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Contents contributed and discussions participated by martinelligi

martinelligi

Prosecutors Announce No Charges Will Be Filed Against Officer Who Shot Jacob Blake : NPR - 0 views

  • A Wisconsin prosecutor announced that no charges will be brought against the white Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, several times at close range in August.
  • Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey, who is white, shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back after Blake slowly walked away from officers and toward the driver's side of a parked vehicle. He opened the door and leaned inside. Investigators later said a knife was recovered from the floorboard of the driver's side.
  • The activation of the Wisconsin Guard also on the heels of Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian and police Chief Daniel Miskinis announcing what they called "precautionary community safety measures" designed to keep the public and demonstrators safe and guard against "unlawful activity."
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  • "Officer Sheskey fired seven shots into an unarmed man's back, on a block where our children walk to school and our families go to church," she continued, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. "All of us — Black, white, brown, native and newcomer — deserve to be safe in our own neighborhoods, and that means holding police officers accountable when they brutalize us."
martinelligi

Live Results: Georgia Senate Runoff Elections : NPR - 0 views

  • The 2020 election is still not over. A pair of Senate runoff elections in Georgia on Tuesday will decide which party will hold the majority in the upper chamber. And despite his loss in November in the presidential election, President Trump looms large in the campaign.
  • With Democrats keeping control of the House of Representatives and President-elect Joe Biden slated to be sworn in on Jan. 20, the results of Tuesday's election will shape how much Biden will be able to steer his party's agenda through a Congress with razor-thin margins on both sides of the Capitol.
  • He has touted false claims and, in a stunning one-hour phone call with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday, pressed him to overturn the results of that election. Audio of that call has put GOP lawmakers in the awkward position of answering questions about the legality of the discussion initiated by the president at a time when they want to mobilize supporters.
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  • In Monday's rally, Trump repeated those claims. "They're not going to take the White House. We're going to fight like hell," he said. "When you win in a landslide and they steal it and it's rigged, it's not acceptable."
  • He added, "One state can chart the course not just for the next four years but for the next generation."
martinelligi

A Uighurs' History of China | History Today - 0 views

  • Towards the end of 2018 reports began to emerge that China was building a widespread network of compounds in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. It was being used to detain hundreds of thousands of – some estimates suggested over a million – members of the Muslim Uighur community suspected of involvement in, or sympathy for, demonstrations and attacks on government institutions
  • Although the conflict in Xinjiang between the Uighurs and the Chinese state has intensified in the past two years, it is nothing new.
  • Eastern Turkestan was formally incorporated into the Chinese Empire as the province of Xinjiang in November 1884.
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  • Uighurs are not ethnically or culturally Chinese, but a Turkic people whose language is close to the Uzbek of nearby Uzbekistan and distantly related to the Turkish of Turkey.
  • . In 1955 the PRC created the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region as a concession to the non-Han population and in parallel with similar arrangements for Tibet and Inner Mongolia
  • As China emerged from the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, the power of the Chinese Communist Party recovered; there was no equivalent liberation for the Uighurs.
  • Demonstrations in 1995 in Yining, the base of the 1940s’ independent republic, provoked Beijing to issue Document No. 7 the following year. It identified the conflict in Xinjiang as the most serious threat to the Chinese state and a ‘Strike Hard’ campaign was launched against resisters. In 1997 another major Yining demonstration in the north-east of the state was violently suppressed.
  • The repression under the ‘Strike Hard’ campaign became permanent. Anyone suspected of sympathies for ‘separatism’ – advocating an independent Uighur state – or involvement in ‘illegal religious activities’, primarily with the Sufi brotherhoods – could be detained without trial. Attempts by family members to extract relatives from police stations or other detention facilities have led to frequent clashes with the authorities, many of which have turned violent. Sporadic attacks against the police or other symbols of Chinese rule, either by local people or armed militant groups, were followed by government reprisals. Most conflict occurred in the old Sufi strongholds in the south of Xinjiang but, in July 2009, clashes between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the regional capital, Urumqi, cost many lives. They also resulted in the detention of thousands of Uighurs, some of whom were executed, and the eventual replacement in April 2010 of the Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary, Wang Lequan, who had held the post since 1994. The level of repression and the secrecy of judicial processes aroused widespread international concerns about human rights abuses.
  • In August 2016 Xi appointed Chen Quanguo, who had previously ruled Tibet, as Xinjiang Party Secretary: he rapidly introduced draconian measures of repression – ‘counter-terrorism’ in the official terminology – including the now notorious concentration camps and advanced surveillance technology. The clampdown on religious activities has intensified and satellite images indicate that many mosques and Sufi shrines have been destroyed, including the Imam Asim shrine outside Khotan, the site of an annual festival attended by thousands of pious Uighur Muslims. This intensification of repression shows no sign of ending.
martinelligi

President-elect Joe Biden Transition News: Live Updates - The New York Times - 0 views

  • As they closed in on a $900 billion stimulus deal, top Democrats and Republicans in Congress haggled on Thursday over a handful of remaining issues that could help determine how much power President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will have to act once he takes office to provide additional help for the sputtering economy.
  • Democrats were making a last-ditch effort to provide emergency aid to states, which they argued was critical to helping states weather the pandemic and avoid huge layoffs and cuts in services that could reverberate through the economy. Republicans were working to limit the power of the Federal Reserve to bail out businesses, municipalities or other institutions in the future.
  • With Congress running out of time to cement a stimulus agreement and avoid a government shutdown on Friday, leaders remained optimistic that they would ultimately find a resolution, although their wrangling could bleed into the weekend.
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  • That includes a new round of stimulus payments, probably $600, to American adults; a temporary infusion of enhanced federal jobless aid of around $300 per week; and rental and food assistance. It would also revive a loan program for struggling small businesses and provide funding for schools, hospitals and the distribution of the vaccine.
  • President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has chosen Representative Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico, to lead the Interior Department, according to people familiar with the decision, a move that would make history: If confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first Native American appointed to a cabinet secretary position.
  • As head of the agency that oversees 500 million acres of public lands, including national parks, oil and gas drilling sites, and endangered species habitats, she would be entrusted to restore federal protections to vast swathes of land and water that the Trump administration has opened up to drilling, mining, logging and construction.
martinelligi

California Activates 'Mass Fatality' Program As State Sets New Virus Records : Coronavi... - 0 views

  • Confirmed coronavirus infections and virus-related deaths are soaring in California, the nation's most populous state, setting new records as hospitals struggle to keep up with the onslaught of cases.
  • On Thursday, California reported 52,281 new daily confirmed coronavirus cases and 379 new virus-related deaths, according to state data. This brings the state's total number of cases to more than 1.7 million, with 21,860 deaths since the pandemic began.
  • The spike in new infections, which began in October, is being largely blamed on Californians ignoring safety protocols and socializing with others, according to The Associated Press.
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  • The coronavirus is putting a strain on Americans and the nation's hospital systems across the county. On Wednesday, the U.S. reported its highest number of single-day fatalities since the pandemic began, with more than 3,600 succumbing to virus-related complications.
martinelligi

William Barr To Step Down As Attorney General Before Christmas : NPR - 0 views

  • Attorney General William Barr, an outspoken proponent of conservative values and an expansive view of presidential power, will leave office before Christmas, President Trump announced in a tweet Monday afternoon.
  • Earlier this month, Barr said the DOJ found no evidence of widespread election fraud, directly contradicting President Trump's baseless claims that the election was stolen by Democrats. Ahead of the election, Barr had stood by the president, repeating his unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting was ripe for fraud.
  • In less than two years on the job, Barr emerged as perhaps the most divisive attorney general in recent memory for a series of controversial actions, including his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on the Russia investigation and his repeated false claims about the integrity of mail-in voting.
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  • But his legacy will forever be stamped by his role leading the forceful removal of peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park in the summer of 2020 to clear the way for a presidential photo op in front of a nearby church.
  • Republicans and Democrats alike had hopes that Barr could bring leadership and a steady hand to the department, which had found itself in the middle of Washington's brutal partisan battles since the 2016 election.
  • Graham and other supporters said criticism over Barr's actions was unmerited and politically driven. Backers say he has not done anything outside the realm of what any other attorney general would do.
  • But behind the scenes, Barr grew frustrated by the president's tweets and public statements about the department's ongoing cases, people close to Barr say. The attorney general was sensitive about the perception that he wasn't an independent officer but a political factotum of the president.
  • In an interview with ABC News a few days later, Barr said the president's tweets were making it "impossible" for him to his job. He urged the president to stop publicly discussing the department's work.
martinelligi

VIDEO: When Will You Get Your COVID-19 Vaccine? : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views

  • At the national level, vaccine distribution is organized by Operation Warp Speed, the government's initiative to support the development of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The federal government has invested in and pre-purchased hundreds of millions of vaccine doses from several of the drug companies working on vaccines against COVID-19.
  • The federal government has pledged to eventually provide COVID-19 immunization free of charge to any of the 330 million people in the U.S. who want to participate. In the first few weeks and months after authorization, however, the supply of any vaccine is expected to be limited.
  • The CDC recommends prioritizing health care facility workers who could get exposed to COVID-19 on the job — including doctors, nurses, nursing home aides, cafeteria workers and janitorial staff. The staff and residents of long-term care facilities (such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities) should also be prioritized in the first phase of vaccination, the CDC says, because that population accounts for only 6% of cases but 40% of COVID-19 deaths.
martinelligi

Ethiopian Refugees From Tigray Flee To Sudan : NPR - 0 views

  • The heat is unrelenting in the middle of a December day in eastern Sudan. It's hard to find any shade in this arid landscape. It's mostly dust and boulders — and, for now at least, it is the temporary home of tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees who have crossed the border to flee the fighting in their country.
  • Last month, the Ethiopian government launched a military offensive against a rebellious regional government. The ensuing conflict has killed hundreds, and almost 50,000 Ethiopians have crossed the country's northwestern border into Sudan. It's a refugee crisis that is straining the humanitarian infrastructure in the country. The United Nations refugee agency has appealed for $150 million to help cope with the situation.
  • "[Militias] were slaughtering people with knives and machetes," she says.
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  • They say members of Fano, a youth militia loyal to the government, rampaged through Mai-Kadra killing ethnic Tigrayans. The government has repeatedly disputed that narrative, saying it was a youth militia affiliated with the Tigrayan rebels who killed ethnic Amharas, Ethiopia's second-biggest ethnic group.
  • She says she now feels safe in Sudan but worries about her future and about the bleak living conditions at the camps. Humanitarian workers are struggling to keep up with the flow of refugees and to build up an infrastructure to accommodate them.
  • In Ethiopia, the situation appears more severe. The United Nations has said that refugees in the Tigray Region have received no aid since conflict started. The more than 96,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray, who have fled war and repression in the past two decades, the U.N. says, have run out of food rations. The U.N. has received reports that refugees are leaving camps because of violence.
  • The war is a power struggle between Ethiopia's new government and its old one; it's about what the Ethiopian political system will look like in the future. But in interviews with refugees, the war is about loss. Everyone, no matter which side they're on, is mourning. Some have lost loved ones; many others have lost homes. And every inch of the refugee camps in Sudan has become about grasping at some semblance of what they had before the war.
martinelligi

Biden Immigration Plan May Fall Short Of Activists' Demands : NPR - 0 views

  • Immigration activists are gearing up for a fight to push President-elect Joe Biden to do more to counter the measures taken by President Trump that made life more uncomfortable for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the county.
  • But some immigrant-rights groups like the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, Movimiento Cosecha and United We Dream want more. "We need advocates and people who wake up every day thinking about how they're going to fix the system so that people like myself and people like my family and others who are seeking refuge here have the ability to have a better life,"
  • Their requests include returning undocumented immigrants wrongfully deported under Trump, stopping detention of asylum seekers, expanding the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and using other executive powers like Temporary Protected Status to protect more undocumented immigrants.
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  • While Biden promised to reverse Trump's most restrictive immigration policies, he did not include immigration among his four top priorities: the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.
  • Biden is largely expected to go back to the priorities that were in place at the end of the Obama administration.
  • the Biden administration must be careful not to unwind Trump's restrictions too quickly before getting their own processing system in place — or they will risk a new surge at the border.
martinelligi

Most California Residents To Be Under Stay-At-Home Orders Through Christmas : NPR - 0 views

  • With coronavirus cases surging and capacity inside intensive care units rapidly nearing dangerously low levels, nearly 85% of California residents will soon be under sweeping new restrictions as part of the state's latest salvo to bring the pandemic under control.
  • The order was triggered after ICU capacity in the two regions fell below a 15% threshold announced this past week by Gov. Gavin Newsom. In Southern California, the rate fell to 12.5%, while in the San Joaquin Valley it had dipped to 8.6%, state health officials announced Saturday.
  • The latest directive will be felt in nearly every aspect of daily life. It asks residents to stay at home "as much as possible" and for "100 percent masking" when they are outside. Restaurants will be open only for takeout or pickup, while businesses such as hair and nail salons, movie theaters and bars will be closed. Playgrounds, museums and zoos will be closed as well.
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  • Schools that are currently open will be allowed to continue in-person learning
martinelligi

Trump Sets Up Sale Of Oil Drilling Rights In Arctic Wildlife Refuge : NPR - 0 views

  • In a last-minute push, the Trump administration announced Thursday that it will auction off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in just over a month, setting up a final showdown with opponents before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
  • After finishing its environmental review in August, the Trump administration then launched a "call for nominations" on Nov. 17. That's a 30-day window for oil companies to confidentiality tell the government which pieces of land they'd like included in a lease sale. But the BLM did not wait 30 days before going ahead and scheduling a sale date, which will take place just two weeks before President Trump leaves office.
  • Already, conservation and tribal groups, as well as a coalition of 15 states, have filed lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's environmental reviews. And drilling opponents blasted Thursday's announcement of the lease sale.
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  • President-elect Biden has said he opposes drilling in Alaska's Arctic refuge. But if leases are finalized before he takes office Jan. 20, they could be difficult to revoke.
  • The coastal plain, also known as the 1002 Area, covers about 1.6-million-acres, making it roughly the size of Delaware.
  • "There is huge uncertainty now as to how quickly oil consumption and natural gas consumption will peak and start to decline," says Philip Verleger, a Colorado-based energy economist. "I do not think ANWR is ever going to be produced."
martinelligi

A COVID-19 Vaccine Has Come Quick, But Expert Says That's No Reason To Fear It : Corona... - 0 views

  • Two COVID-19 vaccines are moving toward an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, and both have been found to be more than 94% effective. Yet despite progress on the vaccine front, misinformation continues to spread, fueling doubts among skeptics who may decide not to take the vaccine at all.
  • Larson spoke with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly about what's driving this anxiety, why the speed of the development process for a COVID-19 vaccine should not be taken to mean its unsafe and how she counsels talking to someone who is hesitant about vaccination.
  • There are many steps in the process of development, and in this case we had new funding mechanisms that made it possible to start quicker. We've shortened some of the administrative processes. We have new technologies, but the steps involving safety have not been shortened.
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  • I always try to find some point where we can agree. Find some common ground. And there's usually something. It's very rare you don't find something you could talk about and start the conversation in a place you agree.
martinelligi

Study: COVID-19 Reached U.S. Earlier Than Health Officials Previously Thought : Coronav... - 0 views

  • The coronavirus was present in the U.S. weeks earlier than scientists and public health officials previously thought, and before cases in China were publicly identified, according to a new government study published Monday.
  • This discovery adds to evidence that the virus was quietly spreading around the world before health officials and the public were aware, disrupting previous thinking of how the illness first emerged and how it has since evolved.
  • The authors said the report will help broaden health officials' understanding of the pandemic as the world continues to grapple with COVID-19, adding that the research might help in identifying what resources and public health interventions are needed to stop serious illness and death from COVID-19.
martinelligi

Justice Barrett's Vote Could Tilt the Supreme Court on Gun Rights - The New York Times - 0 views

  • For years, conservative justices have said the court disfavors the Second Amendment. Justice Amy Coney Barrett is likely to shift the balance, and a case to help her do so may be knocking.
  • ThanksgivingWelcome to Homeownership
  • In dissent, Judge Stephanos Bibas, a former law professor appointed to the court by President Trump (and the author of a scathing decision on Friday rejecting the president’s challenge to the election results in Pennsylvania), wrote that the framers of the Constitution would not have allowed lawmakers to bar felons convicted of nonviolent crimes from owning guns.
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  • That dissent was written by Justice Barrett when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago. The law forbidding people with felony convictions from owning guns, she wrote, should not apply when the crimes in question were nonviolent.
  • Before Justice Barrett’s arrival, the court’s four most conservative justices had repeatedly written that the court should return to the subject of the Second Amendment
martinelligi

Covid-19 News: Live Updates - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The first shots of the two vaccines are likely to go to certain groups, including health care workers, essential workers like police officers, people in other critical industries and employees and residents in nursing homes. On Tuesday, a panel of advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet to determine how to allocate initial supplies of vaccine.
  • The first injections may be given as early as Dec. 21 if the process goes smoothly and approval is granted, Stéphane Bancel, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview.
  • Moderna’s application is based on data that it also announced on Monday, showing that its vaccine is 94.1 percent effective, and that its study of 30,000 people has met the scientific criteria needed to determine whether the vaccine works. The finding from the complete set of data is in line with an analysis of earlier data released on Nov. 16 that found the vaccine to be 94.5 percent effective.
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  • The drugmaker Moderna said it would apply on Monday to the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its coronavirus vaccine for emergency use.
  • According to Transportation Safety Administration data, about 800,000 to one million people passed through T.S.A. checkpoints each day in the days before and after the holiday — far lower than the same period last year, but likely far higher than epidemiologists had hoped to see.
  • There were 91,635 current hospitalizations as of Nov. 28, according to the Covid Tracking Project, almost twice as many as there were on Nov. 1, and triple the number on Oct. 1.
  • California on Sunday became the first state to report over 100,000 cases in a week, according to a New York Times database.
martinelligi

Iranian Leaders Vow Retaliation For Killing Of Nuclear Scientist : NPR - 0 views

  • One day after the assassination of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist, the country's leaders have made clear they intend to retaliate for a slaying they blame on Israel.
  • Rouhani, meanwhile, directly named Israel as the suspected perpetrator of what Iranian authorities described as a daytime ambush in Absard, a district east of the Iranian capital.
  • Many observers are now concerned there may be further violence in store — though the American presidential election may have affected the calculus for Iranian leaders.
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  • "In these uncertain times, it is more important than ever for all parties to remain calm and exercise maximum restraint in order to avoid escalation which cannot be in anyone's interest,"
martinelligi

Fauci Warns Of 'Surge Upon A Surge' As Coronavirus Hospitalizations Increase : Coronavi... - 0 views

  • The number of hospitalizations from the coronavirus set yet another record on Saturday, as cases continue to surge and public health officials warn of a worsening outlook with the holiday season just weeks away.
  • Across the country, medical personnel are now bracing for what they fear will be a new wave of infections after millions of Americans ignored the advice of public health experts and traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday. Already, hospital resources are being stretched thin, with many institutions reporting a dire shortage of beds and personnel to handle the influx of new patients.
  • The rising hospitalization numbers reflect an overall rise in infections. The U.S. hit another tragic milestone Friday, when over 200,000 daily cases were reported for the first time. More than 13 million people have been infected in the U.S. since the pandemic began, and nearly 267,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
martinelligi

How Joe Biden Might Try To Make Masks A Less Partisan Issue : NPR - 0 views

  • In the months since Memorial Day, face masks have become a potent symbol of the political polarization over the coronavirus in the United States. The division shows up in polling. Gallup found that while a clear majority of Americans say they're "highly likely" to wear masks in public indoor spaces, Republicans are less likely to do so.
  • "Some straight talk: There are two extreme and distinct camps out there," said Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, as he announced new COVID-19 restrictions last week. "Most of the public isn't part of either camp. And by the way, neither am I. Masks work. Please wear them."
  • For his part, Biden has consistently worn a mask and has stuck to a consistent message. He tweeted last week: "Wearing a mask isn't a political statement — it's a patriotic duty."
martinelligi

Biden Transition: Trump Administration To Allow Biden Protocols To Begin : NPR - 0 views

  • President-elect Joe Biden can finally, formally begin his transition to power, after the General Services Administration on Monday officially ascertained the Democrat's victory over President Trump.
  • "Contrary to media reports and insinuations, my decision was not made out of fear or favoritism. Instead, I strongly believe that the statute requires that the GSA Administrator ascertain, not impose, the apparent president-elect."
  • The decision means that Biden's team should now have access to government office space, will be able to formally meet with Trump administration officials to discuss policy issues, and will receive some $7.3 million to pay staffers and other expenses.
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  • Trump also said Monday his "case strongly continues." The president has not conceded the election despite numerous legal setbacks and the certification of votes in some key states, including Michigan on Monday.
  • The GSA decision was the second major blow on Monday to Trump's effort to overturn the election's result. Earlier in the day, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers voted to certify Biden's win in the state.
martinelligi

FDA Grants Emergency Authorization For COVID-19 Treatment From Regeneron : NPR - 0 views

  • The treatment combines two antibodies — casirivimab and imdevimab — and administers them together by IV. In a clinical trial of about 800 people, the combination was shown to significantly reduce virus levels within days of treatment.
  • "Due to advancements in quality care, information for medical personnel to better treat patients, and life-saving vaccines rapidly advancing toward approval faster than ever before, the United States has never been more prepared to confront the coronavirus and save millions of lives as we are now," White House spokesman Michael Bars said in a statement.
  • Regeneron's drug, called REGEN-COV2, "is designed to mimic what a well-functioning immune system does by using very potent antibodies to neutralize the virus," Regeneron's chief scientific officer, Dr. George Yancopoulos, said in a statement. "We are encouraged that no variants resistant to the cocktail were identified in the clinical trial analyses to date."
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