Las labores inician a las 6:00 a.m. en la “sala de guerra” del Comité Nacional Republicano para recolectar buenas noticias sobre Donald Trump. (AFP)
Las labores inician a las 6:00 a.m. en la “sala de guerra” del Comité Nacional Republicano para recolectar buenas noticias sobre Donald Trump. (AFP)
Dos veces al día, a las 9:30 a.m. y a las 4:30 p.m., el presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, debe recibir un informe de “noticias positivas” sobre él mismo, reveló el portal “Vice News” tras conversar con tres fuentes que se encuentran trabajando o lo hicieron durante la actual administración en la Casa Blanca.
El folder, al que no han dudado en bautizar como “documento de propaganda”, es un compilado de capturas de pantallas a titulares halagadores, tuits elogiantes, transcripciones a entrevistas de TV positivas realizadas al mandatario, noticias que alaban al mandatario y -en algunas ocasiones- simplemente “imágenes de Trump luciendo poderoso”, detalla Vice.
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El resultado es un compilado de entre 20 a 25 páginas. Que, a decir de las fuentes, buscaba ser entregado gustosamente por el ex jefe de Gabinete, Reince Priebus, y el también ex secretario de prensa, Sean Spicer.
Pese a ello, según el testimonio de uno de los funcionarios, la única respuesta que han recibido de la Casa Blanca es: “necesita ser más jodidamente positivo”.
El medio digital detalla que la recopilación de toda esta información se produce en el “cuarto de guerra” del Comité Nacional Republicano -el cual vio incrementar a sus miembros de 4 a 10 personas desde que Trump llegó a la presidencia- donde se monitorean las noticias locales y nacionales, TV por cable, redes sociales, medios digitales e impresos para ver cómo son percibidos el partido, sus candidatos y adversarios.
La labor arranca a las 6:00 a.m., cuando tres miembros del equipo llegan a la sala. De ahí en adelante, cada 30 minutos, envían correos a la Oficina de Comunicaciones de la Casa Blanca con capturas de pantallas, tuits, noticias y transcripciones de entrevistas.
En la residencia presidencial, otro equipo se encarga de enviar titulares favorables a los periodistas. Sin embargo, se reservan lo más positivo para el mandatario.
¿Y qué sucede cuando no se encuentran noticias positivas sobre Trump? No hay problema, ese día se buscan las fotos más halagadoras del presidente.
“Quizás es bueno para el país que el presidente esté de buen humor por la mañana”, dijo uno de los miembros del Comité Republicano a Vice.
Sobre la predilección de Spicer por entregar el folder con buenas noticias, Vice buscó al ex funcionario y le preguntó al respecto.
“Si bien no voy a comentar sobre los materiales que compartimos con el presidente, esto no es del todo verdad en varios niveles”, respondió sin precisar qué parte de la historia era falsa.
The addition of 18 commercial airplanes — activated, the Pentagon announced Sunday, as part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet — is intended to address those bottlenecks. The jetliners, contracted from domestic airlines United, American, Atlas, Delta, Omni and Hawaiian, will not be flown into Kabul, but used instead to move those taken to places like Qatar on to other destinations in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Persian Gulf. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier in the weekend that 13 countries had pledged to temporarily host evacuees, while an additional 12 had agreed to serve as transit points.
A massive Entergy tower fell Sunday night, Aug. 29, 2021, during Hurricane Ida, knocking out power to most of metro New Orleans. (photo by Tony McAuley, The Times-Picayune)
Facing heavy criticism after her office rejected charges against five suspects in a deadly shootout in Austin, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx on Tuesday slammed Mayor Lori Lightfoot for raising alarms about the case and said the mayor had her facts wrong.
But a short time later, Lightfoot brushed off Foxx’s claims and announced that she’d effectively circumvented her by asking U.S. Attorney John Lausch to review the evidence in the gang-related gunfight Friday morning in Austin that left one shooter dead and two suspects wounded.
“I’ve also reached out to the U.S. attorney to ask him to also evaluate the evidence that was there to see if there’s a possibility for federal charges,” Lightfoot told reporters.
The dueling press conferences reveal the stark division between Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor herself, and the county’s top law enforcement official over what evidence is needed to prosecute the suspects Chicago police had hoped Foxx would charge with first-degree murder and aggravated battery.
“Whatever evidence that needs to be gathered, the police department is going to be Johnny on the spot and make sure we get it,” Lightfoot after she appeared in Pilsen with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge at an unrelated event. “But this is, to me, a very compelling case.”
People sit on the street near the 1200 block of North Mason Avenue in the Austin neighborhood, where a person was fatally shot and two were injured, Friday morning, Oct. 1, 2021.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
On Tuesday morning, Foxx had told reporters that it was “wrong” for Lightfoot to publicly discuss details of the high-profile case, alleging that some of the mayor’s previous statements about the evidence “simply weren’t true.”
“I was quite honestly mortified by what happened yesterday, particularly because the mayor as a former prosecutor knows that what she did yesterday was inappropriate,” Foxx said during her news conference in Englewood.
Though Foxx wouldn’t say what she believes Lightfoot got wrong, she noted that Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan conceded during a budget hearing Monday that the evidence was insufficient to bring the charges against the five members of warring factions of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang.
Deenihan also acknowledged that police video footage doesn’t clearly show some of the shooters, and that none of those arrested were willing to cooperate with investigators. Asked about those comments Tuesday, Lightfoot said she planned to speak to Deenihan directly and insisted that his boss, Supt. David Brown, “does not agree with a no charging decision.”
The state’s attorney’s office previously told the Sun-Times that the “evidence was insufficient to meet our burden of proof to approve felony charges,” but Lightfoot contested that claim as she appeared to reference police POD camera footage that captured the shooting.
The footage, which has circulated online, appears to show two people firing shots next to two waiting Dodge Chargers. When a police cruiser pulls up, one of the shooters jumps into one of the waiting cars, while the other is left lying in the street.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot responds to questions regarding Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx at Concordia Place Apartments in Eden Green, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Lightfoot noted that two suspects were ultimately found with guns “used in that firefight,” a claim backed up with a law enforcement source with direct knowledge of the investigation. She said investigators have also collected body-worn camera and dashcam video from officers in Chicago and Oak Park, where the source said one of the suspects was apprehended after crashing one of the Chargers.
Deenihan said he thought prosecutors could pursue lesser charges against at least some of the suspects, though Foxx noted that cops haven’t sought any other charges. While she has refused to discuss the evidence related to the ongoing investigation, Foxx said her office needs a victim, a witness or someone else to tie a suspect to a crime, even if it’s caught on video.
“In order for us to bring charges in a case, it’s not simply, we saw a video of something happening,” Foxx said. “We need to be able to say that the person who we have arrested and charged is the same person who engaged in the act.”
Lightfoot conceded “there are circumstances when we absolutely need to have a witness to identify who did something,” but she noted this shootout was captured on “multiple videotapes” as she questioned why no charges — even disturbing the peace — were filed in connection to the shootout.
“We cannot send a message that it is OK and you get a pass that you shoot up a residence in broad daylight, captured on film, and no consequences will happen to you,” she said. “That can’t be a world that we live in.”
Whether the feds will get involved is unclear. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.
Foxx: ‘This isn’t me pointing fingers’
Amid the dispute, Foxx made a public request to meet with Lightfoot, Brown and Area 5 police leaders to address her concerns about recent investigations and information that has been leaked to the media.
Lightfoot later confirmed that she and Foxx would meet. Police spokesmen didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Police officials in Area 5, which investigates crimes in parts of the West, North and Northwest sides, had already been at odds with the state’s attorney’s office over other high-profile cases prosecutors refused to take up, including the fatal shootings of National Guard member Chrys Carjaval in July and 7-year-old Serenity Broughton in August. Foxx apparently referenced those cases when she insisted it wasn’t part of her job to “try cases in the media, nor to play politics on the deaths of children and veterans and people in our community.”
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx speaks to reporters during a news conference at Hope Manor II in Englewood on the South Side, Tuesday morning, Oct. 5, 2021.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
“We would expect that our partners, especially those who served as prosecutors, would recognize that,” said Foxx, taking a not-so-veiled shot at Lightfoot. “And more importantly, if engaging in that, [they] would tell the truth. Tell the truth.”
Facing renewed criticism that she’s week on crime, Foxx also apparently sought to deflect some of the blame back onto the police department amid the city’s continued surge in violence. Of the 13,374 citywide shootings that have occurred since she took office in 2016 and July of this year, Foxx told reporters, police have made arrests in just 2,447, or 18%, of them.
“This isn’t me pointing fingers. … This isn’t me playing the victim,” she insisted. “This is us in the state’s attorney’s office wanting to work with our law enforcement partners because when we know we have that many unsolved shootings there is a sense that people can get away with murder with impunity, and that makes our communities less safe.”
Anticipated snow totals continue to rise for Northern parts of New Jersey where a winter storm warning has been issued for Sunday until Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
The winter storm warning is in effect for Sussex, Warren and Morris counties from 4 a.m. Sunday to 1 a.m. Tuesday. Those locations could see heavy mixed precipitation with snow totals anywhere from 5 to 11 inches, the National Weather Service reported late Saturday afternoon.
The expected heavy mixed precipitation could make travel difficult and hazardous for those returning to work or commuters returning home from the long Thanksgiving weekend.
Snowfall totals could change, depending on the timing of the transition from rain, freezing rain and sleet to snow.
The winter storm is projected to start at 7 a.m. Sunday throughout most of New Jersey, forecasters predicted.
There will be two main periods of winter weather over the course of the storm. First, there will be a mix of snow, sleet and ice on Sunday with snow accumulations of about 2 inches or less.
But don’t let a possible lull Sunday evening fool you. The bulk of the forecasted snow will fall late Sunday night and Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
Other parts of New Jersey aren’t out of the woods either.
A winter weather advisory is in effect from 4 a.m. Sunday to 1 a.m. Tuesday for Hunterdon, Somerset, Middlesex and Mercer counties.
Mixed precipitation with snow accumulations of 3 to 5 inches are expected in Hunterdon and Somerset counties. The wintry mix will make for slippery road conditions, according to National Weather Service reports.
Slightly less snow is forecasted for Middlesex and Mercer counties. Just 2 to 4 inches of snow and a light glaze of ice are expected there.
Trenton and Freehold are expected to get about 2 inches of snow, while Southern New Jersey is expected to get less than an inch.
Forecasters predict the wintery mix will begin around 7 a.m. Sunday for much of New Jersey.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May faces a vote on her leadership Wednesday, as debate rages on how Britain should exit the European Union. She spoke about the vote to the media outside 10 Downing Street in London.
Toby Melville/Reuters
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Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May faces a vote on her leadership Wednesday, as debate rages on how Britain should exit the European Union. She spoke about the vote to the media outside 10 Downing Street in London.
Toby Melville/Reuters
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is fighting to keep her job as members of her Conservative Party seek to oust her in a no-confidence vote. May has been unable to shore up support for the Brexit deal she negotiated with the European Union.
“I will contest that vote with everything I’ve got,” May said outside of 10 Downing Street, referring to the vote on her leadership that will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. local time (1 p.m. – 3 p.m. ET).
“If she wins, she can serve for another year without another challenge from her party,” NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports from London. “If she loses, this triggers a leadership contest within the Conservative Party. The winner of that contest would not immediately become prime minister and there could be heavy pressure to call a general election.”
If May loses her leadership post, it could trigger a “no-deal” exit from the EU when the deadline of March 29 arrives, meaning the country would have few formal trading mechanisms in place to interact with the union it’s belonged to for decades.
With all eyes now on the U.K. Parliament, there is speculation over what the outcome might bring. You can watch the proceedings in the House of Commons here:
“Traditionally, winning a no-confidence vote by a small margin might force a Conservative leader to step down anyway,” Langfitt reports, “but the United Kingdom is facing its biggest political crisis in decades, and past traditions seem to no longer apply.”
The call for a vote on May’s political fate comes two days after she delayed a vote on the Brexit deal she negotiated with the EU, acknowledging that it had no chance of being approved in Parliament.
May left Britain on Tuesday to meet with European leaders, hoping to get help in changing the deal enough to win over the doubters back home. But she returned home empty-handed — and she was briefly trapped in her own car as German Chancellor Angela Merkel awaited her. With the U.K.’s leader unable to get out of a German sedan, the moment was called both awkward and symbolic of her struggles in office.
The process of reaching a final Brexit deal has foundered, in large part, on the complicated and essential question of how the U.K. and EU will treat Northern Ireland (part of the U.K.) and the Republic of Ireland (an EU member) without enforcing a hard border.
To trigger today’s vote, Conservatives who are unhappy with the way May has managed Brexit submitted 48 no-confidence letters to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, a group that represents the Conservatives’ rank and file membership.
As for May’s public standing, George Parker, political editor for the Financial Times, recently told NPR that the prime minister seems to be more popular than her Brexit deal:
“She’s dogged. She’s determined. She’s got a real sense of duty. And it’s interesting that although the Brexit deal she’s negotiated seems to upset just about everyone, she herself has actually gone up in the public estimation over the last few weeks. I think people see her standing there hour after hour in the bear pit at the House of Commons being attacked by people on her own side – mainly men, it has to be said. And I think it – her sort of doggedness actually resonates with people. So although she’s often seen as rather an unimaginative politician and just really blundering her way through this Brexit morass, in the end, people quite respect the fact that she’s still there and she’s still standing.”
Both May and her political opponents have had an eye on the clock as the March 29 deadline approaches, with each side seeking to put pressure on the other to make concessions. And in the background, there has been a recognition that the Brexit process will not be a tidy and painless process, no matter who’s in charge.
When asked about a possible no-confidence vote yesterday, Parker said, “it will solve nothing. It will be an act of huge and damaging self-indulgence, I think.”
American said its decision was informed by the State Department advisory. The union representing the airline’s pilots had sued American on Thursday, seeking an end to the flights, citing “known and unknown risks” in its lawsuit.
Airlines had already begun limiting service to China this week, offering fee waivers for people traveling to China.
In its statement, Delta said customers whose flights are affected can get information from the My Trips section of the Delta site to understand how to request a refund and rebook their travel after April 30.
Once the voting began, the House chamber buzzed with activity. Ms. Pelosi could be seen on the floor counting the votes as they came in and tracking Democrats until the very last minute, leaving nothing to chance.
In a statement just after the resolution was adopted, Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said that the House had approved a process that was “unfair, unconstitutional and fundamentally un-American.”
“The president has done nothing wrong,” she said, “and the Democrats know it.”
Though it is not a perfect comparison to votes taken to authorize impeachment inquiries into Mr. Clinton and President Richard M. Nixon, Thursday’s outcome underscored the depth of partisan polarization now gripping American politics. Democrats delivered a show of unity that just weeks ago seemed improbable, with even many moderate lawmakers who are facing difficult re-election races in conservative-leaning districts voting in favor of moving forward.
Whereas the vote against Mr. Nixon registered only four objections and 31 members of the president’s party endorsed the inquiry into Mr. Clinton, this time, not a single Republican defected.
Two Democrats, Representatives Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, voted against the measure, while Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, the House’s lone independent, supported it.
The inquiry remains a high-stakes gamble for Democrats just over a year from the 2020 balloting, as their presidential contenders — some of whom would act as jurors in a Senate trial should the House vote to impeach — are already deep into their campaigns to try to defeat Mr. Trump. Public polls in recent weeks have suggested a narrow majority of the nation backs the inquiry and believes Mr. Trump’s actions warrant scrutiny. But support for Mr. Trump being impeached and removed appears weaker, and there has been no sign that the president’s narrow but durable base of supporters has been troubled by the accusations.
WASHINGTON — It might seem counterintuitive, but the dreaded polar vortex is bringing its icy grip to the Midwest thanks to a sudden blast of warm air in the Arctic.
Get used to it. The polar vortex has been wandering more often in recent years.
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It all started with misplaced Moroccan heat. Last month, the normally super chilly air temperatures 20 miles above the North Pole rapidly rose by about 125 degrees (70 degrees Celsius), thanks to air flowing in from the south. It’s called “sudden stratospheric warming.”
That warmth split the polar vortex, leaving the pieces to wander, said Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside Boston.
“Where the polar vortex goes, so goes the cold air,” Cohen said.
By Wednesday morning, one of those pieces will be over the Lower 48 states for the first time in years. The forecast calls for a low of minus 21 degrees (minus 29 Celsius) in Chicago and wind chills flirting with minus 65 degrees (minus 54 Celsius) in parts of Minnesota, according to the National Weather Service.
The unusual cold could stick around another eight weeks, Cohen said.
“The impacts from this split, we have a ways to go. It’s not the end of the movie yet,” Cohen said. “I think at a minimum, we’re looking at mid-February, possibly through mid-March.”
Americans were introduced to the polar vortex five years ago. It was in early January 2014 when temperatures dropped to minus 16 degrees (minus 27 Celsius) in Chicago and meteorologists, who used the term for decades, started talking about it on social media.
This outbreak may snap some daily records for cold and is likely to be even more brutal than five years ago, especially with added wind chill, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private weather firm Weather Underground.
When warm air invades the polar region, it can split the vortex or displace it, usually toward Siberia, Cohen said. Recently, there have been more splits, which increase the odds of other places getting ultra-cold, he said. Pieces of the polar vortex have chilled Europe, Siberia and North America this time. (It’s not right to call the frigid center of cold air the polar vortex because it is just a piece or a lobe, not the entire vortex, said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado.)
When the forces penning the polar vortex in the Arctic are weak, it wanders, more often to Siberia than Michigan. And it’s happening more frequently in the last couple decades, Furtado said. A study a year ago in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society looked at decades of the Arctic system and found the polar vortex has shifted “toward more frequent weak states.”
When the polar vortex pieces wander, warmth invades the Arctic, Alaska, Greenland and Canada, Masters said. While the Midwest chills, Australia has been broiling to record-breaking heat. The world as a whole on Monday was 0.7 degrees (0.4 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1979-2000 average, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer.
Some scientists — but by no means most — see a connection between human-caused climate change and difference in atmospheric pressure that causes slower moving waves in the air.
“It’s a complicated story that involves a hefty dose of chaos and an interplay among multiple influences, so extracting a clear signal of the Arctic’s role is challenging,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. Several recent papers have made the case for the connection, she noted.
“This symptom of global warming is counterintuitive for those in the cross-hairs of these extreme cold spells,” Francis said in an email. “But these events provide an excellent opportunity to help the public understand some of the ‘interesting’ ways that climate change will unfold.”
Others, like Furtado, aren’t sold yet on the climate change connection.
Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, who has already felt temperatures that seem like 25 degrees below zero, said there’s “a growing body of literature” to support the climate connection. But he says more evidence is needed.
“Either way,” Gensini said, “it’s going to be interesting being in the bullseye of the Midwest cold.”
Joseph Blatter, actual presidente de la FIFA, habló hoy en el incio de la 65 Conferencia de la máxima entidad del fútbol mundial. El dirigente se refirió al escándalo de corrupción que se desató ayer en Zúrich, lugar donde fueron arrestados 7 directivos de la FIFA.
“La reputación de la FIFA no tiene por qué ser arrastrada al barro. Por eso tenemos que actuar con rapidez. Sé que van a llegar más noticias malas. Este puede ser un momento clave para que las personas se comporten de forma ética y responsable”, dijo Joseph Blatter.
“Nosotros no podemos controlar todo todo el tiempo. Los que están corrompiendo al fútbol son una minoría y deben ser castigados. Los próximos meses no serán fáciles para la FIFA, pero debemos rescatar la confianza”, agregó el dirigente.
“Los acontecimientos de ayer causan una sombra enorme al fútbol. No hay lugar para la corrupción de cualquier tiempo”, afirmó Joseph Blatter.
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