“In order to prevent a total, statewide blackout, which could take several days if not one or two weeks to restore, the system is having to be very surgical on taking people off the system to reduce that demand on that limited supply,” Turner said. “Otherwise, it could be considerably worse and this situation could be prolonged.”
The weather station at Bush Intercontinental Airport recorded an air temperature of 17 degrees Monday morning, the lowest reading since 1989.
Video: Houston Chronicle Photo Staff
Centerpoint said residents without power should not expect service to be restored before Tuesday at the earliest, leaving families to choose between bad options: Hunker down with layers of blankets or traverse icy roads to the homes of friends and relatives with electricity.
Michele Whitebread in Spring Branch said she is not eager to drive several miles to her parents’ home, but plans to do so with her husband and five children Monday afternoon, after losing power at 5 a.m. Staying put and bundling up would have been an option, she said, if not for her youngest daughter, Maggie, who has born just four weeks ago.
“My parents have power and we don’t,” Whitebread said. “The house can’t get too much colder with the newborn.”
A failing fire alarm woke Jared Berry at his northwest Harris County home around 2 a.m. when it lost power. His wife’s humidifier was out, too.
Hours later, after donning thermal underwear, he used a meat thermometer to see how cold his home was. The device stopped at 58 degrees.
“We were able to boil water and make a cup of coffee in our French press,” Berry said.
Running water was not available for Jamie Rangel at his west Houston apartment, along Interstate 10 and near Silbur Road. His power went out around the same time, too.
“It’s just me. I have a lot of bottled water to drink,” Rangel said, expressing a lack of worry.
He plans to subside off of cold sandwiches until the power comes back.
Ryan Sullivan spent his morning huddled in a comforter as the temperature continuously dropped inside his Spring Branch-area home. He wishes he had planned better.
“Honestly — we didn’t prepare well for this. I should have bought some groceries that I could cook without a stovetop,” Sullivan said. “I wasn’t thinking about losing power for the rest of the day.”
As the indoor temperature reached 45 degrees, he contemplated using a novelty burner for s’mores to cook food for his girlfriend and roommate.
Arwen Mallet’s two kids have been going in and out to play in the snow. The joy is waning, she explained.
“I’m trying to discourage them from going outside because it’s too hard to warm them up afterward,” Mallet said.
Her family’s home lost power around 3 a.m. near Memorial City Mall, just north of Interstate 10.
Image caption
En 2004, Hadid ganó el premio Pritzker, el más importante de la arquitectura.
La arquitecta iraquí Zaha Hadid, cuyos diseños incluyen el Centro Acuático Olímpico de Londres, murió este jueves en Miami a la edad de 65 años.
Hadid murió de un ataque cardiaco en un hospital donde era tratada por una bronquitis.
Este año Hadid se convirtió en la primera mujer en recibir la Medalla de Oro del Instituto Real de Arquitectos Británicos en reconocimiento a su trabajo.
“Ahora vemos más mujeres arquitectas establecidas”, indicó cuando recibió el premio del cual se sentía orgullosa.
Image caption
Hadid decía estar convencida de que los edificios deben alimentar el alma.
“Eso no significa que es fácil. Algunas veces los desafíos son inmensos. En los años recientes ha habido un cambio tremendo y continuaremos este progreso”.
Hadid, quien también poseía la nacionalidad británica, era considerada una de las arquitectas más destacadas del siglo XXI.
Decía estar convencida de que los edificios deben alimentar el alma.
“Las ideas fuertes nunca fallan”, dijo en 2004.
Internacional
Sus diseños han sido comisionados en varias partes del mundo.
Image copyright PA
Image caption
El Centro Acuático Olímpico de Londres, que abrió sus puertas en las Olimpiadas de 2012, fue diseñado por Hadid.
Entre los países en que se pueden encontrar están: China, Alemania, Qatar y Azerbaiyán.
Sus creaciones incluyen: la Serpentine Gallery en Londres, el Museo Riverside en Glasgow y el Opera House de Cantón, China.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption
Hadid cuando recibió la Excelentísima Orden del Imperio Británico en 2012.
El editor de Arte de la BBC, Will Gompertz, describió su estilo como una mezcla reconocible de curvas sensuales y modernismo geométrico.
Su estilo también ha sido catalogado como “neofuturista” y se caracteriza por poderosas formas curvas y estructuras alongadas.
Una diva de la arquitectura
Fue la primera mujer en recibir el famoso premio Pritzker (considerado el Nobel de la Arquitectura) en 2004 y en 2008 la revista Forbes la incluyó en su lista de las mujeres más poderosas del mundo.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption
Zaha Hadid frente a una de sus creaciones, la Serpentine Sackler Gallery en Londres.
En una entrevista realizada por la BBC en 2004, la periodista Caroline Frost describió a Hadid como una diva de la arquitectura: “su personalidad tiene la fuerza de cualquiera de sus diseños“, dijo entonces.
Nacida en Bagdad y educada por monjas francesas, Hadid llegó a Inglaterra cuando tenía 20 años. Pero antes pasó por Beirut, donde estudió matemáticas.
Bajo el auspicio del ambicioso arquitecto holandés Rem Koolhaas, Hadid consiguió crear dibujos con lenguaje propio.
Cuando se graduó en 1977, Koolhaas la describió como “un planeta en su propia e inimitable órbita“.
Image copyright PA
Image caption
Esta es la parte externa del Centro Acuático Olímpico de Londres.
Hadid diseñó uno de los principales estadios donde se celebrará el Mundial de Fútbol de Qatar 2022, cuyos organizadores han sido acusados de no respetar los derechos humanos de los empleados que trabajan en las construcciones destinadas al evento.
El año pasado, el gobierno de Japón dejó a un lado su propuesta de diseñar un estadio de apariencia futurista para las Olimpiadas de Tokio 2020 y optó por un diseño menos ambicioso y menos costoso.
“I want to try something new, to go beyond politics to all the things I’m interested in; I’m ready for a new adventure,” Mr. Wallace said. “And I hope you’ll check it out. And so for the last time, dear friends, that’s it for today. Have a great week. And I hope you’ll keep watching Fox News Sunday.”
Mr. Wallace covered the Reagan White House as an NBC News correspondent (and briefly moderated “Meet the Press”) before Roger Ailes, the co-founder of Fox News, hired him away from ABC News in 2003 to anchor the Murdoch network’s leading political news program.
An equal-opportunity interrogator of Democrats and Republicans, Mr. Wallace proved himself an outlier at times at Fox News, particularly in recent years when the network’s conservative opinion hosts closed ranks behind former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Wallace’s criticisms of Mr. Trump earned rebukes from some viewers and the president’s own Twitter account, but he also irritated liberals who wished he would denounce his partisan colleagues.
In his on-air remarks on Sunday, Mr. Wallace said that “the bosses here at Fox promised me they would never interfere with a guest I booked or a question I asked, and they kept that promise. I have been free to report to the best of my ability, to cover the stories I think are important, to hold our country’s leaders to account. It’s been a great ride.”
The anchor’s contract was up at the end of this year, and the network had wanted to keep him on, according to a person familiar with internal deliberations. “Fox News Sunday” will temporarily be hosted by a rotation of the network’s news anchors, including Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, John Roberts, Neil Cavuto, and others.
Parliament has expressed its objection to leaving the EU without a deal, but hasn’t been able to agree what terms it would find acceptable. While today’s ruling makes it impossible for Johnson to carry out his implied threat to exit even without an agreement by suspending Parliament through Oct. 31, that remains the default outcome if nothing else changes.
As the prospect of no deal trashing the U.K. economy has grown in recent months, every pound rally has petered out as quickly as it began.
Small wonder, then, that traders who initially pushed sterling higher in the wake of the court’s announcement quickly lost enthusiasm for chasing the currency higher. While the Supreme Court’s decision is historic and potentially devastating for Johnson, it still leaves investors with absolutely no idea about what happens next — it’s pretty much “as you were” for the markets.
“The House of Commons must convene without delay,” Speaker of the House John Bercow said in a statement. That raises the prospect of members of Parliament rushing back to Westminster on Wednesday.But what happens next remains unclear. Will Johnson resign? Can Parliament force him to seek another delay from the EU? Will there be an election? Might the PM even defy the courts and reopen the constitutional crisis the courts have sought to avert?
Currency traders are sitting on the fence. For once, that’s probably the right place to be.
To contact the author of this story: Mark Gilbert at magilbert@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. He previously was the London bureau chief for Bloomberg News. He is also the author of “Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable.”
Como escribía un lector hace varios días, las noticias sobre accidentes de tránsito son “el pan de cada día” en el Ecuador. Prácticamente no hay semana que no se reporte al menos un suceso de esta naturaleza que ocurre ya sea en las calles de las ciudades o en las reconstruidas carreteras del país.
Lamentablemente los accidentes se han convertido en un hecho tan cotidiano que la mayoría de medios, incluido HOY, los registran como notas secundarias y se olvidan de los casos hasta volver a informar sobre el siguiente, desde luego con los datos de rigor: número de heridos y de fallecidos, el lugar donde se produce, las posibles causas, las placas de los vehículos involucrados, la actuación de los organismos de socorro y algún otro dato adicional. Pero en raras ocasiones estas noticias tienen seguimiento.
Al igual que en los casos de crímenes violentos, daría la impresión que los seguimientos en este tipo de informaciones depende del número de fallecidos o de su “importancia”. El domingo anterior, en la página de Actualidad se publicó la nota “Pujilí: 4 muertos en un accidente de tránsito”, la cual daba cuenta del volcamiento de un bus que habría rodado unos 400 metros en el sector de Guangaje (Cotopaxi), con un saldo de cuatro fallecidos y 29 heridos.
El texto incluía la versión de testigos, datos sobre el traslado de los heridos y el número de víctimas mortales, entre otros proporcionados por el ECU-911 de Quito, y una reacción del presidente Rafael Correa quien indicó que las autoridades investigaban las causas para sancionar a los responsables del fatal accidente.
Ahí acabó todo. Al día siguiente no se volvió a saber del suceso. No se informó sobre el estado de los heridos, no hubo ninguna noticia del conductor, no se supo si el bus había sido remolcado, no se indicó el nombre de la cooperativa, peor aún si tenía vigente la matrícula o el SOAT. Nada. El caso recibió un tratamiento similar a tantos otros que involucran directamente a personas que pierden seres queridos o pasajeros que quedan lesionados de por vida.
A propósito de una balacera ocurrida hace dos semanas al norte de Quito en la que falleció un policía, un supuesto asaltante y el empleado de un restaurante, un lector escribió que los medios (así, en general) resaltaban la muerte del uniformado pero que las referencias sobre el trabajador eran mínimas. Probablemente esto se debe a que las instancias oficiales influyen de mejor forma para lograr que se reproduzca su información y a una reportería deficiente que solo vio de pasada el otro lado de la noticia, en este caso específico las otras víctimas y las consecuencias para sus familiares.
No porque los accidentes y crímenes sucedan a diario, podemos verlos como hechos corrientes. Hace falta darles seguimiento, alguna vez llegar a “las últimas consecuencias”.
Pollster Frank Luntz on whether special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings will shape the 2020 presidential election.
Under federal law, Attorney General William Barr could have taken Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s long-awaited Russiagate report, shoved it in a drawer, and sent the following letter to Capitol Hill:
“Dear Congress:
“No collusion. No obstruction.
“Love,
“Bill”
Beyond that, Barr was obligated to do none of what he did on Thursday morning. He held a press conference at Justice Department headquarters, answered journalists’ questions, sent Congress redacted copies of Mueller’s 448-page “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election” (on CD-ROMs), made a nearly unredacted copy (minus only legally verboten grand jury material) available for top congressional leaders to inspect, posted the document on DOJ’s public website, and freed Mueller to discuss his findings before Congress, as Democrats have demanded. Barr previously agreed to let the Senate and House judiciary committees grill him on, respectively, May 1 and 2.
Democrats have suggested that Barr has something to hide. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York stated Wednesday, “The American people deserve to hear the truth.” In fact, Barr’s behavior has been clearer than a Brooks Brothers storefront window.
The White House has been equally see-through. While President Donald J. Trump ground his molars through this 22-month-long legal root canal, he let his lawyers hand Mueller some 1.4 million pages of records and allowed administration and campaign personnel to be interrogated. Trump never asserted executive privilege, nor did he request redactions in the report.
The Taliban have named UN-sanctioned veteran Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund as the leader of Afghanistan’s new government, while giving key positions to figures who dominated the 20-year battle against the US-led coalition and its allies.
Chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference on Tuesday that Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar would be the deputy leader.
Mullah Yaqoob, the son of the Taliban founder and late supreme leader Mullah Omar, was named defence minister, while the position of interior minister was given to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the feared Haqqani network who also doubled up as a Taliban deputy leader.
“The cabinet is not complete, it is just acting,” Mujahid said at the Government Information and Media Centre in Kabul.
“We will try to take people from other parts of the country.”
They have promised an “inclusive” government that represents Afghanistan’s complex ethnic makeup – though women are unlikely to be included at the top levels.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, a Taliban negotiator in Doha and member of the first regime’s cabinet, was named foreign minister.
As they transition from insurgent group to governing power, the Taliban have a series of major issues to address, including looming financial and humanitarian crises.
The announcement of cabinet appointments by Mujahid came hours after the Taliban fired into the air to disperse protesters and arrested several journalists, the second time in less than a week the group used heavy-handed tactics to break up a demonstration in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
The demonstrators had gathered outside the Pakistan embassy to accuse Islamabad of aiding the Taliban’s assault on the northern Panjshir province. The Taliban said on Monday they had seized the province – the last not in their control – after their blitz through Afghanistan last month.
Afghanistan’s previous government routinely accused Pakistan of aiding the Taliban, a charge Islamabad has denied. Former vice-president Amrullah Saleh, one of the leaders of the anti-Taliban forces, has long been an outspoken critic of neighbouring Pakistan.
Dozens of women were among the protesters on Tuesday. Some of them carried signs bemoaning the killing of their sons by Taliban fighters they say were aided by Pakistan. One sign read: “I am a mother when you kill my son you kill a part of me.”
“We’ll see what happens, but we are going to have a good deal and a fair deal or we’re not going to have a deal at all and that’s OK too,” President Donald Trump said at his re-election rally. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo
The president is running for reelection with a major unfulfilled campaign promise — a trade deal with China.
OSAKA, Japan — President Donald Trump departed a gathering of world leaders Saturday without striking his long-sought trade deal with China, leaving him with a major unfulfilled campaign promise just as he revs up his reelection bid.
But the leaders of the world’s biggest economies agreed that their teams should resume negotiations that had broken down several weeks ago with Trump pushing off another round of tariffs on $300 billion on Chinese imports.
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That incremental step is far from what he promised Americans when he was on the campaign trail in 2016 pledging to beat China — the so-called “enemy” that cost the U.S. jobs, spied on U.S. businesses and stole U.S. technology.
Trump will now need to try to persuade supporters — some of whom have been hurt by rising prices due to his many trade disputes — that not accepting a bad deal with China is actually a win.
“I don’t think they will see this as a failure. I think they will see this as him fighting,” said Jonathan Felts, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and now lives in the swing state of North Carolina and remains close to the Trump White House. “What they see is a man who is doing exactly what he said he would.”
At a rally kicking off his reelection campaign in Florida earlier this month, Trump, a businessman who prides himself on making shrewd deals, tried to put a positive spin on his failure to secure a deal with China.
“We’ll see what happens, but we are going to have a good deal and a fair deal or we’re not going to have a deal at all and that’s OK too,” Trump told the crowd.
Trump held a series of meetings in Japan while he attended the G-20, an annual gathering of the world’s biggest economies, but did not announce any major agreements with those he spoke with, including the leaders of Japan, Germany and Russia.
Most of the attention, however, was on trade. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping and their top aides talked for more than an hour at a meeting closely watched by foreign leaders and business executives worried that the trade impasse will continue to hurt the global economy.
“You know, we’ve never really had a deal with China,” Trump said at a news conference Saturday. “Tremendous amounts of money was put into China — $500 billion a year. And I mean, you know, not just surplus and deficit. I’m talking about real, hard cash. And it should have never, ever been allowed to have happened for all of our presidents over the last number of years.”
Trump had already hit China with two rounds of tariffs after unsuccessfully pushing Beijing to change longstanding trade practices that he deems unfair. China retaliated with its own set of tariffs.
“I think you’ve heard the president say publicly on a number of occasions that he’s quite comfortable with where we are, and he’s quite comfortable with any outcome of those talks,” a senior administration official said.
On Saturday, at least, they agreed to the ceasefire.
A former Trump adviser who remains close to the White House said Trump still looks engaged on the issue in contrast to lawmakers of both parties who try to tackle tough issues, such as immigration, only to give in when they can’t initially work out a deal. “The minute things got tough, they bailed,” the former adviser said. “He’s going to keep talking.”
But David Dollar, who served as economic and financial emissary to China for the Treasury secretary and is now a leading expert on China for the center-left Brookings Institution, said Trump was never going to leave his meeting with Xi this week with a win when the two sides hadn’t been talking for weeks.
“There hasn’t been enough preparation for there to be a really detailed trade deal between China and the United States,” he said.
Now, after more than two years of negotiations and his reelection campaign looming, Trump faces intense pressure to find a compromise before his yet-to-be-named opponent criticizes his lack of deal-making skills and his tariff threats continue to cost Americans money, including in states that helped him win in 2016.
And some of Trump’s allies fear that the tariffs could put a dent in the economy — his strongest reelection selling point — though they note the economy has stayed strong despite earlier Trump-imposed tariffs.
“Exporters are suffering from the retaliatory tariffs from China,” Matthew Goodman, who served as director for international economics on the National Security Council staff and is now senior adviser for Asian economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It’s causing some political blowback for the president. His polls in some states that are red states and farm states are not as good as he would like. And so, you know, it’s possible that he has an incentive to do a deal.”
Scott Jennings, who worked under President George W. Bush and is close to the Trump White House, said Trump still has plenty of time left in his term to make good on this campaign promise.
“Trump is in a strong political position,” he said. “He’s put so much effort in for them to roll over and accept less is not an option.”
“Why should Crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a slight majority in the House, be allowed to Impeach the President of the United States?” wrote Trump, who is staying at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., for the holidays.
He also called the impeachment process “very unfair.”
Why should Crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a slight majority in the House, be allowed to Impeach the President of the United States? Got ZERO Republican votes, there was no crime, the call with Ukraine was perfect, with “no pressure.” She said it must be “bipartisan…
…& overwhelming,” but this Scam Impeachment was neither. Also, very unfair with no Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses. Now Pelosi is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House. Dems want to run majority Republican Senate. Hypocrites!
The tweets come a week after the House voted largely along party lines to impeach Trump. The two articles of impeachment accuse Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Trump criticized Pelosi on Monday for not sending the articles to the Senate.
The Speaker defended her decision, arguing that she can’t choose trial managers until she has a clear picture of how the Senate plans to proceed.
“The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the Senate will conduct,” Pelosi wrote. “President Trump blocked his own witnesses and documents from the House, and from the American people, on phony complaints about the House process. What is his excuse now?”
Puerto Ricans are pushing back against misleading remarks by Kimberly Guilfoyle, the national chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee, during her speech Monday night at the Republican National Convention.
Guilfoyle, a former California prosecutor who is Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, showed her support for President Donald Trump’s re-election as “a Latina and proud American,” she said. Her mother is from Puerto Rico, and her father is from Ireland.
“As a first-generation American, I know how dangerous their socialist agenda is,” said Guilfoyle, referring to Democratic opponent Joe Biden and his vice presidential pick, Kamala Harris. “My mother, Mercedes, was a special education teacher from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. My father, also an immigrant, came to this nation in pursuit of the American dream. Now, I consider it my duty to fight to protect that dream.”
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Her remarks sparked a loud social media backlash as people reminded Guilfoyle that Puerto Ricans aren’t immigrants because they are born U.S. citizens.
“Proud Latina” Kimberly Guilfoyle should know that Puerto Ricans like her mother Mercedes have been U.S. citizens since 1917. Therefore, she was not an “immigrant.”
“After 1940, Congress declared that anyone born in Puerto Rico is born in the United States, so for her to claim that she is the daughter of immigrants is really tricky,” said Charles Venator-Santiago, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut who is coordinator of the Puerto Rico Citizenship Archives Project.
Political scientist Carlos Vargas-Ramos, director of public policy at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York, said: “Could her mom count as an immigrant, even though she is a born U.S. citizen? In that case, no.”
But when Puerto Ricans like Guilfoyle’s mother move to the U.S. mainland, which is considered internal migration, “they don’t migrate as someone who has come from Montana to North Dakota,” Vargas-Ramos said. “There’s a cultural transition in coming from Puerto Rico that is evidently Latin American in terms of culture and language.
“Crossing that cultural border makes their experience similar to that of an immigrant,” said Vargas-Ramos, but it doesn’t make Puerto Ricans immigrants.
What makes Puerto Rico more complicated is its territorial status compared to the states.
“Puerto Rico is part of the United States for international purposes but foreign for domestic or constitutional purposes,” said Venator-Santiago, citing a series of Supreme Court cases from the 1900s known as the Insular Cases.
Against this background, Guilfoyle’s “claim that she is an immigrant is nonsensical in international laws because what the Insular Cases say,” Venator-Santiago said.
While Puerto Ricans are citizens, they don’t vote for president, and they have no voting representation in Congress. They also pay more for foreign goods because of shipping laws that benefit mainland workers, for example.
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“So for the rest of the world, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, but within the United States, Congress invented this idea that Puerto Rico could be separate,” Venator-Santiago said.
For Vargas-Ramos, “quibbling over the terminology that she uses obscures the fact of what she was really trying to say.”
“What she was trying to say is that her family is a family of Latin American immigrants, when, in fact, her boyfriend’s father has targeted Latin American immigrants, specifically Mexicans, as the worst kind of immigrant in this country,” Vargas-Ramos said.
“From my estimation, what she was trying to do and what the campaign was trying to project is that here is this half-Hispanic woman who has been allowed into the president’s family, even if it’s marginally through her companionship, to kind of demonstrate that the president isn’t a racist or a xenophobe,” he said.
Kirsten Gillibrand will finish out her Senate term as promised. That’s because she will never be president.
Well, OK — there’s one scenario that could actually give her a minute but tangible shot.
Gillibrand’s positions have flip-flopped on everything from gun rights advocacy (she once had a 100 percent rating from the NRA) to immigration. She now supports single-payer healthcare and tries to posture herself as a champion of the people all while waiting on Wall Street on bended knee for campaign cash. The former proud moderate has the single most anti-Trump voting record in the Senate, “evolving” into a #Resistance hero, coincidentally just in time to run for president!
Gillibrand’s electoral issue, however, is less about her blatant political opportunism and more about the current landscape of the Democratic Party. The socialists and hard-leftists don’t trust her coziness with Wall Street, and she hasn’t exactly positioned herself well to claim the mantle of centrism or Rust Belt friendliness. She’s a white woman running in a primary race where as many as half of the voters have heard of “intersectionality” and think it actually matters. Although she doesn’t suffer from the same obvious unlikability factor plaguing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Gillibrand hardly oozes charisma.
Plus, an entire coalition of Clinton and Al Franken acolytes already have their knives out for her. Gillibrand, recall, spearheaded the push to oust Franken from office for his sexual predations, and she also denounced Bill Clinton’s treatment of women.
But this is where a target on her back can become an asset.
There’s just one issue that Gillibrand has been earnestly consistent on, and that’s advocating for sexual assault victims. Although her push to oust serial predator and former Sen. Al Franken from office earned her left-wing ire, it was probably one of the most honest and genuine things she’s done in a very opportunistic political career. We cannot know her motive, and it’s fully possible that she turned on Franken out of political expediency. But given the continued grudge held by Franken fans and donors levied against Gillibrand, it seems unlikely that she did so out of sheer political calculus. Her advocacy for sexual assault victims has spanned from those in the military to college campuses over her entire career in national politics. If Gillibrand has one “passion” that doesn’t seem to have come from a public opinion poll or campaign strategist, it’s justice for women.
Gillibrand doesn’t have a real constituency or base yet. Her biggest selling point at the moment is that she’s not as insane as many of her peers and has actual experience with a legislative record to speak of, unlike (ahem) a very popular failed Senate candidate from Texas. But what if Gillibrand could turn the Franken and Clinton outrage in on itself, making lemons into lemonade?
It would be bold and extremely risky for Gillibrand to open fire on hypocritical liberals who were more than happy to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s life without a shred of evidence, but proudly defend Al Franken and Bill Clinton to this day. But it would be a masterful relitigation of 2016 and a stunning rebuke of President Trump at the same time. If executed correctly, it could even could have bipartisan appeal. If Gillibrand went kamikaze on her own party, forcing Democrats to take sides on #MeToo, either to expose themselves as hypocrites or stand with her, then she could buy herself time to build a base.
Then, if she did secure the nomination, she would have an easy pitch to suburban voters in the general election: I’m a non-insane Democrat who stands with women instead of groping them.
This isn’t a likely scenario, but it’s the only one where Gillibrand emerges with her image empowered instead of corrupted and her career doesn’t fade into irrelevance.
Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang says if the United States makes certain declarations, China will ‘back off.’
Three top U.S. senators will visit Taiwan to meet with its top leaders Sunday amid a period of tense relations between the United States and China.
Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Chris Coons, D-Del., and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, are making the visit as part of a broader trip to Asia, according to the American Institute in Taiwan, which announced the visit Saturday.
“The bipartisan congressional delegation will meet with senior Taiwan leaders to discuss U.S.-Taiwan relations, regional security, and other significant issues of mutual interest,” the organization said in a statement.
The move will likely anger China, since the state was upset when President Biden asked former Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and other former State Department officials to Taiwan earlier this year. The U.S. also moved to relax guidelines around communication between U.S. officials and Taiwan. The Chinese government said the U.S. should “Stop immediately all official interactions with the Taiwan region.”
In this image from video, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., delivers a nominating speech during the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. Coons will visit Taiwan Sunday, according to the American Institute in Taiwan (Democratic National Convention via AP)
U.S.-China ties remain strained over issues ranging from the independence of Taiwan and Hong Kong to the Chinese persecution of Uighur Muslims to China’s broad military and economic claims in the South China sea.
China claims Taiwan, which functions as a democracy under an elected government, as its own territory. The United States does not have official diplomatic ties to Taiwan but still engages with Taiwan commercially and through unofficial diplomatic channels. And members of Congress regularly visit the island as a way to show their support for its democracy and demonstrate strength against China.
The Trump administration moved to increase relations with Taiwan and according to Council on Foreign Relations fellow David Sacks, “The Biden administration has signaled that it will largely pick up where the Trump administration left off.”
In his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the “bipartisan commitment to Taiwan” and “making sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself… will absolutely endure in a Biden administration.”
“Our support for Taiwan is rock solid,” a State Department spokesperson told Fox News earlier this year. “We are committed to deepening our ties with Taiwan – a leading democracy and a critical economic and security partner.”
Hong Kong students and Taiwanese supporters hold slogans during a march in Taipei, Taiwan, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2019. The demonstration was part of global “anti-totalitarianism” rallies in over 60 cities worldwide, including in Australia and Taiwan, to denounce “Chinese tyranny.” (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
China has also recently sent fighter jets and nuclear-capable bombers to fly over Taiwan and the U.S. has flexed its military muscles in the region too.
These tensions follow a tone-setting meeting that happened soon after Blinken was confirmed. He and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan participated in a testy meeting with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska. Blinken expressed “deep concerns” over what he’s called China’s genocide against the Uighur Muslims, economic coercion, cyberattacks and more.
And it’s not clear what might tone down tensions between Washington and Beijing, as the Biden administration turns its focus toward China even as its new defense budget is smaller than some Republicans would like.
In his request to Congress, Biden asks for $5.1 billion to be spent on a “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” to counter Beijing.
Fox News’ Jackie Zhou, Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson and Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.
(Reuters) -Russian artillery fire killed at least two people and wounded five at a humanitarian aid distribution point on Wednesday as Moscow’s forces bombarded towns and cities in eastern Ukraine, local officials said.
Authorities in the eastern region of Luhansk urged civilians to evacuate “while it is safe,” warning that Russian bombardments could cut off escape routes.
Ukraine says Russian troops that invaded on Feb. 24 are regrouping and preparing for a new offensive in the Donbas area, which includes both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko shared online photos from the town of Vuhledar, where he said Russian artillery fire had struck a humanitarian aid distribution point.
The photos showed two women stretched out on the ground. Another person had a serious leg wound and a fourth was shown with a bloodied leg, being helped into a rescue vehicle.
“At the moment it’s known that two people were killed and five were injured. We document all the crimes committed by the Russian Federation on our land,” Kyrylenko wrote.
Russia has denied targeting civilians. Reuters was unable immediately to verify Kyrlyenko’s account of the incident.
Local officials reported fighting in many part of eastern Ukraine and there were also reports of shelling and fighting in the south, where the port city of Mariupol is surrounded and under siege from Russian forces.
Mariupol’s capture could enable Russia to entrench a land passage between two separatist, self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donbas and the Crimea region which Russia seized and annexed in 2014.
CALL TO EVACUATE
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukraine was trying to evacuate trapped civilians through 11 humanitarian corridors across Ukraine, but that people trying to flee Mariupol would have to use their own vehicles.
The city mayor said last week up to 170,000 civilians were trapped in Mariupol with no power and dwindling supplies.
The Luhansk region governor, Serhiy Gaidai, said Russian forces now controlled 60% of the eastern town of Rubizhne and reported 81 mortar, artillery and rocket strikes across the region over the previous day.
“I appeal to every resident of the Luhansk region – evacuate while it is safe,” he wrote in an online post earlier on Wednesday. “While there are buses and trains – take this opportunity.”
Gaidai said rail connections in the Donetsk region of Donbas had been damaged this week and took several hours to repair.
“This is another alarm bell,” he said.
Gaidai said separately that Russian forces were destroying “everything in their path” and would “stop at nothing.”
Russia says its “special military operation” is aimed at demilitarizing and “denazifying” Ukraine. The Kremlin’s position is rejected by Ukraine and the West as a pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
Two people were killed and one person was injured Monday in a rapidly expanding fire near Hemet that burned at least seven structures, according to fire officials, while another fast-moving blaze in the San Bernardino Mountains near Big Bear Lake also prompted evacuation orders.
The Fairview fire east of Hemet ignited around 3 p.m. and quickly exploded to more than 2,000 acres, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. It was 5% contained as of 10 p.m. Monday, fire officials said. They did not give further details on the deaths. A third person was taken to the hospital with burns. No firefighters were injured, officials said.
“This fire … was spreading very quickly before firefighters even got on scene,” a spokesman for the Riverside County Fire Department and the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on a Twitter livestream. Hemet hit a high of 110 degrees on Monday as searing heat enveloped the state.
About 3,250 homes were under evacuation orders Monday night. Evacuations were initially ordered south of Thornton Avenue, north of Polly Butte Road, west of Fairview Avenue and east of State Street and then a few hours later expanded to include areas south of Stetson Avenue, north of Cactus Road, west of Fairview Avenue, and east of State Street.
Shortly before 11 p.m., the Hemet Unified School District announced that all schools in the district would be closed Tuesday and remain so “until conditions improve.”
“This decision was not made lightly,” the district’s statement said, noting that given the heat, the potential for power outages, and the current level of fire containment, it was “necessary to ensure the safety of students, staff and families.”
At sunset Monday, flames raged through the hills above houses as columns of smoke billowed into the sky, reaching the Orange County coast. The fire consumed cars and blackened trees. Television news reports showed aerial shots of structures engulfed in shooting flames.
Some of the homes in the area could be reached on dirt roads, fire officials said. Residents on Twitter noted that many in the area keep horses, complicating evacuations.
Around the same time and about 75 miles north, the Radford fire ignited just west of Sugarloaf near Big Bear Lake. By 7:15 p.m., the fire had grown to 200 acres with no containment.
Initially, firefighters said no structures were threatened, but shortly after 6 p.m. the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department issued a mandatory evacuation order for people living east of Glass Road and Highway 38 to South Fork River Road.
The cause of the fire was still under investigation. The fire danger level for Big Bear Valley is “very high.”
“I’m in Perris and can see both fires if I stand on my street corner,” one person tweeted Monday night. “To the left I can see the Radford and to the right the Fairview.”
Meanwhile, fires continued to threaten parts of Northern California. In addition to blazes in Siskiyou County that consumed a neighborhood in the town of Weed and left two dead, firefighters were battling a brush fire Monday evening near Rodeo in Contra Costa County.
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