Big Time News Blog: 02/10/20

Monday, February 10, 2020

Pete Buttigieg is an elitist. He should embrace it.

The more former Mayor Pete Buttigieg tries to prove that he is not an elitist, the more obvious it is to everyone that he is. Just embrace it.

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Biden Aide Calls Hunter Biden Probe ‘an Entirely Partisan Smear’

(Bloomberg) -- Senate Republicans’ continued push to investigate Hunter Biden is “an entirely partisan smear,” a top campaign adviser to his father, Joe Biden, said Monday.“The more Republicans come forward and say we’re going to focus on Hunter Biden,” deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said, “only underscores what a partisan attempt this is to try to derail” his father’s presidential hopes.Bedingfield made her comments at a Bloomberg News reporter roundtable in Manchester, New Hampshire, responding to a question about a request last week from Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson for the U.S. Secret Service to provide records of the younger Biden’s travel while his father was vice president. The Treasury Department has already complied with a request from the same senators to provide financial records about Hunter Biden and his associates, Yahoo News reported last week.Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company that had been embroiled in controversy, while his father oversaw U.S. policy on Ukraine. Biden pushed for the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who has since claimed that he was removed because he was investigating Burisma and Biden wanted to protect his son. The claim has been debunked.President Donald Trump will “spend a tremendous amount of time” trying to smear the eventual Democratic nominee, Bedingfield said, and, in her view, Biden has been able to withstand it. “Other candidates have not really faced the full force of Trump“ and their ability to survive it remains an open question, she said.To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Manchester, New Hampshire at jepstein32@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Coronavirus Keeps Killing and Americans Keep Getting Infected

The 2019 novel coronavirus claimed more lives in China on Sunday than in any 24-hour period since the outbreak began late last year, and the danger to Americans seemed only to be increasing.Ninety-seven people died of the infection over that timespan in China, bringing the death toll in that country to 909, according to officials with the World Health Organization.A 60-year-old who died Thursday in the port city of Wuhan, where the disease originated in December, became the first U.S. citizen to succumb to the illness, the American embassy in Beijing announced Saturday. The number of patients killed by the virus has officially surpassed the toll—774—of those who died during a SARS epidemic, which also originated in China in 2002. Even so, the coronavirus death toll outside mainland China has held steady for some time at two, with one each in Hong Kong and the Philippines. In recent weeks, hundreds of Americans have been evacuated from China and placed in isolation on U.S. military bases for symptom-monitoring. The State Department has said dozens more are still waiting on help from the federal government in evacuating from Hubei province, where the rate of infection soared over the weekend, leaving experts fearing that the worst of the outbreak might be still to come. The WHO said 40,235 people had been infected in China as of Monday morning, but public health officials have repeatedly cautioned that these numbers are likely too low due to a severe strain on testing facilities.North Korea’s Secret Coronavirus Crisis is Crazy ScaryIn his first public appearance in two weeks, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday said authorities have confidence they will triumph over the “grim” outbreak, which has demonstrated both “the strength and many shortcomings” of his nation’s public health system, the South China Morning Post reported.While the number of people infected inside the United States has been steady at 12 since last week, 23 Americans have contracted the virus since the outbreak hit a now-quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan. A total of 135 people on board had been diagnosed, the ship’s captain told passengers on the Diamond Princess on Monday. The outbreak on the 3,700-person ship, which is carrying more than 400 people from the United States, is now the largest outside China. The passengers and crew members have been quarantined on the ship since Feb. 3, and Japanese officials have reportedly said they cannot test everyone on board.At last count, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said there had been 398 people under investigation for infection in 37 states and territories, of which 318 came back negative. Sixty-eight of those possible cases were still pending as of Monday morning. Twelve cases have previously been confirmed in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, and Wisconsin.Two of those 12 cases were spread through person-to-person transmission, and all others were patients who had recently traveled to China. There is no vaccine yet for the virus, but experts have emphasized that the risk to the average American remains low, even as they expect to confirm more cases in the coming days and weeks. The CDC said last week that it had shipped hundreds of diagnostic test kits to labs across the country, enabling states to begin their own testing instead of shipping all samples to federal facilities in Atlanta.For his part, President Donald Trump waded into the issue on Monday, telling pool reporters that viruses “typically” subside in April “with the heat, as the heat comes in.” “We’re in great shape, though. We have 12 cases,” said Trump. “Many of them are in good shape now."From Lobsters and Steak to Coronavirus: One Couple’s Surreal Cruise NightmareOutside China, including the U.S., there were 319 confirmed cases in 24 countries on Monday, according to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization. Speaking from Geneva, Switzerland, Tedros referred to the “concerning” case of “onward transmission” that reportedly infected five British nationals, including a child, at a French mountain resort. The group were said to have had contact with another British man who contracted the virus in Singapore.“The detection of this small number of cases could be the spark that becomes a bigger fire,” Tedros said.“For now, it’s only a spark,” he continued. “Our objective remains containment. We call on all countries to use the window of opportunity we have to prevent a bigger fire.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Elizabeth Warren compared Mike Pence to a dog when a voter asked who her running mate would be

Elizabeth Warren held a town hall event in Lebanon, New Hampshire Sunday. When asked a quirky question, she gave a "feisty" response.

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Trump reportedly didn't take GOP senators' advice about Sondland

Republican senators tried to offer some advice, but President Trump reportedly didn't think much of it.Multiple GOP lawmakers tried to prevent Trump from dismissing U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, sources confirmed to The New York Times and CNN.Sondland was told to resign by State Department officials Friday, but refused and was ultimately fired. A group of Republicans in Congress' upper chamber, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), had advised against it to no avail, believing the decision would look bad for the White House and create political backlash. Sondland provided damaging testimony during the House's impeachment inquiry, so his removal has been viewed by many as a Trump revenge tactic.The senators also reportedly thought the firing was unnecessary because Sondland had already communicated with senior officials about leaving his post after the Senate impeachment trial concluded.Trump on Saturday also defended his decision to remove another impeachment witness, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, from the National Security Council. Vindman is reportedly seen less sympathetically by Republicans, so he didn't receive the same kind of effort from senators to preserve his post. Collins, though, did say she was opposed to the White House going forward with any kind of retribution against witnesses. Read more at The New York Times and CNN.More stories from theweek.com For better pasta sauce, throw away your garlic America needs to stop its natural gas pipeline mania Why Amy Klobuchar would win by subtraction

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This endangered wolf traveled nearly 9,000 miles to find love. She was found dead.

The gray wolf that was found dead, known as OR-54, was protected by California and Oregon law and by the federal Endangered Species Act.

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It Was China That Stole the Data of 150 Million Americans by Hacking Equifax, Feds Say

The U.S. Justice Department has indicted four members of the Chinese military in connection with one of the biggest data breaches in history, a hack that compromised the data of nearly half of all American citizens.The credit report giant Equifax had its systems compromised in a 2017 security breach that gave hackers access to information such as Social Security numbers, birth dates, and addresses. In total, the members of the Chinese military are accused of stealing personally identifiable information from 145 million Americans, as well as driving license numbers for ten million and the credit card numbers of around 200,000.A nine-count indictment unveiled Monday accused four Chinese military members of hacking into the company’s computer networks, maintaining unauthorized access to them, and stealing the sensitive data. The four are named as Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei—all of them are said to have carried out the hack as part of the People's Liberation Army’s (PLA) 54th Research Institute, a component of the Chinese military.“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement. “This was an organized and remarkably brazen criminal heist of sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans, as well as the hard work and intellectual property of an American company, by a unit of the Chinese military.”Barr added: “Unfortunately, the Equifax hack fits a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of state-sponsored computer intrusions and thefts by China and its citizens that have targeted personally identifiable information, trade secrets, and other confidential information.”What remained to be seen was how this might fit into a larger pattern of aggression U.S. officials have attributed to the Chinese military. In 2014, the Obama-era Justice Department indicted five members of the PLA on charges of corporate espionage, specifically intellectual property theft. “Fraud is a surface level strategy,” Paul Martini, co-founder of network security platform iBoss, told The Daily Beast. "Equifax is a holy grail in terms of the value of information that can be used to reset passwords and grant access to other systems, like power grids, sensitive devices, even military vehicles."The four Chinese military members are accused of running thousands of queries on Equifax’s systems before gaining access to and downloading millions of pieces of information between May and July 2017. They’re also accused of stealing valuable trade secret information, including Equifax’s data compilations and the company’s database designs.When it was disclosed, the hack prompted public fury over the company's vulnerability and the mass exposure of customer information, and ultimately led to the resignation of Equifax chief executive Richard Smith.“Ultimately, the company is responsible for its data, as challenging as that can be,” Martini said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Wuhan journalist has gone missing, and his family says he's been forcibly quarantined

A Chinese lawyer and citizen journalist has gone missing after his video reports from Wuhan about coronavirus went viral on platforms like Twitter and YouTube.