For two years, they tried to tutor and confine him. They taught him history, explained nuances and gamed out reverberations. They urged careful deliberation, counseled restraint and prepared talking points to try to sell mainstream actions to a restive conservative base hungry for disruption. But in the end, they failed.
For President Trump, the era of containment is over.
One by one, the seasoned advisers seen as bulwarks against Trump’s most reckless impulses have been cast aside or, as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis did Thursday, resigned in an extraordinary act of protest. What Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) once dubbed an “adult day care center” has gone out of business.
Trump will enter his third year as president unbound — at war with his perceived enemies, determined to follow through on the hard-line promises of his insurgent campaign and fearful of any cleavage in his political coalition.
So far, the result has been disarray. The federal government is shut down. Stock markets are in free fall. Foreign allies are voicing alarm. Hostile powers such as Russia are cheering. And Republican lawmakers once afraid of crossing this president are now openly critical.
“I want him to be successful, but I find myself in a position where the best way I can help the president is to tell him the truth as I see it,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump confidant and frequent golf partner, said as he denounced the president’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria against the counsel of his military advisers.
Trump is surrounding himself with “yes” men and women — at least relative to Mattis and other former military generals who tried to keep him at bay — who see their jobs as executing his vision, even when they disagree. He has designated some officials, including the new White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, as “acting,” meaning they must labor to please the president to eventually be empowered in their positions permanently. And he is railing against his handpicked chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, whom he blames for the sliding market and says he never should have chosen.
Meanwhile, Trump’s family members are ascendant. Son-in-law Jared Kushner is an increasingly influential interlocutor with foreign governments, such as Saudi Arabia, and was dispatched, along with Vice President Pence and Mulvaney, to the Capitol on the eve of the government shutdown to try to negotiate a spending deal with congressional leaders.
The increasingly isolated president explained his mind-set in a Nov. 27 interview with The Washington Post: “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”
Earlier this year, Trump began rejecting the advice of such economic advisers as Gary Cohn, who resigned in March, and instead followed his nationalist instincts to implement tariffs.
But the departure of Mattis and the national security implications that come with it sent a shock of anxiety through Washington and world capitals that far exceeded the worries over Trump’s earlier trade moves.
“This is a rogue presidency,” said Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general.
“We’ve got Mr. Trump who looks, in the eyes of our allies and of the professionals in the key elements of our national security power, to be incompetent and impulsive and to be making bad decisions and to be excoriating America’s historic allies and then embracing people who are threats to U.S. national security,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called this “the most chaotic week of what’s undoubtedly the most chaotic presidency ever in the history of the United States.”
In a speech Friday, he added: “The institutions of our government lack steady and experienced leadership. With all of these departures, it is about to get even more unsteady. The president is making decisions without counsel, without preparation, and even without communication between relevant departments and relevant agencies.”
Consider the recent departures. Mattis, a revered former Marine Corps general who commanded respect worldwide, especially among NATO countries, quit after Trump defied him on the Syria withdrawal. His resignation letter was a stunning rebuke of Trump’s worldview, which he presented as a threat to the global order the United States helped build over the past seven decades.
John F. Kelly, another Marine Corps general widely respected for his battlefield experience, was ousted this month as White House chief of staff after running afoul of Trump, who chafed against Kelly’s restrictive management style. After being turned down by a number of other candidates, Trump tapped Mulvaney to replace Kelly — temporarily, at least. Mulvaney has vowed to Trump that he would try to manage only the staff, not the president.
Nikki Haley, who as ambassador to the United Nations showed flashes of independence and was far more aggressive with Russia and other traditional American adversaries than the president, is leaving this month on her own accord. Trump nominated as her replacement Heather Nauert, a onetime Fox News Channel presenter who has been delivering the administration’s message as State Department spokeswoman.
Earlier this year, Trump pushed out H.R. McMaster as national security adviser, replacing the Army lieutenant general and military intellectual with John Bolton, a neoconservative veteran of the George W. Bush administration who officials say has proved more accommodating than McMaster of Trump’s impulses.
In an onstage interview this month with Bob Schieffer of CBS News, Tillerson explained: “So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it,’ and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’ ”
Trump fired Tillerson in March after months of tension and replaced him with Mike Pompeo, who has a better personal rapport with the president.
“In Trump’s mind, and those of some of his supporters, he’s shedding those establishment figures who have prevented him from following his instincts and fulfilling his campaign pledges,” said David Axelrod, a political strategist who was a White House adviser to President Barack Obama. “But his instincts are impulsive, almost always grounded in his own narrow politics and often motivated by spite. An unbridled Trump is a frightening proposition.”
At the same time, some institutional checks on Trump’s impulses are under duress. Trump’s decision to remove troops from Syria blindsided Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because he was kept out of final discussions.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), after securing from the White House what they believed to be a short-term spending compromise, were unable to prevent a government shutdown once Trump reversed course in reaction to criticism from Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and other conservative firebrands.
“This is tyranny of talk radio hosts, right?” Corker asked reporters. The retiring senator then wondered aloud, “Are Republicans really going to trust the guy that comes out of the White House on a go-forward basis? I mean, this is a juvenile place we find ourselves at.”
Some of Trump’s former advisers and outside allies share the same concern about the president’s recent behavior. One former senior administration official said “an intervention” might be necessary. And a Republican strategist who works closely with the White House called the situation “serious, serious, serious.”
This strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, drew comparisons to the presidencies of Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush. “There are no adults like there were in Nixon days,” this strategist said. “And the V.P. is perceived as nowhere. He’s just a bobblehead. It’s not like [former vice president Richard B.] Cheney.”
Since his drubbing in the midterm elections last month, Trump has been preoccupied with worries about his political survival. Democrats take over the House on Jan. 3, promising a torrent of investigations into Trump’s conduct, his personal finances and alleged corruption throughout his administration.
Meanwhile, various federal investigations are intensifying. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation has moved into a more perilous phase. That probe, as well as a federal investigation into illegal hush-money payments to women who claimed sexual encounters with Trump, have ensnared his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, among others.
In a separate case, Trump agreed to shut down his family charitable foundation last week after New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said it engaged in “a shocking pattern of illegality.”
Ian Bremmer, a foreign affairs expert and president of the Eurasia Group, posited that despite the global reaction to Mattis’s exit, the ouster last year of Stephen K. Bannon as chief White House strategist was the more significant episode.
“The reduction in potential damage of the Trump administration could exact on the world from Bannon’s firing is significantly greater than the additional chaos and danger that comes from Mattis’s resignation,” Bremmer said. “Bannon actually was a compelling individual with a lot of influence and power in Trump’s ear that wanted to really upset the apple cart in U.S. foreign policy.”
Still, alarm bells rang last week throughout the foreign policy establishment. The resignation of Mattis was held up as a singular moment. Eliot A. Cohen, a senior official in the State Department during the Bush administration and Trump critic, wrote in the Atlantic, “Henceforth, the senior ranks of government can be filled only by invertebrates and opportunists, schemers and careerists.”
“They may try to manipulate the president, or make some feeble efforts to subvert him,” Cohen added, “but in the end they will follow him.”
Houston Fire Department paramedics prepare to transport a COVID-19 positive woman to a hospital on September 15, 2021 in Houston, Texas. While the virus is still rampant in the U.S., some vaccinated people will continue to get infected.
John Moore/Getty Images
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Houston Fire Department paramedics prepare to transport a COVID-19 positive woman to a hospital on September 15, 2021 in Houston, Texas. While the virus is still rampant in the U.S., some vaccinated people will continue to get infected.
John Moore/Getty Images
When Colin Powell died this week from complications related to COVID-19, it was a shock to many Americans.
Though scientists and federal health officials are adamant that the vaccines work well to protect against hospitalization and death, it’s unnerving to hear of fully vaccinated people like Powell, or perhaps your own friends and neighbors, falling severely ill with COVID-19.
So how well do the vaccines work? How serious is the risk of a serious breakthrough infection, one that could land you in the hospital?
In Powell’s case, of course, there are several reasons he was at higher risk. He was 84 and had been treated in recent years for multiple myeloma — a blood cancer that forms in plasma cells, which are critical for the immune system. These facts alone would put him at very high risk for a breakthrough illness, says Dr. Rachel Bender Ignacio, who directs COVID-19 clinical research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
“We shouldn’t change our risk estimation on one good or bad outcome that happens to a single person,” she says. “The vaccines are still holding up extremely well.”
Even with concerns about the possibility of waning protection from the vaccine, scientists say the best data in the U.S. still tell a clear story: people who are fully vaccinated have a far lower risk of getting infected or dying from COVID-19 than the unvaccinated, according to data representing about 30% of the U.S. population from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Who is getting severely ill from COVID after being vaccinated?
Those who do have severe breakthrough illnesses tend to be older or have serious underlying health conditions, or a combination of those risk factors.
“People who are of advanced age or who have impaired immune systems always respond less well to vaccines — that’s true whether it’s flu vaccine or really any other vaccine,” says Bender Ignacio.
The effect of age on the risk of breakthrough infections is stark. The CDC released data separating breakthrough infections and deaths by age. Among fully vaccinated people, those aged 80 or older had a almost 13 times greater risk of dying from COVID than people of all ages. However unvaccinated people in their 80s were at far greater risk than vaccinated ones.
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Research shows that people who fare the worst tend to be especially medically fragile. A study of vaccinated patients hospitalized at the Yale New Haven Health System found that the median age was about 80 and many had underlying problems, including cardiovascular disease, lung disease, diabetes and some were also on immunosuppressive drugs.
While those findings came before the surge of the delta variant, Dr. Hyung Chun, who led the study, says their ongoing research shows these types of patients still account for most breakthrough illnesses “even with the shifting landscape of breakthrough infections.”
Chun says those who are vaccinated generally tend to do better once they are in the hospital, compared to those who aren’t vaccinated.
“Even if you were hospitalized [with a breakthrough infection], the trend we’ve been observing is that you will likely be far less sick in terms of needing things like supplementary oxygen or mechanical ventilation, or even your risk of death,” says Chun, an associate professor of cardiology at the Yale School of Medicine.
As of mid July, the CDC found that people who were immunocompromised accounted for 44% of breakthrough hospitalizations — a figure that supported the decision to recommend a third shot of the vaccine to people who met the criteria of having a weakened immune system. A more recent study conducted by the vaccine maker Pfizer and not yet peer reviewed, found that study participants who were immunocompromised accounted for about 60% of the breakthrough hospitalizations and were three times more likely to have an infection compared to people who weren’t immunocompromised.
The three major clinical trials done by the vaccine makers did not include immunocompromised people, so researchers are still trying to tease apart how different medical conditions affect a person’s immune response to the vaccine, says Dr. Jonathan Golob, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan in the Division of Infectious Diseases.
“The vaccines are still stellar, including against delta for just about everyone, except for people with very, very impaired immune systems,” he says. That list includes patients who’ve had an organ transplant, with active cancer, or some other severe autoimmune disease that requires a lot of medicine to treat it. “All those people, I would say, still need to be cautious and the best thing to protect them is to have everyone around them vaccinated,” he says.
How common is it to have a severe breakthrough illness?
It’s currently hard to answer that in the U.S. To date, 7,178 people are reported to have died from COVID-19 after being vaccinated and about 85% were 65 and older, according to the CDC, but these figures are meant to be a “snapshot” and are an undercount, an agency spokesperson told NPR. In that same time period, approximately 190 million have been fully vaccinated in the U.S.
As more Americans get vaccinated, the raw numbers of serious breakthrough infections will inevitably increase as long as the virus is spreading, but those figures can be misleading.
“Hospitalizations due to breakthrough infection are higher than even a few months ago, but this should be viewed in light of the fact that more people are fully vaccinated,” says Chun. “You’re working with a much bigger denominator of patients.”
Bottom line: The risks of hospitalization are far greater for the unvaccinated. The chance of being hospitalized in the U.S. for COVID-19 is 12 times higher if you are unvaccinated, according to recent CDC data. These rates may vary week to week, the agency notes. And they vary by age group. Unvaccinated adults aged 18-49 were 14 times more likely to be hospitalized, while those over 65 were 9 times more likely.
Some of the most compelling data also comes directly from what hospitals are seeing in their communities.
A study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at Beaumont Health — Michigan’s largest hospital system — found a “dramatic” difference in hospital visits between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, says Dr. Amit Bahl, an emergency physician who authored the study.
“If you were fully vaccinated, you had a 96% reduction in the chance of being hospitalized or going to the emergency room,” he says. “A bad outcome for a patient that’s fully vaccinated was exceedingly rare.”
Some states that track breakthrough hospitalizations are finding a similar pattern.
For example, New York’s data shows that 0.06% of the vaccinated population has ended up in the hospital for COVID-19. Minnesota has a similar rate.
However, it’s still hard to quantify how often a breakthrough infection leads to someone being hospitalized, because the U.S. is not tracking this data closely on a national level, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.
“I don’t think we’re there yet,” she says. “We don’t really know the denominator — how many breakthrough infections there have been overall.”
Has the chance of getting very sick increased and is that why the government is starting to roll out boosters?
The push for booster shots reflects the concern that certain groups of Americans — namely those who are older — appear to be now slightly less protected against a severe case of COVID-19 than they were in the spring, and worries that the risk of infections has risen because of the delta variant. The data vary between the vaccines. The one shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine appears to be the least effective against hospitalization.
But scientists are still trying to untangle exactly what’s behind this increased risk.
Older Americans were already more susceptible to the virus. They were also some of the first groups to get vaccinated. “So we have not only a higher risk population, but now a longer time since they received the vaccine,” says Bender Ignacio. “And this is exactly why boosters have been recommended for those populations.”
The arrival of the delta variant and a surge in cases among the unvaccinated has put many more people in contact with the virus, including people who may be especially vulnerable, says Rasmussen.
“Unfortunately, even though we have a lot more people getting vaccinated, it’s still not enough and we still have a lot of virus around,” she says. “When those two conditions are met, you’re just going to have more breakthrough cases.”
Ultimately, the protection against hospitalization — while it may be waning for some groups — doesn’t appear to have translated into a major spike of severely sick vaccinated patients, even as the country has dealt with a huge surge in cases.
“Everyone I’ve seen this week who is critically ill from COVID is unvaccinated,” says Golob of the University of Michigan health care system.
Según el Art. 60 de la Ley Orgánica de Comunicación, los contenidos se identifican y clasifican en:
(I), informativos; (O), de opinión; (F), formativos/educativos/culturales; (E), entretenimiento; y (D), deportivos.
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.
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.
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En las noticias más leídas del día, Grupo Financiero Banorte, que preside Carlos Hank González, ha venido posicionándose en los primeros lugares del sistema financiero mexicano. Javier Duarte ya está en México, el siguiente paso del caso en contra del exgobernador de Veracruz es la etapa de investigación, que puede durar de dos a seis meses.
1. FMI sube a 1.9% su pronóstico de crecimiento para México en 2017
Este año la economía mexicana alcanzará un crecimiento de 1.9% según pronósticos del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI). Esta previsión incorpora una revisión al alza sobre la que tenía el organismo en enero y abril cuando esperaba una expansión de 1.7 por ciento.
En la actualización trimestral del Panorama Económico Mundial (WEO, por su sigla en inglés), el FMI detalla que esta corrección al alza es explicada por la fortaleza que presentó la actividad económica en el primer trimestre del año.
FMI sube a 1.9% su pronóstico de crecimiento para México en 2017. Ver nota.
2. Uber puede acabar siendo un mero holding como Yahoo
La plataforma Yahoo comenzó como pionero y terminó siendo un mero holding. Lo mismo podría pasarle a Uber.
En los embriagadores días de 1999, el valor de mercado de Yahoo se disparó más allá de los 100,000 millones de dólares. El mes pasado, la compañía entregó los últimos vestigios de su negocio online a Verizon por 4,500 millones. Los 56,000 millones que vale lo que queda, Altaba, son participaciones en Alibaba y YahooJapón, y 11,000 millones en efectivo.
Mientras, los obstáculos legales y regulatorios se le acumulan a Uber, junto al fracaso de su cultura laboral, que la ha dejado sin su cofundador y CEO Travis Kalanick, entre otras bajas de directivos.
Uber puede acabar siendo un mero holding como Yahoo. Ver nota.
3. ¿Cuántos fracasos del Tri has vivido?
México fue derrotado 1-0 por Jamaica. Adiós a la soñada y esperada final para Concacaf y con ello también adiós a varios millones de dólares.
Siendo sinceros, el Tri de Osorio y Pompilio demostró desde el primer partido que era demasiado limitado: en el futbol y en su carácter.
Un gol a falta de tres minutos del final de tiro libre dio a los jamaiquinos la posibilidad de disfrutar la final ante Estados Unidos que hizo los deberes ante Costa Rica y los derrotó 2-0. Si quieres conocer más sobre la opinión de Ivan Pérez con respecto a esto, entra a la nota completa.
4. ¿Qué etapa sigue en el caso contra Javier Duarte?
Este fin de semana pasado, un juez de control del Reclusorio Norte de la Ciudad de México decidió que existen suficientes pruebas para vincular a proceso al exgobernador de Veracruz, Javier Duarte de Ochoa. El siguiente paso del caso en su contra es la etapa de investigación, que puede durar de dos a seis meses y en la cual los fiscales de la Procuraduría General de la República deberán recabar todas las pruebas que comprueben la participación del exmandatario en delitos de lavado de dinero y delincuencia organizada.
La audiencia de vinculación a proceso fue distinta para el exgobernador de Veracruz y su equipo de defensa. Según información de Arturo Ángel, de Animal Político, los gestos de burla y las sonrisas de Duarte quedaron atrás debido, en principio, a que la PGR “duplicó su fuerza.
¿Cuál es la siguiente etapa en el caso contra Javier Duarte?. Ver nota.
5. Banorte pelea por el segundo lugar de la banca; en utilidades ya lo logró
Grupo Financiero Banorte, se ha posicionado en los primeros lugares del sistema financiero mexicano. Tan es así, que hoy ya hay una disputa por el segundo lugar entre tres instituciones, incluida la de origen regiomontano. Hoy ya es el segundo banco que más utilidades genera.
En entrevista, el nieto de Carlos Hank González y de Roberto González Barrera, atribuye parte de este éxito a que Banorte, al ser un banco mexicano, conoce mejor que ningún otro el mercado local y toma sus decisiones aquí. Ahora la meta, dice, es consolidarse como el mejor grupo financiero y, por lo tanto, como el mejor banco de México. Si para lograrlo hay una oportunidad en el camino para adquirir otro banco, se analizaría.
Banorte pelea por el segundo lugar de la banca; en utilidades ya lo logró. Ver nota.
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.
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.
“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.
Cuando María Teresa Paucar habla de sus triunfos en la Quito-Últimas, sus ojos brillan como queriendo retroceder el tiempo. “Gané en 1986 y 1987“, dice con un orgullo que le sale del fondo de su alma.
“En esos años había un grupo de 15 a 20 atletas de alto nivel y ganar la Últimas Noticias requería una gran preparación”, añade la atleta hoy con 55 años, que participa, al menos dos veces al mes, en carreras que se organizan en el país y donde siempre sube al podio en la categoría supermáster .
“En la cuesta desde el Machángara hasta Santo Domingo era la prueba de fuego. Yo era buena escaladora y ahí fue donde le saqué ventaja a Martha Tenorio. En esos años que gané también participaron Yolanda Quimbita, Sandra Ruales, Soledad Villamarín, Graciela Caizabanda y Marcia Chiliquinga“.
Su paso por la 15K la ayudó a “salir a la palestra. Fui seleccionada y representé al país en el Sudamericano de Chile donde gané la medalla de plata en los 10 000 m y bronce en los 3 000 m. También fui a los Panamericanos en Indianápolis, donde fui novena”. Por eso recomienda a los deportistas que se inscriban en la prueba. “Es emocionante vivir cada tramo de la carrera para los deportistas profesionales y los aficionados, es una experiencia inolvidable”, dice.
Lastimosamente el 7 de junio no estará en la edición 55. El martes último fue sometida a una intervención quirúrgica debido a una dolencia en el cuello. Su rehabilitación le impedirá estar en la prueba.
Para María Teresa, su esposo Gonzalo y su hijo Paúl ocupan un lugar especial. También sus padres, Angelina Guanotoa y Rafael Paucar, que están por cumplir 99 y 100 años, en ese orden, y a quienes cuida todos los días. “Como hace 25 años nos ofrecieron una beca para entrenar en Estados Unidos. Martha Tenorio se fue, yo me quedé por cuidarles”.
Silvio Guerra ‘Correr la Últimas Noticias es como llegar a una Olimpiada. Durante el trayecto los atletas recibimos el calor de la gente, su buena energía”, relató Silvio Guerra, el carchense que ganó en cinco ocasiones la 15K.
En 2009 fue la última vez que corrió la prueba, “que por su importancia es la competencia que ningún atleta se quiere perder”. Detalla que la Últimas Noticias es diferente por la topografía de su trayecto. “Existe un desgaste muscular por las subidas y bajadas. El entrenamiento y la preparación son importantes para soportar esos cambios bruscos”, así como para planificar la estrategia de cuándo atacar”.
Silvio Guerra ganó cinco ediciones: 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 y 2001. “Esas carreras fueron importantes y también las que no gané como en 1995”. Ese año se vivió una de las carreras más mediáticas por su rivalidad con Rolando Vera. Corrieron codo a codo hasta la famosa cuesta de Santo Domingo, donde ninguno de los dos se decidía a dar el jalón. Vera se sintió con más fuerza y llegó primero. En adelante cuidó su primer lugar hasta llegar a la meta. “En esa ocasión me sobreentrené”, recordó Guerra.
Vive en Estados Unidos donde ha incursionado en otras prácticas deportivas como el duatlón y ahora “me estoy entrenando para intervenir en el medio Ironman que se realizará en Manta. Ya competí en la Guayasman, y me gustó”.
Silvio Guerra llegó a Quito para pasar con doña Teresa el Día de la Madre. Ese domingo compitió en la PUCE 8K como parte de su entrenamiento. Guerra aún mantiene en su poder el récord nacional de la maratón con un registro de 2:09:42 horas que lo logró en la Maratón de Chicago en 1997.
Pero en su carrera, la Quito Últimas es parte de su crecimiento deportivo. Por eso recomienda a los atletas que participen en la prueba más importante del país. “Los participantes nos contagiamos del apoyo de las personas que salen a las calles a vernos”, dice.
Miguel Almachi, quiteño de 30 años, forma parte de la nueva generación de atletas de fondo que tiene Ecuador. Junto con el cotopaxense Segundo Jami y el azuayo Byron Piedra han tenido que hacer frente a la tropa extranjera que cada año compite en la 15K.
“Ese año compitieron dos kenianos y un peruano”, inicia en el relato Almachi, quien ganó la Quito–Últimas Noticias en el 2013. “Si analizamos, el recorrido no es complicado, pero la carrera tiene algo especial que se torna difícil”.
Si bien dice que la famosa cuesta ‘rompecorazones’ desapareció del recorrido desde 2006, el actual trayecto tiene sus exigencias, “el tramo más complicado está entre los km 8 y 9, por el Banco Central, donde hay subidas y bajadas que parecen que son imperceptibles, pero que desgastan al atleta”.
Dice que en este sector muchos atletas se rezagan, “pero hay que estar muy fuerte porque recién en el kilómetro 12 y 13 es donde se define la carrera, es decir por el parque La Carolina”. Pero si bien es en estos tramos donde hay que estar fuerte física y mentalmente para asumir el enorme esfuerzo físico, se compensa en el último kilómetro cuando culmina la carrera.
“Uno se emociona cuando llega al estadio Atahualpa. Recuerdo que la gente, que está en las afueras empieza a gritar “es el primero, es el primero”. Con esa emoción se recorre el anillo atlético y llega a la meta cansado, pero feliz”.
El último fin de semana Miguel fue a Estados Unidos para intervenir en un Torneo Invitacional, donde corrió los 5 000 metros. “Desde el miércoles continúo con mis entrenamientos, estoy listo para correr la Últimas Noticias”, dijo.
Almachi corrió la Maratón de los Juegos Olímpicos en Londres 2012. En julio espera competir en los 10 000 m de los Juegos Panamericanos en Toronto y luego buscará la marca para correr en los Olímpicos de Río de Janeiro 2016.
Demonstrators gather during a protest vigil outside of the Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Carol Whitehill Moses Center in January. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images
A drip, drip, drip of state restrictions has made abortion harder to obtain.
Abortion is still legal in the United States, but for women in vast swaths of the country it’s a right in name only.
Six states are down to only one abortion clinic; by the end of this week, Missouri could have zero. Some women seeking abortions have to travel long distances, and face mandatory waiting periods or examinations. On top of that, a new wave of restrictive laws, or outright bans, is rippling across GOP-led states like Alabama and Georgia.
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Both sides of the abortion battle are focused on the future of Roe v. Wade, but opponents have already won the ground game over the past decade, chipping away at abortion access.
The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority, about to wrap up its first term, has not yet taken up a case challenging Roe. Just this week it declined to reinstate an Indiana law, signed by Mike Pence when he was governor, that would have banned abortion on the basis of gender, race or fetal disability. But that’s no guarantee the court won’t take another look at the landmark 1973 abortion rights ruling.
But even without the high court, GOP-backed laws have added restrictions and obstacles, whittling away access. Since the start of the Trump administration, hostility to abortion in general and Planned Parenthood in particular has only intensified in statehouses around the country.
“We celebrate freedom in America. But I believe that my choice ends when another life begins,” Louisiana state Rep. Valarie Hodges said just before a fetal “heartbeat” abortion bill passed there.
Years of piecemeal state laws have left their mark. Mandatory waiting periods, travel, missed work and lost wages all make getting an abortion more expensive and more difficult, particularly for low-income women. Doctors and clinic staff have to face protesters, threats, proliferating regulations and draining legal challenges; clinics have closed. In remote parts of the midwest and south, women may have to travel more than 300 miles to end a pregnancy.
“This is a moment of seeing how all of these laws fly in the face of medicine and science and go against what we in the medical profession know, which is that any restriction on medical care by politicians will endanger people’s health,” Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen, a physician herself, said in an interview.
It’s intensified of late. Republicans in Alabama and other states have raced to enact laws that would almost completely ban abortion, sometimes without exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest. Eight states have enacted laws which, if allowed to go into effect, would ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as the sixth week of pregnancy, when many women don’t even know they are pregnant. (Missouri’s variant is eight weeks.) Alabama has gone even further, granting “personhood” and legal rights from conception.
Those laws may eventually reach the Supreme Court and test Roe, the 1973 decision that recognized women’s right to abortion. But those statutes aren’t what’s crimping access nationwide right now. That’s happened through a drip, drip, drip of lower-profile efforts that have created obstacles for pregnant women and led to a dwindling supply of doctors trained and willing to perform abortions.
Many of those laws were promoted as attempts to make abortion safer — though courts often disagreed and threw them out as unconstitutional barriers. Now, abortion opponents are openly talking about ending the practice altogether.
“The strategy used to be death by a thousand cuts,” said Colleen McNicholas, a physician based in St. Louis who also provides abortions in Kansas and Oklahoma. “They’re no longer pretending things are to promote the health and well-being of women, which is what we used to hear all the time. Now they’re being very bold and upfront.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that for many Americans, particularly for women in the middle [of the country] and the South, abortion is inaccessible,” she added.
Data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, shows that 788 clinics in the U.S. provided abortion services in 2014 — a drop of 51 clinics over three years. Since 2013about 20 clinics have closed just in Texas.
Further, one in five women would have to travel at least 43 miles to get to a clinic, according to a Guttmacher analysis from October 2017. In North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, at least half of the women between 15 and 44 years old lived more than 90 miles from a clinic.
Six states — Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia — have only one clinic left that performs abortions, according to a recent analysis from Planned Parenthood and Guttmacher. Lawmakers in many of those states have pursued limits in when abortion can be allowed — such as fetal heartbeat laws or 15-week bans, though the laws have been blocked in court. Four of those states have also passed so-called trigger laws that would ban abortion immediately should the Supreme Court overturn Roe.
In Missouri, the sole clinic, which is in St. Louis, could close this week. On the surface, it’s a dispute with the state health department over licensing, safety and regulation, but the showdown comes just days after state lawmakers passed a ban on abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
“States have been marching down this path for a number of years. The restrictions that have passed previously have set the stage for the bans this year,” said Elizabeth Nash, Guttmacher’s senior state issues manager. “It’s counseling, it’s waiting periods, it’s abortion coverage in your health plan. It’s limits on abortion providers, such as unnecessary clinic regulations.”
“Missouri is the first and other states could be next,” Planned Parenthood’s Wen said on a recent call with reporters.
The ramifications of the anti-abortion movement’s sustained assault against Planned Parenthood are perhaps no clearer than in Texas, where lawmakers have passed dozens of restrictive laws, including mandatory ultrasounds, waiting periods and state funding restrictions.
The Supreme Court overturned another set of Texas restrictions in 2016 — but not before about 20 clinics shut down, many of which were never able to reopen. Providers retired, staff found other jobs and clinics had to start from scratch to get licensed and staff up. “All of those things take time and a significant amount of money,” said Kari White, an associate professor in Health Care Organization and Policy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an investigator with the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.
Even though Texas permits abortions until 20 weeks — itself a cut-off point that conflicts with Roe v. Wade, although it hasn’t yet come to the Supreme Court — abortion access has sharply declined. That scenario is likely to play out in other conservative states, even if they don’t go as far as Georgia or Alabama.
More than half of Texas’ 41 abortion clinics closed or stopped performing abortions after the state passed legislation in 2013 that bundled several onerous restrictions, according to research from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. The average distance a woman had to travel one way for an abortion jumped to 35 miles from 15 miles. In rural parts of the state, drives of 100 miles or more to access care are not uncommon, according to the group.
The evaluation project found that while the number of abortions overall declined after the Texas law went into effect, the number of second-trimester abortions rose as women were forced to wait and travel longer distances. Currently only about 22 abortion providers, mostly in urban areas, are operating in Texas, a state with roughly 6.3 million women of reproductive age.
Low-income women are disproportionately affected by abortion restrictions, said Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, which helps women who can’t afford an abortion, which costs between $500 and $10,000 dollars depending on the point in pregnancy. The nonprofit was part of a group that challenged dozens of Texas abortion restrictions in court.
Calls to the group’s hotline have tripled over the past few years to 6,000 in 2018, but it only funded about 1,000 women last year, she said. Some of those women are undocumented immigrants, some are incarcerated and others have children but cannot afford to raise more.
Other costs mount — both in money and time, Conner said. Because Texas has a 24-hour waiting period between an initial consult and the abortion, women miss work and may have to pay for hotel rooms.
“There are fewer clinics to provide the services,” said Conner. “The few clinics that are left are in very high demand.”
Telemedicine could plug some gaps in care for women seeking abortion medication, instead of a surgical abortion. But there too access varies widely by geography. Some states ban telemedicine-facilitated abortions. Elsewhere, providers are using video-chat technology to dispense the medication. Seventeen states require licensed abortion providers to be physically present when administering abortion medication, which effectively is a ban on telemedicine, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Abortion medication is approved for use up to ten weeks into pregnancy, but under current FDA rules can only be dispensed at certain medical facilities, including abortion clinics.
Alternatives are being tested. In one FDA-reviewed study, clinicians can mail abortion medication directly to patients after a video chat. Study participants can go to any clinic for their screening and ultrasound, send the results to a participating abortion provider, and then video chat with that provider. If appropriate, the provider can decide to dispense the medication to the patient’s address, and the patient can take it at home.
Under this system, women don’t have to travel several hours just to pick up the abortion pills, Erica Chong, director of Gynuity Health Projects, told POLITICO. The Gynuity study has enrolled about 360 people across eight states since 2016; it builds on recent research concluding that telemedicine-facilitated medical abortions are just as safe for patients as the ones administered in-person.
Because it’s been reviewed by the FDA, the Gynuity trial is exempt from the dispensation limitation. The study operates in Maine, New York, New Mexico, Hawaii, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Georgia. Gynuity’s trial in Georgia began a few weeks ago, shortly before the state passed its “fetal heartbeat” law.
“With a lot of these bans, there’s going to be a long legal battle,” Chong said, explaining that she didn’t expect the new Georgia law, which bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected at about six weeks, to affect the study in that state just yet. But she noted that the recent spate of early abortion bans have alarmed patients, who are unsure whether their appointments are still legal.
Gynuity’s goal is to convince the FDA that dispensing abortion medication directly to women’s homes, or even to retail pharmacies, is safe and effective, and that restrictions on its dispensation should be eased, Chong said.
Outside the Gynuity trial, some providers across the country let patients drive to the facility closest to them and video chat a clinician located at another site. Planned Parenthood, for instance, lets patients in 14 states virtually consult with clinicians based elsewhere. Yet in many cases, the clinician must watch the patient ingest the pill on screen to comply with federal restrictions limiting where the medication can be dispensed. Women might still have to travel across state lines to access these services — and many don’t even realize these options exist.
“How’s a woman in Alabama going to know to go to a Georgia clinic to find services?” Chong said.
El periodista Pedro Canché visitó al ex gobernador de Quintana Roo, Roberto Borge, preso en Panamá, donde espera ser extraditado a México.
En su sitio, Pedrocanche.com detalla el encuentro que duró unos minutos; este es un fragmento de la crónica:
Le dicen “El Ciervo”. Pertenecía a una pandilla en el barrio de Curundu. Asesinó a un rival y tiene una condena de 40 años. Se acerca a barrer él aérea de la mesa de madera despintada donde nos sentamos a esperar a Borge. Es el encargado de organizar las visitas.
“Que venga Roberto”, grita y uno de sus muchachos se va al edificio de tejas rojas. Es muy servicial y se dice “entregado al señor”. Entona unos himnos religiosos.
-¿Que tal se porta Roberto Borge, el mexicano?
“Está en el lugar del general Manuel Antonio Noriega, en la enfermería(Noriega salió de esta carcel el 17 de Enero de 2017 para un arresto domiciliario y murió apenas el 30 de Mayo reciente de un tumor maligno en el cerebro). Colabora bien. Está cumpliendo con barrer y lavar las celdas del baño y enfermería. Ya hizo amigos ahí y pidió que lo cuidaran”.
-¿Y es bueno con la escoba Roberto?
“Si, lavar los baños le cuesta pero está aprendiendo. ¿Y usted de que le toca? Oiga lo vamos a poner a jugar futbol o basquetbol pues se la pasa encerrado y no quiere salir al patio”.
Roberto Borge cruza la pequeña cancha de futbol. Y mueve la cabeza por todos lados tratando de hallar un rostro conocido.
“El Ciervo” se retira pues le ha llegado su hijo a visitarlo. Lleva 10 años en el Renacer y su muchacho ya está en la adolescencia.
Borge busca a su amigo. Igual anda descontrolado.
-Hola Roberto Borge, soy yo el que vino a visitarlo. Venga acá.
Trastabilló con la grava suelta. El tipo se pone pálido. Cambian sus facciones. Está sorprendido. No esperaba verme ahí. Aprieta las mandíbulas. El rostro sin afeitar se pone colorado. El gobernador que me puso en la carcel por sus caprichos de dictador ahí estaba… derrotado.
Nunca lo había visto en persona, ni antes ni después del encarcelamiento a la que fui sometido en su gobierno. Nunca le había visto el rostro. Su cara me recordó a Buzz, el personaje del infinito y más allá de la caricatura infantil Toy Story.
-Vamos a platicar. Esto no es nada personal. Es un trabajo periodístico. Dígame cómo está.
“Yo esperaba a Fabián (Vallado, ex secretario privado de Borge y ex delegado de la Sedesol en Quintana Roo). No quiero platicar con nadie. Contigo no. Qué haces aquí”.
-¿Te gustó la torta del Trapiche? Le digo mientras observo el polo color celeste y el pantalón de mezclilla que le traje ayer.
-Por cortesía creo que podremos charlar unos minutos por lo menos. Intento convencerlo.
Hay dos guardias que vigilan la interacción de los visitantes y los presos. A ellos se dirige Borge una vez recuperada la compostura. Aún cree tener el mando. Lo soberbio lo tiene a flor de piel.
“Guardias desalojen al periodista por favor. Manden a desalojar a esta persona”.
El guardia a quien se dirigió, un soldado panameño le dijo: ” Si usted manda a desalojar a sus visitas entonces no permitiremos que lo visiten. ¿Cómo sabremos que visitas quiere y cuál no? Y sabe señor aquí la visita se le respeta. Está en su derecho de no aceptarlo. Pero aquí no desalojamos a nadie.
Borge apresura el paso por la pequeña reja y le dice algo a dos de sus compañeros que se le acercaron y voltean a verme.
Parado contemplo cómo se escabulle por la cancha de futbol. Presuroso va cuesta arriba a su celda en la enfermería…
La jornada estuvo marcada por distintos eventos importantes. Por un lado, la liberación de los periodistas españoles quienes permanecían secuestrados en Alepo desde hace casi 10 meses. Por otro lado, el sorpresivo traslado de “El Chapo” a una prisión de máxima seguridad en Ciudad Juárez. La Gran Época le presenta un resumen de las noticias más destacadas de este domingo 8 de junio.
El País: Liberados los periodistas españoles secuestrados en Siria hace 10 meses. El periódico español informó sobre la liberación de los periodistas españoles Antonio Pampliega, José Manuel López y Ángel Sastre, quienes permanecían secuestrados en Alepo (norte de Siria) desde hace casi 10 meses han sido liberados, según fuentes del Gobierno español. Detalló que los mismos están sanos y salvos yana
ya se encuentran en Turquía. Un avión Falcon 900 de la Fuerza Aérea española salió el sábado por la noche desde la base aérea de Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) hacia Ankara (Turquía) para facilitar su repatriación, que se espera se produzca hoy mismo. Destacó además que la liberación de Pampliega, López y Sastre acaba con una pesadilla que se inició el 12 de julio del año pasado, cuando los tres desaparecieron en Alepo, solo 48 horas después de entrar en Siria para cubrir la guerra civil que asola el país desde 2011.
El Mundo: El incendio en Canadá continúa su incontenible avance. El portal de noticias español reportó sobre el feroz incendio forestal que está causando estragos en Canadá. Detalló que duplicó su tamaño este sábado y continua avanzando este domingo sobre los bosques de la región de Fort McMurray sin grandes esperanzas de poder sofocarlos por la falta de lluvias abundantes, mientras los miles de evacuados encontraban un poco de alivio en los gestos de solidaridad de los canadienses.
Clarín: Sorpresivo traslado de “El Chapo” a una cárcel de Ciudad Juárez. El diario argentino informó sobre el sorpresivo traslado del narcotraficante Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán durante la madrugada de hoy a una prisión de máxima seguridad en Ciudad Juárez, en la frontera con Estados Unidos. Asimismo indicó que el narcotraficante fue trasladado en medio de un fuerte resguardo policial cerca de la medianoche, lo que despertó las especulaciones de los medios en cuanto a una posible extradición a Estados Unidos. Desde su recaptura, el 8 de enero, el líder del Cártel de Sinaloa se encontraba preso en el penal del Altiplano, a 90 kilómetros al oeste de Ciudad de México.
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.”
One of Italy’s most popular travel destinations is under water after it was hit by the highest tide in 50 years.
Flooding in Venice hit the second-highest levels ever recorded in history, and the historic canal city braces for yet another wave on Wednesday.
Venice’s Mayor Luigi Brugnaro blamed climate change for the “dramatic situation” and called for a speedy completion of a long-delayed project to construct off-shore barriers.
“Now the government must listen,” he said on Twitter. “These are the effects of climate change… the costs will be high.”
According to the Sun,exceptionally high tides that produce major flooding occur every four years. However, the city usually experiences minor flooding about four times a year.
Brugnaro also tweeted various photos that showed historic tourist attractions under water such as St. Mark’s Square, which was one of the worst hit areas. Photos surfaced of shopkeepers struggling to minimize the damage as water poured into their stores.
Brugnaro also noted that St. Mark’s Basilica had suffered major damage from the high levels of water, raising new concerns for the mosaics and other artworks. According to the BBC, this is the sixth time the basilica flooded in 1,200 years with four of those times occurring within the past 20 years.
Photos on social media showed a city ferry, taxi boats and gondolas grounded on walkways flanking canals.
The high-water mark hit 74 inches late Tuesday, meaning more than 85 percent of the city was flooded. The highest level ever recorded was 76 inches during infamous flooding in 1966.
Officials projected a second wave as high as 63 inches at midmorning Wednesday.
One person, a man in his 70s, died on the barrier island of Pellestrina, apparently of electrocution, said Danny Carrella, an official on the island with 3,500 inhabitants.Media outletsreport that a second man was found dead in his home. He said the situation there remained dramatic, with about three feet of water still present due to broken pumps.
The governor’s office had estimated earlier Saturday afternoon that some 2,000 people were under evacuation orders due to the fire.
Officials said thunderstorms and unpredictable winds in the area have made it difficult to determine the trajectory of the fire, which is burning in Klamath National Forest near the Oregon border.
“We still have thunderstorms in the area and that means lightning and erratic winds. I don’t believe that we’re expecting much precipitation,” said Caroline Quintanilla, a public information officer for the Klamath Nation Forest, on Saturday afternoon. “The dry lightning is of concern.”
The fire was 1% contained by Saturday evening, and fire weather warnings were in effect for the area Sunday and Monday.
“It has been a crazy time period,” said Yreka resident Kiko Gomez, speaking by phone on Saturday afternoon. “I’m feeling a bit nervous, not only for myself but others.”
Gomez, who left Yreka on Saturday evening, said that after living in the area for over a decade, this is the closest a fire has ever been.
In a sign of its extreme behavior, the wildfire sent a 50,000 foot pyrocumulonimbus cloud — a plume generated by intensely burning fires — into the air, pushing smoke high above the clouds, climate scientist Daniel Swain noted on Twitter.
Siskiyou County Supervisor Brandon Criss, whose district is east of Yreka, said he has friends in the city packing and getting ready to leave. He said he could smell the thick smoke at his home in Dorris, just south of the Oregon border.
“The fire has grown exponentially over the last short while,” he said. He added the Board of Supervisors will likely declare a state of emergency in the county during its meeting on Tuesday.
No information is available on the cause of the fire. The state of emergency declaration from Newsom’s office will help cut red tape and speed resources to the region, including potentially from other states.
Remarkable satellite imagery this AM in NorCal/OR. #McKinneyFire exploded last night, generating massive pyrocumulonimbus cloud ~50,000 ft tall (!!). You can see smoke at two different heights: most in troposphere, but some (possibly) injected into stratosphere (!). #CAwx#CAfirepic.twitter.com/Ri7IKcsnk8
The area around the fire was under a fire weather watch through Monday as lightning was expected over dry vegetation. Two additional fires in Siskiyou County — the China 2 and Evans fires — are also prompting evacuation warnings for over 200 residents. The two blazes merged earlier today and have burned more than 300 acres.
Crews from multiple agencies are battling the flames. Firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service are currently in charge, but a California Incident Management Team, which coordinates agencies like the Forest Service and Cal Fire, was scheduled to take over Sunday morning.
Siskiyou County Supervisor Ed Valenzuela, who represents Mount Shasta, said even though he is miles away from the blaze, he can see the clouds of smoke from his backyard.
“Hopefully with the weather moderating they can get a handle on it,” he said. “This is not the first rodeo. We’ve gone through fires.”
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