| Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has become the latest Democrat to announce he’ll run for president in 2020. Booker chose the first day of Black History Month to announce his run, telling supporters in a video released Friday morning: “The history of our nation is defined by collective action; by interwoven destinies of slaves and abolitionists; of those born here and those who chose America as home; of those who took up arms to defend our country, and those who linked arms to challenge and change it.” Booker will be the second black senator to join the presidential race, alongside his colleague Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). |
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| The Trump administration is expected to announce Friday that it’s formally withdrawing from a key agreement with Russia that has kept the development of nuclear missiles in check since the days of the Cold War. The pact, known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, has banned ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 kilometers and 5,000 kilometers since it was signed in 1987. The U.S. has accused Russia of violating the treaty with the development of a new missile—a charge that the Kremlin denies. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in early December that Washington would give Moscow 60 days to destroy the missile—that deadline expires Saturday. The Associated Press reports that withdrawal will be announced Friday morning. Leaving the pact will allow the Trump administration to counter the fear that China, which is not restricted by the 1987 treaty, has gained a significant military advantage. Last-ditch talks this week to save the treaty failed. |
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| A 14-year-old girl who’s been missing from her home in Tennessee for nearly three weeks has been found alive nearly 700 miles away in Wisconsin, and her adoptive father has been charged with rape. Monroe County Sheriff Tommy Jones confirmed Thursday night that Randall Pruitt had been detained, saying: “He was arrested and charged with rape. We don’t believe at this time that he had any connections to her being a runaway or missing... I have to be vague in all my statement because this is still an ongoing investigation.” The young girl disappeared from her home in Madisonville, Tennessee, on Jan. 13 after her mom put her to bed. Jones said about the girl: “She is safe. She is in custody so that’s a very good ending to this as far as we’re concerned... She’s had shelter, she’s been eating and, according to the information that we got back, she’s doing fine.” Jones added that there's a possibility of “multiple other charges coming forward” with multiple people other than Pruitt being involved. |
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| A company founded by Erik Prince has reportedly agreed to build a training center in Xinjiang, China, where one million Uighurs and members of other mostly Muslim minority groups are being held in detention camps. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, a former Navy SEAL, and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. He has been interviewed as part of the Mueller probe after reports that he helped establish an alleged backchannel to Russia for the Trump administration. His company, Frontier Services Group, provides security and logistics for businesses in dangerous regions. It posted a statement on its website saying it had signed a deal to build a training center in Xinjiang. However, a Prince spokesman told Reuters on Friday that he had “no knowledge or involvement whatsoever with this preliminary memorandum regarding the company’s activity in Xinjiang” and a Hong Kong-based spokesman for Frontier said the statement was “published in error by a staff member in Beijing” and had been removed. The statement said a signing ceremony took place in Beijing this month, and that the company will invest 4 million yuan ($600,000) in the center. It’s not known what kind of training will be carried out. |
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| The FBI opened a “domestic terrorism” investigation into a California civil-rights group over a potential conspiracy against the “rights” of neo-Nazis, The Guardian reports. Feds reportedly ran a surveillance operation on the far-left anti-fascist civil group By Any Means Necessary [BAMN] after it protested against neo-Nazis in 2016. One of BAMN’s members was stabbed at the white-supremacist rally, according to the documents seen by The Guardian. The FBI investigation probed a potential “conspiracy” against the “rights” of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists, and said of the Klan: “The KKK consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white-supremacist agenda.” Mike German, a former FBI agent and far-right expert who reviewed the documents for The Guardian, said: “This description of the KKK should be an embarrassment to FBI leadership.” The FBI launched its investigation after white supremacists armed with knives faced BAMN activists at a June 2016 neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento. |
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| Billionaire Republican donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson have pumped $500,000 into a defense fund set up to help Donald Trump’s aides cover their legal costs associated with Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust was set up last year to help campaign aides caught up in the Mueller investigation pay for costly legal bills. The Adelsons each contributed $250,000 to the fund on Oct. 1, Politico reports, and were the only people who gave money to the fund from October to the end of 2018. The new disclosure, filed Thursday, shows the fund paid out more than half a million dollars to law firms between October and December. Real-estate mogul Geoffrey Palmer contributed to the fund earlier in the year. |
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| Facebook has pulled hundreds of Indonesian accounts after discovering that they were linked to a secretive group known as Saracen, and accused them of peddling hate speech and fake news. “These accounts and pages were actively working to conceal what they were doing and were linked to the Saracen Group, an online syndicate in Indonesia,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of Cybersecurity Policy, said Friday. “They have using deceptive messaging and... networks of concealed pages and accounts to drive often divisive narratives over key issues of public debates in Indonesia,” Gleicher told Reuters. Indonesia’s presidential election is set to take place in April—the country is believed to be Facebook’s third largest market, with more than 100 million users. Indonesia’s police cybercrime unit previously accused Saracen of incendiary posts on religious and ethnic issues, as well as a disinformation campaign that defamed government officials. |
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| The Trump administration has ended all aid to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID] confirmed the decision Friday and said it was related to a Jan. 31 deadline set by new U.S. legislation under which foreign-aid recipients are more likely to be sued in anti-terrorism lawsuits. Congress’ Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA) makes foreign-aid recipients more exposed to being sued in U.S. courts over alleged complicity in “acts of war.” The Palestinians declined further U.S. funding to avoid that legal risk. “At the request of the Palestinian Authority, we have wound down certain projects and programs funded with assistance under the authorities specified in ATCA in the West Bank and Gaza,” a U.S. official told Reuters. “All USAID assistance in the West Bank and Gaza has ceased.” The deadline also sees the end of around $60 million in U.S. aid for the Palestinian security forces. No decision has yet been made about future staffing at the USAID mission in the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, Reuters reports. |
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| Hundreds of immigrants across the U.S. showed up for ICE-issued court dates on Thursday only to find out the hearing dates were fake, CBS News reports. ICE agents had reportedly issued thousands of Notice to Appear documents telling immigrants to appear in court or risk permanent removal from the United States, but the dates on the notices were bogus. The chaos reportedly stemmed from ICE agents issuing seemingly random hearing dates last year in an effort to comply with a Supreme Court ruling mandating that all notices include actual dates rather than “TBD” for “to be determined,” which had been done previously. “It's mass chaos,” Ruby Powers, a Houston-based immigration attorney, told CBS News in a telephone interview. “These courts are already short staffed trying to clean up from the government shutdown's mess. It's a perfect storm.” |
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