“I predict to you, your children and grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral theses on the issue of, ‘Who Succeeded: Autocracy or Democracy?’ Because that is what is at stake,” said the president, speaking of other nations.
The White House is refusing to hand over documents and impeachment proceedings seem unlikely, so the Democrats are turning to hearings to bludgeon the president.
Democrats may not be able to saddle President Donald Trump with impeachment proceedings or pry documents from his administration, but they have another means of bludgeoning him: hearings, hearings and more hearings.
It’s a counter-strategy to the president’s all-out resistance to congressional investigations, lawmakers told POLITICO. Democrats say the optics are on their side. Witnesses like Attorney General William Barr, ex-White House counsel Don McGahn and special counsel Robert Mueller are all but guaranteed to draw blanket media attention. And even if the bold-faced names don’t show up, party leaders recognize that the spectacle of empty chairs and drawn-out legal fights could dog Trump and create negative narratives during the 2020 race.
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“Let’s face it, most Americans are not going to read a 400-plus page report,” said Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, referencing the special counsel’s report summarizing the nearly two-year Russia probe. “They would much rather see something on TV that they can make conclusions for themselves about. That’s the age we’re living in. It’s almost entertainment.”
Democrats say a spate of hearings will also highlight Trump’s efforts to stonewall their myriad probes. The president has resisted at least half a dozen subpoenas from House committees and launched an unprecedented series of federal lawsuits to invalidate some of the information requests.
The approach is almost as much political as it is tactical. It gives Democrats a chance to navigate around the thorny impeachment question, while still showcasing their majority and flexing their investigative chops. And they might even uncover some wrongdoing along the way just as the 2020 presidential race heats up.
“There’s a big sentiment amongst some that they should ‘Benghazi’ Trump,” said Julian Epstein, a former senior House Democratic aide, referring to how Republicans spent two years relentlessly holding hearings about the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, a process that revealed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The unexpected discovery ultimately haunted Clinton’s own presidential campaign.
Epstein, who served as chief counsel for the House Judiciary Committee Democrats during the Bill Clinton impeachment fight, said a spate of hearings has two purposes: creating a political weapon to weaken the president going into 2020, and also satisfying a party base frustrated that the House hasn’t moved to impeach the president.
“Democrats are trying to figure out what their off-ramp is here,” he said.
One, he said, is the hearing-laden “Benghazi” approach. Another is a censure resolution that passes on the House floor, effectively serving as a formal wrist slap for Trump. “They don’t have a lot of good options,” Epstein noted.
Trump and his administration have been eager to play the political card, too.
White House officials have either refused to turn over documents or delayed producing them to 12 House committees, according to Democratic aides. Several administration officials have also ignored requests for interviews and testimony. Barr, for example, is resisting plans to appear Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee because Democrats want to allow the panel’s staff counsel to ask the attorney general an additional hour of questions about the Mueller investigation.
The president and his allies argue that Trump has the authority to fight the House Democrats because they were openly taunting him with plans to launch their investigations and discussing impeachment since well before last year’s midterm elections returned them to power.
“By the time you hear all that, you say, ‘What am I, a sucker? I’m gonna go in front of these people who want to hang me?” Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, told POLITICO. “This is a complete political game now. It’s even being calculated by them based on are they gonna get hurt or not by carrying it on.”
Still, Democrats continue to lay the groundwork for more high-profile hearings.
On the oversight panel, they issued a subpoena to a former White House official to testify about potential security clearance abuses. The gathering would shed a spotlight on allegations that staffers including Trump son-in-law and senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner were granted clearances after initially being denied.
Over at the Judiciary committee, Democrats are angling to hold what might be the most blockbuster hearing — Mueller himself. They’ve subpoenaed the Justice Department for Mueller’s full report, his underlying evidence and are in talks to get the special counsel to testify as early as next week. They’ve also authorized subpoenas for a slate of former top Trump aides, including Hope Hicks, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon — all of whom would create spectacle hearings that resonate beyond the Beltway.
And one attention-grabbing hearing could be rescheduled in the coming weeks. Felix Sater, the chief negotiator for Trump’s failed election-year attempts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, had previously agreed to testify but his appearance was pushed off until after the Mueller report came out.
“We need to put some color around the Mueller report and really come to a conclusion in concert with the American people over what the proper response is,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the Intelligence committee.
“And until people are more familiar with the details of what occurred, it’s hard to come to a unified notion,” Himes added. “Certainly, in my district and around the country, there’s ambivalence about the right mechanism of accountability for the president. Just as in the 1970s, we need to do more work and better understand what occurred.”
With the never-ending gush of news, each hearing could also come on the heels of new revelations, giving lawmakers a rare chance to publicly press the key players. For instance, just hours before Barr was set to testify before the Senate on Wednesday, it came out that Mueller had sent him a letter expressing frustration with the attorney general’s initial characterization of his report.
Within minutes, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a presidential candidate who will question Mueller as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had tweeted: “Barr will have to answer for this at our hearing. Updating my questions!”
The high-profile hearing formula has worked for Democrats in the past.
When Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, testified in February, it was appointment viewing. Trump fumed at the revelations from the public hearing, and Cohen’s appearance launched new avenues of investigation. Both House Democrats and New York authorities subpoenaed documents related to Trump’s financial records based on Cohen’s answers.
Some Democrats who have been in the oversight trenches argued that the strategy shouldn’t be viewed through a 2020 lens, though.
“Their responsibility is to be methodical and follow the facts,” said Phil Schiliro, the former Obama White House legislative director and a veteran House Democratic aide under then-Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman. “That’s not something that happens quickly.”
Even House Democrats are fretting about their limited time to notch victories as they square off against a Trump White House willing to push many oversight battles into the courts.
California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a 2020 White House hopeful who serves on both the judiciary and intelligence committees, said in an interview that it wouldn’t take much for Trump to “run out the clock” on Democratic document and testimony demands.
Others caution that Democrats might appear overzealous and even create sympathetic witnesses during a parade of highly publicized hearings.
“Do you really want to put Hope Hicks on TV? She’s going to win that,” said a Washington-based defense attorney who worked on the Mueller investigation.
Several Republicans say that Democrats would have more options for getting materials from Trump’s administration, and even underlying materials at the center of Mueller’s investigation, if they open up formal impeachment proceedings. So far, that’s a step that Democratic leadership has been reluctant to endorse.
“I don’t know frankly if it’s such a bad thing for Democrats to do that. Once you get these things and you explore it, who knows where it goes?” said Tom Davis, a former Virginia GOP congressman who chaired the House Oversight Committee.
William Moschella, who ran the Justice Department’s congressional affairs office during the George W. Bush administration, said the current Democratic clamor for documents and testimony “seems to be adding fuel to the impeachment fire” even as party leaders try to stay away from the topic.
“The Hill must know that these various unorthodox requests are going to be rebuffed and when they are, members are going to claim that those refusals are evidence of obstruction and that they must defend the institutional integrity of the House,” he said. “To mix metaphors, these things have a way of snowballing.”
Democrats counter that Trump’s run-out-the-clock strategy will damage his re-election chances.
Democrats expect they’ll ultimately prevail in court against Trump’s efforts to invalidate their subpoenas, including those seeking Trump’s financial information.
“If we get the information, he’s seen as violating the law or supporting a position that is contrary to the law, and we get the information anyway, that’s not a winning strategy for him,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a senior member of the oversight panel.
And it’s those same battles that Democrats say could still produce the kinds of smoking guns that go off right in the heat of the 2020 campaign.
“I don’t think it serves him to delay all this,” said Swalwell, “because if he knows his history, he will see that the courts are going to rule against him, and the courts take time to make their rulings and so the rulings could come out at a time when Americans are thinking about who they want to lead them.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk just unveiled the company’s first electric pickup truck, also known as Cybertruck, at an event in Los Angeles, California. The truck will come in three versions with 250 miles, 300 miles, and 500 miles of range, respectively. And it will start at $39,900, Musk said. The truck won’t be rolling off the assembly line until late 2021, but preorders can be made at tesla.com/cybertruck.
Always a showman, Musk put the truck through its paces in an effort to demonstrate its ruggedness. He had Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief of design, hit the door of the truck with a sledgehammer several times, claimed it was practically bulletproof, and showed the truck winning a tug-of-war with a Ford F150 and a drag race with a Porsche 911.
However, when he tried to show how shatterproof the “armored” glass was, things went awry. A metal ball thrown by Holzhausen shattered both the truck’s windows. “We’ll fix it in post,” a sheepish Musk quipped.
There are three versions of the truck available:
Single motor rear-wheel drive with 250 miles of range, 7,500-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph capabilities in under 6.5 seconds, for $39,900.
Dual motor all-wheel drive with 300 miles of range, 10,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 4.5 seconds for $49,900.
Triple motor all-wheel drive with 500 miles of range, 14,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 2.9 seconds for $69,900. (Though this version won’t start production until late 2022.)
The truck can seat a total of six adults, Tesla says. The body is made of ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless steel. Musk had Holzhausen demonstrate the body’s strength by smashing it with the aforementioned sledge hammer. The payload has a 3,500-pound capacity, with 100 cubic feet of storage space. The truck’s vault length is 6.5 feet, and it will have 4-inch suspension in either direction. A 17-inch touchscreen sits in the center of the dashboard, though images of the interior look slightly unfinished. (Is that dashboard made of formica?)
Musk has spent the better part of a decade poking at the idea of a Tesla pickup truck. He tweeted in 2012 that he “[w]ould love to make a Tesla supertruck” with “crazy torque” and “dynamic air suspension.” By 2013, he told Business Insiderthat the company was actually planning to make one. The pickup was even featured in his second “master plan” for Tesla, which he published in 2016.
Musk continued to toy with the idea in public, saying in April 2017 that a reveal event would happen in “18 to 24 months.” In 2018 he said the truck had taken on a “futuristic-like cyberpunk, Blade Runner” design, and that he didn’t even care much if people didn’t like it. He’s since said the pickup truck is his favorite project out of all the ones Tesla’s working on.
While the pickup truck has obviously been a pet project for Musk, it could also be a great opportunity for Tesla’s business. Not only are pickup sales on the rise in the US, but trucks command high average selling prices and high profit margins.
“Pickup truck buyers spend a lot on their trucks,” says Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics consulting at JD Power. “A $50,000 pickup truck is a very common occurrence now. People are willing to spend on this segment to haul their toys, to support a lifestyle.”
Tesla’s business could arguably use the bump. While the company squeaked out a $143 million profit in the past quarter, it only did so after including $164 million worth of regulatory credits and money that it’s banked from customers who’ve paid for the yet-to-be-released “full self-driving” version of Autopilot.
That said, a lot will happen between now and when the truck starts shipping. Not only will Tesla soon start producing Model 3s in China for that market, making it less of a burden to sell cars there, the company is also releasing the Model Y crossover at the end of 2020.
One of the only segments rivaling the growth of pickup trucks over the last few years is the SUV segment (and especially the small SUV segment). If things go according to plan for Tesla, the company’s business will already be in better shape by the time the Cybertruck ships, meaning whatever profit it can reap from the pickup will be gravy.
Tesla has led the charge into long-range electric vehicles, and there’s currently no mass-market electric pickup truck available for sale. But the landscape will change by the time the truck ships. Ford has an all-electric F-150 on the way, General Motors confirmed it will put an electric pickup on the market in 2021, and EV startup Rivian — which is now backed by both Ford and Amazon — is scheduled to release its electric pickup in late 2020.
Depending on how things shake out with all of these plans, Tesla could wind up releasing the Cybertruck into a market that’s already somewhat established — which would be an unfamiliar position for the company.
She is set to deliver remarks on the topic at 5 p.m.
Several Democrats have raised concerns that a full embrace of impeachment could hurt more moderate caucus members who flipped districts in 2018 that Trump won in 2016.
Nearly half of the first-term Democratic lawmakers who flipped districts are now backing impeachment following reports of Trump’s call with Zelensky and a whistleblower complaint that is said to be centered on that call.
Recent polls have generally shown support for impeachment in the high 30 percent to low 40 percent range.
Democrats currently hold a 235-199 majority in the House of Representatives, and generic congressional ballots show them winning by wide margins in 2020.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday the state is “controlling the spread” of the coronavirus, and it appears that “the worst is over … if we continue to be smart going forward.”
At the same time, Cuomo revealed that the death toll from Covid-19 in New York — which is the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States — has topped 10,000 people.
Cuomo called the death tally a “horrific level of pain and grief and sorrow.”
But he pointed to a flattening of the daily death toll, the flattening in the net number of hospitalizations and a drop in the number of people on ventilators as evidence that radical measures such as the shuttering of nonessential businesses have helped to contain the virus.
He said the death toll for Sunday was 671, versus 758 on Saturday.
“We’re controlling the spread,” Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany. “The worst can be over, and is over, unless we do something reckless.”
“You can turn those numbers on two or three days of reckless behaviors,” he said.
Cuomo said he will make an announcement later Monday about plans for reopening the state in conjunction with some other governors.
He said he and governors from Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island have been talking “for the past couple of days, about coming up with, how do we come up with a reopening plan? And can we work together on a reopening plan?”
The new deaths recorded in New York state on Easter Sunday brought the state’s total 10,056, Cuomo said.
“For me, I’m Catholic, Easter Sunday is the high holy day in many ways … and to have this happen over this weekend is really really especially tragic and they’re all in our thoughts and prayers.”
He noted that the state’s total number of fatalities from the virus dwarfed the 2,753 deaths in the terrorist attacks in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
But Cuomo noted that the daily number of new deaths has dropped a bit from some recent days, when new fatalities had topped 750 people each day.
▪ El Papa Francisco apoyó a Donald Trump para la presidencia.
▪ Abuso de menores y pedofilia dentro del partido demócrata tramado desde una pizzería en Washington (pizzagate).
▪ Bill Gates ofreció a los usuarios de Facebook $5,000 por compartir un enlace.
▪ Usain Bolt donó $10 millones y Shakira, $15 millones para ayudar a Haití luego del Huracán Matthew.
¿Verdad o mentira?
Todas falsas, pero que muchos creyeron y compartieron en su momento vía Facebook,Twitter, WhatsApp, blogs o por cualquier otra vía digital.
Si durante 2016 estas y otras centenares de “noticias” cobraron protagonismo, el bombardeo de mentiras, exageraciones, desinformación y calumnias que vienen para 2017 será abrumador, esto debido al lucrativo negocio que genera para muchos la creación de contenidos digitales falsos, al acceso global a la internet y a los 1,650 millones de usuarios activos por mes en Facebook, quienes usan esta red como una, o quizás, la principal fuente de noticias.
Según una encuesta de Ipsos, el 75 por ciento de los estadounidenses considera ciertas las noticias falsas que lee en internet. La encuesta realizada a casi 3,000 personas en el país muestra además que quienes consideran a Facebook como una fuente importante de noticias son más propensos a creer que los titulares falsos que lee son reales.
Millones de personas ya han caído en los hoax o noticias falsas, incluso, se ha llegado a decir que los contenidos falsos difundidos en las redes sociales fueron decisivos en los resultados de eventos trascendentales como el Brexit, el plebiscito en Colombia y las elecciones en Estados Unidos.
El 75% de los estadounidenses considera ciertas las noticias falsas que lee en Internet, según una encuesta de Ipsos
Para que en este 2017 no sea víctima de las mentiras en Internet, tenga en cuenta estas claves y herramientas que le ayudarán a detectar entre lo real y lo ficticio en medio de la avalancha de contenidos que surgirán durante el próximo año.
Le preguntamos a Mauricio Jaramillo, periodista en tecnología y consultor digital sobre las claves para no caer en un hoax y las siguientes son sus recomendaciones:
Señales de alerta de que una noticia es falsa:
▪ Parece increíble.
▪ La noticia no presenta fuentes o usa fuentes poco confiables. (Si usa fuentes confiables, se puede ir directamente a ellas para confirmar).
▪ Los datos en la noticia son vagos o incompletos (lugar, fecha, nombres de personas u organizaciones, etc.).
¿Qué hacer como usuarios para no caer en un ‘hoax’ o noticia falsa?
▪ Siempre desconfiar de lo que leemos o vemos. Ya sea de una cuenta desconocida, de una de baja reputación o incluso de la fuente más creíble.
▪ Desconfiar implica contrastar, verificar, buscar otras fuentes. ¿Cómo? “Googlear” las palabras clave de la noticia falsa, para ver si se ha publicado en medios de comunicación u organizaciones confiables.
Si hay pocos resultados, o estos son de sitios web y medios de poca reputación, esto casi confirma que es un hoax. Si hay muchos resultados y de medios respetados, aumentan las posibilidades de que sea una noticia real, pero no sobra buscar la fuente primaria, pues estos también pueden haber sido engañados.
Usar búsquedas avanzadas de Google
En redes sociales, buscar qué publican los periodistas y líderes de opinión sobre esas noticias sobre las que se desconfía de su veracidad. (Es posible que ellos caigan en una noticia falsa, pero lo más probable es que las ignoren o las desmientan).
Si no se está totalmente seguro de la veracidad de una noticia, no se debe compartir. Hacerlo pone en entredicho la credibilidad de la persona que lo hace.
Por último, Jaramillo recomienda que si en Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp u otras plataformas los amigos y demás contactos difunden una noticia falsa, conviene corregirlos y “educarlos” sobre la importancia de verificar la veracidad de las noticias que se comparten.
¿Y qué hacer con las noticias en Facebook ?
Recientemente Facebook añadió una nueva alerta que, en colaboración con los usuarios, busca detectar las noticias falsas que se difunden en esta red social. Funciona en dos pasos:
1. Reporte del usuario Cada vez que el usuario vea noticias que considera que podrían ser engañosas las puede reportar haciendo click en el extremo superior derecho de la publicación . Un equipo de Facebook revisará si esta publicación viene de medios reales o de webs que intentan dar la impresión de serlo (por ejemplo, bbc.co en lugar de bbc.com).
2. Identificación y evaluación: Si la noticia procede de un medio real, pero el contenido es dudoso, Facebook remitirá la información a sus organizaciones aliadas como Snopes, Factcheck.org y Politifact, además de algunos medios como ABC News y la agencia de noticias AP, que comprobarán si se trata o no de una noticia falsa. Si al menos dos de estos medios aliados dudan de la veracidad de la información, las historias aparecerán marcadas como “cuestionadas”.
¿Cómo filtrar la información en Google ?
Google también cuenta con su propio sistema de verificación de hechos, la etiqueta Fact Check permitirá a los usuarios contrastar con Google News si el artículo que está leyendo es veraz, accediendo a bases de datos de la organización Schema.org. Para saber que una noticia es Fact check o “hecho comprobado”, esta contará con una etiqueta gris hacia el lado superior derecho. Su presencia indicará que ha superado una serie de filtros y que se trata de información real y fiable.
La herramienta filtrará el acceso a fuentes primarias, la transparencia a la hora de obtenerlas, una redacción imparcial, referencias, datos verificados y hasta el título.
Hoaxy, una plataforma para detectar noticias falsas
Aunque actualmente está en una versión preliminar (beta), la plataforma genera un listado con cerca de 132 resultados sobre los principales sitios que se dedican a difundir noticias falsas. Cualquier persona puede ingresar a la página, introducir un tema y obtendrá resultados inmediatos. Rumores, noticias falsas y teorías de la conspiración son los principales objetivos de Hoaxy. La herramienta está siendo desarrollada por expertos de la Universidad de Indiana.
Detectores de mentiras
Snopes, es una de las herramientas disponibles para detectar contenidos falsos en la red, y una de las organizaciones aliadas de Facebook en su lucha contra la difusión de noticias falsas. Si hay alguna información que te genera desconfianza, puedes indagar sobre su veracidad con esta plataforma cuyo propósito es desenmascarar engaños o rumores que hay en la Red.
FactCheck, las noticias falsas pueden camuflarse bajo “medias-verdades” que distorsionan la realidad. Fact Check es otro verificador de hechos del Centro de Políticas Públicas Annenberg de la Universidad de Pensilvania. Su objetivo consiste en reducir el nivel de decepción y confusión de las personas sobre la política de Estados Unidos.
Otros sitios que se dedican a desenmarcarar mentiras virtuales PolitiFact.com, del diario Tampa Bay Times, ganador de un Premio Pulitzer, y el Washington Post cuenta con su propio Fact Checker como una guía para detectar noticias falsas.
El Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Rusia lanzará en su página web un nuevo proyecto para recoger y desmentir noticiasfalsas de los medios de comunicación extranjeros, según ha anunciado en una rueda de prensa la portavoz de la Cancillería rusa, María Zajárova.
Zajárova ha señalado que el número de noticias falsas y otras desinformaciones provenientes de fuentes extranjeras dirigidas contra Rusia y su política exterior ha alcanzado tal magnitud que requiere un enfoque serio y sistemático para su refutación.
En el marco del proyecto, que se pondrá en marcha “en breve” en la página web de la Cancillería, se recogerán las noticias falsas de “los principales medios de comunicación extranjeros”, y también “las declaraciones de los representantes oficiales de diferentes países”, ha detallado la portavoz.
El Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores refutará las mentiras proporcionando fuentes primarias, hechos y pruebas documentales para revelar las falsificaciones.
Entre los ejemplos de noticias falsas, Zajárova ha citado el informe del centro estadounidense Atlantic Council sobre “ataques indiscriminados de Rusia en Alepo”; informaciones que acusan al Ejército sirio del uso de armas químicas; especulaciones de que Rusia quiere “regalar” Edward Snowden al presidente estadounidense Donald Trump o sobre la supuesta iniciativa de Serguéi Lavrov de dividir Macedonia.
Un reporte de BuzzFeed indica que la red social pondrá a prueba un área dedicada a las noticias con los contenidos más importante del momento reflejados por los medios.
In a dramatic move, at least a dozen colleges and universities across the country have cancelled in-person classes and switched to teaching their courses online, as the battle against the novel coronavirus in the United States intensifies.
The cancellations have been focused in states hardest hit by COVID-19 cases, including, California, New York and Washington state, after the virus infected more than 800 people in the US and killed at least 28 according to official counts.
On Tuesday, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, asked its students not to return to campus after its spring break, which begins on Saturday, and said it would move to virtual teaching by March 23.
“The decision to move to virtual instruction was not made lightly,” the university said in a statement. “The goal of these changes is to minimize the need to gather in large groups and spend prolonged time in close proximity with each other in spaces such as classrooms, dining halls, and residential buildings.”
Columbia University, Princeton University, Stanford University, the Ohio State University, the University of Southern California and the University of Washington have all announced similar so-called “social-distancing” measures.
Princeton University in New Jersey said all lectures, seminars and courses would be moved online after its spring recess next week. Online instruction there will last until at least April 5. Stanford University, located in California’s Santa Clara County, which currently has dozens of confirmed cases of the coronavirus, cancelled all in-person classes for the final two weeks of its winter semester. The Ohio State University suspended in-person classes through at least March 30.
Dozens of schools and houses of worship across the country have been closed, and conferences, sporting events and concerts have also been cancelled in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.
Quick shift
Bryan Alexander, a senior scholar at Georgetown University, said most universities have the adequate technological infrastructure to conduct classes online, but may face some difficulties with faculty who do not have experience with virtual teaching and students who do not have access to the necessary technology.
“The difficulty is faculty who don’t have experience in teaching online, they have to shift quickly, as well as translate class materials online,” Alexander told Al Jazeera.
“Not all students will have access to sufficient technology,” he said. “If, at home, they don’t have good broadband, the right hardware, this could be a problem that we have to scramble to fix.”
Harvard student Tom Osborn, 24, from Kenya said he was “shocked” by the announcement, which gave students only five days to finish schoolwork, pack their belongings, say goodbye to friends and make travel arrangements.
“It’s chaotic right now, we don’t really know what is happening,” Osborn told Al Jazeera.
Osborn, who took to Twitter to vent, said that for international students or those who are taking classes with a lab or studio component, attending online classes may not be feasible.
“It might be that I have to go online at 2am to attend classes,” he said.
@Harvard‘s #COVID2019 response is a complete joke. How do they expect low income students, and international students, to leave campus on 5 day notice. And do I have to wake up at 2am in Kenya to attend zoom classes? #coronavirus
Emily Philbrook, 18 a first-year international affairs student at George Washington University, which has not announced a shift to online courses, said physically going to classes was vital to her learning process.
“I like being in class, asking questions and being around my friends,” Philbrook told Al Jazeera, “I like interacting with my teachers.”
The virus – which originated in Wuhan, China, last year – has spread to more than 110 countries, areas or territories worldwide and infected over 100,000. More than 4,000 have died as a result of the virus.
For most people, the infectious respiratory disease causes only mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough and the infected recover within weeks.
For others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
Image caption
Trump describió el domingo al líder norcoreano como “un hombre que sabe lo que hace”.
El presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, se mostró este lunes dispuesto a reunirse con el líder norcoreano Kim Jong-un, aunque la Casa Blanca matizó que en las circunstancias adecuadas.
“Si fuese apropiado que me reuniera con él, lo haría, absolutamente. Sería un honor hacerlo“, le dijo al medio de comunicación Bloomberg.
El domingo, al canal de televisión CBS, le había descrito a Kim como un “hombre que sabe lo que hace”.
Los comentarios se produjeron en medio del panorama de creciente tensión por el programa nuclear de Corea del Norte.
La Casa Blanca publicó un comunicado tras los dichos de Trump en el que advierte que Pyongyang necesitaría sumar una serie de condiciones antes de llevar a cabo cualquier encuentro.
El portavoz de Washington, Sean Spicer, declaró que el gobierno quiere ver que el país asiático ponga fin a su conducta provocadora de inmediato.
“Claramente las condiciones no están allí en este momento”, añadió.
Corea del Norte mostró su fuerza militar en un desfile a mediados de abril.
En la entrevista que concedió el domingo, el presidente Trump hizo notar que Kim asumió el poder siendo joven, a pesar de tener que lidiar con “gente muy dura”.
El mandatario dijo que “no tenía idea” si Kim está estable mentalmente.
El líder norcoreano ordenó la ejecución de su tío dos años antes de llegar al poder, y recibió acusaciones de haber ordenado el asesinato de su medio hermano.
Sobre qué opinión tiene de Kim Jong-un, Trump le dijo a CBS: “La gente anda diciendo: ‘¿Está cuerdo?’ No tengo ni idea…pero era un hombre joven de 26 o 27 años… cuando su padre murió. Obviamente tiene que lidiar con gente muy dura, en particular los generales y otros.
“Y a una edad muy joven, tuvo la capacidad de asumir el poder. Muchas personas, estoy seguro, intentaron quitarle ese poder, ya fuese su tío o cualquier otro. Y aún así pudo lograrlo. Así que, obviamente, es un hombre que sabe lo que hace“.
Los comentarios de Trump llegan poco después de que el sábado Pyongyang realizara su segunda prueba fallida de misiles balísticos en dos semanas.
Las tensiones en la región han aumentado en el último mes y tanto Corea del Sur como Corea del Norte han llevado a cabo ejercicios militares.
Estados Unidos envió un grupo de buques de guerra a la zona y comenzó a instalar un controvertido sistema antimisiles en Corea del Sur en semanas recientes.
El domingo, un artículo publicado por la agencia de noticias estatal norcoreana KCNA urgió a Washington a “reflexionar sobre las consecuencias catastróficas que acarrearía su insensata provocación militar“.
Derechos de autor de la imagen Reuters
Image caption
El sábado, Pyongyang realizó su segunda prueba fallida de misiles balísticos en dos semanas.
Corea del Norte ha realizado varias pruebas de misiles en los últimos meses y está amenazando con lanzar un sexto ensayo nuclear.
El presidente Trump le dijo a CBS que su país “no iba a estar muy contento” si se realizaban más pruebas.
Cuando se le preguntó si esto implicaría una posible acción militar, señaló: “No lo sé. Digo, ya veremos”.
Two Sacramento police officers won’t be charged in deadly shooting of Stephon Clark.
Prosecutors in California have decided not to charge two police officers who fatally shot an unarmed black man last year, saying the “shooting was lawful.”
Sacramento County District Attorney Marie Schubert announced on Saturday that Officers Terrance Mercadal and Jared Robinet would not face criminal charges in the March 18 death of Stephon Clark after an independent review of the case found that the pair used lethal force lawfully.
The 61-page review conducted by the prosecutor’s office stated that Mercadal and Robinet “had honest and reasonable belief that they were in imminent danger of death or great bodily injury.”
Schubert said the decision “does not diminish in any way the tragedy, the anger and the frustration that we heard since the time of his death.”
She added: “We cannot ignore that there is rage within our community.”
Reaction to the decision came swiftly on Saturday. Among the first to weigh in was Clark’s mother, Sequette, who refused to accept prosecutors’ judgment. “They executed my son,” she said, according to The Associated Press. “It’s not right.”
Also on Saturday, Gov. Gavin Newsom and civil rights activists called for criminal justice reforms concerning use of deadly force. Newsom called it a hard truth that “our criminal justice system treats young black and Latino men and women differently than their white counterparts. That must change.”
How the community at large will react to prosecutors’ decision remained an open question early Saturday evening, though Sacramento has been bracing for protests; business owners were warned by a business association and state government workers told by legislative officials in recent days to stay away from downtown at least through the weekend.
Clark was shot and killed March 18; the two officers were responding to a report of somebody breaking car windows. Police said they believed Clark was the suspect, and that he ran when a police helicopter responded and failed to obey officers’ orders.
Police said they thought Clark was holding a gun when he moved toward them with his arms extended and an object in his hands. He was later found to only have a cellphone on him.
Police video of the shooting does not clearly capture all that happened after Clark ran into his grandmother’s backyard.
It showed him initially moving toward the officers, who were peeking out from behind a corner of the house, but it’s not clear whether he was facing them or that he knew the officers were there when they opened fire after shouting “gun, gun, gun.” The video showed Clark staggering sideways and falling on his stomach as the officers continued shooting.
“We must recognize that they are often forced to make split-second decisions and we must recognize that they are under tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances,” Schubert said on Saturday.
A review of the district attorney’s findings stated that “the law recognizes an inherent right to use deadly force to protect oneself or others from death or great bodily harm.”
It continued: “This fundamental legal principle is known as the right of ‘self-defense.’ A police officer does not lose his fundamental right by virtue of becoming a police officer.”
Claudia Cowan reports from California, where protesters are calling on prosecutors to file criminal charges against officers involved in the fatal shooting of Stephon Clark.
Clark’s family, including his two sons, his parents and his grandparents, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in January seeking more than $20 million from the city, Mercadal and Robinet. The suit alleges that the use of force was excessive, and that Clark was a victim of racial profiling.
One of the officers who shot Clark is black and the other is white, police said.
En Las Vegas, el jubilado Stephen Paddock, de 64 años, fue identificado como el hombre que utilizó dos armas automáticas para disparar contra una multitud. (Foto: AFP)
(Foto: AFP)
Tres gigantes del sector de internet –Facebook, Google y Twitter– admitieron este martes que fracasaron en evitar la diseminación de rumores y desinformación luego de la matanza de 59 personas el domingo en Las Vegas.
Los tres gigantes informaron que estaban trabajando en modificaciones en sus servicios luego de comprobar que noticias falsas, rumores y claras tentativas de desinformación terminaron entre menciones destacadas en búsquedas.
Algunas noticias falsas identificaron equivocadamente al atacante, y otras indicaron que se buscaba a una mujer que describieron como una “admiradora de Rachel Maddow que odia a (el presidente Donald) Trump”.
Maddow es presentadora de un programa en la red de televisión MSNBC y es una crítica mordaz del presidente. En el caso de Google, el principal problema detectado fue que reportes completamente falsos que circularon en la red 4chan terminaron en el tope de las búsquedas.
“En un plazo de horas, la historia que circuló en 4chan fue reemplazada mediante un algoritmo por resultados relevantes”, informó Google en un correo a AFP.
El material falso de 4chan “no debió aparecer en ninguna de las búsquedas, y continuaremos haciendo mejoras en el servicio para evitar que esto ocurra en el futuro”.
En tanto, Facebook informó que descubrió la circulación de información falsa sobre el tiroteo y actuó para eliminarla.
“Sin embargo, la remoción de ese material se atrasó algunos minutos y eso permitió que se hayan hecho capturas de pantalla que siguieron circulando”, admitió la firma.
“Estamos trabajando para corregir el problema que permitió que esto ocurriera, y lamentamos profundamente la confusión causada”, añadió.
A su vez, Twitter también informó sobre esfuerzos para impedir la circulación de información falsa sobre el tiroteo.
“Tenemos información sobre este problema y estamos tomando acciones sobre contenido que viola los términos de nuestro servicio”, apuntó un vocero de la firma.
En Las Vegas, el jubilado Stephen Paddock, de 64 años, fue identificado como el hombre que utilizó dos armas automáticas para disparar contra una multitud, dejando un saldo de 59 muertos y unos 500 heridos.
Las investigaciones ahora se concentran en tratar de establecer un motivo para la matanza.
Como si fuera un espectáculo de ilusionismo orquestado por la naturaleza, las ruinas de una imponente iglesia del siglo XVI emergieron del río Grijalva en el estado de Chiapas, en el sur de México.
Image copyright AP
El tempo de Santiago se hizo visible días atrás por la bajada de 25 metros de las aguas, causada por una persistente sequía.
Había quedado sumergida bajo la superficie del Grijalva hace cerca de medio siglo, cuando se levantó la represa Nezahualcóyotl.
No es la primera vez que el templo vuelve a emerger de entre las aguas.
Image copyright AP
Image copyright AP
Hace unos 12 años el nivel del río bajó tanto que hasta era posible caminar por el interior de la iglesia.
News of his departure was met with concern by Senator Robert Menendez, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He said he feared it would create a vacuum in Ukraine, which is still grappling with Russian-backed separatists.
In his testimony before the impeachment inquiry last month, Mr Taylor said that a member of his staff overheard a telephone call in which President Trump inquired about “the investigations” into Mr Biden.
Media captionTrump could be impeached – how did we get here?
The call was with Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the European Union, who reportedly told the president over the phone from a restaurant in Kyiv that “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward”.
After the call, the staff member “asked Mr Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine”, Mr Taylor said.
Mr Taylor said: “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.”
President Trump is accused of withholding US military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country’s president to publicly announce a corruption inquiry into Mr Biden. He denies any wrongdoing and has described the impeachment inquiry as a “witch hunt”.
A majority of House Democrats are expected to vote to impeach Mr Trump on Wednesday.
OXFORD, Mich. (FOX 2) – The Oakland County Sheriff said three students were killed and eight others have been hurt when someone started shooting inside Oxford High School on Tuesday.
According to Oakland County Undersheriff Michael McCabe, three students were killed in the shooting and there were at least eight other victims including a teacher. The sheriff also said that the suspect is a 15-year-old sophomore at the school and has invoked his right to remain silent.
McCabe said the first of more than 100 calls came into 911 at 12:51 p.m. to a report of a shooting. Deputies immediately responded to the scene and took the suspect into custody but not until after he shot 10 people, killing three.
The suspect did not resist officers when they arrived. McCabe said he asked for an attorney and would offer no details regarding a possible motive.
Around 2:00 p.m., medical helicopters including the University of Michigan’s Survival Flight had landed in the parking lot of the school as a secondary search was being conducted around the perimeter of the school.
Isabel Flores, a 15-year-old freshman, was inside the school when the gunshots were fired. She told FOX 2’s Charlie Langton they heard gunshots and saw another student bleeding from the face before they all ran from the area through the back of the school.
Another student we spoke with, identified only as Savannah, said that the school conducts mass shooting training and they knew what to do.
Continuing coverage of active shooter at Oxford High School in Michigan
FOX 2’s Jess Dupnack provides update on active shooter situation at Oxford High School
After the lockdown was lifted, students from the high school were sent to the Meijer parking lot across the street from the school.
A parent sitting in a car told FOX 2 that his student inside had to barricade inside a classroom when they heard the gunshots being fired inside the school. He said his son was not physically hurt.
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According to an alert sent out to Oxford parents, an active emergency was reported at the school around 1 p.m. and it has gone into emergency protocols and put the school into lockdown.
By 2 p.m., students were being released and dozens of ambulances and emergency personnel arrived at the scene.
The alert sent to parents urged them not to come to the school at this time.
There are multiple units on the scene including SWAT and the aviation unit and the sheriff said the scene is still active.
Oxford is a village population of just under 3,400 about 30 miles north of Detroit.
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Oxford High School Shooting: At least four hurt after gunman opens fire in Michigan
FOX 2’s Deena Centofanti gives an update on student pickup after Oxford High School in Michigan was placed on lockdown Tuesday in regards to an active shooter situation.
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