claims both the Paracels and the Spratlys, immediately condemned the announcement of the two new districts by China, calling it a serious violation of its sovereignty.
How Communist China Subverted the UN & WHO, & How Taiwan Beat Coronavirus—J Michael Cole | CCP Virus
Commentary/Opinion:
What can the US, Canada, and the rest of the world learn from Taiwan in dealing with communist China, especially during the COVID 19 pandemic?
What accounts for Taiwan’s success in containing the CCP virus, despite Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO and proximity to mainland China?
And, how has the Chinese regime subverted the WHO, the UN, and other international organizations? What can democratic countries do to counter this threat?
In this episode, we sit down with J. Michael Cole, a senior fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, D.C., the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada, and the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham in the UK.
He is also a former analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Ottawa.
Commentary/Opinion:
Don’t Sneer At The Lockdown Protestors If You Still Have A Job | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 470
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the people protesting the lockdowns across the country have been called “selfish.”
The interesting thing is that most of the people making that accusation still have jobs and incomes.
Also, Five Headlines, including Trump’s immigration moratorium, and apparently fake fliers for an anti-lockdown protest meant to discredit the anti-lockdown movement.
Finally in our Daily Cancellation, I have to once against cancel someone near and dear to me.