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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | What We Know About The American Russia Has Detained On Spying Allegations The U.S. and Russia are beginning the new year much like they ended last year — with a note of friction. Russia is detaining an American and is accusing him of spying. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | The nerdiest New Year's party in the solar system happened 4 billion miles from Earth, where a lone, intrepid spacecraft just flew past the farthest object humans have ever explored.
There was no champagne in this dim and distant region, where a halo of icy worlds called the Kuiper belt circles the outermost edge of the solar system. There were no renditions of "Auld Lang Syne" (in space, no one can hear you sing).
But there was a minivan-size spacecraft called New Horizons. And there was a puny, primitive object called Ultima Thule, a rocky relic of the solar system's origins, whose name means "beyond the borders of the known world."
At New Horizon's birthplace, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, scores of space scientists gathered Tuesday morning to wait for the signal confirming that New Horizons had survived its encounter with Ultima Thule.
The call came at 10:31 a.m. Eastern: The spacecraft's systems were working. Its cameras and recorder were pointed in the right direction.
"We have a healthy spacecraft," mission operations manager Alice Bowman announced. "We have just completed the most distant flyby. We are ready for Ultima Thule science transmission - science to help us understand the origins of our solar system."
At mission control, and in an APL auditorium where the rest of the science team was watching, people jumped from their seats and broke into cheers. The borders of the known world had just been pushed a little bit farther.
It had been 30 years since the mission to the outer reaches of the solar system was first conceived. Thirteen years since New Horizons launched from Kennedy Space Center, speeding away from Earth faster than any probe had traveled before. Three years since the spacecraft's famous and fateful encounter with Pluto, when it revealed the distant dwarf planet to be a complex and colorful world. And it had been 10 hours since 12:33 a.m., when the spacecraft was supposed to make the closest approach to its target.
"At this moment, while we're speaking, New Horizons is taking its riskiest observation," project scientist Alan Stern said in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Most other Earthlings had already counted down til midnight and popped their champagne, but at APL, the assembled scientists, their family and friends were still waiting. Way out in the Kuiper belt, they knew, Ultima Thule was growing larger in New Horizon's field of view, glowing like a full moon.
"Thirty seconds to flyby," Stern said. "Are you ready? Are you psyched? Are you jazzed?"
Twenty seconds. Ten. And then Stern raised his hand in the air while confetti fell from the ceiling. The crowd cheered.
"New Horizons is at Ultima Thule," Stern proclaimed.
Or so he hoped. The spacecraft was still too busy conducting observations to send any information home. When it did beam out a status update, the immense distance from Ultima Thule meant it took more than six hours for the light to reach Earth.
The scientists did not know until Tuesday morning whether New Horizons had succeeded. It will take days to resolve the first sharp images, and months for all the data collected during the encounter to finally stream down.
But somewhere out in the dusky, dusty expanse of the Kuiper belt, New Horizons is already speeding further into the distance, Ultima Thule shrinking in the rear view.
This is the biggest and busiest moment for the New Horizons team since its spacecraft soared past Pluto three years ago, capturing detailed close-up photos of the distant dwarf planet.
Helene Winters, the mission's project manager, said spacecraft operators have been subsisting on chocolate and sleeping on air mattresses at the APL so they could make the most of every minute until New Horizons reached its target. Navigators kept a watchful eye out for potential hazards, which can be hard to spot in this faraway corner of the solar system.
Asked whether she thought she would be able to sleep Monday night, Winters laughed. "Ask me again tomorrow."
The following morning, New Horizons's operators sat in mission control, anxious. Data from the Deep Space Network, a chain of radio antennas NASA uses to communicate with distant spacecraft, was displayed on their screens.
Bowman sat with her hands folded, leaning toward her computer.
"In lock with telemetry," Bowman said.
In the APL auditorium, where the rest of the team and their families were watching, the crowd erupted in cheers.
Next came the status check: Planning - nominal. Power - green. Solid state recorders - pointed right where NASA wanted them. The spacecraft was healthy. New Horizons had done it.
Bowman grinned.
It was a fitting end to a celebration that began the night before. The scene at APL was somewhere between a New Year's party, a scientific conference, and a comic book convention. Researchers gave talks about the history of the early solar system. Scientists and their guests munched on crudités in a room lit with sparkling blue lights. Small children up long past their bedtimes scurried between chairs and sneaked cookies from the buffet.
"This is like a dream come true," said Chuck Fields, a podcast producer from Indianapolis who drove nine hours to attend Monday's event. He was dressed in a blindingly bright blazer and tie bearing images of planets, galaxies and the sun. His wife, Dawn, wore matching pants.
"You can find anything on Amazon," Dawn said with a laugh.
"Alan (Stern) said this was going to be a celebration," Chuck added. "So it was like, okay, let's celebrate!"
Benjamin Holder, 5, pored over an image of New Horizons and the distant rock it was due to encounter.
"I used to have a cat named Toolie," Benjamin said. "But the Thule rock that you're looking for is not named after my cat."
His uncle, Erik Lessac-Chenen, stifled a laugh. As a member of the spacecraft's optical-navigation team, he had devoted the better part of the past year and a half to tracking down that "Thule rock."
NASA nodded to the (entirely coincidental) timing of the encounter by counting down to 12 a.m. and distributing plastic cups of champagne. Then astrophysicist Brian May, better known as lead guitarist for the rock band Queen, debuted a song he wrote for the occasion.
"I'm not nervous," Stern said, with minutes to go until the encounter. "No, no, no. We'll find out how it all went in the morning." | null | 0 | -1 | null | 72 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Chicago journalist Steven Lattimore worked in several smaller markets before returning to work as a reporter at WBBM-Ch. 2 in the early 2000s, not long before he began a career teaching journalism at Columbia College in Chicago.
Lattimore was hired in 2000 to work on the launch of a newscast that teamed young reporters with some more experienced journalists as part of a newscast that covered the day’s news but also tried to dig deeper, former colleague Carol Marin said.
“He was part of that effort,” Marin said. “He was always trying to make it better, refine what he was doing and always open to suggestions. His openness would make him a really great professor.”
Lattimore, 55, died of natural causes Dec. 20 after collapsing in his Lansing home, according to his son, Jeffrey Wright.
After graduating from Columbia in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he worked in various broadcasting markets including Greenville, Miss., Juneau, Alaska, and Tupelo, Miss. In the mid-1990s, while working at WAVY-TV in Norfolk, Va., he met Lisa Parker, then a cub reporter but now known for her work at NBC-Ch.5 in Chicago.
In Norfolk, Lattimore “cut such a big impression in that newsroom,” Parker said.
“Just motivational,” she said of Lattimore. “A larger-than-life Chicago-born and raised journalist.”
Much of his motivational style was built around what Parker called “Lattimorisms,” short sayings delivered with intensity, Parker said. “Whose team are you on?” he would challenge colleagues he thought needed to step up their game. If he thought someone was not properly preparing or attending to business, the phrase was “they’re coming over the walls.”
Parker said Lattimore used those sayings with his kids, in the newsroom and in the classroom. His son confirmed that, saying one of his dad’s favorites if he thought someone wasn’t trying hard enough was to ask, “You know who’s hiring? McDonald’s is hiring.”
Parker said it was effective motivation for a group of people working together, but not really cheerleading. “More like a surly coach,” she said. “You loved him, but you also wanted him to be on your side.”
Lattimore began life on the West Side of Chicago, then moved with his family to Englewood. He went on to Columbia after graduating from Leo Catholic High School.
In addition to his staff reporting work, he took on many freelance projects, including special news reports and documentaries. One of those was a 2003 special report on AIDS in Africa. That reporting took him to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to report on conditions and governmental issues related to the epidemic.
He also did extensive work reporting on recovery efforts in the New Orleans area following Hurricane Katrina. Closer to home and more recently he was a general assignment reporter for Lakeshore Public Radio, based in Merrillville, Ind.
Eric Scholl, interim chair of Columbia’s cinema and television arts department, said Lattimore taught in the school’s broadcast journalism program, bringing his real-world experience to his students.
Lattimore taught a class in creating a television news package and a basic class in broadcast journalism. “People who came to those classes found him to be incredibly inspiring because he brought what he did best, which was chasing down news stories and reporting them, to the classroom,” Scholl said.
He used some of those Lattimorisms in his classes. “He was demanding,” Scholl said. “And he also was preparing them for life in a newsroom which is deadline-based and which expects quality. He expected people to deliver.”
In 2010, Kiera Ellis was a student in Lattimore’s class on putting together a news package, she said. “He was very direct and honest with us about what the real world of journalism looks like,” said Ellis, now director of external affairs for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Ellis said the class is the second in the broadcast journalism track and Lattimore challenged his students to evaluate their commitment to the profession. “He’d say, ‘if you don’t want to do this, if you can’t make it here, McDonald’s is always hiring,’ ” she said.
Parker said Lattimore was a teddy bear with a huge and caring heart. “I think he found his peace and his calling in Chicago in the classroom,” she said. “Influencing the next generation of reporters was really important to him.”
In addition to his son, Lattimore is survived by his mother, Barbara; his wife, Robin Tatum-Lattimore; a daughter, Maya Tatum-Lattimore; another son, Aaron Wright; two sisters Angela and Beverly; a brother, Kermit; and three grandchildren.
Services were held.
Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 38 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Kim Jong Un Wants New Summit With Trump, But Also Issues A Veiled Warning
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ahn Young-joon/AP Ahn Young-joon/AP
In a New Year's address on Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he is eager to renew face-to-face negotiations with President Trump after a bilateral summit in June, but suggested that he could ramp up nuclear weapons development if the U.S. does not end economic sanctions against Pyongyang.
In the speech broadcast on state television, Kim said he is ready to meet Trump at any time to forge an agreement "welcomed by the international community."
However, if the U.S. did not "keep its promise made in front of the whole world" and instead "insists on sanctions and pressures" on North Korea, "we may be left with no choice but to consider a new way to safeguard our sovereignty and interests."
After months of bitter acrimony and public name-calling between the two leaders, Trump and Kim met in Singapore in June. At the summit, the president hailed a new beginning in U.S.-North Korea relations and an end to Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Since then, the North has halted nuclear and ballistic missile tests. However, the summit produced little in the way of concrete progress toward denuclearization.
Kim urged the U.S. to take "sincere measures and corresponding action" in response to North Korea's peace initiatives.
In October, the president said he wanted to hold a fresh summit with Kim after the midterms, but did not specify a date.
"It is the unwavering position of our party and the republic's government and my firm will that the two countries as declared in the June 12 joint statement ... take steps to establish a permanent and stable peace regime and push toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Kim said.
Although Kim's address — which is an annual tradition in North Korea — is aimed mainly at a domestic audience, international observers parse his words to get a sense of the secretive Pyongyang regime's intentions.
As The Associated Press notes, North Korea "over the past months has accused Washington of failing to take corresponding measures following the North's unilateral dismantlement of a nuclear testing ground and suspension of nuclear and long-range missile tests."
North Korea expert Bob Carlin, speaking at a conference call run by 38North.org, noted the possible significance of Kim proclaiming that the North is no longer producing nuclear weapons.
"This thing about halting production is new," said Carlin, a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.
"It was in my mind quite extraordinary all the attention [Kim] paid to the question of negotiations with the United States," Carlin said.
Following the June summit, reports based on satellite imagery suggested that North Korea was continuing or expanding its ballistic missile production.
Just a month after the Trump-Kim summit, The Wall Street Journal, citing analysis satellite images, said Pyongyang was expanding a facility for building solid-fuel ballistic missiles. Separately, The Washington Post, also citing satellite data, said the North was stepping up ICBM production.
Earlier this month, CNN reported evidence that a North Korean missile base near the Chinese border was also being expanded. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 19 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Video
UN peacekeeper Major Michelle Kayanda from Zambia tells us about life as a female peacekeeper in the Central African Republic.
Video produced by Trystan Young
Listen to BBC World Service's Newsday programme on the iPlayer. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | France Rang In The New Year Under A Cloud Of Heavy Security Security forces were deployed nationwide to protect against New Year's Eve violence. The Champs Elysees in Paris was under extra watch after Yellow Vest protesters said they would join revelers. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | As 2019 Begins, Trump And Democrats Disagree Over Government Funding President Trump welcomed the new year with a promise of a further fight with the Democrats, who have a plan to re-open the government that does not include funding for his border wall. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 1 |
polusa | 2019_1_test.csv | 52,942,341 | 0 | 2019_1_test.csv0 53010215
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | After Synagogue Shooting, Pittsburgh Rabbi On What Keeps Him Hopeful Noel King talks to Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who was leading the Tree of Life Synagogue community in prayer when a gunman opened fire, killing 11 people. He says hate will not close his synagogue. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Here's What Could Be Ahead In The Russia Investigations In 2019
Enlarge this image toggle caption Evan Vucci/AP Evan Vucci/AP
The Russia imbroglio is barreling into another year that could deliver even more revelations and political heat than the last one — and maybe even a big finale.
The criminal cases of several key players are unresolved, new charges could be ripe and House Democrats are set to sweep into Washington with huge ambitions about how to use their investigative and oversight powers now that they wield the majority.
Here's what you need to know:
Big cases still unresolved
Three of President Trump's former top aides are waiting to be sentenced after reaching plea agreements with prosecutors.
Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, first was convicted in a bank and tax fraud trial in Virginia, then pleaded guilty to avoid a second federal trial in a separate conspiracy case in Washington, D.C.
But the Justice Department said its cooperation agreement with Manafort had broken down over what the government said were lies Manafort had told investigators.
Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced early in 2019. Will he and his lawyers try to salvage their relationship with prosecutors so that the government asks the judge in the case to be lenient?
And, if not, will Manafort's sentencing hearing include new details about the core question that special counsel Robert Mueller's office is investigating: Did Trump's campaign conspire with the Russians who attacked the 2016 presidential election?
Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was scheduled to be sentenced in December, but a federal judge in that case instead delayed the decision.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Now Flynn has no date scheduled for his sentencing. Instead, he and the government have been ordered to give Judge Emmet Sullivan a status update in March.
This means Flynn may give even more cooperation to the Justice Department beyond the more than 60 hours of meetings and other materials he's provided so far.
In fact, he could appear as a witness for the prosecution in a case the government is making against two of Flynn's former business partners, who have been charged in a scheme to smear an enemy of the Turkish government.
So if all goes well for Flynn, serving as a government witness may be the cherry on the sundae and make the judge more inclined to show leniency in his ultimate sentence.
Trump's former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates, so far has no sentencing date scheduled. He's been cooperating with prosecutors since he pleaded guilty to charges connected with Manafort and served as the star witness against his former mentor in the Virginia trial last summer.
The Justice Department has asked a judge not to schedule a sentencing hearing for Gates because he's cooperating with so much of its work, much of which still appears to be behind the scenes. When, or if, Gates is sentenced in 2019 could be an important milestone in the investigation.
New charges?
There have been many suggestions about new charges by the special counsel's office.
They might target political consultant Roger Stone — who has told NPR he thinks he'll be indicted — or associates of his such as the conservative commentator Jerome Corsi — who told MSNBC he walked away from a plea deal offered by Mueller's team. Stone and Corsi both deny they engaged in any wrongdoing.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Drew Angerer/Getty Images Drew Angerer/Getty Images
In December, the House intelligence committee voted to release to the executive branch a transcript of Stone's testimony before the panel. That move fueled speculation that Mueller might be preparing to charge Stone with lying to Congress, although there's still been no official indication.
Stone and his associates are thought to be potential connections between Trump's campaign and WikiLeaks, which released an avalanche of data stolen by Russian intelligence from political targets including the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman.
Stone and Corsi have suggested they won't give evidence against Trump and Stone has invoked his 5th Amendment privilege not to submit to an interview or provide documents in response to requests from the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
If Stone, Corsi or others in this part of the Russia story line are ultimately charged, that could mean high-profile new trials in New York City or around Washington, D.C.
And if the Justice Department charges WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, after suggestions that may happen, that trial also could be huge — assuming the United States could get Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has taken refuge.
Enlarge this image toggle caption J. Scott Applewhite/AP J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The new House Democratic majority
Congress has been a dominant force in the Russia imbroglio all along, but 2019 may bring a big change in tenor.
The House Republicans who have criticized the Justice Department and Mueller's office will lose their ability to convene hearings and subpoena witnesses. The House Democrats who've sought to defend DOJ and the Mueller investigation will gain those powers as they arrive in a new majority.
One incoming Democratic chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, fired a warning shot well before the new Congress was even seated: He announced that he has sent 51 letters to "the White House, multiple federal agencies and others requesting full compliance" with existing requests for information by Jan. 11.
Cummings and Democrats are likely to make more new requests of their own.
California Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House intelligence committee, says he wants to re-awaken the panel's investigation into the Russian attack on the 2016 election, one Republicans closed in spring 2018.
The finding was that there was no wrongdoing by the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and that contacts between people involved and Russians were, at worst, "ill advised."
Schiff and Democrats have called that a whitewash, and they say they want answers from many of the people involved and to open new lines of inquiry. Specifically, Schiff has said he wants to find out whether Deutsche Bank was involved with any payments to Trump.
The German finance giant has figured in discussions about the Russia investigation for months but it isn't clear about where it may fit into the broader story. It has paid heavy fines to regulators after admitting its role in past money laundering and some investigations appear to be ongoing.
New boss at DOJ
Enlarge this image toggle caption Drew Angerer/Getty Images Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The new year also is expected to bring a new ultimate boss for Mueller's investigation. President Trump has nominated former Attorney General William Barr to return to the Justice Department to take the place of Jeff Sessions.
Barr is expected to have a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee early in the year and it may prove contentious.
Barr has been a public skeptic about the Mueller investigation — at least the part of it that may be focused on possible obstruction of justice by the president. Barr submitted some written criticisms to the administration and, in the past, echoed Trump's criticisms of former FBI Director James Comey.
Democrats likely will press him about whether he can be involved with the Russia investigation or whether he must recuse himself, as Sessions did. Critics also want acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to recuse, but as the Justice Department explained, he opted not to take himself out of the matter.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has continued to oversee the investigation anyhow, it emerged. Rosenstein was asked about Barr at a press conference before Christmas.
He said that whoever was involved with the Russia investigation — whether it was him, Mueller, Barr or another Justice Department leader — it would continue to be handled "appropriately."
The final report?
Jan. 1 marked the 595th day since Mueller was appointed. No one outside of his office has any clear idea about how much longer his team's work may go.
Trump's attorneys said they believed it would be wrapped up by Thanksgiving — of 2017. When attorneys on the Mueller team left in October of 2018, people took that as a sign the investigation might be cooling down.
Predictions that "Mueller is tightening the net" or "this is the fourth quarter" haven't gone away — and yet the special counsel investigation hasn't, either.
All that's clear about the road map to the end of the special counsel investigation is this: Justice Department regulations compel Mueller to file a confidential report to the attorney general at the conclusion of his team's work. (Another regulation requires the attorney general to provide certain notifications and reports to the leadership of the judiciary committees in both the House and the Senate.)
Many in Washington expect the Mueller report also to go to Congress and become public, perhaps even making the same kind of imprint as earlier reports about President Bill Clinton or the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
How or even whether that happens, however, remain big questions — along with what any report could mean for Trump. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 58 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | As 2019 Begins, Trump And Democrats Disagree Over Government Funding
President Trump welcomed the new year with a promise of a further fight with the Democrats, who have a plan to re-open the government that does not include funding for his border wall.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
On this first day of 2019, the power in Washington is about to shift. On Thursday, Democrats take the House majority. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
On the eve of the new year, Democrats announced a new plan for reopening the federal government, but Republicans have already signaled they are unlikely to accept that deal. I'm joined now by NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe. Hey, Ayesha.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what can you tell us about the Democrats' spending package? What does it look like? Is it - is it an earnest effort at a compromise?
RASCOE: Well, I'm sure they would say it is, but as with many things these days, Republicans would probably disagree. So it is some concrete action where up until now, you've had a lot of talk. Basically, it would provide a year of funding for most departments and agencies that are currently shut down. And then for the Department of Homeland Security, where this whole fight over the wall is happening, it would just provide this stop-gap fund - spending bill, basically pushing the issue back to February.
But there is no wall or barrier funding in this. So it's not clear it's going to go anywhere. Trump has said you cannot have border security without a wall, and Republicans in the Senate say they're not going to bring anything up that Trump won't sign. So even if this passes, it's not clear that - that anything will happen with the legislation that Democrats pass.
MARTIN: But they have to negotiate. I mean, they have to find a way out of this moment. Does either side have any leverage left?
RASCOE: So at this point, it seems like what the White House is focused on is trying to pressure the Democrats with the shutdown, with people being out of work saying, look, you have to come to the table, and you have to kind of show that you care about border security by giving us this money for the wall. But, of course, President Trump is making this case after Republicans lost the House in the midterms. So his leverage is greatly diminished.
And the Democrats, they're coming in kind of with the wind at their backs in the House at least. And they're saying, look, we want border security but not a wall. And they - which they don't think is effective - and they are also going to throw into President Trump's face that he said that he would own a shutdown and he would take responsibility for it and that Mexico is supposed to pay for this, even though Trump is saying that Mexico is going to indirectly pay for this.
But as you said, something has to give. There - there are hundreds of thousands of people not getting paid. And so the question is who is going to give, and what that might look like.
MARTIN: President Trump closed out 2018 with an interview with Fox News. And we've got a clip of what he said. Let's play that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'm in Washington. I'm ready, willing and able. I'm in the White House. I'm ready to go. They can come over right now. They could have come over any time. I spent Christmas in the White House. I spent New Year's Eve now in the White House. And, you know, I'm here. I'm ready to go.
MARTIN: Sounds like he's just sitting there, waiting for the Democrats to come over and knock on the door. Presumably, he's in the mood to negotiate?
RASCOE: Well, he's in the mood to talk. I don't know about negotiating. That's the question. Like, what is he going to give the Democrats that would make them come to the table? Because what the White House has been offering has not been enough. So what can they give to them that would make the Democrats want to make a deal? That's the question.
MARTIN: NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, thanks so much.
RASCOE: Thank you.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 62 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Russia Arrests U.S. Man In Moscow On Suspicion Of Spying
The State Department confirms the man has been arrested and detained by Russian authorities. Steve Inskeep talks to former ambassador Daniel Fried about options for a Trump administration response.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to start this hour with a story of that U.S. citizen who's being held in Russia on suspicion of spying. The State Department has confirmed the detention but hasn't provided further details. Russia's security services have given a name, though, Paul Whelan. Today, his family released a statement saying he is not a spy. They said they learned of his arrest on Monday morning from the media and are, quote, "deeply concerned for his well-being."
Let's ground this development in what we do know about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. To do that, we've reached Ambassador Daniel Fried. He's a veteran U.S. diplomat with a focus on Russia and Central Europe. He's served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Ambassador Fried, thanks for being here.
DANIEL FRIED: Thanks for the opportunity.
MARTIN: So I guess it would be helpful if you could help us understand how the Trump administration - or any administration, for that matter - needs to navigate a moment like this.
FRIED: The Trump administration Russia hands are now waiting to hear from the Russians about when they can have access to - to Paul Whelan. The Russians are obligated, under bilateral treaties, to give us access, let - in other words, let somebody from our embassy in Moscow see him. So they're waiting for that. It's supposed - it ought to happen today at the latest.
So they're waiting to see, and they're hoping the guy will be released quickly. Otherwise, this could devolve into another U.S.-Russia standoff. We've had these in the past.
MARTIN: The Trump administration will be waiting for details of any alleged crime that Paul Whelan has committed.
FRIED: Well, that's right, details and, more likely, invented details. I would be skeptical of anything the Russians said about Paul Whelan.
MARTIN: What kind of leverage does President Trump have at this point?
FRIED: Well, the - there is some speculation that the Russians arrested Paul Whelan as some kind of retaliation for the arrest and conviction of Butina, the Russian woman accused of basically violating U.S. law by representing Russian interests with the NRA and other organizations - Maria Butina.
So it's possible that a la the Cold War, the Russians are interested in some kind of swap. But the administration, at least people I spoke to yesterday, raised the issue of Pastor Brunson. That is the American cleric in Turkey who was falsely arrested and triggered some Russian - some U.S. pressure on the Turks before he was released. So it may be that the Trump administration pushes back against the Russians in other areas.
Relations are bad right now. And we're going to see how the admin - the Trump administration responds. But this feels like the beginning of a Cold War-style standoff rather than some legitimate - legitimate arrest of a U.S. spy.
MARTIN: You mentioned other areas where the U.S. could push. What are they?
FRIED: Well, the U.S. weapon of choice these days, the kind of default mode, is sanctions. There are - there are still - despite our existing sanctions on Russia right now, there's a lot of headroom to escalate if we chose to do so. We chose sanctions against the Turks, who are, after all, an ally. And we even imposed some. And as I said, people in the Trump administration yesterday were talking quietly about that option. We will see what they do. But they don't seem in a - an accommodating mood.
MARTIN: So here we are, Ambassador. You and I have spoken several times over 2018, different machinations of the U.S.-Russian relationship. What are you thinking as you look down the pike at the new year? How would you describe the relationship between the U.S. and Russia at this moment? And how can you see it evolving, especially as we anticipate the end of the Mueller probe?
FRIED: U.S.-Russia relations are as bad now as they have been since before the end of the Cold War, either the early 19 - early, mid-1980s, before the Reagan-Gorbachev relationship developed in a positive way, or even the early 1960s with standoffs over Berlin.
So relations are bad. I see no sign that they're going to get particularly better. And the reason is not this U.S. administration or the last one. The reason is Vladimir Putin. His conditions for good relations with the U.S. are those no U.S. administration can or should accept.
MARTIN: Daniel Fried, distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. Ambassador Fried, thank you, as always. We appreciate it.
FRIED: Thanks for the opportunity. Happy New Year.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 65 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Examining Whether The GOP Tax Cuts Are Working Out It's been one year since Congress cut business and personal taxes. Noel King checks in with Richard Rubin, tax policy reporter at The Wall Street Journal, to gauge their effect on the economy. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | France Rang In The New Year Under A Cloud Of Heavy Security
Security forces were deployed nationwide to protect against New Year's Eve violence. The Champs Elysees in Paris was under extra watch after Yellow Vest protesters said they would join revelers.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
France rang in 2019 under a cloud of heavy security. In the wake of a recent terror attack and social unrest that spread out across the country, France's president, Emmanuel Macron, used his annual address to call for unity. Jake Cigainero has the report from Paris.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC, CHEERING)
JAKE CIGAINERO, BYLINE: The excitement of the hundreds of thousands of people on the Champs Elysees on New Year's Eve was a stark contrast to another crowd that has gathered here each week since November, the French yellow vests, a national movement that started as a protest against a fuel tax, but has morphed into a larger expression of middle- and working-class discontent. The French interior minister said more than 10,000 police and soldiers had been deployed in Paris for the celebration.
France has been on high terror alert since the shooting at the Christmas market in Strasbourg last month, and the yellow vests had also called for a peaceful gathering on the Champs Elysees. But their protests have frequently turned violent. However, there were no clashes with police or any major incidents on New Year's Eve.
Earlier in the evening, President Emmanuel Macron gave the presidential New Year's address in a televised speech. Standing in his office in the Elysee Palace, Macron said his three wishes for 2019 are truth, dignity and hope.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON: (Speaking French).
CIGAINERO: Macron says, "for me, the lesson of 2018 is we want to change things in order to live better, and we want to innovate in our plans for democracy, politics, economy and the environment. But," he said, "to do this, France cannot close itself off to the world."
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MACRON: (Speaking French).
CIGAINERO: "It would be dangerous if our situation drives us to ignore the world around us. Quite the opposite," Macron says. He said the government will continue to roll out his ambitious reforms, including in education and taxes, some of which sparked the yellow vest movement more than a month ago.
After a particularly violent day of protests last month, Macron tried to calm tensions by canceling the fuel tax that caused the uproar in the first place. He also raised minimum wage. Following his concessions, there was a significant drop-off in yellow vest numbers, but protesters have continued to gather, although fewer and fewer each week.
Just a few weeks ago, more than 280,000 people had turned out across France, according to authorities. But over the weekend, only a few hundred yellow vests gathered in Paris. However, yellow vest organizers say they plan to return in full force in January. Post-holiday protest will be an indicator of how much steam the movement really has left. For NPR News, I'm Jake Cigainero in Paris.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 34 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | TSA Moves Toward Enlisting More Floppy-Eared Dogs
The agency's administrator told the Washington Examiner that the agency is phasing out pointy-eared dogs in favor of floppy-eared dogs, which seem to go over better with passengers.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Happy New Year, I'm Rachel Martin. And like a lot of you, I was in airports over the holidays. And at least once I was sniffed out by a TSA dog, which was fine. And I don't remember if the dog had pointy or floppy ears. But apparently, it matters. The TSA is moving towards more floppier dogs. That's according to the agency's administrator, who told the Washington Examiner that floppy-eared dogs seem to go over better with passengers. Safety first, but I guess it helps if they're cute too. It's MORNING EDITION.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 17 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | North Korean Leader Addresses Policy Issues In New Year's Address Kim Jong Un declared that --while denuclearization is still his goal — his nation may have to follow a "new path" if the U.S. insists on unilateral action on that issue. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 1 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | New Calif. Law Requires Documents On Police Shootings Be Made Public
At least one city has approved the destruction of that paperwork before the deadline. The Inglewood City Council voted to destroy more than 100 police records at the police chief's request.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to California, where a new state law is going into effect today, a law that will require police to make documents related to police shootings public. But at least one city has given the OK for that paperwork to be destroyed before the deadline. From member station KPCC in Los Angeles, Frank Stoltze reports.
FRANK STOLTZE, BYLINE: The city of Inglewood sits just west of Los Angeles, has about 100,000 residents and 180 police officers. In early December, its city council voted to destroy more than 100 police records at the request of the police chief. He said in a memo that the files were no longer needed nor legally required to be kept. The council's resolution also said they were taking up valuable space.
These are some of the department's most sensitive files on officer shootings, uses of force and other internal affairs investigations and date back as far as 1991. Many would have become public for the first time today under a new state law designed to make policing in California more transparent.
That law also opens to the public files on officers who've lied or engaged in a sexual assault while on duty. The ACLU's Peter Bibring says Inglewood's decision to destroy the files can only mean one thing.
PETER BIBRING: This last-minute push to shred documents rather than allowing them to become public under California law almost certainly means those documents would show problems that management doesn't want the public to see.
STOLTZE: Calls to the police department and mayor went unreturned. Inglewood acted legally. The new California law doesn't require police to keep records beyond current requirements. That's five years for shootings. Attorney Milton Grimes has represented the families of people shot by police in this LA suburb.
MILTON GRIMES: Old records tell us sometimes what people are thinking and doing and whether there's a pattern. And we cannot better this police department unless we're able to show that there's a bad pattern.
STOLTZE: The U.S. Justice Department identified some of those patterns when it found in 2010 that the department lacked clear use of force policies and oversight, following the shooting of three unarmed people in four months.
Inglewood is retaining its most recent shooting records in keeping with state law. That means Trisha Michael will have access to files regarding the shooting of her twin sister and sister's boyfriend. But she says the dozens of other families of people shot or beaten by Inglewood police will be deprived a chance at the truth.
TRISHA MICHAEL: There's a lot of unsolved, mind-bothering questions people still think about. You know, this is the opportunity for people to go back and try to figure out what happened.
STOLTZE: Not in Inglewood, which appears to be the only city in the state that decided to erase large parts of its shooting past. For NPR News, I'm Frank Stoltze in Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF KULPA AND J'SAN'S "OUT OF TOWN")
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 36 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | California Housing Development Is A 'Disaster Waiting To Happen' California suffered devastating wildfires in 2018. But cities and counties are still allowing subdivisions to stretch out into the suburban edges with the highest risks of wildfire. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | N.Y. Swears In New Attorney General After A Tumultuous Year For The Office
Enlarge this image toggle caption New York State Office of the Attorney General New York State Office of the Attorney General
The state of New York has a new attorney general and she is, literally, like no one who has ever held the office before.
Democrat Letitia James was sworn in as New York's 67th Attorney General late Monday in a ceremony at the state capitol in Albany. James, 60, is the state's first black attorney general and the first woman ever elected to that state-wide office.
In a statement, James said it was the highest honor to officially begin her time as New York's attorney general and that she "will never waiver" on upholding the promise to "use the rule of law to protect the rights and advance the interest of all New Yorkers." She's slated to participate in an inauguration ceremony later in the day on Jan. 1, according to her office.
James, who is a long-time New York City politician, replaces Democrat Barbara Underwood, who was appointed to the post when former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned last year after multiple women came forward to accuse him of physical and verbal abuse.
Schneiderman, a Democrat who took a prominent spot as an advocate of the #MeToo movement when he pursued legal action against Harvey Weinstein for the movie mogul's alleged sex crimes, was accused by four women of non-consensual physical violence in a May 7, 2018, New Yorker article. As NPR previously reported, Schneiderman resigned from the New York attorney general post though denied all of the allegations.
In November, a prosecutor announced that after an "exhaustive review" of the facts, Schneiderman would not face criminal charges.
For all the different perspectives James brings to the office, aggressively pursuing the Trump administration is one thing she does have in common with her predecessors. And she's made her feelings about the president very clear, calling Trump an "illegitimate president" and that her decision to run was "about that man in the White House who can't go a day without threatening our fundamental rights," according to The New York Times.
Her victory in November drew the ire of President Donald Trump, who accused her of running her election campaign on a "GET TRUMP agenda."
The Times reports that James will continue with the lawsuit Underwood filed against the Trump Foundation, and that she may also look into whether Trump has violated the Constitution's emoluments clause.
But first, now that she's sworn in, James plans to tour around New York and host information meet-and-greets with constituents, according to a statement from her office. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 14 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | News Brief: Government Shutdown, Spying Charges, North Korea It's Day 11 of the partial government shutdown, and there's no end in sight. Russian authorities arrest an American on spying charges. North Korea's leader has given his annual New Year's Day address. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 3 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | North Chicago School District 187 is on track to refinance its debt, which could lead to $150,000 to $200,000 in savings each year moving forward.
The new debt would refinance the remainder of the $43 million in bonds taken out in 2010 at a lower interest rate, Superintendent John Price said. Like those 2010 bonds, this new debt earmarks specific revenue streams instead of guaranteeing the loans through property taxes.
North Chicago District 187 used the military impact aid it receives from the federal government to pay off the 2010 bonds and plans on using it for the refinanced debt as well, Price said.
The district receives extra money from the federal government to mitigate the impact of Naval Station Great Lakes, which sits on land the school district can’t tax but still brings in students for the district to educate.
The district’s two governing boards are set to decide in January whether to move forward with using just those dollars to repay the refinanced debt or to also include state aid, Price said.
The district’s bond advisors have said the additional revenue stream would make investors feel more confident and could lead to lower interest rates, Price said.
The bonds will be sold immediately after the January meeting, and depending on the market, the district could see its annual payments decrease about $150,000 to $200,000, he said.
Those savings will be revisited in the classroom, by helping the district maintain its current offerings, adding more social workers or reducing class sizes, Price said.
North Chicago District 187, which has been under state control since 2012, received an extra $3.3 million from the state to help balance its budget last year, Price said. The additional help meant the district ended the year with a surplus, which was saved in the district’s reserves and helped boost the district’s bond rating.
Moody’s Investors Service, one of the three main agencies that gives credit ratings to companies and local governments, gave a Ba1 rating this fall to the district’s $43 million in existing debt, a one-step improvement that means the debt is still of medium investment grade quality.
It is unclear whether the district will receive the additional state aid again, and so the district tends to budget pretty conservatively, according to Price.
emcoleman@tribpub.com
Twitter @mekcoleman | null | 0 | -1 | null | 14 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | A U.S. Marine was shot and killed Tuesday morning inside the Marine Barracks on Capitol Hill in Southeast Washington, prompting a District of Columbia police investigation.
Two officials with knowledge of the investigation said that it appears the Marine was struck by an accidental discharge from another Marine's weapon.
Authorities cautioned the investigation is in its beginning stages.
No arrests have been made and police classified the case as a "death investigation," an indication that, at least for now, investigators do not believe a crime was committed. The shooting occurred about 5 a.m. A Marine Corps spokeswoman, Capt. Colleen McFadden, said she could only confirm that the victim did not suffer "a self-inflicted injury."
The name of the victim, described as in his early 20s, was not made public on Tuesday. Police, who lead all death investigations in the District, said they were reaching out to the victim's relatives. The military typically makes names of deceased members public 24 hours after next of kin have been notified.
A District police report says the Marine was shot about 5:05 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 5:59 a.m. at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
As a result, the post canceled its traditional New Year's Day serenade, scheduled for Tuesday, a formal affair in which an audience is invited as the Marine Corps Band plays for the commandant at his home.
In a statement from Marine Barracks Washington, Col. Don Tomich, the commanding officer, said officials are taking care of the victim's family and friends "during this challenging time."
The statement confirmed the Marine died but did not provide any other details, including the victim's age, assignment or in which building the shooting occurred on the installation that is also known by its address, "8th and I."
"No threat to local residents exists," the statement says.
The Marine Barracks Washington, founded in 1801 by President Thomas Jefferson, is the oldest active Marine Corps post. Its personnel perform both ceremonial and security missions in the District and is home to the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps and the Marine Band, as well as the site of the Home of the Commandants. The post is south of Eastern Market and next to a newly sprouted night life and restaurant district called Barracks Row.
Tuesday's shooting marks at least the second time in six years that a Marine suffered a gunshot wound at the compound.
In June 2018, a Marine standing guard at the home of the commandant suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was hospitalized. The Marine survived what at the time was describe by officials as a negligent discharge of a weapon.
In 2013, a 19-year-old Marine from South Dakota suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head. Authorities said they believed Lance Cpl. Cody S. Schoenfelder accidentally shot himself in the building where the commandant lives.
Authorities did not describe the circumstances that led up to Tuesday's fatal shooting nor what caused them to believe it might be accidental.
The Washington Post's Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.
First published in the Washington Post | null | 0 | -1 | null | 26 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | To The Dismay Of Free Speech Advocates, Vietnam Rolls Out Controversial Cyber Law
Enlarge this image toggle caption Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty Images Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty Images
A new cybersecurity law has gone into effect in Vietnam that puts stringent controls on tech companies operating inside the country and censors what its citizens read online.
The decree, which was passed by the National Assembly in June, requires companies such as Facebook and Google to open offices in Vietnam, store local user data and to hand over information if the government asks for it. It would also require social media companies to remove any content authorities deemed offensive or "toxic."
Opponents of the law say it could hurt Vietnam's economic prospects and allow the one-party communist government to further crack down on dissent and free speech.
The industry group Asia Internet Coalition told Reuters that the law would hurt Vietnam's ambitions for economic and job growth.
"These provisions will result in severe limitations on Vietnam's digital economy, dampening the foreign investment climate and hurting opportunities for local businesses and [small-to-medium-sized enterprises] to flourish inside and beyond Vietnam," AIC Managing Director Jeff Paine said. Both trade and foreign investment are critical components of Vietnam's economy.
In a statement released shortly after it was passed, Clare Algar, director of global operations at Amnesty International, said the law's sweeping power "has potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression" in Vietnam.
"This vote means there is now no safe place left [in Vietnam] for people to speak freely," she said.
The Vietnamese government says the law is necessary to fight cybercrime such as cyber-espionage, and prevent cyberterrorism. Maj. Gen. Luong Tam Quang, chief of Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security, said in a news conference in early November that the new cyber law brings Vietnam in line with other countries that also want to protect their domestic users' information and that the law was "within the ability of business."
Internet companies have a year to comply, despite pleas from tech firm, reports Reuters. U.S. lawmakers even made an appeal to Facebook and Google to not comply with the law.
"The cyber security law does nothing to protect internet users," 17 members of the Congressional Vietnam Caucus wrote in a letter. "Rather, it is a blatant effort by the Vietnamese government to crackdown on online expression by enlisting the help of leading technology companies."
Google declined to immediately comment to NPR about its plans now that the law has been implemented. Facebook also did not immediately return a request from NPR for comment. However, earlier this month Facebook said it "remains committed to its community in Vietnam and in helping Vietnamese businesses grow at home and abroad," Voice of America reported.
A growing and youthful middle class in Vietnam is a draw for digital companies, Bloomberg reports. Almost half of Vietnam's population uses the Internet, according to the World Bank, and the country has more than 60 million Facebook users. The new cybersecurity law comes into effect a little over a year after Vietnam deployed a 10,000-strong cyber unit to combat "wrong" views. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 21 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | President Donald Trump has invited congressional leaders to the White House for a briefing on border security, the first face-to-face session involving Republicans and Democrats as the partial government shutdown entered its second week.
The briefing will occur one day before Democrats take control of the House and Trump gets his first taste of divided government. It was unclear whether the Wednesday session would break the budget impasse - now in its 11th day - as Trump had demanded billions of dollars for a U.S.-Mexico border wall and Democrats have rejected his request.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security will brief the top two leaders in each party in the House and the Senate.
In the last televised White House session on Dec. 11, Trump said he would take responsibility for a shutdown over the wall as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said they would not support wall funding.
The shutdown began Dec. 22 and there has been no sign of direct negotiations involving Republicans, Democrats and the White House. Members of Congress left Washington while Trump remained at the White House.
On Thursday, House Democrats plan to use their new majority to vote through measures that would reopen nearly all of the shuttered federal agencies through the end of September, at funding levels Senate Republicans have previously agreed to. Those spending bills contain scores of priorities and pet projects for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The Democratic proposal holds out one exception: The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border security, would keep its current level of funding, with no new money for a border wall. The plan would also extend the department's budget only through Feb. 8, allowing Democrats to revisit funding for key parts of Trump's immigration policy in a month.
The president has asked for $5 billion in border money, far beyond the $1.3 billion that Democrats plan to vote through this week. Trump, who tweeted his opposition to the plan on Tuesday, has reiterated that he had no plans to back down.
Word of the White House briefing was first reported by Politico.
Trump used Twitter on the first day of 2019 to insult a retired U.S. commander in Afghanistan as a dumb loudmouth, sing the praises of an ultranationalist former aide and tell America to chill and "ENJOY THE RIDE."
Trump's cheery tone in an all-caps tweet welcoming the new year did not last the morning.
"HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE HATERS AND THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA! 2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE, GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!" Trump wrote.
That may have been before he read all his mail. Trump went on to bash retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal over remarks McChrystal made Sunday, calling the president untruthful and immoral.
"General" McChrystal got fired like a dog by Obama. Last assignment a total bust. Known for big, dumb mouth. Hillary lover!" Trump opined.
McChrystal was forced to resign in 2010 after making disparaging comments about Obama administration officials in a Rolling Stone article. He had been a rising star in the Army, a decorated expert on counterinsurgency tasked with turning around the stalemated Afghanistan war.
Although McChrystal's comments were made on ABC two days prior, Trump did not comment publicly until he responded Tuesday morning to a tweet from conservative commentator Laura Ingraham.
Ingraham had tweeted an article Monday titled "Media Didn't Like McChrystal Until He Started Bashing Trump." Catching up to it Tuesday, Trump evidently agreed.
The president's very first words of the new year were an endorsement of a pro-Trump book by former White House aide Sebastian Gorka. The former Breitbart writer, a frequent television defender of the president, either quit or was fired in 2017 partly in protest that Trump's first major speech about the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan made no mention of what Gorka called "Radical Islam."
"Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a very good and talented guy, has a great new book just out, "Why We Fight." Lots of insight - Enjoy!" Trump wrote.
Trump has been holed up in the White House instead of vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, as planned, because of the government shutdown now in its second week and his standoff with Democrats over funding for a border wall.
"One thing has now been proven. The Democrats do not care about Open Borders and all of the crime and drugs that Open Borders bring!" Trump tweeted Tuesday morning.
In a second tweet, he said: "The Democrats, much as I suspected, have allocated no money for a new Wall. So imaginative! The problem is, without a Wall there can be no real Border Security - and our Country must finally have a Strong and Secure Southern Border!"
Trump also tweeted congratulations to newly inaugurated Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a populist conservative who like Trump was elected to shake up the status quo.
First published in The Washington Post | null | 0 | -1 | null | 46 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | One answer is that last fall many investors were looking at a couple of quarters of high growth, and thinking that this might be the start of an extended boom. Serious economists warned that this growth was a temporary lift — a “sugar high” — driven by the shift from fiscal austerity to what-me-worry deficit finance. But at least some people bought into the Trumpist line that tax cuts were going to produce an enduring rise in the growth rate.
Since then, however, it has become clear that the tax-cut boost was indeed a one-time thing. In particular, there has been no sign of the promised surge in business investment.
At the same time, Trump’s trade war may be starting to take a toll. In particular, the uncertainty may be deterring business spending. Whether new tariffs would hurt or help your business, it now makes sense to hold off on plans to expand, until you see what he actually does.
Finally, economic troubles in the rest of the world — several major European economies are quite possibly in recession — are filtering back to the U.S.
Now, most economists aren’t predicting a recession here, for good reason. The truth is that nobody is very good at calling turning points in the economy, and calling a recession before it’s really obvious in the data is much more likely to get you declared a Chicken Little than hailed as a prophet. (Believe me, I know all about it.) But the bond market, which doesn’t worry about such things, is looking remarkably grim. I leave the possible political implications as an exercise for readers. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 13 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Ireland's Momentous Change: Abortion Services Are No Longer Banned
Ireland is a country that's politics were once dominated by the Catholic Church and now abortion is legal. The change marks a significant milepost in the country's political evolution.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today marks an historic moment in Ireland. For the first time, women will have broad access to legal abortions. The government passed a bill legalizing abortions last month. For more on the change, we turn NPR's London correspondent, Frank Langfitt, who's been following this. Hi, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hi. Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: Good morning. So describe the scope of this. How is life different today for women in Ireland than it was yesterday?
LANGFITT: Well, for pregnant ones, it's very different. For the first time beginning this morning, women can call in to a government help line for advice on a pregnancy and receive guidance on obtaining an abortion. They'll also, obviously, get other guidance. There are lots of ways to handle a pregnancy, of course.
If they're nine weeks pregnant, they'll be given the name of the nearest general practitioner who provides abortion services. So far, there are about 165 clinics in the country that have signed up to participate. And they'll offer an abortion pill. The names are actually not being published, of these clinics, because there is fear, certainly from the clinics, of being targeted by anti-abortion groups.
If a woman is more than nine weeks pregnant, she can then be referred to the nearest hospital to provide abortion procedures. There are just nine that have agreed so far to do that. But still, even though the numbers are not enormous in terms of the opportunities for women and where to go, it is a huge shift in the country. You got to remember, Rachel, as recently as 2016, at least several thousand women travelled from Ireland to England and Wales to have an abortion.
MARTIN: All right. So is the government putting any limits on abortions?
LANGFITT: It is. It is. You know, it's still - there's still a very strong conservative streak in - in, certainly, parts of the country. And abortion is now generally forbidden after 12 weeks. So, for instance, if an abortion were to fail and a woman's pregnancy exceeds 12 weeks, it would be illegal to attempt a second abortion, except for certain circumstances, particularly involving risk to the life of the mother, health of the mother. Doctors who carry out an abortion after 12 weeks, in certain circumstances, that aren't covered could face a fine or imprisonment of up to 14 years.
MARTIN: So Ireland is obviously tethered to the Catholic Church, very socially conservative, has been anyway. So this is a huge change. Can you just remind us the arc of this?
LANGFITT: Sure.
MARTIN: How did it come to be?
LANGFITT: Yeah, so back in May, politically, there was a landslide vote to repeal a constitutional amendment in Ireland that had banned nearly all abortions. But really, this goes back over the decades, and it's the culmination of years of dramatic social, economic and religious change in the country.
Now, you remember not so long ago, Ireland was poor. But the economy took off in the 1990s and drew back a lot of Irish emigrants, people who'd been in U.S., Australia, England. They came back with more liberal ideas.
The biggest factor though has been the collapse of the authority of the Catholic Church. And, of course, this has happened, to a certain degree, in the United States following the child sex abuse scandals. Also in Ireland, you had these church-run workhouses that took children away from unwed mothers. The church tried to cover up a lot of these things.
And so over four decades, what you've seen is mass attendance has gone from about 80 percent, and now it hovers around 35 percent.
MARTIN: And the pope was there recently, right? I mean, did you see evidence of the church's waning influence through his visit?
LANGFITT: He was. I was there for the visit, and it was - Rachel, it was night and day. It was so striking. Back in '79 when Pope John Paul II went, there was - to Ireland, there was an outpouring of affection. He held mass in Dublin for 1.2 million people.
This time out, Pope Francis, it was just a small fraction of that. And in the crowds, they weren't that thick in Dublin, waiting for the popemobile. And even - you could even hear some boos from victims of clerical sex abuse who'd come out to protest the church - so a huge shift in Ireland in terms of the authority and the affection for the Catholic Church.
MARTIN: NPR's Frank Langfitt for us this morning. Thanks so much, Frank.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEQUERBOARD'S "DUNES")
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 67 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | The family of an American arrested in Russia on espionage charges said on Tuesday that he is innocent and that they fear for his safety.
Paul Whelan, a 48-year-old retired Marine, was detained last week by Russia's domestic security services while he was in Moscow for what they described as a "spy mission."
"We are deeply concerned for his safety and well-being," his family said in a statement. "His innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected."
Whelan's twin brother, David, said Paul was in Moscow for a wedding of a fellow Marine, which took place at an upscale hotel in central Moscow on Dec. 28, the day he was detained.
"It is inconceivable to me that he would have done anything to break the law in Russia," David Whelan told The Washington Post.
By Russian law, foreigners found guilty of spying on Russia face between 10 and 20 years in jail.
A member of the U.S. government should have visited Whelan in detention by now, according to Russia's obligations under the Vienna Convention, which dictates that consular access must be provided within a 72-hour window from the time of arrest.
But the U.S. government shutdown may have hindered this process, said a person familiar with Whelan's case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
Although U.S. embassies are not closed during the shutdown, they are working with reduced staff. The person added that it could take months before the case is resolved.
Whelan's arrest comes as tensions between Washington and Moscow continue to escalate over issues including election interference, the crises in Syria and Ukraine, and the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.
Whelan works as the corporate security director for BorgWarner, an automotive parts supplier based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, that has business contracts in Russia.
"BorgWarner has been in contact with the relevant U.S. Government authorities in order to help our employee and the U.S. government," the company said in a statement.
Whelan is a regular visitor to Russia. According to Whelan's brother and Russian acquaintances reached by The Post, he has been visiting Russia since 2007.
He enlisted in the Marines in 1994 and rose through the ranks to become a staff sergeant, serving two tours in Iraq, in 2004 and 2006, according to military records released to The Post. Whelan was discharged for bad conduct in 2008 after being convicted of several charges related to larceny, according to the records.
Several Russian acquaintances described Whelan as a friendly man who greatly appreciated Russia and had a basic command of the language.
An acquaintance in St. Petersburg said the pair had made plans to meet in that city around Jan. 1, but contact with the American abruptly stopped on the day of his arrest.
The timing of Whelan's arrest - coming weeks after Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina pleaded guilty to Kremlin interference in the United States - has raised questions about a potential swap. The two countries do not have an extradition treaty.
The arrest and guilty plea by Butina, 30, has become a sharp thorn in the side of U.S.-Russian relations. Butina is the first Russian national to be convicted of seeking to influence U.S. policy in the 2016 election campaign. Moscow has gone to great lengths to paint her as a political prisoner.
First published in the Washington Post | null | 0 | -1 | null | 26 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Shutdown-Delayed Immigration Cases Could Further Strain Backlogged System
The partial government shutdown, in part prompted by disagreement over federal immigration policy, means most of the country's immigration courts are not hearing cases.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Among the sweeping consequences of the ongoing federal government shutdown, immigration courts across the country are closed. From member station WHYY, Laura Benshoff reports that diverted cases could further strain a system already plagued by backlogs.
LAURA BENSHOFF, BYLINE: Immigration attorney Matthew Archambeault spent the last day of 2018 tidying his office in Philadelphia. But he hasn't yet called up clients to tell them they don't have to show up in court.
MATTHEW ARCHAMBEAULT: I kind of mentioned it to a few of the clients that, you know, there might be a chance that their hearings are not going to go forward because of the government shutdown. I don't like to get into it too much to them because it can be confusing.
BENSHOFF: Confusing because a delay in their hearings doesn't actually have anything to do with the facts of their cases. And the government shutdown could end at any time. When the government shut down, the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees federal immigration courts, sent out a notice. Immigration cases scheduled for hearings during the shutdown would be reset. The exception are the courts that work with immigrants who are already detained.
Those federal employees are working with no guarantee they'll be paid. Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge in Los Angeles and the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, says this is all happening when these courts already face a heavy workload.
ASHLEY TABADDOR: We don't even have the time to be able to adequately really consider each case, much less have to spend extra time to think about what we're going to do with all the cases that have to be rescheduled.
BENSHOFF: She says she alone has about 2,000 pending cases. Nationally, the immigration court backlog is more than 700,000 active cases. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University keeps stats on federal immigration. It estimates it would take 3 1/2 years to clear that backlog. Tabaddor says adding time to the backlog isn't what President Donald Trump says he wants. His demands for funding for a border wall partially contributed to the impasse.
TABADDOR: It's quite ironic to shut down the immigration court because of the differences on immigration.
BENSHOFF: As for cases themselves, it's hard to generalize if a delay is good or bad. Here's attorney Matthew Archambeault again.
ARCHAMBEAULT: Every immigration attorney who's honest will tell you that sometimes getting cases delayed is the best thing for the case.
BENSHOFF: For example, if an immigrant doesn't have a good claim, a delay may mean more time in the U.S. or maybe qualifying for another form of immigration status in the interim. Or stretching out a case can hurt. It may keep someone who qualifies for asylum now from getting it later, for example, if immigration policies become more restrictive. In either situation, Archambeault says he's telling his clients to be prepared to go to court just in case. For NPR News, I'm Laura Benshoff in Philadelphia.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 37 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Federal Workers, Burdened By Shutdown, Face Trump-Ordered Pay Freeze
Enlarge this image toggle caption J. Scott Applewhite/AP J. Scott Applewhite/AP
President Trump on Friday issued an executive order freezing the salary rates for federal workers. The order wasn't a surprise but for some 800,000 federal employees furloughed during the partial government shutdown or working without pay, it was like rubbing salt into a wound.
The president had been telegraphing his plans for a pay freeze for almost a year — first in his annual budget and again last summer in a letter to Congress. Trump pointed to the government's dire fiscal situation. Thanks to tax cuts and increased spending, the deficit has ballooned to more than a trillion dollars this year.
Trump's order only applies to civilian workers. Military personnel, who are covered under a separate funding measure, will receive a 2.6 percent raise.
Jacqueline Simon of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, tells NPR that "the military deserve their pay increase, and we're strongly in favor of it. And, in fact, for many, many years — decades, even — there was parity between the civilian and the military workforces in terms of their pay adjustments."
For the last two years, though, paychecks for civilian government workers have grown more slowly than those in the military. And the president's pay freeze would widen that gap if it stands.
Federal workers shouldn't give up hope — there is a chance they could get a raise. The Senate has already OK'd a pay raise for federal workers of 1.9 percent. And the new Democratic House is expected to follow suit. The president would have to sign the measure.
The Washington Post reports: "Federal employee pay raises are effective at the start of the first full biweekly pay period in the new year, which in this case will start Jan. 6. There will not be much time for enactment of a raise by then, but raises have been paid retroactively — most recently in 2003 and 2004, when agency funding also hadn't been resolved until after the start of the new year. In both cases, a raise had been paid by default in early January but was overridden by a larger one contained in a full-year appropriations bill." | null | 0 | -1 | null | 18 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un Kicks Off New Year With Address And A Warning To U.S.
In his New Year's Day address, Kim Jong Un said he's committed to denuclearization, but warned North Korea will take a "new path" if the U.S. maintains sanctions against his country.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Sitting in a leather chair in a wood-paneled room, North Korea's leader kicked off the new year with an address to his nation and a warning to the U.S. Kim Jong Un said he's willing to meet with President Trump a second time but threatened that if international sanctions against North Korea continue, he'll have no choice but to take a new path.
NPR's Anthony Kuhn joins us now from Seoul to talk about what this could mean. And, Anthony, since President Trump met Kim Jong Un in Singapore for that historic summit last year in June, the nuclear issue has been somewhat stalled. So can you tell us what new information you heard in Kim's speech?
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Actually, most of the speech was not about the nuclear issue. It was for a domestic audience, news about the economy. But he did repeat his pledge to denuclearize and mend fences with the U.S. Now, let's hear one of the more optimistic, upbeat parts of his speech.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SUPREME LEADER KIM JONG UN: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: "It is our party and republic's unchanging position and my unwavering will," he said, "to establish a new relationship between the DPRK and the U.S. that meets the demands of the new century and to establish a permanent, stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula and move towards complete denuclearization." By DPRK, he meant the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which is its formal name.
Analysts point out that there was actually something significant elsewhere in the speech. He said that North Korea would stop building atomic bombs, basically cap his country's nuclear program. But as you mentioned, there was also this warning that if the U.S. tries to sanction North Korea into submission or just runs out their patience, then all bets are off, and there could be a return to confrontation.
CORNISH: You mentioned a warning. Did Kim provide any specifics of what he wants from President Trump?
KUHN: I think it's pretty clear that he mostly just wants the meeting at this point, and we know this because North Korea has refused to engage in working-level talks with the U.S., particularly Mike Pompeo and U.S. special envoy Steve Biegun have basically been shut out. So analysts believe that North Korea is betting everything on a second summit with Trump, where they will try to manipulate him into making more concessions.
And the - North Korea's point has been pretty consistent in past months. They say, look, since the summit, we have dismantled some of our nuclear and missile testing facilities, and now we expect the U.S. to reciprocate by providing security guarantees and easing sanctions. The U.S. wants to start off as a first move by providing an inventory of all its nuclear assets, but North Korea refuses to do that.
CORNISH: What about the relationship with South Korea? The two leaders met, I think, about three times in the past year. Did Kim Jong Un say anything about South Korea in his speech?
KUHN: Yes. He talked about continuing the thaw in relations with South Korea. Now, at times, the U.S. has seemed nervous that this sort of inter-Korean rapprochement is getting out too far ahead of the nuclear issue. But lately, they seem to have had a change of heart. They seem to have decided that it doesn't really cost them anything at this point. There's only so far they can go with those sanctions still in place. And they hope that this will just improve the atmosphere and maybe make talks a little bit easier.
And that is why the U.S. gave its blessing to last week's groundbreaking on a project to connect railways between the two Koreas. And the U.S. says it will try to ensure that the sanctions that are in place do not prevent U.S. aid groups from delivering humanitarian assistance to the North.
CORNISH: It's interesting. I understand Kim talked about an end to U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises. And at the same time, the U.S. and South Korea failed to meet a deadline to renew a funding agreement for U.S. forces in South Korea, right? So there's this little dispute going on between the U.S. and South Korea. How does that affect this conversation?
KUHN: Well, these - the two sides were supposed to come up with a new agreement before the old one expired last night. But the U.S. reportedly wants South Korea to increase its contribution by 50 percent, and Seoul says no. The Trump administration wants all U.S. allies to pay more, and it's focusing on South Korea first. The South Koreans are also somewhat unnerved by the resignation of Defense Secretary Mattis because he was a consistent advocate for the alliance. It's not clear that the U.S. Congress would allow any sort of pullout of U.S. troops, but any sign that the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea is wavering has Seoul very concerned.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Anthony Kuhn in Seoul. Thank you for your reporting.
KUHN: Sure thing, Audie.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 54 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | After Synagogue Shooting, Pittsburgh Rabbi Is Still Hopeful
Noel King talks to Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who was leading the Tree of Life Synagogue community in prayer when a gunman opened fire, killing 11 people. He says hate will not close his synagogue.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, 2019 is going to be a year of rebuilding. In late October, members of that synagogue gathered for Shabbat service. Their prayers were interrupted by gunfire.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Good morning. We're coming on the air right now with breaking news for those...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MARTIN: Eleven Jewish worshippers have been killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. A man has been charged with hate crimes and could face the death penalty.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh has again revealed the ugly anti-Semitism that still exists in the United States.
MARTIN: In the aftermath, the synagogue's rabbi, Jeffrey Myers, vowed that hate would not close his building's doors. It's now been two months since that tragedy. In a conversation with our co-host Noel King, Rabbi Myers explained what has kept him hopeful.
JEFFREY MYERS: Such a outpouring of love and support from not just around the immediate community or even the United States, but from around the world. I'll give one example. There was a young boy who had his bar mitzvah also on October 27 in another synagogue. And upon his reflection of the horrific events of that day, he felt he needed to do something.
So he took some money that was gifted to him for his bar mitzvah and sent a donation to our synagogue as his way of connecting with us and sharing in his sorrow and at hoping for a brighter future. And I thought, wow. That just took my breath away. And to me, that's so uplifting.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: I wonder, though, over the past couple of months whether or not your perspective has changed at all on anti-Semitism in this country.
MYERS: I don't think my perspective has changed at all. Many felt that this sort of horrific massacre was inevitable at some point in the history of the Jewish community in the United States. It was going to happen. Many were surprised that it didn't happen, I guess, historically sooner than it did, but that it was going to happen at some point.
KING: You know, people will hear you say that there was a sense of inevitability, and they'll say, you know, no one should have to live like that. This is the United States of America. What do you say to people who don't understand what it's like to be in the United States and to know that anti-Semitism does exist?
MYERS: This one has probably the longest-running form of bigotry in existence in humanity because it's been around literally almost as long as the Jewish people have been around. I'd like to think in some, you know, rosy sort of view of the United States that our country was founded because people were escaping bigotry and prejudice in Europe and came to a new place to build a new life. And yet there's some disappointment there in that the hopes that people could escape those forms of bigotry didn't materialize. It still exists. Americans still preach words that wound and hurt fellow citizens.
KING: Rabbi, you've been advocating for political leaders and for people of all parties and all faiths to eliminate the word hate from their vocabulary. Why?
MYERS: When we use words of hate, to use that word only once, we're creating a more dangerous world because those words lead to actions such as the massacre that occurred in Tree of Life on October 27. So if one could just be careful and think about what they say and how they use their words, people may come to realize, wow, my words really have an impact. I can be really more careful about those choices.
KING: Having had time to reflect, I wonder do you have a message for the man who committed these murders?
MYERS: I think that's the first time I've been asked that question. To me, it's such an unconscionable act that it defies answers. I don't think that anything I could ask, I would find a suitable answer that would soothe my soul, ease my pain or burden. So I don't have anything that I would ask at this time. I don't know if I ever would.
KING: Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, thank you so much for being with us.
MYERS: A pleasure to have a conversation with you.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 53 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Sen. Warren's Timing Was Brilliant, Former Obama Adviser Says
Sen. Elizabeth Warren outlined a potential presidential bid Monday. Rachel Martin talks to Anita Dunn, an ex-senior adviser for President Obama, about how candidates can differentiate themselves.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Well, as we mark this new year, take note. We are now just 672 days away from the 2020 presidential election. Sorry about that. And already four Democratic contenders have announced they're either running or are considering running.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is the most high-profile of those. She announced yesterday in a video message to supporters that she is forming an exploratory committee.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELIZABETH WARREN: I'm in this fight all the way. Right now, Washington works great for the wealthy and the well-connected. It's just not working for anyone else.
MARTIN: The field of Democrats is likely to open up to two dozen names all told. So how can Democrats distinguish themselves from one another? We're going to ask Anita Dunn that question. Back in 2008, Dunn helped to distinguish Senator Barack Obama from the others running for the Democratic nomination. She served as the communications director for the presidential campaign, and she joins us now. Anita, Happy New Year.
ANITA DUNN: And a Happy New Year to you and to your listeners.
MARTIN: Thanks for being here. So what do you make of Senator Warren's timing? What are the benefits and the risks of getting out so early ahead of the rest of the crowd?
DUNN: I thought her timing was brilliant. Anytime you make news between Christmas and New Years, you basically have a clear field. Even with the government shutdown, it was still, I thought, a very strong way to end the year and begin the year for her.
I also thought that the way she did it is symbolic of the way people are going to do these announcements now, which is direct communication to their supporters. She also had a very clear message, which is going to be the chief differentiator for all these candidates in 2020.
MARTIN: I mean, you talk about what is differentiating her. In her message, she focused on economic inequality and really seemed to be tacking even more left. Is that how you think of her? Is that how she is positioning herself in this race?
DUNN: You know, I don't think - I don't think of it as left or right when it comes to Elizabeth Warren. She has a consistent record over the years of fighting the economic issues for the middle class. It is what propelled her into the administration - into the Obama administration. It is what propelled her into the United States Senate. And it is what has made her an effective United States senator.
How that translates to the presidential campaign level will be interesting to see for all of these candidates who are thinking about running. But for Elizabeth Warren, economic inequality and economic issues around the middle class and the lower-middle class, how people get taken advantage of, have been the propelling value of her political life.
MARTIN: Although, she's had - she's had a lot of publicity as of late for really getting into it with President Trump, so much so that some Democrats have warned that she has too much political baggage. And this is the challenge for Democrats - right? - how much to engage Trump in a back-and-forth about things that aren't related to policy. What are the pitfalls as you see them?
DUNN: The winner of the Democratic nomination will be the candidate who successfully figures out how to engage Trump, how to challenge Trump, how to take him on on issues and how to communicate with the voters who voted for him in 2016. And that's why this is going to be a primary process we need to have as Democrats because it's not clear the most effective way to do this.
In 2016, we saw an entire field of Republican candidates not do it effectively. Each Democrat is going to figure out their way, but the person who wins the nomination will be the person who figures this out.
MARTIN: Do you think Elizabeth Warren handled it right?
DUNN: I think everybody will have their fits and starts along the way. Everybody will kind of feel out what their style will be.
MARTIN: That sounds like a no.
DUNN: It's not a no. It's not a yes because I don't tend to think that things that happened in 2016 - 2018 are going to be determinative of who wins the nomination in 2020.
MARTIN: All right. It's a couple years away.
DUNN: It's a couple of years away. And every candidate is going to make their mistakes in this, Rachel.
MARTIN: I mean, it sounds like you like her though. I mean, there's a long list of people who are thinking about throwing their hat in the ring - Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, faces we know - Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders. Does she stand out in that crowd, or do you like someone else?
DUNN: I'm like a lot of Democrats. I like whoever can beat Donald Trump, and I - and I like almost - I like all the candidates who are running. I know many of them. I've worked with some of them. They're all very, in their own ways, effective, great public servants. And that's why this is going to be a very valuable primary process for the Democratic Party. We as a party have issues to sort out, and this primary process will allow us to do it.
MARTIN: Is it going to be dangerous to have so many in the field, though, to get these candidates all battered up before the general?
DUNN: No, I think the larger field means that it's harder for one candidate to become a lightning rod, at least at the beginning. And it gives some of the lesser-known candidates time to develop their messages. Having an open primary process is better for this party than a small group of people who ran. I didn't think 2016 was healthy for the party. I think this is healthier.
MARTIN: Anita Dunn, former communications director for Barack Obama. We appreciate your time this morning.
DUNN: Well, thank you for having me, and Happy New Year.
MARTIN: Happy New Year.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 82 |
polusa | 2019_1_test.csv | 52,937,803 | 0 | 2019_1_test.csv0 53010215
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | News Brief: Government Shutdown, Spying Charges, North Korea
It's Day 11 of the partial government shutdown, and there's no end in sight. Russian authorities arrest an American on spying charges. North Korea's leader has given his annual New Year's Day address.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is up to a new Congress in this new year to resolve a government shutdown. Roughly 800,000 federal employees are unsure when they'll be paid. President Trump demanded $5 billion to help build a wall on the border with Mexico. Democrats offered less for various border security measures. The president told Fox News last night he's ready to talk.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOX NEWS BROADCAST)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So I'm ready to go any time they want. No, we are not giving up. We have to have border security, and the wall is a big part of border security - the biggest part.
MARTIN: The president spoke amid confusion about what he really wants. His outgoing chief of staff, John Kelly, said the administration ditched the idea of an actual wall a long time ago, instead favoring fences, technology and more border guards. NPR's White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe joins us now. Ayesha.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Happy New Year.
RASCOE: Happy New Year. (Laughter).
MARTIN: I'm assuming you, like me, did not go out and party it up last night 'cause we had to talk about the news this morning. So thanks for making the sacrifice.
RASCOE: (Laughter). Yeah.
MARTIN: Democrats - let's get right to it. Democrats and Republicans have been stuck in this stalemate for a long time now. Thursday, Democrats take control of the House. What's expected to change?
RASCOE: Well, at this point it doesn't look like much will change. But you will finally have some concrete action where, up until now, we've had a lot of talk. So Democrats plan to put forward legislation that would fund the government. Basically, it will provide, like, a year of funding for most of the departments and agencies that are currently shut down. For the Department of Homeland Security, which is at the center of this wall fight, it would provide this stopgap spending bill. And that would basically just push the issue back to February.
But this does not include any wall or barrier funding. So it's not clear it's going to go anywhere. Trump is saying you cannot have border security without a wall. And Republicans in the Senate say they won't bring up anything that Trump doesn't support. So it seems like this impasse will remain, even if Democrats pass their bill in the House on Thursday.
MARTIN: I mean, what leverage is even left for either party?
RASCOE: Well, so right now it seems like the White House wants to use the shutdown to pressure the Democrats to come to the table. Basically, you have all of these people out of work. Something has to be done. President Trump is arguing that the government needs to be reopened and that Democrats need to show that they're concerned about border security. But he's making this case at the Democrats with Democrats set to take over the House after they gained all these seats in an election where Trump made immigration a top issue. So his leverage is not what it would have been before the midterm elections.
Democrats, of course, say they're offering money for border security, just not for a wall, and - which they don't see as effective. And they see it as a symbol of what they oppose about President Trump's immigration policies. And Democrats have their own base that they're trying to play to. And basically, they're arguing President Trump said he would own the shutdown. He said that Mexico would pay for the wall. And that - that's their argument that they're making.
And so they're trying to move ahead without any funding for the barrier - I mean, for a barrier or for a wall. But ultimately, something is going to have to give. The question is who is going to do the giving...
MARTIN: Right.
RASCOE: ...And what it might look like. They need each other at this point, the president and the Democrats. They're going to have to come together on something.
MARTIN: Right. So I guess if we thought it was tough for the last Congress to get anything done, 2019's going to be a doozy, right?
RASCOE: It - it will. There won't be - there's no shortage of areas of disagreement. And there's going to be a lot of things that they're just going to bump heads on. And this is an example of the start of it.
MARTIN: All right, NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe with the latest. Thanks so much, lady, we appreciate it.
RASCOE: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: Now to Russia, where an American citizen has been detained. The FSB - that's the Russian security service - says that Paul Whelan was taken into custody late last week on suspicion of espionage. Here in Washington, the U.S. State Department put out a short statement saying essentially that they're just aware of the arrest.
This comes weeks after a Russian operative was convicted of conspiracy here in the U.S., trying to influence U.S. policy ahead of the 2016 presidential election. For more, we've got NPR's Lucian Kim on the line with us from Moscow. Lucian, Happy New Year.
LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Happy New Year. Good morning.
MARTIN: Any new details? Good morning. Any new details come out about this arrest yet?
KIM: Well, not really. All we have is this very terse statement from the FSB that was issued yesterday. And it basically named this American citizen, identified as Paul Whelan, who was arrested, quote, "in the act of spying in Moscow" last Friday. And we know that a criminal investigation for espionage has been opened.
As you mentioned, there's also the State Department's statement from yesterday - also very terse - saying the U.S. is aware of the detention and expects Russia to follow its obligations under international conventions. What that means is providing access to this individual by U.S. Embassy officials. But we don't know anything about this person except the name given by the FSB. And the State Department is not commenting due to what it calls privacy considerations.
MARTIN: So I mean, it's hard to ignore the fact that this arrest is coming really close after this Russian national, Maria Butina, pled guilty to conspiring to act as a Russian agent and basically infiltrate American political groups. I mean, are these connected? It would seem real weird if they're not.
KIM: Well, of course there's a lot of speculation right now that this might be a Russian response to Butina's detention and plea deal and that this American citizen accused of espionage may be used to swap out Butina. President Vladimir Putin has been asked about her. And he's said that she was forced to make a confession to U.S. prosecutors because he maintains she never had any Russian government duties.
He's also said the charges against her are baseless and that he's not indifferent to her case. What's interesting is at the same time, he said that Russia will not arrest innocent people just to use them as bargaining chips.
MARTIN: So we also remember last year - right? - Russia expelled 60 U.S. diplomats after the Trump administration kicked out 60 Russian diplomats. So this has been going on for a while. As we look down the pike at 2019, what's the state of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia?
KIM: Well, just about those diplomats - at the time, the Trump administration indicated that those Russians it expelled were intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. And of course, the arrest last week is not the best way to end the year.
MARTIN: Right.
KIM: In February we expect the Trump administration to withdraw from a 1987 arms control treaty that the U.S. says Russia is violating. President Trump also doesn't look like he will meet President Putin anytime soon because it looks like the White House has made that - a future meeting contingent on Russia releasing two dozen - two dozen Ukrainian navy sailors that it's captured.
Of course, in the U.S. we have the Mueller investigation grinding on. We have the Democrats taking over the House. And these are - of course are also factors that will affect U.S.-Russia relations. So unfortunately, not a lot of bright spots looking forward into this new year.
MARTIN: All right, buckle up. NPR's Lucian Kim from Moscow. Thanks so much, Lucian.
KIM: Thank you, Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: All right, we're going to turn now to North Korea, where Kim Jong Un, North Korea's leader, has given his annual new year's address. And in this televised speech, Un says he remains committed to complete denuclearization but only if the U.S. keeps its promises. Kim Jong Un also said he'd be willing to meet with President Trump again, anytime. NPR's Anthony Kuhn joins us now from Seoul. Anthony, happy 2019.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Happy 2019, Rachel.
MARTIN: So just from that snapshot I gave, it doesn't seem like Kim Jong Un is paving the way for a breakthrough on the nuclear issue, does it?
KUHN: No, not at all. The speech was pretty much what analysts expected - especially those analysts who predict that this stalemate on the nuclear issue is going to drag on well into the new year. What Kim said is that, you know, he's serious about improving relations with the U.S. and denuclearizing.
But North Korea's been pointing out for a while that since the Trump-Kim summit in June, they have made gestures such as dismantling nuclear and missile test sites. And so now it's up to the U.S. to reciprocate by easing sanctions or providing some sort of security guarantee. And there is an or-else. Let's hear some tape from Kim's speech here.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEADER KIM JONG UN: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: "If the U.S. fails to keep the promises it made before the world," he says, "if it misjudges the patience of our people and continues to use sanctions and pressure against our republic, then we'll have no choice except to seek a new path to secure the sovereignty and interests of our country."
Now, he didn't say what exactly that new path is, Rachel, but it sounds a lot like the old path of hostility and confrontation with the U.S. - except now with a more lethal nuclear arsenal. And also, we might note that the setting for this, the scene for this speech was different. He was sitting in a wood-paneled, bookshelf-lined office, which was apparently intended to look more like a president's office than a dictator's bunker.
MARTIN: Does he have a wood-paneled, bookshelf-lined office? Or is that a stage set? (Laughter).
KUHN: We don't know.
MARTIN: Unclear.
KUHN: I've never been in his office.
MARTIN: (Laughter). So what's he holding out for?
KUHN: Well, you remember the Trump-Kim summit in June. People saw right then that that was the vaguest of deals and that the U.S. and North Korea have completely different understandings of denuclearization. And they have, you know, emphasized this time and again, that when they say denuclearization, that includes getting rid of the U.S. nuclear umbrella that protects South Korea and Japan.
And today, Kim added in his speech, you know, no new strategic weapons on the Korean Peninsula and an end to U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises. So it seems that North Korea is holding out for another summit where they're going to try to squeeze more concessions out of President Trump.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, south, in South Korea, the U.S. and the South were supposed to strike this new deal on the U.S. military presence. And this was supposed to happen by New Year's Eve. And it didn't happen, right?
KUHN: Right.
MARTIN: So what's going on there?
KUHN: Well, the White House wants all allies to pay more. According to South Korean media, they're asking Seoul for a 50 percent increase. And they want to cut their five-year agreements down to just one so that they strike a deal with South Korea, and then they ask all other allies for similar terms. And South Korea has said no.
Seoul was not happy about the U.S. pullout from Syria. And they're also worried about the resignation of Mattis, who tried to reassure allies, including South Korea, that he wouldn't either - the U.S. wouldn't pull out, and they also wouldn't attack North Korea without consulting with them first.
MARTIN: All right, NPR's Anthony Kuhn from Seoul, reporting on Kim Jong Un's annual address. Anthony, we appreciate it.
KUHN: No problem. Take care, Rachel.
MARTIN: Take care.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAMPIQUE'S "EARTH")
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 165 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Co-Founder Of 'Time's Up' Campaign Reflects On First Year Of Action NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with Fatima Goss Graves. She's co-founder of the Times Up campaign. It was founded in response to the #MeToo movement one year ago today. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 3 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Homelessness Strains Compassion For Some Los Angeles Residents
Enlarge this image toggle caption Anna Scott/NPR Anna Scott/NPR
Approximately 50,000 people are experiencing homelessness in and around L.A., according to the latest count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The vast majority of them live unsheltered on the streets. According to city officials and nonprofit leaders, there's a growing frustration among L.A. residents who — despite the city's big new investments in housing and services — continue to confront L.A.'s homeless crisis in their daily lives.
For the past few years, a man has been living on and off in the carport at Shannon Peace's building near West Hollywood, Calif. For a while, he had an elaborate encampment right in front of her parking spot.
"He had a laptop. He had a bicycle," she says. "And he used our storage bins."
Still, Peace figured he wasn't hurting anyone, and for a while she thought of the man as an unofficial neighbor. That is, until one day she came downstairs to get into her car, said her usual greeting and was met with a blank stare instead of the usual friendly 'hello.'
It's a fear issue. When it comes to your own feelings of safety, suddenly it influences the way you view the entire issue.
"His eyes were glazed over and he was muttering to himself," Peace says. "That was the point at which I went 'OK, this is really a safety issue. This is somebody who potentially has mental illness — potentially has a substance abuse problem.'"
She called police, but the man still returns to the carport periodically. Peace says the experience has hardened her a little bit towards homeless people in general.
That feeling is uncomfortable for her to admit. As a kid growing up in L.A., Peace would beg her mother to give money to panhandlers. Now, she says, she's less likely to interact with men and women on the streets than she used to be.
"I've interrogated my feelings on this to make sure that this is not judgment, to make sure this is not me being disdainful," she says. "It's a fear issue. When it comes to your own feelings of safety, suddenly it influences the way you view the entire issue."
Growing tension
"There's definitely a growing tension and people [are] frustrated by the challenges that we're facing here in this city," says L.A. City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. "It's a challenge."
Rodriguez recently asked California state lawmakers to extend hate crime protections to people experiencing homelessness after a few violent incidents against homeless people. Those are rare cases, but Rodriguez says she worries generally about anger towards L.A.'s homeless community. Not only for humanitarian reasons, but because homeless housing and services often depend on public dollars and public support.
"We have [solutions]," Rodriguez says, but it requires citizens "to have the compassion and the empathy to work with us to help address this problem."
Two years ago, L.A. voters overwhelmingly passed Measure HHH, a city bond to fund homeless housing. In 2017, they passed a county-wide sales tax increase called Measure H, to fund various homeless services. Despite all this new money flowing to a number of projects, tens of thousands of men and women still sleep on the streets. The situation has led to increasing impatience among some voters.
In some parts of the region, anger over encampments and a potentially dangerous element amongst L.A.'s homeless has resulted in explosive town halls, hateful social media posts and even one citizen patrol to monitor encampments. More often, however, the housed and unhoused live in peaceful but uneasy coexistence.
Homeless feel judged
On a recent afternoon on L.A.'s westside, about a half dozen homeless men spread their belongings across picnic tables and on the lawn of a busy park. Nearby, children swarmed a playground. One of the men, 59-year-old Filipe Calderon, says he knows people judge him.
"They see you pushing the cart, they look at you funny," he says. He also says he's as unhappy with his situation as any onlooker could be. "I haven't showered in about a month," he says. "So I don't feel good."
Calderon used to have a carpentry business but lost it to drinking. His alcoholism cost him his family too, driving away his wife and two adult children. Although he still drinks, he'd like to quit this year. "I'm gonna get back on my feet again," he says. Nonetheless, he points out a beer cooler he keeps in a shopping cart hidden behind some plants.
Calderon's story is long and complicated, but on the surface it's the kind of story that can strain some residents' empathy. It's easy to feel for the financial victim or the person who ended up homeless after a health crisis. It's more difficult to identify with the person who appears somehow complicit in his or her own circumstances, or appears to be doing something wrong.
Yet this mental sorting between who is "deserving" and "undeserving" is one of the biggest hurdles to fostering empathy around homelessness, says Ann English, who works for the nonprofit Corporation for Supportive Housing.
More than homeless
English directs a program training formerly homeless men and women to share their stories in public. One of the program's goals is put individual faces on L.A.'s massive homeless crisis. English says she tells community members to think of a couple of things when faced with a person on the street who appears intoxicated or disruptive.
"First, that's not the entire story for that person," English says. "Second, everyone that you see is a drop in the bucket of all the people that are experiencing homelessness. Just recognizing the assumptions that you're making without knowing the facts affects what we're able to do about the situation."
Not everyone sees an empathy gap among L.A. residents. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti says the city's getting more volunteers around homeless causes than ever before. Residents "still need a lot of help in their neighborhoods," he says, "but they're feeling what they voted for starting to come to fruition."
He also says the city is housing more people than ever. Yet it's not enough to keep up with all the people falling into homelessness, which is why the situation on the streets looks a lot like it did. Garcetti says he's fine with L.A. residents feeling impatient.
"I think we should remain frustrated," he says, "but we should also remain committed." He also emphasizes the city's progress. "Because a very complex problem didn't go away overnight," he says, "doesn't mean that things aren't happening." | null | 0 | -1 | null | 65 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Rejected By Italy, Thousands Of Migrants From Africa Risk The Alps To Reach France
Enlarge this image toggle caption Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images
At a ski resort in northern Italy's Susa Valley, outside Turin, children scoot their way onto the bunny slopes as others make snow angels.
But deeper in these woods, not far from the border with France, a dangerous and sometimes deadly scene unfolds.
Just after midnight, Red Cross workers pick up a 28-year-old man, an African migrant. His pulse is weak and his breathing is shallow — classic symptoms of hypothermia. The altitude is 6,000 feet and it's 10 degrees Fahrenheit, but he's not even wearing a jacket — just a hoodie, jeans and sneakers. One of his rescuers, Alessia Amendola, pours him some hot tea.
"Immigrants are trying to go from Italy to France, illegally of course," she says. "We are in the mountains, where it's really dangerous."
On average, she and other Red Cross volunteers rescue 15 migrants per night. But they have rescued as many as 40 in one night. Most are from sub-Saharan Africa. They've already risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Italy. Now they're trying to get out of Italy, which has made clear it doesn't want them. But this time, they're in an unfamiliar Alpine climate.
"They don't even know what they are going to face," Amendola says.
The Red Cross team picks up another migrant, delirious from the freezing cold. His eyes roll back as he collapses into their van.
"Wake up! Wake up," says rescuer Michaela Macrì, as she slaps his cheeks.
He too has hypothermia, and possibly frostbite on his hands and feet. For a moment, he wakes up and says his name — Seidu. He's from Senegal. He says he's 14.
In this border region, an estimated 5,000 migrants have attempted to cross into France in 2018, according to local municipalities and aid groups. About half make it — local municipalities say more than 2,000 have crossed since last spring. But many don't.
"We found several bodies of migrants this spring during the thaw," says Paolo Narcisi, a doctor and the president of Rainbow For Africa, an Italian nonprofit medical organization. "But some bodies we'll never recover. Because there are wild animals. Or the bodies decompose. If you don't know the way, it's easy to wind up off a cliff. And no one will ever find you."
To understand why migrants are taking such deadly risks to leave Italy, look no further than the country's vice premier and interior minister, Matteo Salvini. In late November, his government passed a law that eliminates humanitarian grounds for granting asylum to people who are not fleeing political persecution or war.
"You're not fleeing war. You're not escaping torture. What do you have to do? Go back to your country," Salvini said during an interview with Italian broadcaster RAI shortly after the law passed. "We already have 5 million Italians living in poverty. So I can't host hundreds of thousands of other people from the rest of the world."
In 2017, roughly 130,000 people applied for asylum in Italy, second only to Germany in the European Union for the number of first-time applicants. Refugee status was granted to 6,827 people; about 27,000 others received other forms of protection.
More than 119,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in 2017, according to the U.N. migration agency. Figures from the Italian interior ministry show a dramatic drop in 2018, with only 23,011 migrants and refugees arriving — a decline of more than 80 percent.
Migrants started passing through the Alps to France even before the recent immigration law. After terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, France reinstated border controls with Italy. That sparked a wave of migrants who sought to cross the border in temperate conditions near the Mediterranean coast.
Starting last spring, French police cracked down on undocumented migrants crossing the border, prompting migrants to move to the Alpine north, where border controls are more difficult to enforce.
The United Nations has blasted Italy's new law, warning it will violate human rights and fuel hate, as well as make it harder for migrants to access shelters. It's feared that thousands will wind up living on the streets.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Christopher Livesay for NPR Christopher Livesay for NPR
Two migrants who are living on Italy's streets are Abdul Razak and Harouna Waija, both 22 years old and from Ghana. Razak left because of poverty, he says; Waija because he converted from Islam to Christianity. His family wanted to kill him as a result, he says.
In a train station near the French border in December, they are suiting up to cross the Alps. It is the first time they've seen snow. What looks like a second pair of jeans is coming out the ankles of Waija's pants.
"It's five," he says. He's wearing five pairs of pants.
Razak says he understands the risks and has nothing to lose. They've been sleeping on the streets after failing to gain asylum in Italy. The mountains can't be much worse, he reasons.
"I'm worried, but I have to try," he says. "I want a better life."
The two agree to let me follow along, and are joined by four other French-speaking migrants.
The odd car whizzes by on the nearby highway as snow crunches beneath their feet. It's pitch-dark outside — easier to evade detection, but also easier to get lost.
A passerby pulls over and points them toward the border. Soon, they're in the woods, just a few feet from a border post flying the French flag — and French gendarmes patrolling the frontier.
Whispers of "la police" ripple through the group. If they get any closer, they risk being caught.
They change course again, and decide to take their chances deeper in the woods. To the left, there's a ravine they want to cross. The other side is completely covered in trees they can use for cover.
I walk with them for about 200 yards, until the snow starts coming up to my knees. I hear water running nearby, and worry about falling blindly into an icy river. I say goodbye and turn back, and the six migrants disappear into the darkness.
The next morning, I get a call from Abdul Razak. He tells me he made it across the border to France. But after four hours of wandering in the snow, he was caught by French gendarmes and sent back to Italy.
Harouna Waija wound up in an Italian hospital, where a nurse says he was treated for exposure. After a few hours on an IV drip, he'll be okay.
"Yesterday the cold was freezing me," he says, with an audible shiver still in his voice. "My blood was frozen. It was very difficult." Going through the icy Alps, he says, is "not a good way. I'm regret."
For now, the two are resigned to staying in Italy. Once spring comes and the snow melts, that's another story, they say. The seasons will change. Italy's crackdown on migrants might not.
Follow Christopher Livesay on Twitter @clivesay. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 91 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | In an exclusive interview aired during Fox News' "All-American New Year" special Monday night, President Trump suggested that only U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren's "psychiatrist" knows whether she thinks she can win the White House in 2020.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, announced Monday she is filing paperwork to launch an exploratory committee for president, becoming the first candidate to take the major step toward a 2020 run for the presidency.
Fox News' Pete Hegseth asked Trump whether Warren really thinks she could make him a one-term president.
"Well, that I don't know," Trump responded. "You’d have to ask her psychiatrist."
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Warren, a liberal firebrand who rose to prominence during the 2008 financial crisis, angered many top Democrats and Native American groups in October by releasing inconclusive DNA test results in response to Trump's claims that she repeatedly lied about her heritage to obtain affirmative-action benefits in the course of her academic career.
The Cherokee Nation responded to the results at the time by asserting that “a DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship.” And Kim TallBear, an associate professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, remarked that Warren's "very desire to locate a claim to Native American identity in a DNA marker inherited from a long-ago ancestor is a settler-colonial racial understanding of what it is to be Native American."
"Elizabeth Warren will be the first," Trump told Hegseth in the phone interview. "She did very badly in proving that she was of Indian heritage. That didn't work out too well."
According to Warren's DNA analysis, "the vast majority” of Warren’s family tree is European and there is “strong evidence” she has Native-American ancestry “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” As reported by the Boston Globe, this means she could be between 1/64 and 1/1,024 Native American.
"I think you have more than she does, and maybe I do too, and I have nothing," Trump said, referring to tribal heritage. "So, we’ll see how she does. I wish her well, I hope she does well, I’d love to run against her."
Trump repeatedly has derided Warren for claiming she has Native American ancestry. At a rally in July, he joked that he would pull out a heritage kit during a hypothetical presidential debate with Warren and slowly toss it at her, "hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably two ounces."
"If you go just based on the record, I don't see how anybody [else] wins" in 2020, Trump said. "It doesn't just seem based on the record that somebody's going to do really well."
The president said the big winners of 2018 are "the American people," owing to progress on the economy and the military. As for the big losers, Trump suggested some of the Democratic candidates lining up against him might soon qualify.
Trump's New Year's resolution: "Success, prosperity, and health for our country."
Separately, Trump again invited top Democrats to join him in Washington to resolve the ongoing partial federal government shutdown -- but he signaled that a border wall is an essential element of any deal.
One bipartisan proposal to end the shutdown that has been floated among key senators is to provide $5.7 billion in funding for the border wall, as well as a congressional reauthorization of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for those brought to the U.S. illegally as children, along with some other immigration provisions. There also has been talk about a special allowance for some classes of Central American refugees to be granted more robust asylum statuses.
"You’d have to ask her psychiatrist." — President Trump on Elizabeth Warren's chances of winning in 2020
"I’m in Washington, I'm ready, willing and able. I'm in the White House, I'm ready to go," Trump said. He added that Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer "can come over right now, they could've come over anytime."
The president emphasized that he canceled his plans to spend Christmas and New Year's Day at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida because of the partial shutdown, and signaled that he remains concerned about the approximately 800,000 federal workers who are affected by furloughs and understaffing.
"The wall is not old-fashioned. The wall is one-hundred percent foolproof. ... I spent Christmas in the White House, I spent New Year’s Eve now in the White House," Trump said. "And you know, I'm here, I’m ready to go. It's very important. A lot of people are looking to get their paycheck, so I'm ready to go whenever they want."
He added: "No, we are not giving up. We have to have border security and the wall is a big part of border security. The biggest part."
Later in the interview, Trump reaffirmed his decision to order all U.S. troops out of Syria. Following a weekend meeting at the White House with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has fervently criticized Trump's pullout, the president made clear the withdrawal would not be rushed.
"We're fighting these endless wars. I campaigned on getting out of the endless wars," Trump said. "And frankly I've done more than I've said -- not only have I gotten out, but we've won. ... We have to bring our troops back home. It's time."
Fox News' Chad Pergram and Alex Pappas contributed to this report. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 47 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Trump Invites Congressional Leaders For Talks As Shutdown Continues
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mark Wilson/Getty Images Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Updated at 6:12 p.m. ET
As the partial government shutdown continues into its second week, President Trump has invited a bipartisan group of top lawmakers to the White House for talks, two congressional sources say.
The meeting, described as a "briefing" on "border security," would take place Wednesday, a day before Democrats are set to take over the House, the sources tell NPR's Scott Detrow.
The White House has not responded to questions about the invitation, which was first reported by Politico. But President Trump hinted at the talks in a New Year's Day tweet.
"Border Security and the Wall 'thing' and Shutdown is not where Nancy Pelosi wanted to start her tenure as Speaker! Let's make a deal?" Trump asked.
Replying to Trump's tweet, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is set to take over as speaker, wrote that the president "has given Democrats a great opportunity to show how we will govern responsibly & quickly pass our plan to end the irresponsible #TrumpShutdown."
Trump has insisted on $5.7 billion for a southern border wall, but Democratic congressional leaders have stood firm against the funding.
The House is expected to vote on a funding bill to end the partial government shutdown on Thursday. That's the first day of the new Congress, when Democrats will take control of the chamber and are expected to elect Pelosi as speaker.
According to Pelosi, the legislation will include the full-year appropriations for six of the seven outstanding funding bills. And it would provide stopgap funding until Feb. 8 for the Department of Homeland Security, which is where the fight over border wall funding is contained.
"It is important to note that these bills contain no new wall funding," Pelosi said in a letter Tuesday to Democratic House members.
About 800,000 federal employees are furloughed during the partial shutdown or are working without pay. On Friday, Trump issued an executive order freezing the salary rates for civilian federal workers. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 17 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | California Housing Development Is A 'Disaster Waiting To Happen'
California suffered devastating wildfires in 2018. But cities and counties are still allowing subdivisions to stretch out into the suburban edges with the highest risks of wildfire.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In 2018, we saw a lot of devastating wildfires in the state of California. During our coverage, we heard from people conflicted about whether or not to rebuild in the same areas that burned to the ground. But just weeks after the deadly Camp Fire, a massive, new housing development was approved in a high-fire-risk area near Los Angeles. Reporter Emily Guerin from member station KPCC took a look at the financial bet of rebuilding.
EMILY GUERIN, BYLINE: Back in September, the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved a new housing development called Esperanza Hills. It's 340 luxury homes on an undeveloped patch of land. It's got amazing views of hills and canyons. And Kevin Johnson thinks it's a disaster waiting to happen.
KEVIN JOHNSON: This site is probably the most dangerous site in Southern California that you could pick to put 340 new families into.
GUERIN: He's a lawyer for one of the environmental groups that opposes the project. And he says what makes this site so dangerous is that a huge wildfire swept through here just 10 years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Yelling) Stacy (ph), come on. (Unintelligible). Go ahead and drive.
GUERIN: In this recording by Casper News (ph), a man is rushing his wife into their car as a helicopter dumps water on the flames nearby. People who lived through it said the evacuation was chaotic, and they barely got out. Ed Schumann's house and 380 others burned down that day. And he does not like the idea of adding hundreds more houses to the community.
ED SCHUMANN: Evacuating that more many people in the same limited infrastructure - it's a scary thought.
GUERIN: So why would anyone want to build in such a risky place?
DOUGLAS WYMORE: California is woefully deficient in housing units.
GUERIN: And he's right. That's the developer of Esperanza Hills, Douglas Wymore.
WYMORE: When somebody comes into develop, it's going to be the areas that aren't currently developed, right?
GUERIN: In fact, more than 60 percent of new houses on the West Coast are in high-fire-risk areas. But Wymore maintains that it is possible to build here safely. His homes will be fire-resistant, he says. They'll have lots of brush clearing and two water tanks for firefighting.
WYMORE: I think that the bottom line is you can mitigate it, and you can protect it.
GUERIN: So that's the developer. But why would the Orange County Board of Supervisors approve the project? Here's one factor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GARY LAMB: It will generate $8,250,000 in property tax.
GUERIN: That's Gary Lamb, who works with Wymore. At a public meeting last year, he listed off how much money the project will generate for the community.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LAMB: Four million will go to the Placentia-Yorba Linda school district.
GUERIN: And since 2011, Wymore has donated nearly $50,000 to the political campaigns of various members of the OC Board of Supervisors. Now, none of the supervisors wanted to talk to me for this story. But at a meeting last May, Supervisor Shawn Nelson explained one reason why he was signing off on the project. The Fire Department had already given it the green light.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SHAWN NELSON: If the Fire Department's satisfied, I'm not inclined to argue with them. I'm not a fireman.
GUERIN: But Timothy Kerbrat is a fireman in Orange County. And he says, from what he's seen so far, the project does meet state and local requirements.
TIMOTHY KERBRAT: Do they have access? Do they have water? Do they have a defensible space? Do they have hardened structures that they can protect? Are all those things occurring?
GUERIN: And in the Esperanza Hills project, he says they are. But here's the thing. If there's a fire, Orange County won't actually have to spend much of its own money to protect the neighborhood. The state and federal governments will reimburse them. Kimiko Barrett is a researcher at Headwaters Economics, which studies land use.
KIMIKO BARRETT: The consequences actually aren't borne by the people who are approving these developments.
GUERIN: She calls it a moral hazard. And until this changes, she says we're going to keep building in risky areas. For NPR News, I'm Emily Guerin.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAN MOUNTAIN'S "PERIPHERAL DRIFT")
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 67 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Jerry Falwell Jr., 56, took over as president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 2007, following the death of his father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the school. He lives with his wife, Becki, in Bedford County, Virginia.
Q: You said recently that conservatives and Christians should stop electing nice guys. Aren't Christians supposed to be nice guys?
A: Of course, of course. But that's where people get confused. I almost laugh out loud when I hear Democrats saying things like, "Jesus said suffer the little children to come unto me" and try to use that as the reason we should open up our borders.
It's such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally - to love our neighbors as ourselves, help the poor - can somehow be imputed on a nation. Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome. He went out of his way to say that's the earthly kingdom, I'm about the heavenly kingdom and I'm here to teach you how to treat others, how to help others, but when it comes to serving your country, you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. It's a distortion of the teaching of Christ to say Jesus taught love and forgiveness and therefore the United States as a nation should be loving and forgiving, and just hand over everything we have to every other part of the world. That's not what Jesus taught. You almost have to believe that this is a theocracy to think that way, to think that public policy should be dictated by the teachings of Jesus.
Q: So, the government you want is one free of religious association?
A: Yes. The government should be led by somebody who is going to do what's in the best interest of the government and its people. And I believe that's what Jesus thought, too.
Q: In 2016 you wrote in a Washington Post editorial that voters in the 2010 and 2014 midterms sent a message they were "tired of the leftist agenda." What message did voters in the 2018 midterms send?
A: This midterm, the president did better than the average president does in his first midterms. So I think the message is that the American people are happy with the direction the country is headed and happy with the economy, happy with our newfound respect in the world. It's a better result than you normally see in the first midterms.
Q: You pushed for national leaders to use the term "radical Islamic terrorism" when describing Muslims who are terrorists. Should leaders call it "white supremacist terrorism" when we have violent acts by white supremacists in this country?
A: Sure, if a terrorist is someone who is trying to overthrow a political regime. I guess it depends on what your definition of terrorism is. Anybody who kills anybody else or commits violence against anybody else because of their race is horrible. It's just as bad as the 9/11 attack.
Q: You and other white evangelical leaders have strongly supported President Donald Trump. What about him exemplifies Christianity and earns him your support?
A: What earns him my support is his business acumen. Our country was so deep in debt and so mismanaged by career politicians that we needed someone who was not a career politician, but someone who'd been successful in business to run the country like a business. That's the reason I supported him.
Q: The deficit and debt have increased during his first two years.
A: Yeah, Congress, the spending bill that they forced on him in order to get the military spending up to where it needed to be - he said that would be the last time he signed one of those. But he had no choice because (President Barack) Obama had decimated the military, and it had to be rebuilt.
Q: Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders?
A: No.
Q: That's the shortest answer we've had so far.
A: Only because I know that he only wants what's best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically "conservative," but it's going to be what's best for this country, and I can't imagine him doing anything that's not good for the country.
Q: Is it hypocritical for evangelical leaders to support a leader who has advocated violence and who has committed adultery and lies often? I understand that a person can be forgiven their sins, but should that person be leading the country?
A: When Jesus said we're all sinners, he really meant all of us, everybody. I don't think you can choose a president based on their personal behavior because even if you choose the one that you think is the most decent - let's say you decide Mitt Romney. Nobody could be a more decent human being, better family man. But there might be things that he's done that we just don't know about. So you don't choose a president based on how good they are; you choose a president based on what their policies are. That's why I don't think it's hypocritical.
There's two kingdoms. There's the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you'd like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what's best for your country. Think about it. Why have Americans been able to do more to help people in need around the world than any other country in history? It's because of free enterprise, freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurism and wealth. A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It's just common sense to me.
Q: You've been criticized by some other evangelical leaders about your support for the president. They say you need to demand higher moral and ethical standards. You disagree with them on that?
A: It may be immoral for them not to support him, because he's got African-American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor. A lot of the people who criticized me, because they had a hard time stomaching supporting someone who owned casinos and strip clubs or whatever, a lot them have come around and said, "Yeah, you were right." Some of the most prominent evangelicals in the country have said, "Jerry, we thought you were crazy, but now we understand."
First published in the Washington Post | null | 0 | -1 | null | 67 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | A postal service worker working in an unmarked postal vehicle was shot multiple times Saturday evening in Elk Grove Village, police in the suburb said.
The shooting was the first in the village of about 32,000 residents in two years, according to a news release from the suburb’s Police Department.
Village police were called to Brantwood Avenue and Smethwick Lane about 6 p.m. after a resident heard the employee calling out for help, the police statement said.
Witnesses told investigators they saw a dark-colored SUV leaving the area after the shooting.
The victim, whose identity wasn’t disclosed by police, was taken to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge for treatment. His condition was not immediately known, police said.
The department said that the police presence in the area would be bolstered in coming days.
Police ask that anyone with additional information call the Elk Grove Village Police Department at (847) 357-4100.
kdouglas@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @312BreakingNews | null | 0 | -1 | null | 8 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Lawmakers Hope New House Day Care Will Keep Staff On Capitol Hill
Enlarge this image toggle caption Architect of the Capitol's Office Architect of the Capitol's Office
Within sight of the U.S. Capitol dome, a new dome is about to open. It's on the playground of a new day care facility exclusively for U.S. House employees, and the playground is designed in part to look like a kid-sized National Mall.
"This is the only Washington Monument in D.C. that you can climb up," joked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who helped inspire the playground's design.
McCarthy will become minority leader in the next Congress, but as majority leader he used the office to secure space in a government building adjacent to the Capitol — and more than $12 million in taxpayer funds — for a 26,000 square foot, state-of-the-art childcare facility.
Enlarge this image toggle caption J. Scott Applewhite/AP J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The first phase, opening this week, will provide care for up to 120 infants and toddlers. The second phase will add 122 preschoolers in about a year. The expansion will reduce the House day care's waiting list from three years down to just one, making it much easier for new parents to plan for childcare.
This use of taxpayer funds could open up Congress to criticism, but McCarthy says the goal here is to keep highly qualified staff on the Hill. The day care is only available to House employees. (The Senate operates its own day care facility that continues to have a lengthy wait list.)
"If somebody is working for you and wants to continue to serve government, but says 'I don't have day care so I can't stay here, the wait list is too long, the quality is not there,' then you are disadvantaging who can actually serve and work in government at the same time," he told NPR.
The wait list for the House day care had become so long that staffers were signing up before they were even pregnant. "I've had friends who the minute they got engaged, they're putting themselves on the list," said Melissa Murphy, chief of staff to Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., who has two children currently in the day care.
Murphy said it's common for congressional staffers to make a reluctant decision to leave the Hill for more lucrative jobs in the private sector, when they decide to start a family. "It's really upsetting to see because they make the decision to leave the Hill and leave public service because the cost of private day care is difficult to maintain on some of the congressional salaries," she said.
The House day care costs between $1100 and $1700 a month — a fraction of the cost of comparable private day care in the Washington, D.C., area, which ranks as one of the most expensive places in the country to raise children.
Lawmakers get no special treatment. "I never made it off the list," said Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., "I had to keep looking like everyone else does. You get on a list, you hope it works, and if it doesn't work you've got to make something happen."
NPR identified only two members of Congress — both male lawmakers — who currently have their children enrolled in the day care.
Herrera Beutler is one of only ten lawmakers who have given birth while serving in Congress. She is also trying to recruit more young women to run for office, and she said childcare concerns are one of the biggest deterrents for women to run. She hopes the new day care can help change that culture, too.
"The message is: You can make this work. For the good of the country and for the good of your family. And so I feel like the day care facility was just another opportunity to give that option so that we get more women — so we are going to be more representative of the American people," she said.
The new day care could also open up Congress to public criticism that lawmakers are willing to provide quality, affordable, subsidized childcare for their own, but have done little legislatively to ease the crushing costs of childcare for American families.
Outgoing Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kansas, played a lead role in securing the taxpayer funds for the day care expansion. Yoder said he sees it as Congress setting a standard for the private sector to compete against.
"Congress is trying to lead and make it clear that as a governing body we think it's important that employers put childcare as a priority," he said.
And as of this week in the House of Representatives, it is. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 31 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Right-Wing Populist Jair Bolsonaro Sworn In As President Of Brazil
Enlarge this image toggle caption Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images
A far-right populist who has been called the Donald Trump of Brazil has been sworn in as President of Latin America's most populous country.
Jair Bolsonaro, a retired Army captain who has no executive experience, has promised to crack down on criminals, roll back environmental regulations, restrict abortions and relax gun laws in Brazil.
Under tight security and with much ceremony, Bolsonaro took office Tuesday in the country's capital city, Brasilia; in the streets, firefighters misted enthusiastic crowds with water as they cheered on their new president.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined the conservative leaders of Israel and Hungary at the swearing-in. President Trump congratulated Bolsonaro on Twitter.
Bolsonaro's path to the presidency was nearly cut short in September when he was stabbed in a knife attack while on the campaign trail. But he continued to rally supporters from his hospital bed.
As NPR's Philip Reeves reports, Bolsonaro's landslide October election marked a hard turn right for a region that has had leftist leaders for decades.
His huge victory delivered a humiliating riposte to political pundits who, for much of his campaign, portrayed Bolsonaro as a showboating maverick who was about as likely to become president as he was to play in Brazil's star-studded soccer team. Bolsonaro, 63, takes charge amid a wave of optimism about his presidency among Brazilians who yearn for a solution to the country's chronic epidemic of crime and corruption. They warm to his promise of restoring traditional Christian family values and are profoundly disillusioned by the leftist politicians who have governed Brazil in recent years.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Sergio Lima/AFP/Getty Images Sergio Lima/AFP/Getty Images
But his right-wing politics have made others in Brazil nervous.
Some gay Brazilians rushed to marry before Bolsonaro took office; while he now says he doesn't have a problem with homosexuals, he previously called himself a proud homophobe and said he's rather have a dead son than a gay son.
Bolsonaro also directed his incoming foreign minister to cancel a global environmental conference the country was set to host, as NPR's Merrit Kennedy has reported. Speaking with the Associated Press, Bolsonaro said "environmental politics can't muddle with Brazil's development."
On Saturday, Bolsonaro tweeted that he would work to ensure every citizen without a criminal background can own a gun; he had previously said "good guys" with guns would help reduce violent crime in the country.
Bolsonaro has spoken admiringly of Brasil's military dictatorship in the 20th century, and promised a "cleansing" of his political opponents that would "wipe them off the map." But after his inauguration he spoke of peace for the people of Brazil and promised to respect democracy, according to Reuters.
"We have a great nation to rebuild," Bolsonaro said. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 19 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Russia Arrests U.S. Man In Moscow On Suspicion Of Spying The State Department confirms the man has been arrested and detained by Russian authorities. Steve Inskeep talks to former ambassador Daniel Fried about options for a Trump administration response. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Say Goodbye To Small Cars In 2019 Low gas prices combined with fuel economy improvements are driving consumers back to SUVs and trucks. 2019 will see the demise of many small cars, leaving first-time car buyers with fewer choices.
Say Goodbye To Small Cars In 2019 Business Say Goodbye To Small Cars In 2019 Say Goodbye To Small Cars In 2019 Audio will be available later today. Low gas prices combined with fuel economy improvements are driving consumers back to SUVs and trucks. 2019 will see the demise of many small cars, leaving first-time car buyers with fewer choices. NPR thanks our sponsors Become an NPR sponsor | null | 0 | -1 | null | 6 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | To The Dismay Of Free Speech Advocates, Vietnam Rolls Out Controversial Cyber Law
Enlarge this image toggle caption HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images
A new cybersecurity law has gone into effect in Vietnam that puts stringent controls on tech companies operating inside the country and censors what its citizens read online.
The decree, which was passed by the National Assembly in June 2018, requires companies such as Facebook and Google to open offices in Vietnam, store local user data and to hand over information if the government asks for it. It would also require social media companies to remove any content authorities deemed offensive or "toxic."
Opponents of the law say it could hurt Vietnam's economic prospects and allow the one-party Communist government to further crackdown on dissent and free speech.
The industry group Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) told Reuters that the law would hurt Vietnam's ambitions for GDP and job growth.
"These provisions will result in severe limitations on Vietnam's digital economy, dampening the foreign investment climate and hurting opportunities for local businesses and [small-to-medium-sized enterprises] to flourish inside and beyond Vietnam," AIC Managing Director Jeff Paine said. Both trade and foreign investment are critical components of Vietnam's economy, reports Reuters.
In a statement released shortly after it was passed, Clare Algar, director of global operations at Amnesty International, said that the law's sweeping power "has potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression" in Vietnam.
"This vote means there is now no safe place left [in Vietnam] for people to speak freely," she said.
The Vietnamese government says the law is necessary to fight cyber crime such as cyber-espionage, and prevent cyber terrorism. Major General Luong Tam Quang, chief of Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security, said in a news conference in early November that the new cyber law brings Vietnam in line with other countries that also want to protect their domestic users' information and that the law was "within the ability of business."
Internet companies have a year to comply, despite pleas from tech firm, reports Reuters. U.S. lawmakers even made an appeal to Facebook and Google to not comply with the law.
"The cyber security law does nothing to protect internet users," 17 members of the Congressional Vietnam Caucus wrote in a letter. "Rather, it is a blatant effort by the Vietnamese government to crackdown on online expression by enlisting the help of leading technology companies."
Google declined to immediately comment to NPR what the company plans to do about the law now that it's implemented. Facebook also did not immediately return a request from NPR for comment. However, earlier this month Facebook said it "remains committed to its community in Vietnam and in helping Vietnamese businesses grow at home and abroad," reports Voice of America.
A growing and youthful middle class in Vietnam is a draw for digital companies, reports to Bloomberg. Almost half of Vietnam's population uses the internet, according to the World Bank, and the country has more than 60 million Facebook users. The new cybersecurity law comes into effect a little over a year after Vietnam deployed a 10,000-strong cyber unit to combat "wrong" views. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 21 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Ireland's Momentous Change: Abortion Services Are No Longer Banned Ireland is a country that's politics were once dominated by the Catholic Church and now abortion is legal. The change marks a significant milepost in the country's political evolution. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Research Supports Claims That Teeth Worsen Without Fluoridated Water
Using Medicaid payment data from towns in Alaska that have rejected fluoride in recent years, a new study supports dentists' claims that teeth get worse when the water supply is not fluoridated.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A little more than a decade ago, the city of Juneau, Alaska, became one of many American cities that stopped adding fluoride to its tap water. At the time, science predicted more cavities. That prediction has now proven true. From member station KTOO, Jeremy Hsieh reports.
JEREMY HSIEH, BYLINE: Jennifer Meyer is a public health researcher with a new study in the journal BMC Oral Health. She talks about tooth decay and cavities the way dentists do. She calls them caries. And after studying what happened in Juneau to children under 6, this is her takeaway.
JENNIFER MEYER: By taking the fluoride out of the water supply, the tradeoff for that is children are going to experience one additional caries procedure per year at a ballpark of $300 more per child.
HSIEH: She can talk about it in terms of money because she studied the complete set of Medicaid dental claims filed for kids in Juneau's main zip code. She's got a year's worth of data before fluoride went away and another year's worth after, for about 1,900 kids total.
When you talk about children under 6, here's what happened. When the water was still fluoridated, kids on average had about 1 1/2 cavity-related procedures per year. After fluoride was gone, that went up to about 2 1/2 procedures a year. And that got expensive.
MEYER: The cost to have a fluoride management program to actually fluoridate the water is pennies by comparison to what it costs to treat a cavity.
HSIEH: It could be more expensive for anyone, not just the public cost of providing dental care through Medicaid. But Meyer says people with less money are especially vulnerable when fluoride goes away. For example, people with more resources might choose to give their kids fluoride tablets. That would mitigate the absence of fluoride in the water supply for those children.
The new research isn't winning over longtime fluoride opponents like David Ham. He was active in the movement to take fluoride out of Juneau's water in 2006. He calls fluoridation a Band-Aid fix.
DAVID HAM: My issue is that we're asking the wrong question here. You know, and let's get to the root cause and put a tax on sugary drinks and all of these other things or do whatever we can to support good health through good diet.
HSIEH: Ham says community water fluoridation takes away his right to pure water. He also says fluoride is harmful. But the CDC, World Health Organization, European Union and other government and medical institutions have long held that low levels of fluoride in drinking water are safe.
For NPR News, I'm Jeremy Hsieh in Juneau.
(SOUNDBITE OF LYMBYC SYSTEM'S "NIGHTFALL")
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 37 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's New President, Takes Office
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now to Brazil, where they swore in a new president today. Jair Bolsonaro is a far-right retired army captain. His election was a complete break with the leftist leadership of recent years. In the past, Bolsonaro has praised Brazil's former military dictatorship, defended torture and disparaged gays, blacks and women. Crowds cheered as he addressed the nation...
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING)
CORNISH: ...Where he struck a unifying note by declaring war on corruption.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO: (Foreign language spoken).
CORNISH: ...And said the government and economy must serve all Brazilians. NPR's Philip Reeves is in the capital, Brasilia, for today's ceremony and joins us now. Phil, first, describe the mood there. What was the scene?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, this historic moment took place on a dull day under a dripping gray sky. At first, it seemed as if the crowd would be quite small, but the day gradually gathered momentum, especially after both Bolsonaro and his wife drove in standing up and waving from the back of a vintage open-topped Rolls Royce, accompanied by cavalry on white horses which was a brave thing to do when you consider that Bolsonaro was stabbed during his election campaign.
In the end, though, there was quite a large crowd and a crowd with very high expectations. Almost everyone I spoke to thinks Bolsonaro holds the key to solve Brazil's chronic problems. Listen, for example, to Vanessa Silva, a psychologist who sees Bolsonaro as a change that the country really needs.
VANESSA SILVA: (Foreign language spoken).
REEVES: Because, she says, Brazil's going through a huge crisis and desperately needs better health, education and financial reform. She's also hoping that both Bolsonaro and his Cabinet - a third of whom, by the way, are retired military officers - can fix this despite their lack of experience in government.
CORNISH: How did Bolsonaro address some of those issues in his speech?
REEVES: Well, he talked about unity and protecting democracy, but he also hit on many of his favorite themes, saying that he wants to stop families being, in his words, destroyed by what he calls wicked ideologies. That's a swipe at the left for seeking to educate schoolchildren about gender diversity. And talking about the rights of citizens to defend themselves. That's a reference to his plan to greatly expand the ownership of firearms among the Brazilian public on the grounds that this will help them fight the crime epidemic here.
CORNISH: We mentioned earlier Bolsonaro has made a lot of provocative statements. How does that compare to the actual agenda that he's expected to pursue?
REEVES: We're going to see, undoubtedly, a far closer relationship with the United States. Bolsonaro's a big fan of President Trump. This has implications for regional issues, notably the handling of Venezuela, which Bolsonaro regards with the same kind of hostility as Trump. People will also be keeping a very close eye in coming months on his environmental policy. He's talked about withdrawing from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. And he also wants to loosen environmental laws, a move that makes the powerful agribusiness lobby that supports him very happy but sets alarm bells ringing about the preservation of the Amazon rainforest.
Other things to look out for - will he go ahead with his plan to move Brazil's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was here today, and he got a big hug from Bolsonaro. And also, will that plan for widening gun ownership actually go through?
CORNISH: Does he have the support from Congress to do that?
REEVES: Well, it's not going to be easy. He has no experience of high office. And he has a lot of interest groups tugging at his shirt tails - the military, who support him, the evangelical lobby, who support him, the agribusiness lobby. So it's going to be very difficult reconciling their needs and also building the consensus he needs in Brazil's Congress.
CORNISH: That's NPR South American correspondent Philip Reeves.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 47 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Government Workers Voice Their Frustrations As They Struggle During Shutdown Federal workers and their families are fed up with their paychecks being held hostage in the border wall argument. Several are speaking out about their struggles to pay their bills. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 2 |
polusa | 2019_1_test.csv | 52,939,326 | 0 | 2019_1_test.csv0 53010215
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Co-Founder Of 'Time's Up' Legal Defense Fund Reflects On First Year Of Action
Co-Founder Of 'Time's Up' Legal Defense Fund Reflects On First Year Of Action Listen · 5:32 5:32
NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with Fatima Goss Graves. She's co-founder of the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund. It was founded in response to the #MeToo movement one year ago today. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 3 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Americans have grown all too familiar with the horror of school shootings. One of the worst ever, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., left 17 dead and provoked the state to tighten its gun laws. The tragedy and others like it have given parents cause to worry when they send their kids to school.
But mass shootings in schools are rare events. What’s more common is the daily danger from bullying, threats and violence that many students (and even teachers) face from disruptive students. This problem is far less lethal but can cause psychological as well as physical injury, not to mention its corrosive effect on learning.
After the Parkland shooting, President Donald Trump empaneled a federal commission on school safety. In late December, it issued a report stressing the need for the federal government to help local school districts address their respective discipline issues rather than dictating one-size-fits-all solutions. One of the chief recommendations was to revoke the previous administration’s guidance on racial differences in school discipline — which this commission judged to be attacking the wrong problem in the wrong way.
President Barack Obama’s Education Department, headed by Arne Duncan, noted that “African-American students without disabilities are more than three times as likely as their white peers without disabilities to be expelled or suspended.” School districts were put on notice that evidence of “disparate impact” in disciplinary outcomes could trigger investigations of possible racial discrimination.
But why should it? More likely, actual differences in behavior account for the gap. “According to federal data,” Manhattan Institute analyst Heather Mac Donald noted in City Journal, “… black students self-reported being in a physical fight at school at over twice the rate of white students in 2015.” In California, black fifth-graders are five times more likely than whites to be chronically truant.
Mac Donald’s point wasn’t to say that race determines conduct. She was helping to explain how factors outside school may influence conduct inside school. African-American youngsters are more likely to grow up in poverty, in single-parent homes and in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Such conditions are bound to have a detrimental effect on the behavior of some students, which likely accounts for the racial gap in discipline.
The Obama administration guidance had discouraged schools from removing students who are violent or seriously disruptive. But the new commission cited Judy Kidd, president of the Classroom Teachers Association of North Carolina, who expressed the view that “some school leaders have chosen to avoid potential Office of Civil Rights investigations by eliminating the use of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, without considering the impact that such practices have on school safety.”
In Oklahoma City, an American Federation of Teachers survey found that 36 percent of teachers said student offenses had become more frequent under a policy aimed at curbing suspensions. In Madison, Wis., suspensions declined by 13 percent between 2013 and 2018, the Wisconsin State Journal reports, but “bad student behavior in Madison schools nearly doubled.”
What’s easy to forget in the focus on those who are disciplined is the effect of their conduct on everyone else. In schools that are mostly black, the victims of students who engage in violent or disruptive behavior also are mostly black. When disruptive students of any ethnicity are removed from the classroom, teachers are better able to help kids who want to learn.
By rescinding the old guidance, the Trump administration will empower local school administrators and teachers to craft and enforce discipline policies that are fair to every student. A safe school, after all, should be considered a civil right.
Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Submit a letter to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 26 |
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Name: id, Length: 162994, dtype: int64 | Military Apologizes For Bombing A New Year's Eve Tweet
Enlarge this image toggle caption Getty Images Getty Images
U.S. Strategic Command is charged with controlling the nation's nuclear operations, but conceded it missed the mark with a New Year's Eve tweet comparing the famed ball drop to a B-2 bomber dropping weapons.
"TimesSquare tradition rings in the #NewYear by dropping the big ball...if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger," read the now-deleted tweet from Stratcom's official account.
A slick video accompanied by pulsing music showed a bomber soaring through the air and releasing two conventional — not nuclear — weapons at a test range, according to media reports. "Stealth," "Ready" and "Lethal" flash across the screen in all capital letters. The video concludes with an explosion flashing into a huge fireball.
The backlash was swift, and by early Monday evening the unified command of four military branches had removed the tweet, issuing a mea culpa.
"Our previous NYE tweet was in poor taste & does not reflect our values," it read. "We apologize. We are dedicated to the security of America & allies."
A spokeswoman told The New York Times that the video was actually reposted from earlier this year and "was part of our Year in Review series meant to feature our command priorities: strategic deterrence, decisive response and combat-ready force."
But in the hours the tweet was up, Twitter users reacted with confusion and contempt, some with alarm, calling its message disgusting, grotesque and terrifying.
Former Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub Jr., a sharp critic of the Trump administration who resigned in July of 2017, posted a screengrab of the original tweet, asking "What kind of maniacs are running this country?"
But other Twitter users defended the message, saying it was funny, that it actually gave assurances of safety and there was no need to apologize.
The reconsidered reminder of U.S. military might came as tensions with North Korea bubbled up once again.
In a New Year's Day address, Leader Kim Jong Un alluded to nuclear confrontation, saying he was willing to meet with President Trump but Pyongyang would be forced to take a different path if the U.S., "continues to break its promises and misjudges the patience of our people by unilaterally demanding certain things and push(ing) ahead with sanctions and pressure," according to a translation by The Associated Press. | null | 0 | -1 | null | 15 |
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