Buttigieg 'wine cave' attendee offers reality check on event

One of the attendees at South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg's now-infamous "wine cave" fundraiser in Napa Valley, California, wants Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to know what really went down.Bill Wehrle, a vice president of a health-care company in San Francisco, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post about how the event was not full of billionaires drinking $900 dollars bottles of wine like in the image conjured up by Warren during last week's Democratic presidential debate.Wehrle, who says he is neither a billionaire nor a millionaire, attended with his partner, a professor at a community college. Also in attendance, Wehrle said, were a dean from another local community college, a flight attendant, a local city councilwoman, and a college student. People asked Buttigieg questions about primary care for the uninsured, getting out of Afghanistan, and how he plans on combating hate speech. As for the wine? Wehrle said he looked up the price online — it wasn't paltry at $185 a bottle, but nothing close to the Warren-estimated $900 — and, from what he could see, the mayor didn't have a drop.Wehrle did concede there were certainly wealthy people at the event, but he dismissed the idea that the evening was an attempt by billionaires to join together to pick the next president. Read the full op-ed at The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com How a 'legislative terrorist' conquered the Republican Party Queen Elizabeth acknowledges 2019 was a 'bumpy' year Bernie Sanders and the socialist Christmas spirit

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World's tallest geyser breaks eruption record, stunning Yellowstone visitors, scientists

Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park blew past its yearly eruption record in 2019, shooting up water 47 times, indicating an active period.

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Hong Kong police fire tear gas to break up Christmas Eve protest chaos

Hong Kong riot police fired rounds of tear gas at thousands of protesters, many wearing masks and reindeer horns, after scuffles in shopping malls and in a prime tourist district as pro-democracy rallies escalated into Christmas Eve chaos. Protesters inside the malls threw umbrellas and other objects at police who responded by beating some demonstrators with batons, with one pointing his gun at the crowd, but not firing. Some demonstrators occupied the main roads and blocked traffic outside the malls and nearby luxury hotels in the Tsim Sha Tsui tourist district of Kowloon.

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US considers pulling troops from West Africa: report

The Pentagon is looking into reducing or even withdrawing US troops from West Africa, part of a worldwide redeployment of military forces, the New York Times reported Tuesday. There are between 6,000 and 7,000 US troops in Africa, mainly in West Africa but also in places like Somalia. The US presence includes military trainers as well as a recently built $110 million drone base in Niger, the Times said.

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In Slap at Trump, Cuomo Vetoes U.S. Judges Performing Weddings

(Bloomberg) -- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have allowed federal judges to perform wedding ceremonies because many of them are President Donald Trump’s appointees.“I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judges who are appointed by this federal administration,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said Friday as he vetoed the bill, which passed the Democratic-controlled legislature overwhelmingly. “President Trump does not embody who we are as New Yorkers. The cornerstones that built our great state are diversity, tolerance and inclusion.”State Senator Liz Krueger, a progressive Manhattan Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the legislature gave the governor authority to perform wedding ceremonies four years ago, and granted similar powers to lawmakers two years ago.“Marriage is inclusive, equal, and open to all who want it,” she said after the veto. “So when it was suggested to me that we expand it to federal judges, I thought, ‘Why not? The more the merrier!’”The bill passed the state Assembly, 148 to 2, and the state Senate 61 to 1.“It’s hard to imagine a more petty, small action from a sitting governor,” Nick Langworthy, the state Republican Party chairman, said in a statement.Cuomo, who refrained from criticizing Trump early in the president’s term, has traded hostile exchanges with him in the past two years.In October, when Trump moved his formal residence to Florida from New York, Cuomo responded with a terse, “Good riddance.” He has supported legal moves in his administration and by Attorney General Letitia James to investigate Trump’s state tax payments, and he signed a bill in June allowing the state to release Trump’s state tax returns to the U.S. Congress.Trump, in declaring his Florida residence, said in a tweet, “Unfortunately, despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state.”(Updates with comment from Republican state chairman in 6th paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Flynn McRoberts at fmcroberts1@bloomberg.net, Bob Ivry, Larry ReibsteinFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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India's main opposition party stages protest against new law

Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to India’s streets to call for the revocation of the law, which critics say is the latest effort by Modi’s government to marginalize the country’s 200 million Muslims. The law allows Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally to become citizens if they can show they were persecuted because of their religion in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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Michael Bloomberg, the wealthiest 2020 candidate, used prison labor to help his campaign

Michael Bloomberg, who is worth about $54 billion, used prisoners to make phone calls to California for his 2020 presidential campaign.

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Fire in Chilean city of Valparaíso destroys about 50 homes: firefighters

A fire in a poor neighborhood of the coastal Chilean city of Valparaíso destroyed dozens of houses on Tuesday and firefighters struggled to control the blaze, authorities said.

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Nigeria Releases Leading Critic on Bail After a Campaign an Ocean Away

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The Decade’s Best and Worst (Sorry, Knicks)

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In Praise of Barack Obama, Music Critic

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How to Teach an Old Frog New Tricks

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Children’s Aid Helped a Young Ghanaian Woman Get to College

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Pentagon Warns Military Personnel Against At-Home DNA Tests

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Dellin Betances Joins the Mets on a One-Year Deal

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Roberts will tap his inner umpire in impeachment trial

America's last prolonged look at Chief Justice John Roberts came 14 years ago, when he told senators during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing that judges should be like baseball umpires, impartially calling balls and strikes. “He's going to look the part, he's going to play the part and he's the last person who wants the part,” said Carter Phillips, who has argued 88 Supreme Court cases, 43 of them in front of Roberts.

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Saudis Put Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Behind Them With Death Sentences and a Three-Day Rave

PARIS—It looks like heads will roll in Saudi Arabia, literally, for the murder last year of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But they’ll be detached from people that few Saudis and fewer Americans have ever heard of, and certainly not Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the mercurial and malign monarch-in-waiting beloved of the Trump clan.Never mind the CIA’s belief that the elaborately choreographed and gruesomely executed murder of The Washington Post columnist could not have been carried out unless MBS authorized it. Conveniently, the two top aides who would have connected the crown prince to the crime reportedly were cleared.The court statement Monday announcing the sentence named none of the five condemned to death. But Saudi Deputy General Prosecutor Shalaan Al-Shalaan told a press conference “We found that Khashoggi’s murder was not premeditated.” This travesty is in fact much bigger news outside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia than inside. There, it’s party time (or hangover time) in the wake of a high-tech three-day rave meant to titillate the kingdom’s young people with hitherto banned music, dancing, and even a few far-from-veiled semi-celebrities from the United States and Britain. As the Associated Press described it, “More than 70 world-renowned DJs were invited to perform across five stages to the backdrop of surrealist performances—including one with a woman in a skintight sky blue leotard writhing from a hot-air balloon over a crowd of young Saudi men.”MBS, better than any of his forebears, understands the power of what Roman tyrants used to call “bread and circuses,” a phrase attributed to Juvenal and satisfactorily defined on Wikipedia as “the creation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace.”Trump Bet the Whole Middle East on Khashoggi’s Alleged Murderer. Now He’s Doubling Down.As MBS’ decrepit father, King Salman, fades from the scene, the crown prince has made colossal mistakes, including the Yemen war that’s become Riyadh’s quagmire. But he has managed to crush and intimidate virtually all challenges to his power. Rival princes have been imprisoned and stripped of fortunes. Liberal critics have been jailed, flogged, and in some cases sentenced to death while the once-powerful religious police have been threatened or bribed into submission.(As I write this, I cannot help but think how envious an American president from Queens must be when he looks at this man who will be king—a prince rich beyond even Donald Trump’s dreams of avarice, with power as absolute as any medieval tyrant’s.)But let us return for a moment to the matter of Jamal Khashoggi—the murder that Trump and MBS would like us to forget, and an inconvenient atrocity that most young Saudis already are tossing in the circular file of their well-distracted memories.In Saudi Arabia as elsewhere, as long as people feel prosperous and are allowed to indulge their appetites, the abuse of authority by their rulers is treated as political theater beyond their control, and they respond with a willing suspension of disbelief.Thus it hardly matters that the Saudi prosecutor’s claim defies credulity when he says the butchering of Khashoggi—for such it was—“was not premeditated.”But permit me to go over a few of the grisly details again as revealed last summer by the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and reported in The Daily Beast. Turkish authorities had bugged the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and various investigators, including the CIA, subsequently were allowed to listen to the recordings. Members of the U.N. team took meticulous notes on the dialogue and the other sounds monitored as Khashoggi was killed and then chopped up for disposal on Oct. 2, 2018.They heard Dr. Salah Mohammed Tubaigy, from the Saudi interior ministry, explaining to the head of the hit team before Khashoggi arrived how they’d dispose of the portly journalist, referred to as “the sacrificial animal.”“Joints will be separated. It is not a problem,” says Tubaigy. “If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them.”A man more or less of Khashoggi’s build then dressed in Khashoggi’s clothes and walked out the back of the consulate to be seen by closed-circuit cameras, while plastic garbage bags were carried out the front.We don’t know at this juncture whether Tubaigy or the man in Khashoggi’s clothes were among those sentenced to death, or given lesser penalties, or cleared somehow of the crime. In any case, Khashoggi’s remains have never been found, and MBS must have known all along how this would play at home. Out of sight, out of mind. Party on.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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Eleven dead, 300 treated after drinking coconut wine in Philippines

At least 11 people have been killed and more than 300 treated in hospital after drinking coconut wine in the Philippines, including some who were celebrating at a Christmas party, health and local authorities said on Monday. Many were admitted to hospitals on the urging of mayor Vener Munoz in Rizal, Laguna, where the deaths occurred between Thursday and Sunday. The coconut wine that was consumed had been made in his town, he added.

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Obama has reportedly 'gone to bat' for Elizabeth Warren to reluctant wealthy donors

Former President Obama has reportedly been vouching for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to wealthy donors in an attempt to "rally the troops."Obama, The Hill reports, has in recent months "gone to bat" for the Democratic presidential candidate to "donors reluctant to support her given her knocks on Wall Street and the wealthy," describing her behind the scenes as a capable contender and encouraging them to support her if she's the nominee."He obviously thinks she's very smart," a Democratic donor said. "He thinks her policy ideas matter. And I think he sees her running the campaign with the most depth."Obama has not offered any 2020 endorsement and has made clear he'll stay out of the Democratic primary. Still, the Hill reports that those around Obama say he's concerned Democrats in financial services will, per one ally, "have an issue" with Warren as the nominee, hence his attempt to "rally the troops." One Obama source noted, however, he would do the same for any one of the 2020 Democrats.This comes after a report that Obama in 2015 said that if voters rallied behind Warren, who helped set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his administration, it would be a "repudiation" of his economic policies. It also comes after a September report on the "far more combative relationship" between Warren and the Obama administration "than she usually discusses on the campaign trail."More stories from theweek.com How a 'legislative terrorist' conquered the Republican Party Queen Elizabeth acknowledges 2019 was a 'bumpy' year Bernie Sanders and the socialist Christmas spirit

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Smash and grab: Crime gangs prey on Hong Kong protests

The Hong Kong seller of luxury watches looked on in horror as masked men wielding the biggest sledgehammer he’d ever seen smashed through the door of a neighboring watch store, held a machete to the owner’s throat, scooped up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of timepieces, and then scattered into the city's maze of streets. This time, the watch merchants of Kowloon fought back.

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No more US sniffer dogs to Egypt, Jordan after deaths

The United States has temporarily stopped sending bomb detecting sniffer dogs to Jordan and Egypt after several of the animals died due to what US officials say was lack of care. "Any death of a canine in the field is an extremely sad event and we will take every measure possible to prevent this from happening in the future," a US State Department official told reporters on Monday. The State Department's own independent Office of Inspector General (OIG) began looking into the well-being of the animals after reports of canine mistreatment surfaced in mid-2017.

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Could Russia's S-500 Air Defense System Be A Real F-35 'Silver Bullet'?

It was recently tested in Syria.

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Tropical storm ruins Christmas for thousands of Filipinos

Thousands of people in typhoon-prone central Philippines have had their Christmas plans ruined after they were told to leave their homes as a severe tropical storm approaches. Officials on Christmas Eve said residents should evacuate coastal areas, and thousands more were stranded at ports with ferry services shut down as the nation hunkered down for rain and strong winds. Damaging gale- to storm-force winds were forecast over the Asian nation's Pacific coast in the afternoon ahead of Tropical Storm Phanfone's projected landfall on Samar island as early as 5:00 pm (0900 GMT), the state weather service said.

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