July, 2019 | últimas notícias

Iran set to announce further reductions to nuclear commitments on Sunday – CNN

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/06/politics/iran-nuclear-reductions-sunday/index.html

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The Latest: Official: No deaths, major injuries from quake – CBS17.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Latest on Southern California’s strongest earthquake in 20 years (all times local):

9:30 a.m.

A fire official says there were no fatalities or major injuries in Ridgecrest after the 7.1 magnitudes earthquake on Friday night.

Kern County Fire Chief David Witt also said Saturday there were no major building collapses but some structures could be weakened from the back-to-back quakes.

Friday’s quake occurred a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake hit in the same area of the Mojave Desert about 150 miles from Los Angeles.

Witt says there were some power outages and minor gas and water leaks in Ridgecrest, but no known damage outside the area.

He urged residents to get supplies ready in case another quake hits.

___

9 a.m.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for a section of Southern California that saw significant damage after Friday night’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake.

The declaration provides immediate state assistance to San Bernardino County, citing conditions of “extreme peril to the safety of persons and property” in the county due to the earthquake.

State highway officials shut a 30-mile section of State Route 178 between Ridgecrest — the area hit by two major temblors as many days — and the town of Trona southwest of Death Valley.

Photos posted on Twitter by the state highway department shows numerous cracks in the road.

A spokesman for the governor’s Office of Emergency Services says crews were still assessing damages to water lines, gas lines and other infrastructure Saturday.

___

12:15 a.m.

Small communities in the Mojave Desert are reeling from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake — the second major temblor in as many days to rock Southern California.

Authorities say Friday night’s shaker was centered near the town of Ridgecrest — the same area where a 6.4-magnitude quake hit on Independence Day.

Mark Ghillarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, says there are “significant reports of structure fires, mostly as a result of gas leaks or gas line breaks throughout the city.”

He also says there’s a report of a building collapse in tiny Trona. He says there could be even more serious damage to the region that won’t be known until first light on Saturday.

The quake at 8:19 p.m. was felt as far north as Sacramento and even in Las Vegas. It’s been followed by a series of sizeable aftershocks.

___

10:30 p.m.

Authorities say a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that jolted California has caused injuries, sparked fires, shut roads and shaken ball games and theme parks.

However, authorities say there are no deaths or major building damage reported from the quake, which struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday.

It was centered about 150 miles from Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest, which was still recovering from a 6.4-magnitude preshock that hit the region on Thursday.

There were reports of trailers burning at a mobile home, and State Route 178 in Kern County was closed by a rockslide and roadway damage.

But Kern County Fire Chief David Witt says it appears no buildings collapsed. He also says there have been a lot of ambulance calls but no reported fatalities.

___

9:50 p.m.

An earthquake rattled Dodger Stadium in the fourth inning of the team’s game against the San Diego Padres.

The quake on Friday night happened when Dodgers second baseman Enriquè Hernàndez was batting. It didn’t appear to affect him or Padres pitcher Eric Lauer.

However, it was obvious to viewers of the SportsNet LA broadcast when the TV picture bounced up and down.

The quake registered an initial magnitude of 6.9 to 7.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

There was no announcement by the stadium’s public address announcer.

Some fans in the upper deck appeared to leave their seats and move to a concourse at the top of the stadium.

The press box lurched for about 20 seconds.

The quake occurred a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake hit in the Mojave Desert about 150 miles from Los Angeles.

___

9:40 p.m.

Authorities are now reporting injuries and damage from a big earthquake that was felt throughout Southern California and into Las Vegas and even Mexico.

The quake that hit at 8:19 p.m. was given a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 to 7.1, but the measurements were being calculated.

It followed Thursday’s 6.4-mangitude quake that at the time was the largest Southern California quake in 20 years. Both were centered near Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert.

Kern County fire officials reported “multiple injuries and multiple fires” without providing details. San Bernardino County firefighters reported cracked buildings and a minor injury.

___

8:30 p.m.

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 has jolted Southern California, but there are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake hit at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, where a magnitude 6.4 quake struck on Thursday. The agency initially said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1.

The quake was felt downtown as a rolling motion that seemed to last at least a half-minute. It was felt as far away as Las Vegas, and the USGS says it also was felt in Mexico.

If the preliminary magnitude is correct, it would be the largest Southern California quake in 20 years.

___

4 p.m.

Seismologists say there have been 1,700 aftershocks in the wake of the strongest earthquake to hit Southern California in 20 years but the chances of another large temblor are diminishing.

A magnitude 5.4 quake at 4:07 a.m. Friday is so far the strongest aftershock of Thursday’s 6.4 quake, which struck in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest.

Zachary Ross of the California Institute of Technology says the number of aftershocks might be slightly higher than average. He also says a quake of that size could continue producing aftershocks for years.

The quake caused some damage to buildings and roads in and around Ridgecrest.

However, seismologists say it’s unlikely the quake will affect any fault lines away from the immediate area, such as the mighty San Andreas.

___

1:20 p.m.

The city of Los Angeles is planning to reduce the threshold for public notifications by its earthquake early warning app, but officials say it was in the works before Southern California’s big earthquake Thursday.

The ShakeAlert LA app was designed to notify users of magnitudes of 5.0 or greater and when a separate intensity scale predicts potentially damaging shaking.

Robert de Groot of the U.S. Geological Survey says lowering the magnitude to 4.5 was already being worked on and had been discussed with LA as recently as a day before Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 quake centered in the Mojave Desert.

The shaking intensity levels predicted for LA were below damaging levels, so an alert was not triggered.

Mayor’s office spokeswoman Andrea Garcia also says the lower magnitude threshold has been in the planning stages and an update to the system is expected this month.

___

7:05 a.m.

A vigorous aftershock sequence is following the strongest earthquake to hit Southern California in 20 years.

A magnitude 5.4 quake at 4:07 a.m. Friday is so far the strongest aftershock of Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 jolt, and was felt widely.

Seismologists had said there was an 80% probability of an aftershock of that strength.

Thursday’s big quake struck in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, which suffered damage to buildings and roads.

___

9 p.m.

The strongest earthquake in 20 years shook a large swath of Southern California and parts of Nevada on the July 4th holiday, rattling nerves and causing injuries and damage in a town near the epicenter, followed by a swarm of ongoing aftershocks.

The 6.4 magnitude quake struck at 10:33 a.m. Thursday in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, California.

Kern County Fire Chief David Witt says multiple injuries and two house fires were reported in the town of 28,000. Emergency crews were also dealing with small vegetation fires, gas leaks and reports of cracked roads.

Witt says 15 patients were evacuated from the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital as a precaution and out of concern for aftershocks.

Source Article from https://www.cbs17.com/news/the-latest-6-9-earthquake-felt-in-southern-california/

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Police respond to explosion at Plantation, Florida fitness center – 10News

Police and firefighters were responding Saturday to a gas explosion at a strip shopping mall in the South Florida city of Plantation, authorities said.

Plantation Fire Rescue confirmed on Twitter that there are “multiple patients” from the incident.

News footage and social media video showed firefighters arriving at the mall. Windows were blown out of an LA Fitness. A section of the complex appeared to sustain significant damage, with shattered windows and scattered debris.

Plantation police tweeted: “All stores and businesses in the area of the Fountains Plaza and the Plantation Marketplace plaza near LA Fitness will be shut down until further notice until Fire Personnel can determine that it is safe to return. Please do not come into this area if possible.”

CNN affiliate

WPLG

reported that the explosion occurred at The Fountains mall in Plantation, near Fort Lauderdale.

Fire departments from Plantation, Davie, Lauderhill, Coral Springs, as well as Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue all responded to the scene. A triage area has been set up.

“A bomb just went off,” a man says in a video sent to the station.

Source Article from https://www.10news.com/news/national/police-respond-to-explosion-at-plantation-florida-fitness-center

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‘A willingness to fight’: Win or lose, Trump’s push for a citizenship question in the Census is red meat for his base – The Washington Post

July 6 at 8:00 AM

The government had begun printing Census forms, the Commerce Department had publicly announced its legal surrender and Justice Department lawyers had rested their case in court. But President Trump wasn’t ready to give up the fight.

With a tweet that sent much of his administration scrambling over the July 4 holiday, Trump decided to unilaterally revive the government’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

It’s a move that fits into a long pattern of Trump going to the mat — and occasionally overruling his own administration — to force a fight over controversial issues. While the strategy has so far yielded mixed results, it nonetheless allows Trump to cast himself as a relentless change agent — an image that has become central to his reelection bid.

“We’re fighting very hard against the system, that’s a very difficult system but we’ll make a decision,” Trump told reporters Friday, adding that he was “thinking of” issuing an executive order to add the citizenship question to Census forms.

The Trump administration, which told a federal court Friday that it would reverse its plans and continue pursuing the citizenship question, faces long odds. The Supreme Court last week blocked the government from moving ahead with asking about citizenship, after saying the administration’s stated rationale was “contrived.”

Stung by that legal rebuke, and facing fast-arriving deadlines to move forward with the Constitutionally-mandated census, Trump’s government publicly decided to drop its effort to add the citizenship question. On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the decennial population tally, said the administration was abandoning its effort and had begun printing the census forms without the citizenship question.

President Trump stops to talk to guests as he walks to board Marine One to depart from the South Lawn at the White House on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

But the appearance of a premature surrender — and the backlash it caused among conservatives — was enough to cause Trump to intervene.

“The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE!” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.”

The president has repeatedly rushed into the brink with last-minute reversals in similar situations, creating the impression that he is saving his administration from throwing in the towel on key priorities before exhausting all options.

In December, after Trump’s congressional negotiators had agreed to support a bipartisan spending deal to keep the government open — without providing funding for building new border barriers — Trump overruled them.

A 35-day partial government shutdown ensued, with the president and lawmakers locked in a stalemate over border-wall funding. Trump used the battle to attempt to bolster his political prospects, running digital ads to inform voters about his hard-line position.

President Trump stops to talk to reporters as he walks to board Marine One to depart from the South Lawn at the White House on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

When Trump did finally agree to give in and sign a spending bill, he coupled his surrender with the announcement of a national emergency declaration that he said would allow the government to repurpose existing funds to build the wall.

Several federal judges have since ruled against Trump’s effort to spend taxpayer money without congressional approval.

Despite the legal setbacks, the president can still tell voters he is fighting as hard as possible for his priorities, said Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican House leadership and the Republican National Committee.

“For a big part of the base, activity is achievement,” he said. “Demonstrating a willingness to fight is not just as important but, to a big part of the base, more important than having a cohesive strategy to win.”

For Trump, losing quietly on certain issues is more personally offensive than going down with a dramatic fight, said Tim O’Brien, author of the Trump biography, “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.”

“This is a president who always thinks theatrically — he doesn’t think strategically,” he said. “The second any issue gets perceived or portrayed as ‘Trump lost,” is almost a guarantor that he’s going to change course pretty quickly.”

For a president who promised voters they would be tired of winning, Trump has shown no hesitation to take on losing legal battles. Courts have struck down his attempts to strip money from sanctuary cities, block congressional inquiries into his finances and overturn several environmental regulations.

In all, federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration more than 60 times over the last two years.

Trump usually appeals negative rulings against him, often with the goal of reaching the Supreme Court — a strategy he described in transparent detail after his national emergency declaration in February.

“We’ll have a national emergency, and we will then be sued and they will sue us in the Ninth Circuit,” he said in a February news conference in the Rose Garden. “We will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we’ll get another bad ruling and then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake, and we’ll win in the Supreme Court.”

In the legal battle over the census, the high court did not serve as Trump’s buffer against lower courts. Opponents have argued before federal judges that the citizenship question would result in an undercount of millions of people who fear acknowledging that a noncitizen is part of their household. Hispanics would be disproportionately affected.

Roberts wrote in his opinion that the Commerce Department’s stated purpose for adding the question — that it was requested by the Justice Department to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act — did not past muster.

But where his lawyers saw defeat, Trump saw an invitation to try again.

“I have a lot of respect for Justice Roberts, but he didn’t like it, but he did say, ‘Come back, “ Trump told reporters Friday at the White House. “Essentially he said, ‘Come back.’”

Heye said Trump will not hesitate to use negative court rulings to his political advantage, by casting himself as a victim of an unfair system.

“If you’re in Trump’s base, everything that he does reinforces his central argument that the system is rigged,” he said. “So if the court rules in his favor, it’s a big victory for Trump. If the court rules against him, Trump can say, ‘This is how rigged the system is against you.’ Win or lose, he still can move that argument forward.’’

While the base-first strategy has helped solidify Trump’s support, it’s not clear if the president’s approach does more harm than good for his electoral prospects.

But Trump’s willingness to push the limit to fight for his priorities might also come across as chaos to some moderate voters.

On trade, Trump revived a trade skirmish with China with new tariffs last year after his treasury secretary said publicly that the U.S. was “putting the trade war on hold.” Trump banned transgender troops from serving in the military and announced he was pulling troops out of Syria without getting buy-in from then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who abruptly resigned in December after the decision.

And on immigration, he has threatened to shut down the southern border, impose tariffs on Mexico, and reinstitute family separations.

Accusations that he is politicizing the Census, or sparking a potential constitutional crisis by defying a judge’s ruling to add a citizenship question, could add to the sense of White House disorder that has turned off swing voters, O’Brien said.

“Immigration is an issue where there is an overwhelmingly broad public consensus,” he said. “People support immigration as long as it’s well-managed, and they don’t want to see it politicized.”

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-willingness-to-fight-win-or-lose-trumps-push-for-a-citizenship-question-in-the-census-is-red-meat-for-his-base/2019/07/06/4950889c-9f5c-11e9-b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html

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Biden warns Democratic rivals he’s got ‘all this information about other people’s pasts’ – Washington Examiner

Joe Biden let slip that his campaign was collecting dirt on his rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

“I mean, I get all this information about other people’s pasts, and what they’ve done and not done. And you know, I’m just not going to go there. If we keep doing that — I mean, we should be debating what we do from here,” Biden told CNN in a Friday interview, referring to the crowded field of two dozen White House hopefuls.

In May, Biden, 76, promised not to attack his rivals, saying: “I will not speak ill of any of the Democratic candidates, I will not do it.”

Although Biden said he wouldn’t use the opposition research, he made the comments while being grilled on the scrutiny his past approach to race issues is receiving.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California last week ripped Biden during the opening Democratic National Committee debate in Miami for his opposition to federally mandated busing in the 1970s, a policy aimed at encouraging educational integration. She also took him to task for his remarks about working with known segregationists in the Senate at the same time.

Should Biden use the information, the change in strategy would mark a pivot from his attempt to craft an affable “Uncle Joe” persona and an abandonment of his promise to stay positive.

Before the attacks from Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker on Biden for his segregationist comments, the Democratic race for the White House had been relatively genteel.

With seven months still until the Iowa caucuses, the former vice president has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he is seeking the presidency because he wants “to restore the soul of this country” and “unite” the nation. He has also vowed to support the party’s eventual standard-bearer, who will be anointed at the Democratic National Convention next July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-warns-democratic-rivals-hes-got-all-this-information-about-other-peoples-pasts

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GOP senators urge Trump to reject Iran’s ‘nuclear blackmail,’ seek to ‘snapback’ sanctions at the UN – Fox News

Video

President Trump says Iran will ‘let us know’ when ready to talk

Iran’s foreign ministry says it will never be ready to negotiate now that the Trump administration has imposed new sanctions; Kristin Fisher reports.

Three GOP senators this week urged President Trump to reject what they describe as Iran’s ‘nuclear blackmail’ in the wake of the rogue nation’s violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement — and highlighted the use of a mechanism in the U.N. resolution enshrining the deal that allows for a “snapback” of sanctions.

“Regime officials have signaled they intend to creep towards a nuclear weapon, while demanding concessions and promising to ‘reverse’ their violations if their demands are met,” Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wrote in a letter Tuesday. “We urge you to reject their nuclear blackmail.”

COTTON MOCKS IRAN OFFICIAL’S SANCTIONS COMPLAINT: WON’T BE ABLE TO SPEND IRANIANS’ MONEY IN ‘5-STAR RESTAURANTS’

Iran recently began stockpiling low-enriched uranium beyond agreed limits, in violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and have warned that more violations could soon be coming.

Given that it was United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 that endorsed the Obama-era deal, the Council could be the site of the next stage in deciding the embattled deal’s fate. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal last year, having described it as “the worst deal in history,” and the administration has since imposed waves of crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.

The senators urge Trump to invoke the so-called “snapback mechanism” in resolution 2231 that would restore sanctions on Iran’s uranium enrichment and missile development.

And while Security Council diplomats seek to work out how the U.S. will re-impose the sanctions given that it quit the deal last year, the letter from the senators notes that the U.N. resolution enables the original parties to the deal to revoke or snapback at any time.

“Paragraph 10 of the resolution defines the United States as a participant for the purpose of invoking the mechanism. We urge you to do so,” the senators wrote.

The lawmakers also call on the president to cease the use of “civil-nuclear waivers” that they say allows Iran to keep a nuclear status quo.

While there is another mechanism outside of the Security Council to deal with violations from the parties in the JCPOA, Tehran’s threats to enrich uranium mean the process of bringing the snapback mechanism into effect will sooner rather than later be tested.

From 2006 onwards the Council passed six resolutions that imposed severe sanctions on Iran in order to halt its nuclear ambitions by banning Iran from conducting nuclear research and developing ballistic missiles.

TRUMP VOWS IRAN CANNOT HAVE PATH TO NUKES, SAYS HE HOPES SANCTIONS SENT ‘MESSAGE’

The senators letter also claimed that the deal “was built to enable Iranian cheating” and allowed hundreds of billions of dollars to flow into regime coffers, “allowing the Iranians to boost its military and terrorist activities regionally and globally, even as they maintained nuclear weapons infrastructure, periodically exceeded restrictions on nuclear materials.”

“That’s how the deal was always supposed to work, that’s how it did work, and that’s why it is imperative that the United States now respond forcefully to Iran’s systematic violations by ending civil-nuclear waivers and invoking the U.N. snapback,” the senators argued.

It is unclear how such a move would be received by America’s European allies at the Security Council — who opposed the U.S. departure from the deal, and who have fought to keep the compact intact.

Video

Behnam Ben Taleblu a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington D.C. told Fox News that if the snapback mechanism is used and resolution 2231 is done away with, “it would also mean the Rouhani government’s policy of playing both sides of the Atlantic against one another would have failed.”

A source familiar with the administration’s discussions on the use of snapback told Fox News that there are ongoing interagency talks happening now about using the mechanism.

An indication of the interagency discussions came earlier in the week from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose statement on Iran’s violation called on the international community to restore its longstanding requirement of not allowing any uranium enrichment for the regime’s nuclear program in light of Iran’s latest violation.

His statement pulled no punches as he noted that “no nuclear deal should ever allow the Iranian regime to enrich uranium at any level. Starting in 2006, the United Nations Security Council passed six resolutions requiring the regime to suspend all enrichment activity. It was the right standard then; it is the right standard now.”

A senior GOP congressional staffer told Fox News: “Snapback is quickly becoming the only game in town, now that Iran has violated the deal.”

The staffer told Fox that, even though the U.S. left the deal, the administration still has every right per the resolution to put the snapback mechanism into play.

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“There’s no technical reason the Trump administration can’t just do it and quickly restore the international sanctions from before the deal,” the staffer stated, adding that some officials wanted to hold off while the Europeans negotiated with Iran to stay in bounds.

“Now that the Europeans have failed and the Iranians are engaged in nuclear blackmail, there’s no reason left to hold off.”

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-senators-trump-iran-nuclear-blackmail-sanctions-snapback

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Trump says immigration raids coming ‘fairly soon’ – Reuters

(Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday mass deportation roundups would begin “fairly soon” as U.S. migrant advocates vowed their communities would be “ready” when immigration officers come.

Trump, who has made a hardline immigration stance a key issue of his presidency and 2020 re-election bid, postponed the operation last month after the date was leaked, but on Monday he said it would take place after July 4.

“They’ll be starting fairly soon, but I don’t call them raids, we’re removing people, all of these people who have come in over the years illegally,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month said operations would target recently-arrived undocumented migrants in a bid to discourage a surge of Central American families at the southwest border.

ICE said in a statement its focus was arresting people with criminal histories but any immigrant found in violation of U.S. laws was subject to arrest.

Government documents published this week by migrant rights groups showed some past ICE operations resulted in more so-called “collateral” arrests of undocumented migrants agents happened to find, than apprehensions of targeted people.

Migrant rights groups said this generalized threat is harmful to communities, and the U.S. economy, as it forces adults to miss work and children to skip school out of fear they may be picked up and separated.

“We have to be ready, not just when Trump announces it, because there are arrests every day,” said Elsa Lopez, an organizer for Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a New Mexico group which educates migrants on their civil rights and creates phone networks to send alerts if ICE enters their neighborhood.

The threatened raids come after migrant apprehensions on the southwest border hit a 13-year high in May before easing in June as Mexico increased immigration enforcement.

A rising number of migrants are coming from outside Central America, including India, Cuba and African countries. The Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol sector on Friday reported the arrest of over 1,000 Haitians since June 10.

Slideshow (3 Images)

Democratic lawmakers visited an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol station on Monday and said migrants were being held in “horrifying” conditions, with women told to drink out of a toilet.

To “dispel” what he called “the misinformation,” Chief Border Patrol Agent Roy Villareal put out a video showing fresh water available from a cooler and a faucet in a cell at a Tucson, Arizona, sector migrant processing center.

“We’re not forcing aliens to drink out of the toilet,” said Villareal, head of an area that in May apprehended nearly six times fewer people than the El Paso sector, a stretch of border that has borne the brunt of the migrant surge.

Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Leslie Adler & Shri Navaratnam

Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/trump-says-immigration-raids-coming-fairly-soon-idUSKCN1U1003

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Trump Suggests Executive Order on Drug Prices, With a Scope That Is Unclear – The New York Times

The price index idea, which the pharmaceutical industry and many medical providers have vigorously opposed, is still under review from the Office of Management and Budget and may begin as a five-year pilot program next year. But it would apply to only a small subset of the drug market, and would not affect the prices paid for more typical prescription drugs that are sold at retail pharmacies. An executive order on drug prices would most likely have no force of law on its own, but could direct the Department of Health and Human Services to pursue or expand this approach.

Outside of the doctor’s office or hospital, the federal government does not buy many medications itself. Under current law, Medicare’s main prescription drug program farms out its drug purchasing to private insurance companies, and is barred from negotiating with drugmakers directly. The federal government does buy drugs for some populations, including veterans and federal prisoners, but they represent only a small fraction of the nation’s drug market.

“The frustration that the U.S. pays much higher prices for drugs has been a persistent theme of this administration,” said Peter Bach, the director of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, in an email. “We will have to see what is ordered to understand what could actually be implemented by executive order. The scope will have to be pretty limited in that the government itself does very little purchasing of drugs. It is all done through intermediaries that we pay for the service.”

The Department of Health and Human Services published a white paper of possible drug pricing policies last year, and has begun rolling out regulations to help enact portions of it. Congress is also seriously considering a handful of measures related to drug pricing, some of which may become law this year.

A bill introduced by Senator Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, has not advanced to a committee hearing, but comes the closest to what the president described Friday. Mr. Scott’s bill would link a drug’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration to a requirement that the drug’s retail list price in the United States be no higher than the lowest price charged in Canada, France, Britain, Japan or Germany.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/upshot/trump-drug-prices-executive-order.html

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The earth under Southern California is rumbling with about one aftershock every minute – CNN

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/06/us/ridgecrest-residents-earthquake-aftershock-trnd/index.html

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Ridgecrest earthquake rocks Southern California: Live updates – CNN

Ridgecrest Mayor Peggy Breeden said many of the city’s residents are sleeping outside following the second powerful earthquake to hit their city in just two days.

“Many of them have experienced something that is very traumatic, somewhat unknown to most of them and many of them are sleeping outside tonight,” she said.

They are fearful to be in their homes and we are offering any services as noted earlier — we have places for people to shelter here, but many are choosing to just be with their neighbors in their sidewalks and driveways and some of them are in the streets,” she added.

The leaders of the region’s emergency services are coordinating aid and regional in the Ridgecrest area. Photo: CA Governor’s Office of Emergency Services

Megan Person, Director of Countywide Communications for the Bakersfield Emergency Operation Center, said 129 residents are currently sheltering at the Kerr McGee Community Center in Ridgecrest.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/california-earthquake-intl/index.html

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Census 2020: Trump pursues citizenship question without firm plan – BBC News

Media captionUS President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House

The Trump administration will continue to pursue a way of adding a citizenship question to the census, lawyers said in court filings submitted on Friday.

But administration lawyers failed to provide any legal justification for the census question by a court deadline.

The Supreme Court rejected the initial rationale for adding the question to the 2020 census as “contrived”.

The question is controversial because critics believe it will discourage immigrants from taking part.

They say that lower participation by immigrants could lead to an undercount of populations in Democratic districts, benefiting President Donald Trump’s Republican Party and altering how congressional seats are allocated and billions of dollars of federal funds distributed in those districts.

The Trump administration said it wanted to ask about citizenship to better enforce a law that protects the voting rights of minorities, but the Supreme Court dismissed that justification.

Why has the issue come back?

It appeared settled when government lawyers indicated they had dropped the question, and officials began printing the census without it.

That reportedly infuriated President Trump, who announced that his administration would pursue the issue.

Image copyright
Getty Images

Image caption

Critics say the question would lead to a problematic undercount of immigrants

But a deadline of 14:00 (18:00 GMT) on Friday set by a Maryland district judge came and went, with no clear indication from the administration on how they planned to add the citizenship question.

Government lawyers said only that the justice and commerce departments had been “instructed to examine whether there is a path forward”.

President Trump said on Friday an executive order was among the options he was considering to force the question on to the census.

“We have four or five ways we can do it,” Mr Trump told reporters, suggesting the administration could “maybe do an addendum” after getting a positive decision.

But legal experts say executive orders could not override Supreme Court decisions.

US media reported that the administration was considering using separate federal records to try to gather information about undocumented immigrants.

Why is the issue so important?

The question – “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” – has not appeared on a US census for all Americans since 1950, though it has been asked to some subsets of the population between 1970 and 2000.

The census is held every 10 years.

Democrats fear that if President Trump is successful, districts with high numbers of immigrants – such as major cities – will lose congressional representation, since census data is used to determine the distribution of federal funding and the number of congressional seats.

Congressional districts are drawn based on total populations rather than the number of legal citizens.

Source Article from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48890233

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