Congo military intelligence chief dies of heart attack, wife says

Congo's military intelligence chief died on Friday after suffering a heart attack, his wife said, following media reports that an investigation had been opened into allegations that he tried to destabilize the country.

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Polanski wins best director at Cesar awards, several actresses leave in protest

Roman Polanski, who faces accusations of rape, won France's Cesar Award for best directing for his film "An Officer and a Spy" on Friday, prompting several actresses to walk out of the ceremony in protest.

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Photo: Bernie Sanders high fives tiny supporter.

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Why Bernie Scares Me

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Gerald Krone, a Negro Ensemble Company Founder, Dies at 86

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Who Will Care For Society’s Forgotten?

By BY THERESA BROWN AND LEAH NASH from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2weKSc1

Joe Biden Needs a Win in South Carolina. Will He Get It?

By BY NU WEXLER from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2weKQAV

We Don’t Really Know How Many People Have Coronavirus

By BY ELISABETH ROSENTHAL from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2Tcnghj

Tom Steyer showered South Carolina in political spending. Will it pay off?

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Celine: Fall 2020

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Johnny Antonelli, Star Pitcher for the Giants, Dies at 89

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How Bad Could It Get? Companies Gauge the Coronavirus Impact

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Photo: Bloomberg has a canine constituency.

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Map: Confirmed coronavirus cases, worldwide

More than 81,000 people have been sickened by a coronavirus, mostly in China. This map is updated daily.

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The Sinister Sanders Child-Care Plan

Bernie Sanders announced a “universal child care” proposal at the end of his wide-ranging 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper. The plan would guarantee “every child in America free full-day, full-week, high-quality child care from infancy through age three,” and the campaign estimates that it would cost taxpayers 1.5 trillion dollars over ten years. But aside from being prohibitively expensive and distressingly vague, the plan looks an awful lot like social engineering.Start with the price tag. After failing to explain how he would pay for his expansive agenda — “I can't rattle off to you every nickel and every dime,” Sanders told Anderson Cooper in a disastrous moment of candor — the Sanders campaign released a partial list of pay-fors the day after the interview, laying out the cost of the senator’s major proposals alongside the tax hikes a Sanders administration would pursue to finance its domestic agenda. The campaign pegged the child-care proposal at a $150 billion annual price tag, more expensive than current federal outlays on unemployment insurance and the SNAP program combined.Add the child-care initiative to the bevy of programs Sanders has already promised to enact as president, and the fiscal feasibility of a child-care proposal grows more uncertain.The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released their analysis of Sanders’s universal child-care plan yesterday, and raised concerns that the Sanders campaign was overestimating federal receipts from its proposed “tax on extreme wealth”:> Based on the work of economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the Sanders campaign estimates this wealth tax would raise $4.35 trillion. This would be enough to finance Senator Sanders's $1.5 trillion universal child care and pre-K plan, his $2.5 trillion housing plan, and $350 billion of his Medicare for All plan (note that our analysis previously assumed he would dedicate $800 billion, not $350 billion, to Medicare for All).> > In our assessment, however, Senators Sanders’s wealth tax is likely to raise significantly less than advertised due to high levels of tax avoidance and the erosion of taxable wealth over time. We believe the wealth tax is likely to raise roughly $3.3 trillion. Assuming the proceeds are distributed evenly, that would leave the universal child care and pre-K plan nearly $400 billion short.As a point of reference, that $400 billion shortfall is larger than the sum total currently allotted to all federal welfare programs combined.While Sanders’s innumeracy was perhaps to be expected, the senator’s defense of the child-care plan on the merits was surprising. For a candidate with well-documented disdain for corporate America, it was strange to see how much of Sanders’s child-care proposal was concerned with the “career outcomes” of “mothers” who — heaven forfend — make “career sacrifices in order to care for their children.” The Sanders campaign presents female labor participation growth as one of the central selling points for its child-care scheme: “Mothers,” the campaign proclaims, “are 40 percent more likely than fathers to report a negative impact on their career outcomes due to child care considerations,” making the institution of a government-funded child-care scheme a “moral responsibility.” The campaign presents the welfare of the children whose stay-at-home parents enter the workforce as an ancillary concern.The Sanders campaign hardly seemed to consider — or, worse, seemed to have considered and proceeded to ignore — the possibility that those mothers making “career sacrifices” might want to raise their own children. As a 2015 Gallup poll found, 56 percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 said they would rather remain at home than enter the workforce, if given the choice. Instead, the socialist appears eager to incentivize more mothers to join the workforce, whereupon they will be presumably “exploited” by the “greedy” corporations the senator has spent a lifetime deriding.Most alarming is the power the senator’s plan vests in the federal government to insert itself into the child-rearing process. Sanders proposes a one-size-fits-all, government-funded child-care model, with no provision for those parents who wish to remain at home. If the Sanders campaign were simply concerned about the costs associated with raising children — both in the home and at a day-care center — it could have proposed a subsidy that also conferred benefits to stay-at-home parents or to relatives providing child care. But the social-engineering component of the plan is unmistakable, as Sanders would essentially create a scheme to augment the “career outcomes” of mothers who might otherwise raise their children at home, thereby boosting enrollment in government-funded child-care centers. Of course, all of those child-care centers will be subject to “quality standards” concocted in Washington.The implications of Sanders’s child-care agenda are clear enough. Right in the heart of the proposal, the Sanders campaign acknowledges that “ages 0 through 4 are the most important years of human life intellectually and emotionally.” Parents ought to be the ones to impart their values to their children in such a formative window, not a Sanders-administration functionary.

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California bracing for spread of coronavirus

California said Thursday it was monitoring some 8,400 people for the new coronavirus, after officials confirmed a woman had contracted the disease without traveling to outbreak-hit regions. Governor Gavin Newsom said travelers arriving from affected areas were being monitored and sought to reassure the public that the risk of contracting the virus remains low.

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Pence tries to project calm as virus response coordinator

Vice President Mike Pence sought to project calm Thursday in his new role as chief coordinator of the government's response to the coronavirus as the Trump administration rushed to contain mounting public concerns and some of the worst stock market declines in more than a decade. Pence convened his first meeting of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force one day after the president made him the government's point-person for the epidemic.

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The 6 largest coronavirus outbreaks outside of China

More new coronavirus cases were reported outside of China than inside the country on Wednesday — the first time since global health officials began tracking the virus.

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Police identify victims, shooter in Milwaukee brewery shooting rampage

Police in Milwaukee on Thursday identified the five brewery employees shot and killed by a co-worker who later took his own life in the latest spasm of gun violence plaguing U.S. workplaces and schools. The motive for the carnage was unclear a day after the shooting at the landmark Molson Coors Beverage Co complex shook Wisconsin's largest city. "Reasons for this are still under investigation," Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales said.

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Turkey loses 33 soldiers in attack, Russia deploys warships to Syria coast

Turkish President Recep Erdogan is looking West for support, and at his country's request NATO will be holding a meeting on the situation.

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Ex-Phoenix area sheriff declares victory despite court loss

Former Phoenix-area Sheriff Joe Arpaio lost a bid to erase his criminal conviction for disobeying a 2011 court order, but claimed victory Thursday after an appeal's court said the verdict no longer has any legal consequence because of President Donald Trump's pardon. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals explained Arpaio was pardoned before he could be sentenced and that the final judgment in the case ended up dismissing the contempt charge. “They can’t use that conviction against me in a court of law,” Arpaio said.

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Billionaire Steyer shakes up primary with slavery reparations plan

For centuries, South Carolina's Charleston was the largest port of entry for the transatlantic slave trade. Now, a billionaire activist named Tom Steyer is shaking up the state's Democratic primary by advocating slavery reparations for African Americans. A California financier turned philanthropist and environmental campaigner, Steyer has poured tens of millions of dollars into the state ahead of Saturday's vote -- with a single-minded focus on the black voters who make up 60 percent of its Democratic electorate.

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Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

President Trump holds a rally in North Charleston, S.C., 24 hours before the polls close in the state's Democratic primary. Watc

02/28/20 4:09 PM