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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended Vice President Kamala Harris‘ position in the Biden administration on Sunday amid her sinking poll numbers.
“For anyone who needs to hear it. @VP is not only a vital partner to @POTUS but a bold leader who has taken on key, important challenges facing the country—from voting rights to addressing root causes of migration to expanding broadband,” Psaki tweeted.
Psaki’s tweet comes after Harris’ office appeared to respond to a CNN article on Sunday that suggested “dysfunction” within the vice president’s team.
Symone Sanders, who serves as senior advisor and chief spokesperson for Harris, wrote, “It is unfortunate that after a productive trip to France in which we reaffirmed our relationship with America’s oldest ally and demonstrated U.S. leadership on the world stage, and following passage of a historic, bipartisan infrastructure bill that will create jobs and strengthen our communities, some in the media are focused on gossip — not on the results that the President and Vice President have delivered.”
Shortly afterwards, Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh tweeted, “Honored to work for @VP every day. She’s focused on the #BuildBackBetter agenda and delivering results for the American people.”
“Proud to be on team @VP every single day,” Assistant Press Secretary Rachel Palermo wrote.
CNN reporters Edward-Isaac Dovere and Jasmine Wright published an article titled “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president.” The article highlights repeated conflicts between Harris, her staff, and the White House.
“But, with many sources speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation more frankly, they all tell roughly the same story: Harris’ staff has repeatedly failed her and left her exposed, and family members have often had an informal say within her office. Even some who have been asked for advice lament Harris’ overly cautious tendencies and staff problems, which have been a feature of every office she’s held, from San Francisco district attorney to U.S. Senate,” the reporters wrote.
Harris was recently panned for her overseas trip to France after visiting a COVID-19 lab in Paris where she apparently used a French accent. A recent poll showed Harris’ approval rating below Biden’s with a 28% approval rating among Americans.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
The Charlevoix County Sheriff’s Office says the four people who died in a plane crash on Beaver Island include a local real estate agent and a couple who were planning to open a winery and vineyard on the island.
Lieutenant William Church identified three of the victims as Kate Leese and Adam Kendall of Beaver Island and Mike Perdue of Gaylord.
Authorities have not released the name of the pilot who also died in the crash.
Perdue’s 11-year-old daughter was seriously injured and as of Sunday, is still hospitalized.
A fire will be lit in Nathan Altman’s steel sculpture adjacent to downtown’s South Marina for anyone to gather in memory of the victims.
The fire will stay lit until Monday evening when a candlelight vigil starts at 6:30 p.m.
Adam and Kate just celebrated their birthdays on November 5th. They spent the year traveling and were planning on opening Antho Vineyards, a winery and tasting room, on the island.
A week before the crash, the couple told Detroit News their goal of the winery was to bring people together.
According to a GoFundMe page set up for the Perdue family, Perdue’s daughter, Laney, was airlifted to Petoskey and then drove to Grand Rapids for further care.
The page says she is alert and talking and is able to tell doctors her mom’s name and phone number.
The page says Laney suffered many broken bones and injuries, but most will heal on their own.
Fifty-two years after a “The Thomas Crown Affair” obsessed bank teller stole the modern-day equivalent of $1.7 million from his workplace in Cleveland and vanished, authorities say the case has been solved.
According to The United States Marshals Service, on July 11, 1969, 20-year-old Theodore John Conrad walked into his job at the Society National Bank in Cleveland and when he left, he took $215,000 in a paper bag. The following Monday, bank employees realized the one was missing after Conrad didn’t report to work.
Authorities said they learned Conrad told friends before the incident that it was easy to steal money from a bank, and he was planning to eventually do so. Conrad had become obsessed with the 1968 movie “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a movie about a millionaire that steals money for sport, for over a year before he committed the robbery.
With a two-day head start on authorities, Conrad evaded arrest for over 50 years, despite being featured on “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries” and investigators following leads around the country.
But last week, U.S. Marshals from Cleveland identified a man in Lynnfield, Massachusetts under the name Thomas Randele was actually Conrad. They found that Conrad had died in May of 2021 from lung cancer at the age of 71.
Authorities were able to confirm Randele was Conrad from the similarities in documents he submitted in the 1960s and ones submitted in the past 10 years, including when he filed for bankruptcy in 2014.
Conrad had live in Massachusetts under the pseudonym since 1970, close to where the 1968 film “The Thomas Crown Affair” was filmed. Authorities said Conrad had lived an “unassuming life” while in Lynnfield, and changed his actual date of birth of July 10, 1947 to July 10, 1949.
The case of Conrad’s whereabouts was originally handled by U.S. Marshal John K. Elliott until he retired in 1990. His son, U.S. Marshal for Northern Ohio Peter J. Elliott, said in a statement the case was one he knew all too well.
“My father took an interest in this case early because Conrad lived and worked near us in the late 1960s. My father never stopped searching for Conrad and always wanted closure up until his death in 2020,” he said.
Elliott said he hopes his father, who passed away in 2020, is “resting a little easier” that the case he ” always wanted closure” from had finally been brought to a close.
“Everything in real life doesn’t always end like in the movies,” Elliott said.
“For years, Democrats baselessly accused President Trump of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ. In reality, it is the Left that has been weaponizing the DOJ the ENTIRE TIME — from the false Russia Hoax to the Soviet-style prosecution of political opponents,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking House Republican, tweeted Saturday.
Kyle Rittenhouse walked the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, a rifle slung around his chest and shoulder.
The weapon was supposed to be for hunting on a friend’s property up north, the friend says. But on that night in August 2020, Rittenhouse says he took the Smith & Wesson AR-style semi-automatic with him as he volunteered to protect property damaged during protests the previous evening. Before midnight, he used it to shoot three people, killing two.
It’s a similar debate to what has played out across the country around the use of guns, particularly at protests like the one in Kenosha over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer or in other cities over pandemic-related restrictions. In Rittenhouse, some see a patriot defending an American city from destruction when police were unwilling or too overwhelmed to do so. Others see an irresponsible kid in over his head, enamored with brandishing a firearm, or someone looking for trouble or people to shoot.
On the streets of Kenosha that night, Rittenhouse was notable to some for his apparent youthfulness. But, for a while anyway, he was just another person with a gun.
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The Kenosha protest was one of many that year to draw armed militias or counterprotesters. Protesters, too, were armed, Kenosha Police Officer Pep Moretta and others testified.
“We were surrounded all night,” Moretta said, adding “there was probably more people armed with weapons than not.”
The shooting occurred as the coronavirus pandemic raged in the U.S. and three months after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis prompted protests — some violent — in cities big and small. The election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was heating up, with an increase in homicides and calls to “defund the police” a major focus.
All of those factors, experts say, led to a historic spike in the number of background checks to buy or possess a firearm, a key barometer of gun sales. In 2020, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System database reported almost 39.7 million background checks for gun purchases — more than double the 14.4 million in 2010.
Rittenhouse wasn’t old enough to buy a firearm. But in May 2020 he gave money to his sister’s boyfriend, Dominick Black, with whom he had gone shooting in northern Wisconsin, and Black bought the Smith & Wesson for him. The gun was supposed to remain in a safe at the home of Black’s stepfather, Black testified.
Then on Aug. 23, a white Kenosha police officer responding to a domestic disturbance call shot Blake, who investigators said was armed with a knife. The shooting sparked the protests where people damaged buildings and started fires, at one point burning over 100 vehicles in the lot of a car dealership.
Black said that was when his stepfather got the guns out of his safe in the garage and brought them into the house.
On Aug. 25, Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois. He and Black helped clean up businesses damaged in the unrest, then went back to Black’s house. When they left again for the scene of the protests, they both took their guns.
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Richie McGinniss, the chief video director for The Daily Caller, a conservative news site, arrived in Kenosha after working at other protests around the country. This protest was different because Wisconsin law allows some people to openly carry weapons, and he testified that as he followed Rittenhouse through the night, he sensed something bad could happen.
Ryan Balch said he carried an AR-style rifle that night and wore body armor to protect himself from protesters who were armed. The former Army infantryman said he patrolled streets with Rittenhouse, who told Balch he was 19 and an EMT, and thought he seemed like “a young and impressionable kid and ”a little underequipped and underexperienced.”
Gaige Grosskreutz, a protester and volunteer medic, carried a loaded pistol. A supporter of the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, he said it was the same as any other day: “It’s keys, phone, wallet, gun.”
Grosskreutz became the third person shot by Rittenhouse that night. He testified that he drew his weapon because he believed Rittenhouse, who had already fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, was an active shooter. He said Rittenhouse shot him in the arm right after Grosskreutz unintentionally pointed his pistol toward the 17-year-old.
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Rittenhouse, who faces a misdemeanor charge of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 in addition to homicide charges, testified he did nothing wrong and was defending himself when he fired his rifle. Prosecutors say the former police youth cadet who liked to play video shooting games was taking those fantasies to the streets.
For a lot of people, Rittenhouse is the face of gun owners in America, said David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies gun culture.
But that is a misconception, he said. In Kenosha, the more typical gun owner was the father who took weapons out of a safe amid unrest, or Grosskreutz, who carried a concealed pistol as a matter of course.
And while Rittenhouse’s core supporters believe he did nothing wrong from start to finish, a much larger group of gun owners “are somewhere in between,” Yamane said. While they support Rittenhouse’s right to defend himself in the moment, they also think he had no business being there, and that “two people died and one person was injured for no good reason.”
Former gun industry executive Ryan Busse, now senior policy adviser to the gun-safety group Giffords, calls Rittenhouse the “avatar” of a customer the NRA and gun companies have been appealing to, including by marketing and selling products with names like the Ultimate Arms Warmonger.
Among much of society, whether Rittenhouse is guilty or not guilty won’t change anyone’s minds about guns, he said.
“What’s dangerous is he’s going to become a mascot or a martyr,” Busse added. “Every time there’s a Rittenhouse, it moves the window of what’s acceptable. I think Rittenhouse has moved the window.”
LONDON — Media outlets around the world have been giving their verdict on the COP26 deal, an agreement struck Saturday night which tries to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
Nearly 200 countries approved the U.N.-brokered deal, which suffered stumbling blocks over the phasing out of coal, fossil fuel subsidies and financial support to low-income countries.
India and China, both among the world’s biggest burners of coal, insisted on a last-minute change of fossil fuel language in the pact — from a “phase out” of coal to a “phase down.”
After initial objections, opposing countries ultimately conceded.
The U.K.
Germany
The English-language edition of Deutsche Welle declared: “World leaders fail to honor climate pledge.” It noted that the U.N. summit has been “slammed as a failure after India and China weakened language on phasing out fossil fuels.”
It highlighted that, although the language was somewhat watered down, it was the first time that a COP conference had made specific decisions on coal and fossil fuels.
France
France’s Les Monde headlined, “La COP26 accouche d’un accord en demi-teinte,” which underlined the mixed reception the deal received. It said that countries from the North had not met the expectations of the more vulnerable countries of the South.
Le Figaro added that Saturday night’s deal would probably generate a lot of frustration.
The U.S.
China
The announcements received less attention in China’s newspapers but state-backed agency Xinhua noted that the deal included “commitments to significantly increase financial support through the Adaptation Fund as developed countries were urged to double their support to developing countries by 2025.”
“However, it remains to be seen whether developed countries, whose development is responsible for most of today’s climate change impacts, will heed the set timeframe,” the Xinhua report said.
The COP26 agreement falls short of setting up a fund to compensate countries for climate-linked loss and damage. The G-77 group of developing countries expressed “extreme disappointment” at this omission.
There was also less focus on the climate summit on the English-language versions of Indian news websites. The Hindustan Times reported comments made by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who conceded that the deal had been a compromise.
The Times of India picked up comments made by Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, whose eleventh-hour intervention changed the wording on coal in the final text of the agreement. Yadav labeled Glasgow a “success from India’s standpoint because we articulated and put across the concerns and ideas of the developing world quite succinctly and unequivocally.”
A senior Senate Republican refused four times on Sunday to condemn Donald Trump for defending supporters who chanted “Hang Mike Pence” during the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January.
Trump made the comments about his vice-president, who did not yield to pressure to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, in an interview with ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl.
John Barrasso of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, appeared on ABC’s This Week. He was asked: “Can your party tolerate a leader who defends murderous chants against his own vice-president?”
“Well,” said Barrasso. “Let me just say, the Republican party is incredibly united right now and … I think the more that the Democrats and the press becomes obsessed with President Trump, I think the better it is for the Republican party. President Trump brings lots of energy to the party, he’s an enduring force.”
He also said the party was focused on elections and policy debate, not the past.
His host, George Stephanopoulos, said: “So you have no problem with the president saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence’ is common sense?”
“I was with Mike Pence in the Senate chamber during 6 January,” Barrasso said. “And what happened was they quickly got Vice-President Pence out of there, certainly a lot faster than they removed the senators. I believe he was safe the whole time.
“I didn’t hear any of those chants. I don’t believe that he did either. And Vice-President Pence came back into the chamber that night and certified the election.”
Stephanopoulous said: “We just played the chants. I’m asking you if you can tolerate the president saying ‘Hang Mike Pence’ is common sense.”
“It’s not common sense,” Barrasso said, before pivoting to Trump’s lie that the election was subject to widespread voter fraud.
“There are issues in every election,” he said. “I voted to certify the election. And what we’ve seen on this election, there are areas that needed to be looked into, like what we saw in Pennsylvania. We all want fair and free elections. That’s where we need to go for the future.”
Stephanopoulos said: “But you’re not going to criticise President Trump for those views?”
Barrasso said: “I don’t agree with President Trump on everything. I agree with him on the policies that have brought us the best economy in my lifetime. And I’m going to continue to support those policies.”
Karl released more snippets of his interview with Trump. Asked if reports he told Pence “you can be a patriot or you can be a pussy” were accurate, Trump said: “I wouldn’t dispute that.”
Trump also said he thought Pence could have sent electoral college results back to the House – the overwhelming majority of constitutional scholars say he could not – and said: “I don’t know that I can forgive him.”
“He did the wrong thing,” Trump said. “Very nice, man. I like him a lot. I like his family so much, but … it was a tragic mistake.”
Jonathan Karl talks to Stephen Colbert this week. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
Trump’s flirtation with another White House run has seen critics within the GOP subject to primary challenges, political ostracisation and even death threats.
Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio voted for Trump’s impeachment over the Capitol attack. Like Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of only two Republicans on the House select committee investigating 6 January, Gonzalez will retire next year.
He told CNN’s State of the Union he feared Trump was formulating plans for a coup.
“I think any objective observer would come to this conclusion: that he has evaluated what went wrong on 6 January. Why is it that he wasn’t able to steal the election? Who stood in his way?
“Every single American institution is just run by people. And you need the right people to make the right decision in the most difficult times. He’s going systematically through the country and trying to remove those people and install people who are going to do exactly what he wants them to do, who believe the big lie, who will go along with anything he says.
“I think it’s all pushing towards one of two outcomes. He either wins legitimately, which he may do, or if he if he loses again, he’ll just try to steal it but he’ll try to steal it with his people in those positions. And that’s then the most difficult challenge for our country. It’s the question, do the institutions hold again? Do they hold with a different set of people in place? I hope so, but you can’t guarantee it.”
Gonzalez said he “despised” most Biden policies and would never vote Democratic.
But he said: “The country can’t survive torching the constitution. You have to hold fast to the constitution … and the cold, hard truth is Donald Trump led us into a ditch on 6 January.
“… I see fundamentally a person who shouldn’t be able to hold office again because of what he did around 6 January, but I also see somebody who’s an enormous political loser. I don’t know why anybody who wants to win elections would follow that … If he’s the nominee again in ’24 I will do everything I can to make sure he doesn’t win.
“… 6 January was the line that can’t be crossed. 6 January was an unconstitutional attempt led by the president of the United States to overturn an American election and reinstall himself in power illegitimately. That’s fallen-nation territory, that’s third-world country territory. My family left Cuba to avoid that fate. I will not let it happen here.”
Trump issued a statement on Sunday, repeating lies about election fraud and alluding to the indictment of his former strategist Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress, for ignoring a subpoena from the 6 January committee, and legal jeopardy faced by others including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
“American patriots are not going to allow this subversion of justice to continue,” Trump said, adding: “Our country is going to hell!”
Sen. Bill Haggerty, R-Tenn., argues Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan is coming at ‘exactly the wrong time’ for Democrats.
White House national economic director Brian Deese on Sunday touted the Democrats’ $1.75 trillion social spending and climate package as the solution to reducing inflation, saying services like universal preschool and affordable housing will get more people to participate in the economy and reduce price pressures.
During appearances on CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC News’ “This Week,” Deese said he’s “confident” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will bring President Biden’s Build Back Better Act for a vote this week and that it will advance to the Senate.
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., (right) and director of National Economic Council Brian Deese talk after a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., at the Capitol on Oct. 25, 2021, in Washington. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
“We want to improve the productive capacity of our economy, which will actually reduce price pressures,” Deese told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We want to get more people to work, which will actually reduce price pressures. The provisions in this bill have strong support of independent experts.
“You look at something like universal preschool, you know, George, economists for decades have been saying there’s probably no single investment that could do more to improve the productive capacity of our workforce than investing in universal preschool. This bill would do that,” he continued.
“By providing affordable child care, affordable elder care, we’re going to help get those people back into the workforce, which will reduce price pressures while also reducing the practical costs that Americans face,” he added. “That’s the case we’re going to make and that’s the case why delivering right now for the American people is the right thing to do.”
Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese speaks on rising food prices at a press briefing at the White House on Sept. 08, 2021, in Washington. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Deese also said the bill is “fully paid for” by raising taxes on big corporations and the wealthiest Americans, though the Congressional Budget Office has yet to release its scoring of the bill’s budgetary impact. A report is expected in the coming weeks, but Deese said he’s confident the tab will ultimately be zero.
“We’re confident this bill, as it moves through the process, is going to be fully paid for,” he said. “And not only that, it’s actually going to reduce deficits over the long term.”
On CNN, host Jake Tapper asked Deese to respond to comments by former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who said Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that was passed in March has been a major reason behind the rise of inflation.
President Joe Biden attends a virtual COVID-19 summit during the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, on the White House campus on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci / AP Newsroom)
Fifty-two years after a “The Thomas Crown Affair” obsessed bank teller stole the modern-day equivalent of $1.7 million from his workplace in Cleveland and vanished, authorities say the case has been solved.
According to The United States Marshals Service, on July 11, 1969, 20-year-old Theodore John Conrad walked into his job at the Society National Bank in Cleveland and when he left, he took $215,000 in a paper bag. The following Monday, bank employees realized the one was missing after Conrad didn’t report to work.
Authorities said they learned Conrad told friends before the incident that it was easy to steal money from a bank, and he was planning to eventually do so. Conrad had become obsessed with the 1968 movie “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a movie about a millionaire that steals money for sport, for over a year before he committed the robbery.
With a two-day head start on authorities, Conrad evaded arrest for over 50 years, despite being featured on “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries” and investigators following leads around the country.
But last week, U.S. Marshals from Cleveland identified a man in Lynnfield, Massachusetts under the name Thomas Randele was actually Conrad. They found that Conrad had died in May of 2021 from lung cancer at the age of 71.
Authorities were able to confirm Randele was Conrad from the similarities in documents he submitted in the 1960s and ones submitted in the past 10 years, including when he filed for bankruptcy in 2014.
Conrad had live in Massachusetts under the pseudonym since 1970, close to where the 1968 film “The Thomas Crown Affair” was filmed. Authorities said Conrad had lived an “unassuming life” while in Lynnfield, and changed his actual date of birth of July 10, 1947 to July 10, 1949.
The case of Conrad’s whereabouts was originally handled by U.S. Marshal John K. Elliott until he retired in 1990. His son, U.S. Marshal for Northern Ohio Peter J. Elliott, said in a statement the case was one he knew all too well.
“My father took an interest in this case early because Conrad lived and worked near us in the late 1960s. My father never stopped searching for Conrad and always wanted closure up until his death in 2020,” he said.
Elliott said he hopes his father, who passed away in 2020, is “resting a little easier” that the case he ” always wanted closure” from had finally been brought to a close.
“Everything in real life doesn’t always end like in the movies,” Elliott said.
A new WaPo-ABC poll out this morning has President JOE BIDEN’s approval rating down to 41%, with 53% of respondents disapproving. That’s troubling for the White House because the poll was conducted Nov. 7-10 — after the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure package (BIF).
— But the numbers for Biden get even worse than that:
63% of respondents said Biden has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing” so far in his presidency. A full 45% said he’s done “little or nothing” — that’s worse than the numbers for then-Presidents DONALD TRUMP, BARACK OBAMA or BILL CLINTON at comparable points in their presidencies.
Just 31% said he’s kept most of his major campaign promises — also a worse figure than Trump, Obama or Clinton received.
70% rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor.”
— Tsunami warning for Dems:
51% of registered voters said they’d vote for the generic Republican congressional candidate if the elections were today.
63% of respondents support the bipartisan infrastructure deal.
And 58% support “spending about two trillion dollars to address climate change and to create or expand preschool, health care and other social programs.”
Biden will hold a big, splashy BIF-signing ceremony Monday, his first opportunity to begin to turn these numbers around. But despite the bill’s bipartisan support, it looks like it will be an overwhelmingly Democratic affair.
— Several GOP “yes” votes are joining Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL in skipping the White House photo op, according to the WSJ’s Lindsay Wise and Eliza Collins — that includes Reps. ANDREW GARBARINO (R-N.Y.), who’s received a death threat, and DON BACON (R-Neb.). That said, Sen. SUSAN COLLINS (R-Maine) and Rep. TOM REED (R-N.Y.) plan to attend.
Speaking of the Trumpists-vs.-everybody war …
— Trump escalated his hostilities against Republican officials who do not do as he wishes in a statement Saturday night, calling on “good and smart America First Republican patriots to run primary campaigns” against GOP House members who voted for the BIF — as well as those who voted against the BIF but supported holding STEVE BANNON in contempt of Congress. Trump’s statement, which IDs his targeted lawmakers by name
— Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas), fresh off picking a fight with BIG BIRD, turned his sights on Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) on Saturday. Quote-tweeting a two-day-old CNN post that asked “Is there a lane for Liz Cheney in New Hampshire in 2024?” the Texas Republican said, “Yes. It’s called the Democratic primary.” Cheney then quote-tweeted Cruz: “I know you’re posturing for the secessionist vote, Ted. But my party, the Republican party, saved the Union. You swore an oath to the Constitution. Act like it.” (These spats benefit both Cruz and Cheney — riling up their supporters and ginning up media attention.)
WHEN I CALLED YOU LAST NIGHT FROM GLASGOW — Negotiators struck a new global climate deal Saturday at the COP26 conference in Scotland. The BBC writes that the landmark agreement takes some historic steps, including making plans to reduce reliance on coal for the first time ever.
— But it goes only so far: Even if countries live up to their pledges, emissions would still likely push the world past the 1.5-degree Celsius mark — which scientists believe will make the most serious effects of climate change unavoidable. (The Guardian says “the goal of 1.5C of climate heating is alive, but only just.”)
— The U.S. stepped up its involvement majorly after the Trump administration retreated from global efforts to fight climate change, Zack Colman reports. The American presence “helped drive the urgency at the talks,” although it failed to attain its most ambitious goals or persuade China to get fully on board.
— India and China almost torpedoed the entire deal at the last minute, relenting only after the U.S. and the EU acquiesced to many of their demands to soften language, Karl Mathiesen reports.
— Daily downer: The Daily Beast’s Thor Benson writes that our failure to come together in the face of Covid-19 — as societies usually do when confronted with crisis — has psychologists and other experts worried: They “have been stunned by this outcome. And they fear it is a stark warning for what may happen when climate change — one of the biggest existential threats humanity has ever faced — becomes a greater threat in our daily lives.”
— Here’s a question: “Can Reaganism rise again?” “For a long time, longer than I’ve held this job, my advice to Republican politicians and policymakers has been consistent: It isn’t the 1970s or 1980s anymore,” writes NYT’s Ross Douthat. “The year 2021, though, is the first time a reasonable Republican could listen to my pitch and answer, but what if history is repeating itself, and we’re back in Reagan’s world?” The U.S. seems locked in a “cold war” with China, crime has emerged as a major political issue, and inflation is defining Americans’ economic fears. But that’s a tad facile: The parallels are complicated and, as Douthat readily admits, it’d be wrong to expect a simple one-for-one repeat of the 1980s. But just because history won’t repeat doesn’t mean it won’t rhyme.
— Setting the stage for a post-Biden party: While Biden says he plans to run again in 2024 (it’s obviously not to his advantage to say otherwise), some allies and a whole lot of pundits assume that he won’t — which leaves the Democrats in need of a standard-bearer. Enter VP KAMALA HARRIS and Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG, two history-making figures who may well lead the party in 2024 or 2028, but whose “political fortunes [are] diverging in the first 10 months of Biden’s presidency,” write WaPo’s Cleve Wootson Jr. and Sean Sullivan. They dive into that dynamic in some depth — while noting in the final graf that the Harris-Buttigieg “rivalry” seems, thus far at least, to be mostly a media invention. Related reading:“Pete Buttigieg is about to become the most powerful transportation secretary ever,”by Insider’s Adam Wren and Warren Rojas
— One to watch: USAID Administrator SAMANTHA POWER is cutting a high-profile figure in Washington despite her relatively under-the-radar agency — earning speculation that she might be angling for a more prominent post, Nahal Toosi reports. Her celebrity is also helping USAID gain access to people “who in the past would barely give the agency the time of day,” even as her outspokenness has sometimes stepped on the State Department’s toes. Nahal also writes that Power’s relative silence on Afghanistan during much of the U.S. pullout prompted speculation that she might be trying to avoid association with the mess.
SUNDAY BEST:
— National Economic Council Director BRIAN DEESE on the Build Back Better bill timing, on ABC’s “This Week”: “We’re confident that this bill is going to come up in the House this week. It will get a vote, it will pass, and it will move on to the Senate.”
— Bacon on the backlash to Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “To say that a bill is right for your district, right for your state, and something that you helped write, but then you’ve got to vote against it because you don’t want to give the other side a victory? That is a sign of what’s broken.”
— Rep. FRED UPTON (R-Mich.) on whether he’ll run for reelection, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Well, we don’t know what our districts look like yet. We’re in the midst of looking at maps. Michigan loses a seat. We will evaluate everything probably before the end of the year in terms of making our own decision. We have never made a decision more than a year out.”
— Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN on whether inflation will be down by the midterms, on CBS’ “Face the Nation”: “It really depends on the pandemic. The pandemic has been calling the shots for the economy and for inflation.”
— Surgeon General VIVEK MURTHY on a potential winter increase in Covid-19 cases, on “Fox News Sunday”: “We should be prepared for the fact that there may be an uptick in cases that we see in various parts of the country with cold weather. But what has held true for the last year is still true, which is that vaccines still give you a high degree of protection, especially against the worst outcomes of Covid like hospitalization and death.”
— New Hampshire Gov. CHRIS SUNUNU on why he sat out the Senate race, on “Meet the Press”: “Unfortunately, too often on both sides of the aisle, doing nothing is a win. And I don’t live in that world. I can’t really work like that. So I’m more of an executive and a manager. And again, you know, we’re still in the middle of the Covid crisis … At some point, maybe there’s an opportunity to go down. But you’re absolutely right. There just needs to be a fundamental change of philosophy on both sides of the aisle to simply start getting stuff done.”
BIDEN’S SUNDAY — The president will return to D.C. from Camp David at 1:15 p.m.
HARRIS’ SUNDAY — The VP has nothing on her public schedule.
PLAYBOOK READS
POLITICS ROUNDUP
ALARM BELLS FOR DEMS — Republicans made major strides in local elections in Pennsylvania suburbs earlier this month, reversing the Trump-era trend lines in one of the nation’s most pivotal swing areas, reports Holly Otterbein from Philadelphia. Republican candidates successfully downplayed Trump, citing “inflation, education, immigration and crime” as crucial to their victories, while “Pennsylvania Democrats sought to tie local Republican candidates to the former GOP president — and there were few signs that it worked.”
FROM 30,000 FEET — WaPo’s Dan Balz analyzes a couple of recent reports that highlights how much changing attitudes about race over the past decade have polarized the two parties further from each other. The shift was largely the result of white Democrats growing more liberal on race; there were also growing, Trump-fueled partisan divides on immigration and Muslim people. The reports, he writes, show “why the debate over racial injustice is both as politically charged as ever and still seemingly irreconcilable.”
2024 WATCH — In a hypothetical presidential rematch, Trumpleads Biden by 11 points in Iowa — a 3-point improvement on his 2020 margin in the state — according to a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll. That includes independents breaking for Trump by 8. One interesting data point:Sixty-one percent of Republicans say they’re more aligned with the GOP, whereas 26% say they’re more aligned with Trump.
— ALYSSA FARAH, former press secretary for MIKE PENCE, told CNN’s PAMELA BROWN on Saturday that she thinks the former VP will run for president in 2024 against Trump (though she noted she has no insider knowledge). “There’s this belief that people are just going to clear the field for Trump. I actually think some folks are teeing up to run.” Watch here
CONGRESS
(IR)RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES — Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER said today that his chamber will likely take up the annual defense policy bill this week as the BBB process drags out longer — though he hopes to make progress on the parliamentarian’s assessment of the reconciliation bill this week, reports Burgess Everett. With so many priorities piling up over the next several weeks, Schumer asked Dems to “keep your schedule flexible for the remainder of the calendar year.” The Dear Colleague letter
— One under-discussed component of the reconciliation bill is a payroll tax credit for local news outlets, which would be “the first time the federal government has offered targeted support in response to the decline of local news,” report AP’s Farnoush Amiri and Tali Arbel. The measure has largely attracted unified support from Democrats in both chambers, though Republicans deride it as a handout.
FOR YOUR RADAR — In a letter going out Monday, GOP Sens. MIKE BRAUN (Ind.), MARCO RUBIO (Fla.), MIKE LEE (Utah), CYNTHIA LUMMIS (Wyo.) and Cruz say they won’t support any fiscal 2022 omnibus spending bill that doesn’t fund the U.S.-Mexico border wall, per Fox News’ Adam Shaw and Kelly Laco.
AMERICA AND THE WORLD
MAJOR INVESTIGATION — A blockbuster story from NYT’s Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt reveals that a 2019 U.S. airstrike killed several dozen civilians in Syria — one of the worst such incidents in the war against the Islamic State. The military knew almost as soon as it happened, and it was flagged as a potential war crime. “But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.” There was never an independent investigation.
— David Sanger (@SangerNYT): “A remarkable piece of investigative reporting that says volumes about why militaries around the world cannot be trusted to investigate themselves. And to those who argue the press is never justified in publishing classified information – well, read this.”
HAVANA OOH NA NA — Cuba faces a moment of truth Monday, when the opposition movement is planning a “Civic March for Change” (plus corresponding demonstrations in Miami and elsewhere). WaPo’s Karen DeYoung reports that the Cuban government’s response “will play a role in how the [Biden] administration proceeds.” Everyone’s still waiting on Biden to reveal his administration’s long-gestating Cuba policy, but DeYoung reports that it’s likely to fall somewhere in between Trump and Obamaon remittances and travel, while the plan to get Cuba wired to the internet “has run into technological and legal problems.”
CONSULTANT CONCERNS — A big NBC investigation from Dan De Luce and Yasmine Salam reveals that McKinsey has advised “Chinese state-run enterprises that have supported Beijing’s naval buildup in the Pacific and played a key role in China’s efforts to extend its influence around the world,” at the same time that the company works with the Pentagon. That’s prompting national security concerns from some in Washington, though the company says it doesn’t view the situation as a conflict of interest.
POLICY CORNER
FED UP — Bloomberg’s Craig Torres examines what we know about LAEL BRAINARD’s views on employment and inflation if she does get elevated to Fed chair: “Some financial market participants have speculated that Brainard, a Democrat, may put more weight on the employment side of the Fed’s dual mandate, which also includes stable prices. … But there is no direct evidence that Brainard, 59, can’t be tough on inflation. … What is clear is that Brainard has been a big supporter of the Fed’s new policy framework.”
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE — In both the ongoing high-profile trials of KYLE RITTENHOUSE and AHMAUD ARBERY’s killers, the question of self-defense against a victim trying to take one’s guns looms large. NYT’s Shaila Dewan writes that the cases “expose deep fault lines in the legal and moral concept of self-defense, a doctrine that is particularly cherished in America but ill-equipped to handle an era of expanded gun rights, growing political extremism, violent threats and a strong vigilante strain.”
DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS — From San Antonio, WaPo’s Casey Parks tells the story of TERE HARING, the head of an anti-abortion nonprofit working to provide diapers, rent assistance and other help to new mothers. Her center has seen an uptick in clients since Texas’ new near-total ban on abortion helped slash the number of abortions in the state — but, largely thanks to the pandemic, “[h]er coffers had dwindled as the need had risen.”
— In the wake of Texas’ law as well as the pandemic, the use of mail-order abortion pills has increased in many places, reports AP’s John Hanna. But uncertainty surrounding their legality has prevented some people from obtaining medication abortions this way.
THE PANDEMIC
TRENDING THE WRONG WAY — The start of a winter surge ofCovid-19 may be descending: Forty-four states are seeing case numbers rise and 20 states are seeing increasing hospitalizations. More from CBS
PLAYBOOKERS
IN MEMORIAM — “NPR books editor Petra Mayer has died,”by NPR’s Emma Bowman: “She died suddenly at Holy Cross Hospital in Maryland of what’s believed to be a pulmonary embolism … Mayer was a proud nerd with a penchant for science fiction, comics and cats.”
SPOTTED: Susan DiMarco, the wife of Jeh Johnson, in Newport News, Va., on Saturday christening the USS New Jersey, the 11th Virginia Class fast-attack submarine and the very first specially built to accommodate both male and female sailors. Also in attendance: Jeh Johnson, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) and Elaine Luria (D-Va.) Mike Mullen, Erin McPike, Josh Rothstein and Sarah Istel.Video
OUT AND ABOUT — At the Kennedy Center on Saturday night, David Rubenstein interviewed Cappy McGarr, who co-created the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and recently wrote “The Man Who Made Mark Twain Famous: Stories from the Kennedy Center, the White House, and Other Comedy Venues” ($28). McGarr told the crowd many funny stories about the prize over the years, including how Mel Brooks turned it down three times and how he once had to track down Bill Murray on the golf course to try to persuade him to accept it. Also SPOTTED: Tom Daschle, Evan Bayh, Chuck Robb, Deborah Rutter, Bob Barnett and Rita Braver, Barbie Allbritton, Jeff Nussbaum, Kevin Chaffee, Steve and Jean Case, Daniel Lippman, Sophia Narrett, Margaret Carlson, Patricia Harrison, Todd Gillman, Daniel Strauss and Claire Tonneson,Adrienne Arsht, Janet Donovan, and Steve and Amy Ricchetti.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Greg Pence (R-Ind.), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) and Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) … Condoleezza Rice … Valerie Jarrett … Ben Rhodes … Tony Powell … Jacob Freedman of Albright Stonebridge … Peter Lattman … Frank Kelly … Sarah Binder … John Jameson … POLITICO’s Lauren Lanza … WaPo’s Paige Winfield Cunningham … Rachel Noerdlinger … Courtney Alexander (3-0) … Liz Morrison of No Labels … Randolph Court of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation … Brunswick Group’s Joshua Friedlander … Sally Sterling … P.J. O’Rourke … NBC’s Amy Lynn … Ed Reno … Ashley Yehl Flanagan … Brianna Manzelli … Madeleine Weast … Bloomberg Opinion’s Jonathan Landman … Rutland Herald’s Jeff Danziger … Prince Charles
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Send Playbookers tips to [email protected]. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Allie Bice, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross.
Karl Nehammer, the country’s interior minister, announced wide-ranging police measures, such as checking vaccination records, and laid out some of the fines people would face if caught breaking the rules.
Austria is currently averaging 10,395 cases a day, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Less than 65 percent of the country is fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in the European Union.
The new lockdown, which comes a week after an announcement that most businesses were required to check customers for proof of vaccination or immunity, essentially aims to keep the estimated two million unvaccinated Austrians off the streets as cases are surging.
Outside the chancellery in Vienna on Sunday, where Mr. Schallenberg, his interior and health minister were announcing the new restrictions, a crowd gathered to protest them.
The atmosphere was tense. The Chinese were willing to put the whole conference was on the line. “We will break the whole thing down,” said one Chinese delegate, according to the EU official.
Either way, the Glasgow deal would be historic in becoming the first ever U.N. climate agreement to even mention the fuel most responsible warming the planet. But the difference between the eradication of coal and its limitation was fateful for the vulnerable countries watching the great powers leaving and entering the room.
Sharma was attempting to keep delegates from small island states and the least developed countries informed, moving in and out of the room, a U.K. official said. But China and India had blindsided the entire conference, and the U.K. presidency, by waiting for the last possible moment to spring their surprise demand.
Xie and the U.K. lead negotiator, Archie Young, had a heated discussion on the floor of the plenary. Andrea Meza, Costa Rica’s environment minister, said she had no idea it was coming. “The coal thing? No, not all. That was unexpected.”
Huddled together across the hall, another meeting was taking place. Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera called it an “informal European Council:” the body of ministers representing the EU’s 27 member states. Timmermans, who takes his mandate from the governments of the union, was jogging between the back room and the Europeans as they discussed whether the EU could back a weaker text.
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
One of America’s Most Wanted fugitives credited with pulling off one of the largest bank robberies in the history of Cleveland, Ohio, had spent five decades living a quiet life in a Boston suburb, not far from where the movie investigators say inspired his notorious real-life heist was filmed.
An ordinary 20-year-old bank teller at the time, Theodore John “Ted” Conrad walked out of his job at Society National Bank in Cleveland on Friday, July 11, 1969, with $215,000 in a paper bag and vanished, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. That amount is equivalent to over $1.7 million in 2021. The bank didn’t check their vault until the following Monday when Conrad failed to report for work.
Fifty-two years would pass before U.S. Marshals, who traveled from Cleveland to Boston, positively determined that Conrad had been living an “unassuming” life under the alias Thomas Randele in Lynnfield, Massachusetts since 1970. He died there of lung cancer in May of 2021 at the age of 71.
Theodore John “Ted” Conrad walked out of his job at Society National Bank in Cleveland on Friday July 11, 1969 with $215,000 in a paper bag and vanished, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. That amount was the equivalent to over $1.7 million in 2021. (U.S. Marshals Service )
A year before the Cleveland bank robbery, Conrad became obsessed with the 1968 Steve McQueen film “The Thomas Crown Affair,” which featured a fictional millionaire businessman who decided to rob a bank for sport. Investigators say Conrad saw the movie more than a half dozen times and bragged to his friends about how easy it would be to take money from the bank and told them he planned to do so.
Ironically, he moved to the Boston suburb near the location where the original Thomas Crown Affair movie was filmed, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Conrad has been featured on America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. Investigators “perplexed” by the case over the past 50 years have chased leads across the country, including to Washington D.C., Inglewood, California, western Texas, Oregon, and Honolulu, Hawaii.
The cold case was cracked in part of a collaborative effort between a U.S. Marshal and his son, who grew up and joined the same federal agency decades later in northern Ohio.
“This is a case I know all too well,” Peter J. Elliott, U.S. Marshal for Northern Ohio, said in a statement. “My father, John K. Elliott, was a dedicated career Deputy United States Marshal in Cleveland from 1969 until his retirement in 1990. My father took an interest in this case early because Conrad lived and worked near us in the late 1960s. My father never stopped searching for Conrad and always wanted closure up until his death in 2020.
His statement continued, “We were able to match some of the documents that my father uncovered from Conrad’s college days in the 1960s with documents from Randele that led to his identification. I hope my father is resting a little easier today knowing his investigation and his United States Marshals Service brought closure to this decades-long mystery. Everything in real life doesn’t always end like in the movies.”
U.S. Marshals investigators from Cleveland were able to match documents that Conrad completed in the 1960s with documents Randele completed, including documents from when Randele filed for Bankruptcy in Boston Federal Court in 2014, according to the agency’s statement. Additional investigative information led Marshals to positively identify Thomas Randele as Theodore J. Conrad.
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff looks up as he tours an exhibition at the Petit Palais museum with French first lady Brigitte Macron and artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, right.
Ian Langsdon/AP
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Ian Langsdon/AP
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff looks up as he tours an exhibition at the Petit Palais museum with French first lady Brigitte Macron and artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, right.
Ian Langsdon/AP
It was a light-hearted moment at the end of the first diplomatic trip abroad for Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
Before she got on Air Force Two to return to Washington, Harris, who loves to cook, made a quick stop at E. Dehillerin, the iconic purveyor of cookware.
“I am looking around, but I want to buy a pot,” Harris told the pool of reporters in tow, as she gazed up at rows and rows of copper pots hanging from pegboard, and Emhoff awkwardly stood by.
One asked whether the second gentleman is a good cook. “He’s an apprentice,” Harris said, chuckling. “She taught me during COVID,” Emhoff said, “out of necessity after almost burning down our apartment, then I got a little bit better.”
This was one of many examples where Emhoff, on his first diplomatic trip abroad with the vice president, showed how he is taking a very traditional approach to the unpaid and unheralded role as second spouse — and yet using it to send a message about gender equity, which he has chosen as a key priority.
Emhoff stays in the mold of dutiful political spouse
As Harris visited the Surenes American Cemetery to pay tribute to Americans who died in World War I and II, she peppered the tour guide with questions. Decorum dictated that it was the vice president’s moment. Emhoff stood by, quiet, occasionally touching a grave marker with respect.
As America’s first second gentleman, Emhoff is “following the usual patterns, playing the part of the dutiful political spouse — very supportive,” said Katherine Jellison, a professor of women and gender history at Ohio University.
Americans still see Emhoff as a bit of a novelty, and wonder what he would be like as first spouse if Harris one day runs for office and wins, she said. For Europeans, he is less of a curiosity.
“For Europeans, they’ve seen male spouses of high-ranking officials, including heads of state, much more so than is the case here in the U.S.,” Jellison said.
On the Paris trip, Emhoff had the traditional visit with French first lady Brigitte Macron, touring an art gallery. And he escorted Harris to a dinner for world leaders at the Élysée palace.
But one thing that’s different for Emhoff from the second spouses who have gone before him: there’s a distinct lack of curiosity about what he wears, Jellison said.
Keith Stadler, the superintendent of the Suresnes American Cemetery, speaks with Vice President Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, on Nov. 10.
Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times via AP, Pool
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Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times via AP, Pool
Keith Stadler, the superintendent of the Suresnes American Cemetery, speaks with Vice President Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, on Nov. 10.
Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times via AP, Pool
Vice President Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff arrive for a dinner at the Elysee Palace as part of the Paris Peace Forum.
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Vice President Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff arrive for a dinner at the Elysee Palace as part of the Paris Peace Forum.
Michel Euler/AP
Emhoff has his own platform, too
Emhoff, an entertainment lawyer by trade, is teaching a law class at Georgetown University. But he spends most of his time promoting the administration’s priorities, including COVID-19 vaccines. He has visited 30 states since January.
In Paris, while Harris’ days were spent mainly in closed-door diplomatic meetings, Emhoff had more of an outward-facing cultural exchange.
In France, as Harris wrapped up a press conference and rushed off in a motorcade to discuss developments in Libya with a group of world leaders, Emhoff visited a culinary institute and met with students learning to cook and bake — a striking reversal of gender roles.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff meets with interns during a visit to a culinary school in Paris on Nov. 12.
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Second gentleman Doug Emhoff meets with interns during a visit to a culinary school in Paris on Nov. 12.
Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images
A day earlier, Emhoff held a listening session on gender equity while Harris was at the Paris Peace Forum, where she gave an address focused on growing inequality around the world.
“One of things I’ve learned from being married to Kamala Harris is that to be first in so many things is hard. She said once that breaking barriers involves breaking, and when you break something sometimes you get cut, and when you get cut, sometimes you bleed… But it’s worth it,” he said at the end of his event.
Emhoff said he thinks men need to do more to support women, something he said he’s always done “on the regular” as “the right thing to do.”
“Men need to step up and be part of the solution and not be part of the problem,” he said. “I’m going to do everything I can in this role to keep on messaging that.”
Douglas Emhoff at a listening session on gender equity in Paris. He said part of his role is sending a message on how men can support women. “Men need to step up and be part of the solution,” he said.
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Douglas Emhoff at a listening session on gender equity in Paris. He said part of his role is sending a message on how men can support women. “Men need to step up and be part of the solution,” he said.
The FBI’s email server was apparently hacked on Friday night to send threatening spam emails to over 100,000 people, the agency said.
Authorities have not determined the sender or motive behind the rambling, incoherent emails, filled with technological nonsense.
The emails warned receivers that their information may be under attack by Vinny Troia, famous hacker and owner of cybersecurity company Night Lion Security, in connection with notorious cybersecurity group TheDarkOverlord.
The FBI confirmed the incident on Saturday, but said the hacked systems were “taken offline quickly,” after it had been reported.
“The FBI and CISA are aware of the incident this morning involving fake emails from an @ic.fbi.gov email account,” the agency said in a statement. “This is an ongoing situation and we are not able to provide any additional information at this time.
“The impacted hardware was taken offline quickly upon discovery of the issue. We continue to encourage the public to be cautious of unknown senders and urge you to report suspicious activity ic3.gov or cisa.gov.”
We have been made aware of “scary” emails sent in the last few hours that purport to come from the FBI/DHS. While the emails are indeed being sent from infrastructure that is owned by the FBI/DHS (the LEEP portal), our research shows that these emails *are* fake.
The spam emails were first reported by The Spamhaus Project, a European-based nonprofit that tracks spam and related cyber threats. A chart posted by the organization shows the spike in email traffic from the fake warnings, which were sent out in two massive waves.
The sender closed off with a “stay safe” from the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Threat Detection and Analysis Group, which hasn’t existed for years.
The emails were sent from an FBI server, Spamhaus researcher Alex Grosjean told NBC, and were received by publicly listed administrators of websites listed on the American Registry for Internet Numbers, Grosjean said.
TheDarkOverlord unsuccessfully attempted to hold Netflix to ransom in 2017 after stealing all of its videos –including unreleased content — and putting them online as torrents.
The president of COP26 said Sunday that China and India will need to explain why they insisted a crucial passage of the U.N.-brokered climate deal was changed at the last minute.
“China and India are going to have to explain themselves to the most climate vulnerable countries in the world,” U.K. lawmaker Alok Sharma, who led the COP26 negotiations, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr.
It comes a day after nearly 200 countries agreed on a deal to try to prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis, following two weeks of talks in Glasgow, Scotland.
The wide-ranging agreement, which is not legally binding, was amended at the eleventh hour after interventions from India and China — both among the world’s biggest burners of coal. This led to a change in language about fossil fuels; the pact now refers to the “phase down” of coal, rather than the “phase out” of coal, as originally proposed.
After initial objections, opposing countries ultimately conceded to the amendment.
“Over the past weeks obviously there were certain countries that did not want to have coal language in this compact,” Sharma added.
“But at the end of the day, this is the first time ever that we’ve got a language about coal in a COP decision. I think that is absolutely historic.”
Speaking to CNBC Saturday, however, Sharma admitted there was “certainly more work to be done on this issue.”
“When we took on the role of COP presidency, I said very clearly that I wanted us to try and consign coal power to history,” he said in answer to a question at a press conference following the deal.
“If, at that time, I’d said to you, that here, towards the end of this year at COP, we would have ensured that all of the biggest economies will be no longer financing international coal projects and we have managed to get the sort of agreement we have here, I think people would have been skeptical.”
He added: “There’s absolutely progress. Should we be going faster? Of course.”
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