Dicen que es una enfermedad del pasado, pero los síntomas están más presentes que nunca…
En NOTICIAS de esta semana:
Cristinosis: furia en la grieta de un país neurótico. Por odio, amor o morbo, todos hablan sin para de la ex presidenta. La histeria financiera y el presente del que Macri intenta huir para no hablar de crisis.
Máximo K. El hijo de la ex presidenta es custodiado por un ex agente de Inteligencia K que podría ser su doble.
Macri gato. Habla Facundo Scalia, el inventor del eslogan anti PRO que viralizó en las redes sociales. El merchandising.
Famosas a los 50. La quinta década no sólo trae cambios hormonales. La madurez emocional es un valor agregado a esa nueva etapa de la vida.
Además:
Los conflictos de Antonella Roccuzzo con los Messi
Y… la trastienda del golpe a La Salada.
Y Cine, Restaurantes, Teatro, Música, Internacionales, Ciencia, Economía y más, mucho más.
UPDATE: McConnell on Thursday again stopped the Senate from considering the House-passed bill raising the stimulus payments to $2,000.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday once again blocked legislation to send $2,000 payments to most Americans
McConnell, R-Ky., ignored a new plea from President Donald Trump — who tweeted earlier Wednesday, “$2000 ASAP!”— in refusing to allow a vote on the Senate floor. So did U.S. Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., who blocked a second request for a vote. and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who blocked a third request.
The Senate leader said there was “no realistic path” for the $2,000 payments “to quickly pass the Senate.”
“Look, it’s no secret that Republicans have a diversity of views about the wisdom of borrowing hundreds of billions more to send out more non-targeted money,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “Our duty is to get help to the people who need help. Like we did to an historic degree just four days ago.”
Both Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., made separate requests to allow the Senate to vote on the House-passed bill increasing the stimulus payments to $2,000. The House overwhelmingly approved the legislation following Trump’s demands for the larger checks.
“For once, Democrats agree with something on President Trump’s Twitter feed,” Schumer said.
Trump has called for the higher payments after he signed the coronavirus stimulus package that included $600 payments on Sunday.
Sanders has threatened to block quick consideration of an effort to override Trump’s veto of the defense policy bill, possibly forcing the Senate to spend New Year’s Day in Washington, unless McConnell agrees to allow a vote on the $2,000 stimulus checks.
“It’s about basic democracy,” Sanders said on the Senate floor. “All that Senator Schumer and I are asking of the majority leader is a very simple request: Allow the members of the United States Senate to cast a vote.
“What’s the problem?”
Senate Republicans refused to answer the question, but rather just criticized the proposal.
“They are in denial of the hardship that the American people are experiencing now,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said during her weekly press conference Wednesday. “Health wise, financially, in every way. Their lives and livelihood in many cases are on the brink. So, they’re in denial of that need in denying this benefit.”
Republicans, though, complained that some checks would be going to wealthier Americans or those who didn’t lose any income during the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is hardly clear that the federal government’s top priority should be sending thousands of dollars to, for example, a childless couple making well into six figures who have been comfortably teleworking all year,” McConnell said.
The $2,000 checks would begin phasing out at $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for married couples without children.
Because the base is so much higher than it would be with the $600 checks, a family of four, which would start with $8,000 in stimulus checks, would have to make $310,000 before the entire payment would end, according to calculations by the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget. For a family with five children, the cutoff would be $430,000.
GOP lawmakers in 2017 passed a tax cut that the Congressional Budget Office said would increase the federal deficit by $1.9 trillion over 10 years and independent studies showed gave most of its benefits to corporations and the rich, in part by reducing the estate tax paid only by multimillionaires.
They were investigating the president’s allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election that have been debunked by dozens of judges and state election officials, and repealing liability protections for social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook for the content posted on their sites. Trump and his conservative allies have complained about the sites flagging or removing content the companies deem false.
Twitter is shadow banning like never before. A disgrace that our weak and ineffective political leadership refuses to do anything about Big Tech. They’re either afraid or stupid, nobody really knows!
“The Senate is not going to split apart the three issues that President Trump linked together just because Democrats are afraid to address two of them,” McConnell said.
But the House on Thursday adjourned for the year. A new Congress begins Sunday.
“Any modification or addition to the House bill cannot become law before the end of this Congress. It’s a way to kill — to kill — the bill,” Schumer said. “Make no mistake about it. Either the Senate takes up and passes the House bill, or struggling American families will not get $2,000 checks during the worst economic crisis in 75 years.”
TOKYO — President Trump flew over 14 hours, passed through 13 time zones and crossed the international date line to — essentially — be feted by the Japanese.
On a four-day visit to Japan, Trump enjoyed golf and double cheeseburgers (complete with U.S. beef), participated in an imperial gift exchange, attended a traditional sumo tournament and fielded questions from the media at the gilded Akasaka Palace.
But like many strategies to influence and contain the president, the carefully planned Japanese attempt hit something of a skid on Trump’s first full day in Tokyo on Sunday, when Trump fired off a tweet that, in a single missive, undermined his national security adviser, aligned himself with a brutal dictator and attacked a Democratic rival on foreign soil.
Then Monday, in a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump continued his headlong plunge into diplomatic mayhem, expressing such eagerness for a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he backed Kim over his own top aides (notably national security adviser John Bolton), his allies (Japan) and his fellow Americans (former vice president Joe Biden).
Calling Kim “a very smart man,” Trump said he was not “personally” bothered by North Korea’s short-range missile tests this month and does not believe the tests violate United Nations Security Council resolutions — a transgression about which Bolton had previously told reporters there was “no doubt.”
“My people think it could have been a violation,” Trump said, as Bolton sat just feet away. “I view it a little differently.”
Abe, meanwhile, referred to the North Korean tests with “great regret” — though, in an apparent attempt to maintain his bromance with Trump, Abe also credited the president with beginning negotiations with North Korea, saying Trump “cracked open the shell of distrust” with the regime.
Trump also seemed to side with Kim and his repressive regime over Biden, violating an unofficial rule of presidential behavior — that partisan politics stops on foreign soil. Asked about a tweet in which Trump appreciatively recounted North Korea’s state media calling Biden a “fool of low I.Q.,” the president simply doubled down on the insult.
“Well, Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low-IQ individual,” the president said, as Bolton and the U.S. ambassador to Japan, William Hagerty, chuckled lightly. “I think I agree with him on that.”
And Trump expressed openness to improving relations with Iran, currently one of America’s biggest geopolitical foes, after recently ordering 1,500 additional troops to the region.
“We’re not looking for regime change,” he said, in another tacit rebuke of Bolton, who has long pushed for a more aggressive hard-line stance against Iran. “I just want to make that clear. We’re looking for no nuclear weapons.”
Still, when Trump wasn’t making unplanned news, he largely basked in his elevated status, with Abe playing humble guide.
In some ways, the president’s Japan sojourn revealed Trump as part reluctant tourist, part eager honoree, and always deeply perplexed when the spotlight was not squarely on him.
At Ryogoku Kokugikan stadium for the sumo championships Sunday, for instance, Trump suddenly found himself spectator rather than actor, and was notably subdued. After entering the arena to applause and craned necks, the crowd returned its collective attention to the ancient grappling, and Trump sat almost stone-faced as he took in the final matches.
After donning slippers — no shoes are allowed in the ring — Trump did rise to present the 25-year-old champion with the first “President’s Cup,” a more than four-foot-tall and 60-pound silver trophy with an eagle taking flight set atop it. But he appeared to lack his trademark panache. He read from a certificate, smiled, clapped and bowed slightly before exiting the ring.
In other moments, Trump’s interests seemed to drift stateside, at least according to his social media feed. During his four days abroad, the president tweeted about sports (the Indianapolis 500), culture (actor Jussie Smollett) and, of course, politics.
The president attacked Democrats, impeachment efforts and Biden, even using the 1994 crime bill as foil to argue that Biden — who supported the legislation — is unelectable to large swaths of the Democratic base.
“Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected,” Trump wrote from Tokyo. “In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you.”
Abe, for his part, at least publicly largely tried to ignore disagreements between himself and the president, and instead focused on honoring and entertaining his guest — thefirst foreign leader invited to an official state visit following the May enthronement of the new emperor, Naruhito.
After all, Trump is a president who at times prefers to be treated like a monarch, reveling in the spotlight and celebrations of himself. And the Japanese were happy to oblige, hoping to woo Trump on everything from trade to security by tailoring the trip to his whims and professed likes.
Abe and Trump played golf, took a selfie and, in a nod to the president’s preferred palate of bland Americana, consumed a carnivore’s bovine delight — burgers (at the country club), Wagyu beef (at the traditional robatayaki charcoal grill), and Cote de Boeuf Rotie (at the six-course black-tie gala at the Imperial Palace).
And the president was simply thrilled to be the guest of honor — even if, at least at first, he seemed a little unclear on just what the celebration was. Before leaving for Japan, Trump told reporters that Abe persuaded him to visit the country twice in roughly a month — he returns in June to Osaka, for the Group of 20 leaders’ summit — by inviting him to a “very big event” that the prime minister promised Trump would be “one hundred times bigger” than even the Super Bowl.
Once here to help usher in the “Reiwa” era under Naruhito, Trump continued to enthuse about Abe’s invite to be the first leader to meet the new emperor after ascending the Chrysanthemum Throne.
“That was a great honor,” he said Monday, sitting alongside Abe. “That’s a big thing. Two hundred and two years — that’s the last time this has happened.”
Trump has four foreign trips this summer, and a senior White House official said he was most excited about this first one to Japan and next week’s journey to Britain and France, which similarly includes an official state visit — complete with pomp and grandeur — during his British stop.
Before Trump departed for Japan, another senior White House official promised a “substantive” trip with “some substantive things.” Yet it was hard to point to any major diplomatic breakthroughs.
As NBC’s Hallie Jackson quipped on MSNBC as the trip wound down, the only real deliverable “has been the delivery of that trophy to the sumo wrestling championship.”
“As we have noted for years, in jurisdictions where we are not allowed to assume custody of aliens from jails, our officers are forced to make at-large arrests of criminal aliens who have been released into communities,” he said. “When sanctuary cities release these criminals back to the street, it increases the occurrence of preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims.”
But Gil Kerlikowske, the former commissioner of C.B.P., which oversees tactical units along the border, said sending the officers to conduct immigration enforcement within cities, where they are not trained to work, could escalate situations that are already volatile. He called the move a “significant mistake.”
“If you were a police chief and you were going to make an apprehension for a relatively minor offense, you don’t send the SWAT team. And BORTAC is the SWAT team,” said Mr. Kerlikowske, who is a former chief of police in Seattle. “They’re trained for much more hazardous missions than this.”
It was a gun-wielding BORTAC agent who, in April 2000, seized Elian Gonzalez — a Cuban boy who was embroiled in an international asylum controversy — from his uncle’s arms after agents had forced their way into the home where the boy was staying.
The Border Patrol squads will be charged with backing up ICE agents during deportation operations and standing by as a show of force, the officials said.
ICE agents typically seek out people with criminal convictions or multiple immigration violations as their primary targets for deportation, but family members and friends are often swept up in the enforcement net in what are known as “collateral” arrests, and many such people could now be caught up in any enhanced operations.
ICE leadership requested the help in sanctuary jurisdictions because agents there often struggle to track down undocumented immigrants without the help of the police and other state and local agencies. Law enforcement officers in areas that refuse to cooperate with ICE and the Border Patrol — which include both liberal and conservative parts of the country — often argue that doing so pushes undocumented people further into the shadows, ultimately making cities less safe because that segment of the population becomes less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigations.
El Instituto Uruguayo de Meteorología prevé que a partir de este martes se registre la mayor fuerza del ciclón extratropical que se acerca a Uruguay. Actualmente rige una advertencia amarilla por tal fenómeno, pero está prevista que la misma cambie a color naranja en las próximas horas.
En Montevideo ya se registraron destrozos por los fuertes vientos, que están incrementando cada hora su fuerza. Según informó Telemundo, en la rambla de Montevideo hay paradas de ómnibus que quedaron rotas, así como cartelería en general.
Las autoridades de Inumet informaron que desde el miércoles de la semana pasada vienen monitoreando la situación y que en caso de que sea necesario emitir una alerta roja lo harán con tiempo suficiente para que la población tome previsiones. Explicaron que un “ciclón” como el anunciado no es otra cosa “una depresión frontal o baja presión”, al tiempo que aclararon que “esto no es ciclón tropical, sino extra tropical”.
“Es un trabajo que vamos a tener que hacer lo para que la gente cuando escuche esa palabra no piense que se termina el mundo y genere esa alarma que se generó en los últimos días”, añadió.
En relación a la ciudad de Dolores dijeron que ahora hay lluvias y tormentas y “más que el nivel de riesgo amarillo que está vigente no están relacionando otro monitoreo” puntual.
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain said it would eliminate import tariffs on a wide range of goods and keep the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland free of customs checks if it leaves the European Union without a transition deal.
The government announced the temporary measures, which it hopes would soften the immediate impact of a no-deal Brexit, as lawmakers prepared to vote on Wednesday on whether Britain should leave the EU without any transition agreement.
That prospect is alarming many employers as the March 29 departure date looms large. The government’s no-deal tariff plan, which would last for up to 12 months, would seek to keep prices down for consumers while also minimizing job losses among manufacturers in the world’s fifth-biggest economy.
Eighty-seven percent of total imports to the United Kingdom by value would be eligible for tariff-free access, up from 80 percent now.
Some protections for British producers would remain in place, including for carmakers — who are major employers in Britain — and beef, lamb, pork, poultry and dairy farmers.
Aluminum, steel, machinery, arms and ammunition, footwear, paper and wood products would be exempt from tariffs.
The plan would expose many manufacturers to cheaper competition from abroad. A group representing farmers said it was concerned that eggs, cereals, fruit and vegetables would also not be protected by tariffs.
If maintained, the plan could make it harder Britain to extract concessions from other countries in future trade talks.
LITTLE CONSOLATION
Cutting tariffs on imported goods would ease the hit to British consumers from an expected jump in inflation in the event of a no-deal Brexit which would probably cause sterling to tumble and make imports more expensive.
However, the price of cars and food imported from the EU could rise because the new plan would introduce tariffs.
The head of a British carmakers industry group said the protections offered — which included no tariffs on parts imported from the EU — would not resolve the “devastating effect” of a no-deal Brexit.
“No policy on tariffs can come close to compensating for the disruption, cost and job losses that would result,” said Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
“It’s staggering that we are in this position with only days until we are due to leave.”
“MODEST LIBERALIZATION”
May says she wants to avoid a no-deal Brexit. Her finance minister Philip Hammond is set to offer lawmakers an incentive to reverse their opposition to her plan by promising later on Wednesday to free up billions of pounds in extra public spending or tax cuts if a no-deal Brexit is avoided.
Trade minister Liam Fox has invited business leaders to join a call at 1500 GMT to discuss tariffs and Brexit, a senior company source said.
Brexit minister Stephen Barclay called the measures a “modest liberalization”.
“It is a temporary measure, this is for a short term while we engage with business and we see what the real term consequences are,” he told BBC radio.
The new system would mean 82 percent of imports from the EU would be tariff-free, down from all of them now, while 92 percent of imports from the rest of the world would pay no duties at the border, up from 56 percent now.
IRISH BORDER
The government said it would not introduce checks or controls on goods moving from the Irish Republic to the British province of Northern Ireland.
Related Coverage
“The measures announced today recognize the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland,” Karen Bradley, Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland said in a statement. “These arrangements can only be temporary and short-term.”
Britain, Ireland and the EU have said they want to avoid physical checks on the border, which was marked by military checkpoints before a 1998 peace deal ended three decades of violence in the region. But they disagree on the “backstop”, or insurance mechanism, to exclude such border checks.
Goods crossing the border from Ireland into Northern Ireland would not be covered by the new import tariff regime, posing a challenge for British authorities to stop importers from using Northern Ireland as a backdoor route to avoid British tariffs.
Additional reporting by Elisabeth O’Leary and Michael Holden; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Keith Weir
In his remarks on Monday, Mr. Biden promised that he was “sparing no effort, removing all roadblocks to keep the American people safe.”
That pledge came as some Republicans seized on the existence of another variant to attack the president. The Republican National Committee issued a statement saying that “Biden failed to shut down the virus as he promised.” Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, who served as President Donald J. Trump’s White House physician, suggested that Omicron was created by liberals eager to impose further Covid restrictions.
White House officials dismissed the political criticism. Natalie Quillian, the deputy Covid-19 response coordinator, said the potential dangers from the new variant were serious enough to prompt a flurry of meetings among officials from multiple agencies, calls with pharmaceutical companies and urgent messages to health officials in other countries.
“There was a sense of concern, a sense that this felt different from other variants,” Ms. Quillian said. “This had enough of the markers to differentiate itself in the level of concern we felt. We sort of kicked into action Thursday night and Friday.”
The new variant upended the Thanksgiving holiday for administration officials and top scientists, who had scattered across the country for celebrations.
The variant was identified by South African scientists on Thursday afternoon, as many U.S. officials were sitting down to dinner. Shortly before midnight, Dr. David A. Kessler, the chief science officer for the government’s coronavirus response, reached out to a South African partnership, which sent back a genomic sequencing report on the variant.
Dr. Fauci and Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, were in contact with their counterparts in South Africa late on Thanksgiving Day. Jeff Zients, the president’s Covid-19 response coordinator, and others spent most of the night making calls.
For the past week, Republicans in the state Senate have pushed forward with an audit of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County, a massive undertaking that has pleased Trump and his supporters while stirring outrage among Democrats, who have sought to stop the effort.
Here are five things to know about the audit of the 2020 election results:
Why is this happening?
The audit is the latest effort by Trump loyalists in the state to call the results of the 2020 presidential election into question, even after multiple audits since November determined that vote was tallied accurately.
What’s different this time, however, is that the audit is being carried out by the state Senate itself. Republican state senators used their subpoena power to demand that election officials hand over all of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots, as well as its voting machines and voter registration information.
Despite legal efforts by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to block the subpoenas, a judge declared the demands valid and directed officials to hand over the requested materials. State senators are conducting a hand count of the ballots, as well as an examination of the voting machines and voter data.
The state Senate’s audit is widely viewed as a political exercise, intended to placate Trump’s supporters, many of whom remain convinced that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. In fact, no evidence has been uncovered that backs up those claims.
Who’s behind it?
Arizona state Senate Republicans have hired a little-known Florida-based firm called Cyber Ninjas to run the audit, a decision that critics say is a red flag.
Cyber Ninjas has no experience in elections, and its website describes it as specializing in “all areas of application security, ranging from your traditional web application to mobile or thick client applications.”
Democrats have also raised concerns about past tweets from the company’s chief executive, Doug Logan, spreading conspiracy theories about a stolen election in Arizona. Those tweets were deleted earlier this year.
Cyber Ninjas isn’t the only firm involved in the audit. The state Senate has also hired Wake Technology Services Inc. to conduct the hand count of the ballots. The company previously conducted a hand count of the vote in Fulton County, Pa.
While part of the audit is being financed by taxpayer money, the effort also has some prominent backers. One America News Network, the pro-Trump cable channel that has been livestreaming the audit, has started to fundraise for the effort.
What are Trump and Democrats saying?
The audit has so far proven polarizing.
Trump has repeatedly praised the undertaking as a valiant effort to root out voter fraud and malfeasance, echoing the same baseless claims he has made about the election results for months. In several statements issued through his leadership PAC, Save America, he’s cast the audit as a popular effort while maligning Democrats for fighting it.
“Incredible organization and integrity taking place in Arizona with respect to the Fraudulent 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump said in a recent statement. “These are Great American Patriots, but watch, the Radical Left Democrats ‘demean and destroy campaign’ will start very soon.”
Democrats and elections experts have expressed grave concern about the audit, arguing in particular that the process has so far lacked transparency and warning that partisan elected officials may be sacrificing accuracy and security in favor of speed and political convenience.
Critics have also raised concerns about the audit’s potential effects on voter privacy and the security of their ballots. A group of election security and administration experts sent a letter to the Justice Department on Thursday asking federal officials to dispatch monitors to the audit site.
State Democrats in Arizona, meanwhile, are suing to halt the audit. A judge agreed to do so last week if the plaintiffs posted a $1 million bond, though the Democrats in the lawsuit refused. A new judge took over the case this week after the previous judge recused himself.
Has the audit found any fraud?
That’s still unclear, but it’s highly unlikely that the audit will uncover the scale of mass voter fraud that Trump and his allies have alleged. Again, previous audits of the vote in Maricopa County determined that the vote was counted accurately and that the voting machines used had not been tampered with.
And while no state legislature has gone as far as Arizona’s in examining Trump’s claims of fraud, several have conducted their own hearings and reviews on the allegations. None, however, have uncovered credible evidence to back up the allegations.
Cyber Ninjas has agreed to release a report of the audit within 60 days.
What are the implications of the audit?
The audit isn’t going to be used to reverse the election results in Arizona. It can’t be, and state senators have said as much.
The election results were certified by state officials months ago, effectively solidifying Biden’s win in Arizona. What’s more, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate signed off on the Electoral College vote in January, two weeks before Biden took office.
Instead, Republicans in the Arizona state Senate say that the audit is simply a means of restoring voters’ confidence in the elections process and is necessary to help them decide whether to craft changes to the state’s election laws — something that GOP-controlled legislatures in other states have either already done or are working toward in the wake of the 2020 election.
Yet it also comes with the risk of eroding faith in Arizona’s elections.
Democrats and voting rights advocates have warned that the audit has put ballots at risk of being tampered with. What’s more, the catalyst for the audit — Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud and malfeasance — have stirred suspicions that Republicans may be trying to discredit unfavorable election results.
Miembros de una milicia cercana a un influyente diputado afgano, decapitaron a cuatro combatientes afiliados al grupo yihadista Estado Islámico (EI) en una región inestable de Afganistán. y exhibieron sus cabezas en una carretera muy frecuentada, informaron este domingo las autoridades locales.
Según Haji Zahir, vicepresidente del parlamento afgano, el EI había decapitado a cuatro milicianos allegados a él, por lo que se actuó en represalia. “¿Si a usted lo decapitan, o decapitan a sus hijos, espera que le obsequiemos flores a sus verdugos?”, exclamó en una conferencia de prensa. “No se lanzan flores durante una guerra. La gente muere”, subrayó.
“Ellos (los combatientes del EI) eran criminales, entonces tendrían que haber sido juzgados”, explicó, por su parte, el gobernador del distrito, Haji Ghaleb.
El EI, controla grandes territorios en Siria e Irak y en los últimos meses logró implantarse en la provincia de Nangarhar tras expulsar a los rebeldes talibanes, para quienes esta región es uno de sus feudos.
En Afganistán, el EI ha logrado atraer a numerosos talibanes decepcionados con la dirección de su movimiento.
Image caption
Con la votación, el mensaje que parece más claro es el de que la gente quiere cambio.
La oposición venezolana ganó este domingo, por primera vez desde que Chávez asumió la presidencia en febrero de 1999, la mayoría de asientos de la Asamblea Nacional.
A raíz del resultado, algunos están comenzando a hablar del fin de una era: aquella que inició el presidente Hugo Chávez cuando asumió el poder el 2 de febrero de 1999.
No significa el final de la “revolución bolivariana”, como se la conoce. Hay varias razones:
-La transformación del país durante los últimos 16 años ha sido demasiado profunda como para que pueda ser deshecha en el corto plazo.
-Nicolás Maduro sigue siendo presidente de Venezuela, y el sistema político venezolano todavía se define como presidencialista: el Presidente actúa con cierta independencia de la Asamblea y tiene un peso decisivo en la toma de decisiones.
Image caption
Se cree que el voto del chavismo descontento fue decisivo para la victoria de la oposición.
-Dentro de la estructura de poderes, el Ejecutivo (el presidente y los ministros), el Legislativo (la Asamblea Nacional) y el Judicial (representado por el Tribunal Supremo de Justicia) debe trabajar de común acuerdo para producer cambios. Las decisiones de la Asamblea pueden ser efectivamente bloqueadas por los otros dos poderes.
Tampoco significa el fin del chavismo. De acuerdo con diversas encuestas, una parte importante de los venezolanos todavía se definen como chavistas. De hecho, se cree que su votos son los que precisamente definieron el resultado en favor de la oposición.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday sidestepped a major new challenge to abortion rights by declining to hear Alabama’s bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that would have effectively banned the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The justices left in place a lower court ruling that struck down the 2016 law, which would have criminalized a method called dilation and evacuation that is the most common type of abortion performed during the second trimester of a pregnancy.
The law in question is different than an even more strict Alabama measure signed by Republican Governor Kay Ivey in May. The new law, also facing a legal challenge, would ban nearly all abortions in the state, even in cases of rape and incest.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion agreeing with the court’s decision not to hear the issue now but making clear that he would vote to uphold such laws.
“The notion that anything in the Constitution prevents states from passing laws prohibiting the dismembering of a living child is implausible,” Thomas wrote.
The Alabama law was one of a growing number passed by Republican legislators at the state level imposing a variety of restrictions on abortion.
“While we are pleased to see the end of this particular case, we know that it is nowhere near the end of efforts to undermine access to abortion,” said Andrew Beck, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law.
Related: Stars slam new Alabama abortion bill
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“Politicians are lining up to do just what Alabama did – ask the courts to review laws that push abortion out of reach and harm women’s health, with the hope of the getting the Supreme Court to undermine, or even overturn, a woman’s right to abortion,” Beck added.
The lower court found that Alabama’s law was an infringement on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion recognized in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. A ruling by the conservative-majority Supreme Court upholding the Alabama measure could have chipped away at the Roe decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.
In the method targeted in the Alabama law, sometimes called D&E, a woman’s cervix is dilated and the contents of the uterus removed. Alabama calls this method “dismemberment abortion.”
Anti-abortion proponents had hoped the case would present an opportunity to make inroads at the Supreme Court following the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was pivotal in defending abortion rights. President Donald Trump, who vowed before the 2016 election to appoint justices who would overturn the Roe ruling, named conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy.
The Supreme Court has a 5-4 conservative majority but has sent mixed messages on abortion in recent months.
Most recently, the court on May 28 refused to consider reinstating Indiana’s ban on abortions performed because of fetal disability or the sex or race of the fetus while upholding the state’s requirement that fetal remains be buried or cremated after the procedure is done.
In February, the court blocked a Louisiana law imposing strict regulations on abortion clinics from going into effect. An appeal is pending in that case.
The Supreme Court on Dec. 10 declined to take up another abortion-related case when it rebuffed two other conservative-leaning states – Louisiana and Kansas – that moved to deny public funding to Planned Parenthood.
Anti-abortion activists hope the high court will be more receptive to abortion restrictions following Kennedy’s departure. Many liberals have expressed concern that Kavanaugh, who joined the court in October, will be more hostile to abortion rights and could support the overturning of Roe.
The Supreme Court in 2016 on buttressed constitutional protections for abortion rights in a ruling in which Kennedy joined the four liberal justices, throwing out a Texas law imposing difficult-to-meet requirements on abortion clinics and abortion doctors.
With Kennedy gone, conservative states are debating and in some cases enacting laws that are in direct conflict with the Roe v. Wade precedent.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
Image caption
El “ghosting” es algo a lo que cada vez más gente ha de hacer frente. (Foto: ThinkStock)
Quizás te ha pasado alguna vez: conoces a alguien, intercambias números de teléfono, tienes varias citas, empiezas una relación, todo parece ir bien y de repente… silencio.
Sin previo aviso, esa persona deja de contestar tus mensajes de texto y tus llamadas. Simplemente desaparece de tu vida sin dar ningún tipo de explicación.
Si has vivido algo parecido has sido víctima de lo que en inglés llaman ghosting, palabra que se traduciría como “hacerse el fantasma” y que ha ido ganando popularidad en los últimos tiempos, siendo elegida como uno de los vocablos de 2015 por el diccionario británico Collins.
El acabar una relación de la noche a la mañana, cortando todo tipo de comunicación, no es nada nuevo, aunque según los expertos las nuevas tecnologías han hecho que ahora sea una práctica más común.
En una época en la que muchas relaciones de pareja empiezan a través de páginas de internet y de aplicaciones para celulares, el ghosting es algo a lo que cada vez más personas deben hacer frente.
Los expertos en psicología advierten que el ghosting tiene consecuencias tanto para quien lo sufre como para quien lo practica.
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Los adolescentes crecen pensando que no responder a un mensaje es algo normal. (Foto: ThinkStock)
El primero ve su autoestima dañada y tiene que atravesar el periodo de duelo que conlleva el fin de una relación, sin tener todas las respuestas sobre los motivos de la ruptura.
El segundo, si se trata de una relación consolidada, tendrá que hacer frente a los remordimientos y al sentimiento de culpa por haber dejado a alguien de esta manera.
Los expertos sostienen que en algunos casos los que practican el ghosting tienen miedo al conflicto, evitando a toda costa los enfrentamientos, incluyendo el tener que decirle a alguien a la cara que se quiere poner fin a una relación.
En una encuesta que realizó en 2014 en Estados Unidos la compañía YouGov para el sitio Huffington Post, el 11% de los participantes dijo haberle hecho ghosting a alguien y un 13% haber sido víctima de esta práctica.
La revista Elle llevó a cabo una encuesta similar entre sus lectores: un 26% de las mujeres y un 33% de los hombres admitieron tanto haber sido víctimas del ghosting como el haberlo llevado a cabo.
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El “ghosting” tiene consecuencias para el que lo sufre y para el que lo practica. (Foto: ThinkStock)
Parece que en la era de aplicaciones como Tinder y Grindr, el estar ocultos tras las pantallas de nuestros teléfonos hace que nos resulte más sencillo el acabar nuestras relaciones sin dar ningún tipo de explicación.
“Deshacernos de la gente”
Sherry Turkler, profesora de sociología de Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts (MIT, por sus siglas en inglés) aseguró en una reciente entrevista con el Huffington Post que “el ghosting es algo casi único del mundo online“.
“Con las nuevas tecnologías nos hemos acostumbrado a deshacernos de la gente simplemente no respondiendo. Y eso empieza con los adolescentes, que crecen con la idea de que es posible que le envíen a alguien un mensaje de texto y que no reciban nada por respuesta”.
Según Turkle, “eso tiene serias consecuencias, porque cuando nos tratan como si pudiéramos ser ignorados, empezamos a pensar que eso está bien y nos tratamos a nosotros mismos como personas que no han de tener sentimientos”.
“Y al mismo tiempo tratamos a los demás como personas que no tienen sentimientos en este contexto, por lo que empieza a desaparecer la empatía”.
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Algunos culpan del “ghosting” a las aplicaciones para encontrar pareja.
La psicoperapeuta estadounidense Elisabeth J. LaMotte cree que para mucha gente hoy en día el decir adiós o acabar con una relación es incómodo y “lo evitamos en muchas esferas, particularmente en el campo del amor”.
“Pasamos mucho tiempo socializando a través de las nuevas tecnología y compartiendo nuestra vida privada en las redes sociales y cada vez nos sentimos más incómodos con el contacto interpersonal“, asegura LaMotte en conversación con BBC Mundo.
“Ello hace que acabar con una relación sea más complicado, porque cada vez tenemos menos práctica en hacerlo“.
“Experiencia dolorosa”
Según LaMotte, “cuando se analiza la psicología de los que practican el ghosting, en algunos casos uno ve que han sido heridos por gente que consideran más importantes que ellos mismos y que han sufrido rupturas de relaciones que no han procesado correctamente”.
“Incluso en ocasiones no son conscientes del daño que causan“, afirma la experta.
“Para la persona víctima del ghosting, puede ser una experiencia muy dolorosa. El rechazo causa dolor. Y el ghosting es un rechazo vago que hace que el proceso de duelo de la ruptura se alargue”.
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Para la persona víctima del “ghosting”, puede tratarse de una experiencia muy dolorosa.
Según LaMotte, “al principio la gente pasa por un proceso de negación y busca excusa para explicar la situación, como que la otra persona ha perdido el teléfono o ha tenido una emergencia”.
“Cuando son conscientes de la realidad, tienen que hacer frente al dolor de saber que el otro no se tomó la molestia de dignificar la relación y decir adiós”.
LaMotte cree que, a veces, el final de una relación es el momento más importante, ya que “es una oportunidad para el crecimiento emocional”.
La experta aconseja que “si alguien ha sufrido varias experiencias de ghosting, examine sus elecciones de pareja”, ya que considera que “hay que respetarse a uno mismo y no caer una y otra vez en el mismo patrón”.
Evitar el conflicto
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El que la relación no tenga un cierre convencional resulta difícil.
Maya Borgueta, psicologa de la organización californiana Lantern, sostiene que el ghosting “está relacionado con el querer evitar el conflicto“.
“Se quiere evitar el sentirse incómodo porque, por ejemplo, tu pareja se enfade o se ponga a llorar”, le dice Borgueta a BBC Mundo.
“Obviamente el ghosting ha existido desde el inicio de los tiempos, pero no hay duda de que la tecnología y el tipo de comunicación impersonal a la que estamos acostumbrados a través de internet o de las aplicaciones móviles han hecho que sea más común”, apunta la experta.
“Realmente puede llegar a ser muy doloroso, porque cuando nos dejan así a menudo seguimos conectados con esas personas en redes sociales como Facebook, Twitter o Instagram”.
“Así te das cuenta de que esa persona no se está comunicando contigo y continúa con su vida como si no pasara nada. Ello hace que el proceso de duelo sea más complicado”.
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El “ghosting” puede reforzar las inseguridades que uno tiene y puede afectar relaciones futuras.
Borgueta cree que el ghosting “puede reforzar las inseguridades que uno tiene y puede afectar relaciones futuras“.
“También puede tener efectos psicológicos negativos en la persona que lo practica, que puede tener un gran sentimiento de culpa y vergüenza, sintiendo que no pueden manejar los momentos difíciles de una relación”.
Según Borgueta, aunque duela, las víctimas de ghosting “deben asumir que quizás nunca tendrán el cierre deseado para esa relación”.
“This allowed the governor to sexually harass Ms. Bennett, a subordinate employee who is almost 40 years his junior, with impunity,” Ms. Katz said. “We are confident that a thorough investigation of the workplace environment in Governor Cuomo’s office will conclude that the governor and his senior staff fostered a culture of abuse, harassment and secrecy.”
Ms. Garvey, the governor’s special counsel, responded by saying that “Ms. Bennett’s concerns were treated with sensitivity and respect and in accordance with applicable law and policy.”
The paperwork that Ms. James has asked the administration to preserve will be especially important as investigators scrutinize how members of the governor’s staff handled sexual harassment complaints made by its employees. Questions have already been raised about whether Mr. Cuomo’s aides followed proper protocol in reporting the allegations made by Ms. Bennett, who was an executive assistant at the time.
When Ms. Bennett told Jill DesRosiers, the governor’s chief of staff, that Mr. Cuomo had sexually harassed her in June, shortly after the alleged incident, the disclosure should have been reported to a state labor office. That would have prompted an investigation into her complaint.
It remains unclear whether the governor’s aides properly reported her complaint to the labor office, known as the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations, as required under an executive order that Mr. Cuomo issued in 2018 amid the #MeToo movement.
Ms. Bennett said she gave a lengthy statement regarding her interactions with the governor to a special counsel to Mr. Cuomo, Judith Mogul. Ms. Bennett said she made it clear to Ms. Mogul that she believed the governor had propositioned her and was grooming her for sex, telling Mr. Cuomo’s aides that she feared retaliation for reporting his behavior.
Shortly after her initial complaint to Ms. DesRosiers, Ms. Bennett was transferred to another job in a different part of the State Capitol. The governor’s office did not say on Friday whether Ms. Bennett’s complaint was reported or investigated.
“As the documents will reflect, I acted consistent with the information provided, the requirements of the law, and Charlotte’s wishes,” Ms. Mogul said in a statement on Friday.
In a Saturday statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused an NPR host and veteran reporter of lying, being an example of the “unhinged” media, and misidentifying Bangladesh as Ukraine on a map.
On Friday, NPR’s “All Things Considered” host Mary Louise Kelly interviewed Pompeo, and asked him questions about the United States’ support for Ukraine and the ouster of former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
But Kelly said that after the interview, Pompeo yelled at her for asking the questions on Ukraine in his office, cursed her out, and asked her if she could identify the country of Ukraine on a map.
In his Saturday statement, Pompeo said that Kelly “lied to me, twice” last month and on Friday in “agreeing to have the post-interview conversation off the record,” but did not deny that he cursed and yelled at her.
In a Saturday statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused an NPR host and veteran reporter of lying, being an example of the “unhinged” media, and misidentifying Bangladesh as Ukraine on a map.
But Kelly said that after the interview, Pompeo yelled at her for asking the questions on Ukraine in his office, cursed her out, and asked her if she could identify the country of Ukraine on a map.
“I was taken to the Secretary’s private living room where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview itself,” Kelly recounted after the interview. “He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine.”
“He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?'” she added. “He used the F-word in that sentence and many others.”
Kelly added that Pompeo asked his aides to bring a blank map into his office and told her to point to Ukraine, saying, “people will hear about this.”
In his Saturday statement, Pompeo said that Kelly “lied to me, twice” last month and on Friday in “agreeing to have the post-interview conversation off the record,” but did not deny that he cursed and yelled at her and said that Americans didn’t care about Ukraine, which he is set to visit on January 30.
His statement continued, “it is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency. This is another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this administration.”
As NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik noted, however, the State Department’s own transcript of the interview both shows that Pompeo “did not contradict” Kelly when she confirmed that she would ask him about Ukraine.
And while he asked to talk to her without a recorder on after the interview, he did not specify that their conversation would be off the record and thus un-reportable, a key distinction from simply asking her not to record it.
Pompeo ended his statement by saying: “It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine,” seemingly implying that Kelly misidentified Bangladesh as Ukraine on the map he brought into the office.
Kelly, a highly-respected veteran foreign correspondent and national security reporter who has reported from Russia, Iraq, and North Korea, additionally holds a master’s degree in European studies from Cambridge University, making it highly unlikely that she would confuse Ukraine and Bangladesh, located in southeast Asia.
Folkenflik added: “if he wants to accuse distinguished NPR host and correspondent of lying, he should produce additional evidence. This administration often has estranged relationship with fact and truth.”
In a statement to Insider, NPR’s senior vice president for news Nancy Barnes defended Kelly, saying, “Mary Louise Kelly has always conducted herself with the utmost integrity, and we stand behind this report.”
The average refund check paid out so far has been $1,865, down from $2,035 at the same point in 2018, according to IRS data. Low-income taxpayers often file early to pocket the money as soon as possible. Many taxpayers count on the refunds to make important payments, or spend the money on things like home repairs, a vacation or a car.
The IRS had estimated it would issue about 2.3 percent fewer refunds this year as a result of the changes in the federal tax law, according to Bloomberg. MSNBC reports that 30 million Americans will owe the IRS money this year — 3 million more than before Trump’s tax law.
“There are going to be a lot of unhappy people over the next month,” Edward Karl of the American Institute of CPAs told Politico. “Taxpayers want a large refund.” Some 71 percent of taxpayers received refunds last year worth about $3,000 on average, according to Karl.
Scads of taxpayers are complaining on Twitter that they have always received a refund — but now owe the IRS instead.
The number of refunds sent out by the IRS was also down — about 24 percent — as the agency struggled to get up to speed after the government shutdown. The agency sent out about 4.67 million tax refunds in the week ending Feb. 1, compared with about 6.17 million in the same period in 2018, according to IRS data.
This year’s filing season, which began two days after the shutdown ended on Jan. 25, is complicated because it’s the first after the 2017 tax law was enacted. Though President Donald Trump boasted that the new code would be so simplified that people could file their taxes on a postcard, that’s not the case.
In addition, the changes complicated payroll withholding, so that not enough money was withheld by employers in many cases, meaning that people now owe more taxes. The new law also capped IRS deductions for paid state and local taxes, including real estate taxes, resulting in a nasty surprise for many filers. Several other deductions are no longer allowed.
The frustrations will likely continue to fuel support for plans to boost taxes on the ultra-wealthy. A poll last month found that nearly 60 percent of registered voters support a plan by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to impose a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the portion of annual income that exceeds $10 million a year.
Twitter is filling up with complaints from people whose situation has changed radically.
Taxpayers who upgrade their homes to make use of renewable energy may be eligible for a tax credit to offset some of the costs. As of the 2018 tax year, the federal government offers the Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit. The credits are good through 2019 and then are reduced each year through the end of 2021. Claim the credits by filing Form 5695 with your tax return.
Every April, many taxpayers wait until the last minute to file their federal income tax returns. Despite this tendency, there are many reasons to file your taxes early. If you will receive a refund, you may want to submit your return as quickly as possible. Additionally, there are benefits to filing early for those taxpayers who have a balance due.
Typically, children are placed in a lower tax bracket than their parents and the reason for this is quite simple: most children don’t have that much income, and those that do, rarely earn more than their parents. Some parents have attempted to take advantage of this by putting investments in their children’s names, hoping that any investment profits would be taxed at the child’s lower rate. In response, the federal government changed the tax treatment of children’s unearned income by taxing it at the parent’s tax rate. Form 8615 is used to make the child’s tax calculations for this income.
Mark Zuckerberg’s public goal this year was to fix the social network’s issues.
“I’m proud of the progress we’ve made,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Friday.
He wrote that Facebook has intentionally made changes that would harm its bottom line, in the name of building a stronger service: “One change we made reduced the amount of viral videos people watched by 50 million hours a day.”
Facebook has had a difficult 2018, enduring issues that included data-leakage scandals, congressional enquiries, and even accusations that foreign governments used the social network to spread misinformation and propaganda.
But looking back on the year, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees a job well done.
“For 2018, my personal challenge has been to focus on addressing some of the most important issues facing our community — whether that’s preventing election interference, stopping the spread of hate speech and misinformation, making sure people have control of their information, and ensuring our services improve people’s well-being,” he wrote in a note posted to his Facebook page on Friday.
“In each of these areas, I’m proud of the progress we’ve made.”
Zuckerberg famously gives himself an ambitious goal every year as part of his New Year’s resolutions. In 2018, it was to fix Facebook.
Mission accomplished, Zuckerberg said, although there’s still more work to be done.
“To be clear, addressing these issues is more than a one-year challenge. But in each of the areas I mentioned, we’ve now established multi-year plans to overhaul our systems and we’re well into executing those roadmaps,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The rest of Zuckerberg’s lengthy note goes into how Facebook has improved its systems and incorporated artificial-intelligence systems to fight propaganda, remove harmful content, and even reduce the amount of time people spend on viral videos on the site.
“One change we made reduced the amount of viral videos people watched by 50 million hours a day,” Zuckerberg wrote. “In total, these changes intentionally reduced engagement and revenue in the near term, although we believe they’ll help us build a stronger community and business over the long term.”
Zuckerberg didn’t reveal what his personal goal for 2019 is in Friday’s post, but if it’s anything like what he did last year, it’s sure to make headlines.
Half of the qualifiers for the first 2020 Democrat primary debate, including Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker, will have an opportunity to attack the party frontrunner without pushback; Peter Doocy has a preview from Miami, Florida.
MIAMI — The first primary debate of the 2020 season saw cracks of daylight emerge in a Democratic field that has largely played to the progressive base, with the candidates clashing sharply over controversial policies like “Medicare-for-all” and calls to decriminalize illegal border crossings — while taking ample shots at President Trump in the process.
Staking out the left flank of the party on stage Wednesday night in Miami were Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — the highest-polling candidate in the first debate batch, with Round 2 coming Thursday — and long-shot Bill de Blasio, the New York City mayor.
They were the only candidates to raise their hands when asked who’s willing to give up their private health insurance for a government option.
Warren went on to staunchly defend 2020 rival Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare-for-all” plan.
“I’m with Bernie on Medicare-for-all and let me tell you why,” she said. “I spent a big chunk of my life studying why families go broke and one of the number-one reasons is the cost of health care. Medical bills.”
Warren said those who challenge the policy are really saying “they just won’t fight for it.”
But the issue sparked fireworks when former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke said he would not replace private health insurance. De Blasio interrupted to say, “private insurance is not working for tens of millions of Americans.”
Former Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., who has positioned himself as more of a centrist, scolded his rivals by saying they “should be the party that keeps what’s working and fixes what’s broken.”
“We’re supporting a bill that would have every hospital close,” Delaney said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., called a single-payer health care system a “bold approach” but said she worries “about kicking half of America off their health insurance in four years, which is exactly what this bill says.”
The policy was just one wedge on stage Wednesday night. The candidates were largely unified — as expected — in their condemnation of Trump, with O’Rourke calling for “impeachment now” in the wake of Robert Mueller’s report.
“It is the only way we can protect this country,” he said.
But O’Rourke, who was among a handful of candidates who gave some responses in Spanish, repeatedly found himself on the receiving end of swipes from rivals on stage. Former Housing Secretary Julian Castro was among those landing blows as he sought to distinguish himself from the field on the issue of immigration, perhaps gaining traction by targeting the one-time Democratic darling from Texas. And while Warren stayed center stage by hammering her myriad policy proposals and talking up the class divide, the debate production itself gained outsize attention when technical difficulties marred part of the NBC-hosted program — forcing the moderators to cut to commercial break to resolve them when candidates couldn’t hear questions as other voices were piped in over inadvertently open microphones.
Trump, from Air Force One en route to Japan, jeered the network.
But among those looking for a breakout, Castro may have come close with his vocal — and controversial — call for the decriminalization of illegal border crossings, challenging his fellow presidential hopefuls to agree to repeal the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that applies.
“I want to challenge all of the candidates to do that,” Castro said. “If you truly want to change the system then we have to repeal that section.”
He called out O’Rourke by name for not supporting his call. O’Rourke then said he’s more interested in comprehensive reform, saying Castro was looking at “one small part of this.”
Castro said: “I think you should do your homework on this issue. If you did your homework on this issue you would know that we should repeal this section.”
Discussing the heartbreaking photo that emerged this week of a migrant father and toddler daughter who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande, Castro said it “should piss us all off.”
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., also weighed in, saying that the U.S. “has the power to better deal with this process through the civil process than the criminal process.”
“Our country has made so many mistakes by criminalizing things,” Booker said. There is a humane way that affirms human rights and dignity.”
Meanwhile, de Blasio sought to frame the immigration debate around a class warfare theme.
“Americans have been told immigrants have caused their problems,” de Blasio said. “The immigrants didn’t do that to you. The big corporations did that to you! The 1 percent did that to you!”
Two lower-polling candidates also clashed on the issue of military force. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard hit back at Tim Ryan after the Ohio Democratic congressman said the United States must stay “engaged” in Afghanistan.
“Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan?” she said. “‘Well, we just have to be engaged.’ As a soldier, I will tell you, that answer is unacceptable. We have to bring our troops home from Afghanistan.”
“I don’t want to be engaged,” Ryan countered. “… But the reality of it is that if the United States doesn’t engage, the Taliban will grow. And they will have bigger, bolder, terrorist acts. We have got to have some presence there.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, meanwhile, hammered his signature issue of climate change.
But despite their differences on major issues, the candidates rallied to downplay economic successes and growth under the Trump administration, especially Warren.
“It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top,” Warren said of the economy.
The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee rapid response team, though, sent email blasts and tweets “fact-checking” and defending the president’s economic record and the creation of “6 million jobs” since Election Day 2016.
Warren was the highest-polling candidate among those on stage Wednesday but others were looking for their breakout moment or to recapture lost momentum, especially contenders like O’Rourke of Texas. He didn’t appear to get it. Top-polling candidates including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are set to face off Thursday night on the same stage.
The format and sheer number of candidates, though, meant candidates had limited opportunity even during two hours of debate to make their case.
The rules, set by the Democratic National Committee, gave candidates 60 seconds to answer questions from the NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo moderators, and 30 seconds to respond to their follow-up questions. The candidates could not give opening statements but gave closing remarks later in the night.
I have agreed to stay on as Secretary through Wednesday, April 10th to assist with an orderly transition and ensure that key DHS missions are not impacted.
However sudden the news felt, it was a long time coming, ABC News White House Correspondent Tara Palmeri tells us on “Start Here.”
“It was always known that President Trump was not happy with Nielsen,” Palmeri says. “It was a matter of not if it will happen, but when it will happen.”
2. Tourist trap?
An American tourist and her Congolese tour guide are safe and in “good health” after they were kidnapped in Uganda and a $500,000 ransom was demanded, police said.
Police & its sister security agencies have today rescued Ms.Kimberley Sue, an American tourist together with her guide who were kidnapped while on an evening game drive at Queen Elizabeth National park.The duo are in good health & in the safe hands of the joint security team.
A spokesperson for Wild Frontiers Uganda told ABC News a ransom was paid — it’s unclear exactly how much or by whom — raising concern over whether doing so may encourage more kidnappings, Senior Foreign Correspondent Ian Pannell reports from Queen Elizabeth National Park.
“They want tourists to come back, they want them to see that this is a safe place, that it’s an unprecedented event,” Pannell says on today’s podcast. “If money’s changing hands in exchange for foreign tourists, then that potentially endangers others.”
(Martin Zwick/Reda & Co/UIG via Getty Images, FILE) The Crater Area in Queen Elizabeth National Park with view of the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda, East Africa in this Sept. 18, 2016.file photo.
3. Fungus among us
A deadly, drug-resistant fungus has broken out in healthcare facilities — and it’s spreading.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described Candida auris as a “serious global health threat” that can cause bloodstream infections and is difficult to identify with standard technology. More than 587 cases have been confirmed in the U.S., mostly in New York City, New Jersey and Chicago, according to the CDC.
“What we’ve learned is, this microbe, Candida auris, is resistant to the typical cleaning agents that hospital and health care facilities often use,” says infectious disease specialist Dr. Todd Ellerin. “If we don’t change the way we clean rooms, then the Candida will hang out there. It could potentially infect the next person that enters the room.”
4. Tangled with weed
Some immigrants fear careers in the legal cannabis industry have hurt their chances for full citizenship.
“I was led down a path to confess in my [citizenship] interview that I broke the law, that I willingly had known that I had broken the law,” Oswaldo Barrientos, who worked at a marijuana dispensary in Colorado, tells ABC News.
Because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, a related job may disqualify someone from lawful residency, ABC News’ Clayton Sandell explains on “Start Here.”
“It’s legal on one level,” he says, “and illegal on another.”
(ABC News) Denver Mayor Michael Hancock listens during a meeting about immigration problems stemming with legal marijuana jobs.
‘Leaving only a human skull and a pair of pants’: Lions feast on a suspected poacher killed by an elephant.
‘John asked co-workers to take pictures of him’: A man accused of murdering his elderly mother asks colleagues to help with his alibi.
‘We are pleased to be able to reach resolution in this matter’: Motel 6 agrees to pay $12 million after illegally sharing the personal information of 80,000 customers with U.S. immigration officials.
From our friends at FiveThirtyEight:
Willians Astudillo is a baseball enigma: While he looks something like Bartolo Colon, he’s hitting like Ty Cobb.
Doff your cap:
The U.S. Postal Service said it will honor George H.W. Bush by releasing a commemorative stamp on June 12, which would’ve been the former president’s 95th birthday.
The stamp features a portrait of Bush painted by Michael J. Deas from a 1997 photograph taken by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
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