#then at work on the radio they said something about the jan 6 insurrection

[smooth-noob]

#i woke up this morning and saw the date and was like #why does that sound familiar #then at work on the radio they said something about the jan 6 insurrection #and i went oh fuck oh yeah #that happened two years ago huh #throw back to everyone in my lit class logging off zoom bc we had no idea what was happening #anyway happy birthday to gay people congrats noah #noah schnapp #us politics

[virginiaisforstatesmen]

January 6 Hearing #6 Summary

Hearing #6

Summary: Holy crapola! Hutchinson has got the goods. Every part of this hearing is important. Key takeaways: Trump knew about the Jan 6 insurrection plan, knew the mob was armed, he wanted to go to the Capitol along with the insurrectionists. When he was prevented from going to the Capitol, he assaulted his head Secret Service agent. Read on for details.

(Apologies to Pat Cippolone for mangling his name. I’m no better than the C-SPAN closed captioning. I’ll try to go back and fix later when I have time.)

Cheney:

Cassidy Hutchinson is someone a lot of Republicans know because she was the primary liaison between House members and the White House

Hutchinson’s testimony touches on each of the future hearings - this will be a pretty wide-ranging hearing

Q&A

Hutchinson used to work for Steve Sacalise and Ted Cruz

Established that Hutchinson worked with Meadows closely every day and sat in close proximity to Meadows and Kushner.

Cheney took over with questioning from here.

Meadows met with Giuliani on Jan 2. Hutchinson walked Giuliani out and suggested that something big was going to happen on January 6 and that Meadows knew about it. When Hutchinson asked him about what Giuliani meant, Meadows said: “Things might get real real bad on January 6.”

December 2020, director of national intelligence, didn’t want anything to do with the post-election period and thought the White House shouldn’t be pursuing it, was dangerous to democracy.

About the potential for violence on January 6, based on information presented to the president on January 4. DOJ knew that there was a chance people would invade the capitol building and try to occupy federal buildings. Secret Service corroborated this intelligence and shared with the White House. Hutchinson confirmed that when Giuliani was around, the proud boys and oath keepers were discussed in connection with January 6. Hutchinson confirmed that the deputy chief of staff in charge of security knew about these threats.

Committee shared evidence that many of the people attending the rally on Jan 6 were armed with weapons including knives, brass knuckles, spears, flag poles, body armor, and firearms, including AR-15s. There were also military-grade radios. The White House knew about this by 10am on Jan 6 (!!) Both Meadows and Trump knew about the weapons.

At the rally on January 6, Hutchinson was backstage with the president and his family. He was mad that the rally area wasn’t full - people weren’t coming into the secured area because they didn’t want to give up their weapons. “I don’t f’ing care if they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me.” He asked to take the metal detectors away so the rally area would fill up. He knew they were going to march to the Capitol.

Head of security at the White House was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough security at the White House. Secret Service and WH staff were all concerned and knew that the Capitol police would be outmanned. When Hutchinson went to tell Meadows this, Meadows was having a confidential phone call, which was very out of character for him. After about 20 minutes, she finally was able to tell him. Meadows did not react.

The president’s statement in his speech about walking with his supporters to the capitol to fight - Trump’s lawyers wanted him to take that part out of the speech for fear of legal liability. Cippilone and Secret Service urged Trump not to go to the Capitol that day. Cippilone thought Meadows was encouraging Trump to go to the Capitol on Jan 6. “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we go to the Capitol.” (crimes = obstructing justice or defrauding the electoral count). Trump wanted to go, and the Secret Service tried to make the trip happen. Then national security tried to make it happen - they showed a chat log which shows that while Trump and his staff were planning the trip to the capitol, THEY ALREADY KNEW THE CAPITOL HAD BEEN BREACHED. McCarthy immediately called Hutchinson and begged her not to come to the capitol.  

In the planning process, the president was planning to do the following once he got to the capitol (Mark and Scott Perry were both involved): having a speech outside the capitol and then going inside, going into the House chamber.

After the speech and Trump got into his car, Trump thought he was going to go to the Capitol anyway (even after an official visit was not possible). When he found out they weren’t going, Trump was irate. Trump tried to grab the steering wheel and Trump physically attacked his head secret service agent. Also described the President throwing dishes at the wall after he listened to Barr’s interview with the press that day.

After the break:

Meadows was watching the insurrectionists breach the capitol and didn’t seem concerned.

Shortly after, she talked to Cippilone, who was freaking out and insisted that they go talk to the president “if we don’t do anything, the blood is going to be on your f**ing hands.”

After that, Trump’s 2:24 tweet went out (the one about Pence not having the courage to overturn the election)

Hutchinson went into the oval office to give Meadows his phone and overheard the president and Cippilone talking about the “Hang Mike Pence” chants.

Cippilone said “we need to do something about it, they’re literally threatening to kill pence.” Meadows responded and said the President didn’t care, he didn’t think the people doing the chant were doing anything wrong.

Trump said that Pence deserved it.

Giuliani

Meadows

[newstfionline]

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Media grapples with how to cover Trump after White House (AP) Two weeks into Donald Trump’s post-presidency, it feels like he hasn’t really gone away. He’s stayed in the news, defying the tradition of former presidents abruptly falling off the radar upon their successor’s inauguration and despite the shutdown of his favored means of communication on Twitter. A debate in media circles over how much attention he should receive when he is out of power has been put on hold, probably for several more weeks. “It’s virtually impossible to stop talking about Trump,” said Kelly McBride, National Public Radio public editor. “There’s still too many questions about what he did as president.” Stories about Trump on websites monitored by the analytics and advertising company Taboola in January got nearly four times as much traffic as stories about Biden. Trump stories had at least double the amount of traffic almost every day of the month. That continued even after the inauguration, but at a lesser degree.

Trump rejects Dems’ request to testify at impeachment trial (AP) House Democrats on Thursday asked Donald Trump to testify under oath for his Senate impeachment trial, challenging him to respond to their charge that he incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol. Hours after the Democrats’ request was revealed, Trump adviser Jason Miller dismissed the trial as “an unconstitutional proceeding” and said the former president would not testify. Separately, Trump’s lawyers denounced the request as a “public relations stunt.” The impeachment trial starts Feb. 9. Trump, the first president to be impeached twice, is charged with inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters broke into the Capitol to interrupt the electoral vote count. Five people died. Before the riot, Trump had told his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat. Many Senate Republicans have argued that the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office, even though he was impeached while he was still president. In a test vote in the Senate last week, 45 Republicans voted for an effort to dismiss the trial on those grounds.

Biden faces a relieved but cautious Europe (NYT) There’s no doubt that most European leaders are relieved by the vision and commitments of the new U.S. administration. But that doesn’t mean they will follow Biden’s lead in lockstep on the world stage. The ultranationalism of former president Donald Trump and the bruising experience of Brexit further convinced officials in Berlin, Paris and Brussels of the need to pursue a more independent European approach and to build greater capacity for self-reliance after more than half a century of sheltering beneath the American security umbrella. In remarks aired Thursday during a dialogue with the Atlantic Council, French President Emmanuel Macron cheered Biden’s arrival, but emphasized his vision of “European sovereignty,” where the continent takes more ownership of its security and more proactively reckons with crises in its neighborhood, from North Africa to Russia’s borderlands. The experience of the Trump years has shifted Europe’s strategic thinking. The dramatic Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol reflected not just the volatility of U.S. politics, but the extent to which domestic polarization could subsume future foreign policy. “It showed how fragile democracy can be, not just in the United States but here as well,” Anna Stahl, a Berlin-based analyst, told New York magazine. “And one lesson from that could be, in addition to the fact that the U.S. is divided, that we need to focus more on European solidarity.” Macron said Europeans should be wary of finding themselves in situations where they are dependent on U.S. decision-making, “because any U.S. decision which is democratic could be led by a domestic approach, could be led by a domestic agenda, and obviously the reasonable weight of the U.S. interests … could not be exactly the same as the European one.”

U.S. trade deficit rises to 12-year high $679 billion (AP) The U.S. trade deficit rose 17.7% last year to $679 billion, highest since 2008, as the coronavirus disrupted global commerce and confounded then-President Donald Trump’s attempts to rebalance America’s trade with the rest of the world. The gap between the value of the goods and services the United States sells abroad and what it buys climbed from $577 billion in 2019, the Commerce Department said Friday. Exports skidded 15.7% to $2.1 trillion, and imports fell 9.5% to $2.8 trillion.

Billed for bad advice (NYT) McKinsey & Company reached a $573 million settlement with 47 states and Washington D.C. over that time they allegedly helped the maker of OxyContin “turbocharge” sales of the highly addictive opioid, paving a swath of personal and economic destruction across the United States and leading to a deadly epidemic that has claimed 450,000 lives over two decades and caused serious lasting damage to untold more. Records show McKinsey helped Purdue Pharmaceuticals sell higher-dose pills even after Purdue pleaded guilty to misleading doctors about the risks of the pill, and offered assistance in getting the pesky FDA off their back. McKinsey will not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, but agreed to restrictions on its future work with addictive narcotics. The states will use the penalties for the opioid treatment, prevention and recovery programs created in response to McKinsey’s successful advice.

Haiti’s Impasse (Foreign Policy) Stores were shuttered and protests unfolded in Haiti’s capital this week as the country’s opposition staged a general strike calling for President Jovenel Moïse to step down. They argue that his term ends Sunday and a transitional government should step in; Moise says his term lasts until 2022. On Tuesday, Catholic bishops called for dialogue and offered to mediate the crisis, writing in a statement from a bishop’s conference that “the country is on the verge of explosion.” Moïse was elected in late 2016 after a yearlong standoff over a previous election. Less than 10 percent of registered voters supported him at the time, and his administration has faced large, on-and-off street demonstrations since mid-2018. These denounced fuel prices, alleged corruption, political repression, and economic strife. A year ago, Moïse dismissed most of Haiti’s congress and began ruling by decree. For now, Moïse says he will stay put, in which case the protesters say they will stay in the streets. While the United States, the Organization of American States, and the European Union have called for elections to restore the legislature, in the coming months, Moïse’s plans focus on modifying the Constitution.

Denmark to develop digital passport proving vaccinations (AP) Denmark’s government said Wednesday it is joining forces with businesses to develop a digital passport that would show whether people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, allowing them to travel and help ease restrictions on public life. Finance Minister Morten Boedskov told a news conference that “in three, four months, a digital corona passport will be ready for use in, for example, business travel.” “It will be the extra passport that you will be able to have on your mobile phone that documents that you have been vaccinated,” Boedskov said. “We can be among the first in the world to have it and can show it to the rest of the world.” The coronavirus has seen a near-total halt in international travel as countries try to contain the spread of the virus. Major European airlines, for example, are flying a tenth of their normal traffic. [Sweden is developing something similar.]

Moscow’s jails overwhelmed with detained Navalny protesters (AP) The video, shot by a man detained in a Moscow protest, shows a group of people jammed into a police minibus. One of them says on the recording that they had already been held there for nine hours, with some forced to stand because of overcrowding and no access to food, water or bathrooms. Detainees are recounting their miserable experiences as Moscow jails were overwhelmed following mass arrests from protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny this week. They described long waits to be processed through the legal system and crowded conditions with few coronavirus precautions. More than 11,000 protesters were reported detained across Russia in the pro-Navalny rallies on two straight weekends last month and in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Tuesday, after he was ordered by court to serve nearly three years in prison. Some of the protesters were beaten on the streets by riot police or subjected to other abuse. While it accounted for less than half of the detentions, the capital’s jails quickly filled up as scores of people were sentenced by the courts. Many received misdemeanor charges that resulted in jail terms of five to 15 days. Marina Litvinovich, member of the Public Monitoring Commission that observes the treatment of prisoners and detainees, said Moscow simply could not handle such an influx of protesters convicted of misdemeanor offenses and needing to be jailed for several days. “The first crisis occurred when police vans and buses (with detainees) were driving around Moscow anxiously and jails didn’t let them in. They didn’t know where to put people,” Litvinovich told the AP. “Some people were brought back to police precincts. Some were standing the whole day inside police vans near the jails. Some got lucky and they were given food and taken to toilets. Some didn’t have luck and they had to pee in a bottle.”

Virus upends new year for millions of Chinese (Washington Post) For the second year in a row, millions of Chinese are missing out on the most important holiday of the year—a time for family reunions, lavish meals, fireworks and catching up with friends—as authorities try to control new coronavirus outbreaks. Residents are not only disappointed. Many are also angry at the extreme measures local authorities, determined to avoid outbreaks in their districts, have adopted to limit travel. For months, officials have discouraged travel during the festival by handing out cash subsidies, free phone data usage, and points for coveted residence permits in cities. China’s State Council instructed officials to “guide the public” to celebrate “on the spot” rather than crisscross the country. The measures appear to have worked. This year’s Spring Festival travel rush is expected to be the quietest in more than a decade. Transport ministry officials expect 1.2 billion trips, compared with 3 billion in 2019 and a drop of more than 20 percent from last year, when many families were sheltering at home at the height of the outbreak in China. Those who tried to go home have found themselves stymied by extra, often contradictory rules. In theory, residents traveling to rural areas only need to present a negative coronavirus test result taken within the past seven days. Unofficially, local governments have added restrictions, such as mandating centralized quarantine and sealing residents in their homes.

China’s latest weapon against Taiwan: the sand dredger (Reuters) Taiwanese coast guard commander Lin Chie-ming is on the frontline of a new type of warfare that China is waging against Taiwan. China’s weapon? Sand. On a chilly morning in late January, Lin, clad in an orange uniform, stood on the rolling deck of his boat as it patrolled in choppy waters off the Taiwan-run Matsu Islands. A few kilometers away, the Chinese coast was faintly visible from Lin’s boat. He was on the lookout for Chinese sand-dredging ships encroaching on waters controlled by Taiwan. Half an hour into the patrol, Lin’s nine-man crew spotted two 3,000-ton dredgers, dwarfing their 100-ton vessel. Upon spotting Lin’s boat, armed with two water cannons and a machine gun, the dredgers quickly pulled up anchor and headed back toward the Chinese coast.The sand-dredging is one weapon China is using against Taiwan in a campaign of so-called gray-zone warfare, which entails using irregular tactics to exhaust a foe without actually resorting to open combat. Since June last year, Chinese dredgers have been swarming around the Matsu Islands, dropping anchor and scooping up vast amounts of sand from the ocean bed for construction projects in China. The ploy is taxing for Taiwan’s civilian-run Coast Guard Administration, which is now conducting round-the-clock patrols in an effort to repel the Chinese vessels. The dredging is a “gray-zone strategy with Chinese characteristics,” said Su Tzu-yun, an associate research fellow at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research. “You dredge for sand on the one hand, but if you can also put pressure on Taiwan, then that’s great, too.” Sand is just part of the gray-zone campaign. China, which claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, has been using other irregular tactics to wear down the island of 23 million. The most dramatic: In recent months, the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, has been dispatching warplanes in menacing forays toward the island. Taiwan has been scrambling military aircraft on an almost daily basis to head off the threat, placing an onerous burden on its air force.

Efforts to end Myanmar’s ethnic conflicts shaken by coup (AP) The coup that removed an elected government and reimposed military control in Myanmar has raised even more uncertainty about a fragile peace process aimed at ending decades of conflict between the military, armed ethnic groups and militias. Over 20 ethnic groups have been fighting the military over control of predominantly ethnic-minority borderland areas, including Shan, Kachin, Karen and Rakhine states. The groups have sought greater autonomy for their regions, which are often rich with natural resources. The military and militias aligned with it have fought for continued centralized power and control. Myanmar has one of the longest civil conflicts in the world, with fighting continuing at different times across the country since 1949. Many of the armed groups want greater autonomy, which they feel was promised by Suu Kyi’s father, Gen. Aung San, via the Panglong Agreement of 1947, which called for a federal system of government, ethnic minority rights and religious freedom. Aung San was assassinated later in 1947. Decades of junta rule that followed resulted in a slew of human rights violations, including the use of civilians as slave labor, rapes, extrajudicial killings and burning of entire villages.

In Gaza, Pandemic Forces Tough Choices (NPR) How does the pandemic affect one of the world’s most crowded and battle-scarred territories? From merchants to doctors, the 2.2 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip are forced to make tough choices to survive. On a single street, a vegetable seller, supermarket worker and secondhand clothes merchant recently showed up at their day jobs—though the clothes merchant said he was convinced all three of them had COVID-19. “I feel bad about myself. I would quarantine myself for a whole month if I could, but I have to keep the shop open. I have no other source of income,” Hossam, 26, told NPR by video chat. He declined to give his full name because he could be arrested for keeping his shop open while sick. Hossam lost his sense of taste and smell, and became fatigued, but refused to take a COVID-19 test. If it were positive, his whole family would be ordered to quarantine and he and his brother, the family’s sole breadwinners, wouldn’t be able to work. Gaza’s Hamas rulers offer no financial aid to those quarantined at home. “There are many others like me who don’t want to report their illness so they can keep working,” Hossam said. This is common in Gaza, where most live below the poverty line and the economy is in a chokehold due to a nearly 14-year Israeli and Egyptian blockade severely restricting trade and travel to the Islamist-ruled territory.

Food inflation (Financial Times) Global food prices have reached their highest in almost seven years, further raising the specter of food inflation and hunger at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic continues to hit economies around the world. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index for January rose by a tenth from a year ago to its highest level since July 2014, led by a sharp increase in grain prices. Substantial buying of corn by China and lower-than-expected production in the US helped send the gauge—which tracks a basket of food commodities against their 2014-16 prices—to its eighth consecutive monthly increase, the longest rising streak in a decade.

#headlines #news

[newstfionline]

Friday, February 12, 2021

House managers wrap up case against Trump (Washington Post) House managers on Thursday wrapped up their case against former president Donald Trump, imploring the Senate to convict him while warning that he could stoke violence again. Trump’s legal team is poised to respond on Friday, arguing that he should be acquitted. They are expected to use only one of two allotted days. A verdict could come as early as the weekend. The developments came on the third day of an impeachment trial in which Democrats have charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the Jan. 6 violent takeover of the Capitol.

California Is Making Liberals Squirm (NYT) California is a remarkable place. It also has the highest poverty rate in the nation, when you factor in housing costs, and vies for the top spot in income inequality, too. The median price for a home in California is more than $700,000. As Bloomberg reported in 2019, the state has four of the nation’s five most expensive housing markets and a quarter of the nation’s homeless residents. In much of San Francisco, you can’t walk 20 feet without seeing a multicolored sign declaring that Black lives matter, kindness is everything and no human being is illegal. Those signs sit in yards zoned for single families, in communities that organize against efforts to add the new homes that would bring those values closer to reality. Poorer families—disproportionately nonwhite and immigrant—are pushed into long commutes, overcrowded housing and homelessness. Those inequalities have turned deadly during the pandemic. There is a danger—not just in California, but everywhere—that politics becomes an aesthetic rather than a program. It’s a danger on the right, where Donald Trump modeled a presidency that cared more about retweets than bills. But it’s also a danger on the left, where the symbols of progressivism are often preferred to the sacrifices and risks those ideals demand.

6 killed in 130-vehicle pileup on icy Texas interstate (AP) A massive crash involving more than 130 vehicles on an icy Texas interstate left six people dead and dozens injured Thursday amid a winter storm that dropped freezing rain, sleet and snow on parts of the U.S. At the scene of the crash on Interstate 35 near downtown Fort Worth, a tangle of semitrailers, cars and trucks had smashed into each other and had turned every which way, with some vehicles on top of others. The ice storm came as a polar vortex — swirling air that normally sits over the Earth’s poles — has moved near the U.S.-Canada border, resulting in colder weather farther south than usual, said Steve Goss, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

History of abuse for Mexican police unit in migrant massacre (AP) When state police in northern Mexico allegedly shot 19 people, including at least 14 Guatemalan migrants, to death in late January near the border with Texas, it was a tragedy that critics say authorities had been warned could come. In 2019, prosecutors charged that the same Tamaulipas state police unit, then operating under a different name, pulled eight people from their homes in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, posed them in clothing and vehicles to make them look like criminals, and shot them to death. Now, a dozen officers of the 150-member Special Operations Group, known by its Spanish initials as GOPES, have been ordered held for trial on charges they shot to death at least 14 Guatemalan migrants and two Mexicans on a rural road in the border township of Camargo. The bodies were then set afire and burned so badly that three other corpses are still awaiting identification. Authorities had ample warning of the problems in the unit, which was created last year from the remains of the special forces group accused of the 2019 killings and other atrocities. A federal legislator even filed a non-binding resolution in Mexico’s Congress in early January to protest beatings and robberies by the unit. “If back then they had done something, if any attention had been paid, perhaps today we would not be mourning the deaths of 19 people,” said Marco Antonio Mariño, vice president of the Tamaulipas Federation of Business Chambers.

Brazilian ballerina born without arms soars with her attitude (Reuters) When Vitória Bueno’s mother first dropped her off at ballet class, she worried about her five-year-old fitting in. Born without arms, Bueno’s dream of being a dancer seemed painfully unrealistic—especially in a small town in rural Brazil. But Bueno, now 16, focused on her assemblés, pirouettes and other technical challenges. She took up jazz and tap as well. Now a regular at the ballet academy in her hometown in the state of Minas Gerais, Bueno’s talent has made her a social media star and an inspiration to many. Watching her glide across the wooden stage, synchronized with her colleagues in a dazzle of green and white, it is easy to forget she dances without arms. More than just realizing a dream, the strength and flexibility gained through dance have proven crucial to Bueno, who does everything from brushing her teeth to picking items off the supermarket shelf with her feet. “There are things she can do with her feet that I can’t do with my hands,” said her stepfather, Jose Carlos Perreira. With over 150,000 Instagram followers, Bueno is glad to be a role model for others too. “We are more than our disabilities, so we have to chase our dreams,” she said, flashing a broad smile.

German children suffer from psychological issues in pandemic (AP) A new survey of children in Germany suggests that the stress and depravations of the coronavirus pandemic are taking a toll on their mental health, especially among those from underprivileged families, researchers said Wednesday. The study by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf found about one in three German children are suffering from pandemic-related anxiety, depression or are exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms like headaches or stomach aches. Children and teenagers from poorer families and those with migrant roots are disproportionally affected, according to the study. “Children who were doing well before the pandemic and feel sheltered and comfortable within their families will get through this pandemic well,” said Ulrike Ravens-Sieberer, the head of the study and research director of the children’s psychiatric clinic at the university hospital.

Koo d’etat (Foreign Policy) Indian lawmakers are threatening to abandon Twitter in favor of Indian lookalike app Koo amid a dispute with the Silicon Valley company. The Indian government has ordered the removal of hundreds of Twitter accounts and posts in recent days over claims that users are spreading misinformation about ongoing farmer protests. On Wednesday, Twitter announced it would not comply with some takedown orders as it deemed them in contravention of Indian law. India’s IT ministry posted its displeasure with Twitter on rival app Koo, as a number of Indian leaders, including Trade Minister Piyush Goyal encouraged a Twitter exodus. The Koo app has seen a ten-fold increase in downloads as a result of the spat—a total of 3 million in the past two days.

They were accused of plotting to overthrow the Modi government. The evidence was planted, a new report says. (Washington Post) Key evidence against a group of Indian activists accused of plotting to overthrow the government was planted on a laptop seized by police, a new forensics report concludes, deepening doubts about a case viewed as a test of the rule of law under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. An attacker used malware to infiltrate a laptop belonging to one of the activists, Rona Wilson, before his arrest and deposited at least 10 incriminating letters on the computer, according to a report from Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm that examined an electronic copy of the laptop at the request of Wilson’s lawyers. Many of the activists have been jailed for more than two years without trial under a stringent anti-terrorism law. Human rights groups and legal experts consider the case an attempt to suppress dissent in India, where government critics have faced intimidation, harassment and arrest during Modi’s tenure. Sudeep Pasbola, a lawyer representing Wilson, said the Arsenal report proved his client’s innocence and “destabilizes” the prosecution case against the activists. On Wednesday, Wilson’s lawyers included the report in a petition filed in the High Court of Bombay urging judges to dismiss the case against their client.

China to pull BBC News off the air, state broadcast regulator says (Washington Post) China’s broadcasting regulator has moved to pull BBC News off the air in the country over a “serious content violation,” the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported Thursday. China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) said in an announcement on its website that the broadcaster, which is partly funded by the British state but editorially independent, had “undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity.” The announcement, which arrived with the Lunar New Year holiday in China, followed recent disputes between Chinese officials and BBC News. It also came just a week after Britain’s media regulator pulled the Chinese state-run television channel CGTN off British airwaves because of alleged errors in an application to transfer its license to another company. In December, BBC News produced a report that alleged the forced labor of ethnic minority Uighurs in China’s cotton industry in Xinjiang. Chinese state media bristled at the work, calling it “fake news” and accusing the BBC of political bias.

Racialized surveillance (Foreign Policy) Following numerous reports of Chinese firms, including Huawei, singling out Uighurs in facial recognition, a Los Angeles Times/IPVM investigation found that Dahua, the world’s second-largest security camera manufacturer, provides Chinese police with “real-time warning for Uighurs” and informs them of “Uighurs with hidden terrorist inclinations.” In many parts of China, being Uighur is now effectively criminalized, with the few remaining Uighur residents of cities outside Xinjiang reporting routine harassment by police. The arrival of Uighurs, even mothers with children, in a new city or town prompts the arrival of the police and actions ranging from warnings to stay in their hotel or apartment to deportation back to Xinjiang. Dahua is rolling out its race-based systems to other countries, which may have their own least favored minorities to target.

Biden Announces Myanmar Sanctions (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Joe Biden has announced U.S. sanctions against Myanmar’s military junta, ten days after the military seized absolute power and arrested members of the country’s democratically-elected leadership. Biden is to freeze $1 billion in Myanmar’s state assets held in U.S. banks, with further sanctions expected to follow against a “first round of targets” this week. But Myanmar’s generals have endured sanctions before—including recent ones over the ethnic cleansing of its Rohingya minority—and so whatever the international community can muster is unlikely to dislodge them.

Digital siege: Internet cuts become favored tool of regimes (AP) When army generals in Myanmar staged a coup last week, they briefly cut internet access in an apparent attempt to stymie protests. In Uganda, residents couldn’t use Facebook, Twitter and other social media for weeks after a recent election. And in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the internet has been down for months amid a wider conflict. Around the world, shutting down the internet has become an increasingly popular tactic of repressive and authoritarian regimes and some illiberal democracies. Digital rights groups say governments use them to stifle dissent, silence opposition voices or cover up human rights abuses. Regimes often cut online access in response to protests or civil unrest, particularly around elections, as they try to keep their grip on power by restricting the flow of information, researchers say. Last year there were 93 major internet shutdowns in 21 countries, according to a report by Top10VPN, a U.K.-based digital privacy and security research group. The list doesn’t include places like China and North Korea, where the government tightly controls or restricts the internet.

Japan Olympics chief who said women talk too much will resign over remarks, reports say (Washington Post) The head of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee is set to resign, Japanese media reported on Thursday, after an uproar over sexist remarks he had made about women at a meeting last week. Mori, an 83-year-old former prime minister with a record of insensitive and sexist pronouncements, had tried to justify the lack of women at a senior level in the Japanese Olympic Committee by saying women talk too much at meetings and make them run on too long. The following day he apologized but showed no apparent remorse and said he had no intention of resigning. The comments provoked an unprecedented reaction in Japan, with more than 146,000 people signing an online petition calling on him to step down. Nearly 500 Olympic volunteers withdrew, and one poll found less than 7 percent of respondents thought Mori was qualified to continue in his role. The World Economic Forum ranks Japan 121st out of 153 countries in terms of gender parity, with the largest gender gap among advanced economies.

20 UN peacekeepers injured in an attack in central Mali (AP) An attack on a United Nations base in central Mali has injured at least 20 peacekeepers, the U.N. mission spokesman said Wednesday. The temporary U.N. base in Kerena, near Douentza, was the target of direct and indirect fire early Wednesday morning, Olivier Salgado said in a statement on Twitter. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group stage regular attacks on U.N. peacekeepers and soldiers.

Salesforce declares the 9-to-5 workday dead, will let some employees work remotely from now on (The Verge) Cloud computing company Salesforce is joining other Silicon Valley tech giants in announcing a substantial shift in how it allows its employees to work. In a blog post published Tuesday, the company says the “9-to-5 workday is dead” and that it will allow employees to choose one of three categories that dictate how often, if ever, they return to the office once it’s safe to do so. The company joins other tech firms like Facebook and Microsoft that have announced permanent work-from-home policies in response to the coronavirus pandemic. “As we enter a new year, we must continue to go forward with agility, creativity and a beginner’s mind—and that includes how we cultivate our culture. An immersive workspace is no longer limited to a desk in our Towers; the 9-to-5 workday is dead; and the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks,” writes Brent Hyder, Salesforce’s chief people officer. “In our always-on, always-connected world, it no longer makes sense to expect employees to work an eight-hour shift and do their jobs successfully,” Hyder adds. “Whether you have a global team to manage across time zones, a project-based role that is busier or slower depending on the season, or simply have to balance personal and professional obligations throughout the day, workers need flexibility to be successful.”

At first cat lawyer was embarrassed. Then he realized we all could use a laugh. (Washington Post) As far as courtroom disclosures go, this one was unique: “I’m not a cat,” a Texas attorney claimed as his Zoom square displayed a fluffy white feline. At a routine civil forfeiture case hearing in Texas’ 394th Judicial District Court, Presidio County attorney Rod Ponton accidentally signed on with the cat filter, making the flummoxed attorney look like an adorable kitten. The 34-second clip of Ponton’s brief appearance as a cat immediately amused many and is becoming a viral hit. The prevalence of video chat platforms for court appearances has led to other unusual moments: A defendant in Sacramento appeared from a barber’s chair, a Florida burglary suspect tried to flirt his way out of trouble with a judge, and a lawyer in Peru was caught on camera naked after he stripped to have sex. But Tuesday’s video was the cat’s pajamas to many. Even Ponton, once he recovered from cat face and mortification, found humor in his proverbial 15 minutes of fame. “At first I was worried about it,” Ponton, 69, told The Washington Post on Tuesday, “but then I realized as it was going viral if the country could take a moment to laugh at my cat moment at my expense, I’ll take it. We’ve had a stressful year.”

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