Michael Bloomberg robbed the DNC

We now know how much the going rate is for a spot at the Democratic National Convention. Michael Bloomberg spoke for five minutes on Thursday night not long before the nominee itself, a role arguably more prominent than that of Bernie Sanders, the much-abused runner-up.The former New York mayor's remarks were exactly what you would expect. He began by pointing out that he is not a Democrat. He gloated about the vast amounts of money he has given to buy politicians in all parties. He quoted a children's book. He talked about the importance of experts, like the ones he deferred to when he doubled down on the brutal policing tactics that have been the subject of protests across the country. He even said "hell" twice.The best part is that he didn't even have to pay for it. Bloomberg reneged on his promise back in March to keep the thousands of paid staff members who carried him to his towering victory in the 2020 American Samoa Democratic primary onboard until the general election. He has given a whopping $18 million to the party itself and just over $4 million to other grassroots organizations this year. He also offered them some useless free office space during the lockdown.At least President Trump was watching. > After the worst debate performance in the history of politics, Michael Bloomberg, commonly known as Mini Mike, is trying to make a comeback by begging the Democrats for relevance. They treated him like a dog - and always will. Before politics, he said GREAT things about me!> > -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2020More stories from theweek.com Small-time scams are dissolving America from the inside The blocks behind Elizabeth Warren during her DNC speech held a secret message for sharp-eyed viewers Kushner reportedly plans Middle East trip to build on Israel-UAE deal

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Ex-CIA chief John Brennan interviewed for 8 hours as part of Durham's review of Russia probe

Brennan was told he isn't under criminal investigation, according to his spokesman.

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Lori Loughlin, US actress, jailed over college admissions scandal

The star from US sitcom Full House was handed a two-month sentence after agreeing a plea deal.

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California wildfires: 100,000 people under evacuation orders

Lightning-sparked wildfires in Northern California exploded in size on Friday to become some of the largest in state history, forcing thousands to flee and destroying hundreds of homes and other structures as reinforcements began arriving to help weary firefighters. More than 12,000 firefighters aided by helicopters and air tankers are battling wildfires throughout California. Three groups of fires, called complexes, burning north, east and south of San Francisco have together scorched 991 square miles (2,566 square kilometers), destroyed more than 500 structures and killed five people. At least 100,000 people are under evacuation orders. The number of personnel assigned to the sprawling LNU Complex - a cluster of blazes burning in the heart of wine country north of San Francisco - doubled to more than 1,000 firefighters Friday, Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nicholls said. "I'm happy to say there are resources all around the fire today. We have engines on all four sides of it working hand-in-hand with the bulldozers to start containing this fire, putting it to bed," Mr Nicholls said. Fire crews with help from "copious amounts of fixed-wing aircraft" were working on Friday to stop a large blaze from reaching communities in the West Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County, he said.

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Seattle mayor to veto City Council's cuts to police, budget

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Exclusive: No. 2 U.S. diplomat to visit Russia, Lithuania to discuss Belarus

The number two U.S. diplomat will visit Russia and Lithuania soon for talks on Belarus, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, as Washington seeks a peaceful resolution to that country's election crisis that averts Russian intervention. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun's planned mission signals a greater U.S. role in trying to settle the strife that erupted when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters rejecting his claim of a landslide Aug. 9 election win.

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'Is this a joke?' North Carolina voters are being mailed absentee ballot request forms with Trump's face on them

President Trump has criticized mail-in voting for months, baselessly asserting that it will lead to voter fraud.

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Rush Limbaugh: Biden’s ‘Flawless’ DNC Speech ‘Had to Be Taped’

On Thursday night, a series of Fox News hosts and commentators readily acknowledged that Joe Biden “blew a hole” in President Donald Trump’s depiction of him as a demented old man by delivering a highly effective speech at the Democratic National Convention. Even Laura Ingraham had to admit that Biden “beat expectations.” Rush Limbaugh has a different theory. The conservative radio host who not so long ago received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump during a State of the Union address, spent his show Friday pushing the notion that Biden did not, in fact, deliver his speech live.“Now, the assumption I think that everybody had going in, was that he was live,” Limbaugh told listeners. But, he added, “Some people are of the opinion that it had to be taped—and that it had to be taped in segments. And the segments had to be edited together.” Because, as “some people” think, Biden is “not capable of 22 minutes, even reading a prompter, with no screw-ups.” “This is the prevailing theory,” Limbaugh added, claiming to know some “professional video people” who are currently studying the tape. “They’re trying to find out if it was taped or live, based on the premise that there isn't any evidence that Joe Biden has the ability to go 22 minutes, even on a prompter, without making a mistake, without some kind of a flub.” It actually got more outlandish from there as Limbaugh explained that there were a couple of “tiny” mistakes during the speech but his team didn’t bother to fix them and they “went by so fast that you'd think that most people wouldn't notice it.”Limbaugh summed up his “legitimate question” as, “Was that thing really live, or was it a series of edited-together segments, made to look live, on the premise that Biden isn't capable of 22 minutes, however long it was, of flawless reading, with proper emotion and all that, of what's on a teleprompter, without making a single mistake?” “It’d be hard for him to do,” the host concluded. The one explanation Limbaugh wasn’t willing to consider is that Biden did. Chris Wallace: Biden Just ‘Blew a Hole’ in Trump’s Demented ‘Caricature’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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Senegal port seeks removal of 2,700 tonnes of chemical that caused Beirut blast

The port of Senegal’s capital Dakar on Thursday said it had requested the removal of around 2,700 tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate stored in its complex - the same volume of the chemical that caused Beirut’s devastating port blast this month. The unidentified owner of the stockpile has found a warehouse to store the industrial chemical outside the city, according to the general directorate of the port, which sits next to Dakar’s densely populated downtown. “He is currently working with the environment ministry to obtain approval to urgently remove this cargo,” it said in a statement that did not say how long the port had stored the goods destined for Mali. The port strictly adheres to international rules for the management and storage of dangerous materials, it said. Beirut’s port had held 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate for six years without safety measures, before they detonated on August 4, killing more than 150 people, injuring thousands and leaving about a quarter of a million people homeless. “The dramatic situation that Beirut has just experienced” prompted the High Commander of Dakar’s port to take journalists on a tour of the port’s facilities to show that security measures are up to standard, the statement said. The Beirut blast should be a wake-up call for countries on the dangers of ammonium nitrate, experts say. Commonly used in fertilisers and as an industrial explosive, it is considered relatively safe if handled properly, but has caused some of the world’s deadliest industrial accidents.

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Op-Ed: The Belarus crisis is a problem for Moscow. Here's how Putin might respond

Short of using military force, Moscow can shape events in Belarus through networks developed by its security forces, economic levers and media sabotage.

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As more colleges stay online, students demand tuition cuts

As more universities abandon plans to reopen and decide instead to keep classes online this fall, it's leading to conflict between students who say they deserve tuition discounts and college leaders who insist remote learning is worth the full cost. Disputes are flaring both at colleges that announced weeks ago they would stick with virtual instruction and at those that only recently lost hope of reopening their campuses. Among the latest schools facing pressure to lower tuition are Michigan State University and Ithaca College, which scrapped plans to reopen after seeing other colleges struggle to contain coronavirus outbreaks.

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California wildfires: Harrowing video shows woman returning to family ranch to find 100 animals burned

A California woman who escaped deadly wildfires that have engulfed thousands of acres near her home has lost dozens of livestock at her family ranch.Christa Petrillo Haefner captured a harrowing mobile phone video as fires surrounded her family's ranch in Winters on Thursday. Most of the animals did not survive.

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Travelers lost over $950,000 in cash in airport security, TSA says. Where did it go?

Don’t forget your cash.

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Russia Allows ‘Poisoned’ Putin Critic Alexey Navalny to Fly to Germany For Treatment

MOSCOW—As Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Aleksey Navalny, lay in a coma on Friday after a suspected poisoning, a fierce tug-of-war raged between his family and authorities over whether he could be flown to Germany for additional medical treatment. Finally, on Friday night, Russian doctors relented and allowed Navalny to leave the country “on his wife’s responsibility.” All day, while a German air ambulance waited at the airport in the Siberian city of Omsk, Russian doctors at the hospital where Navalny was being treated and law enforcement agencies had refused to allow him out of Russia. Navalny’s wife appealed to President Vladimir Putin in a letter to allow her husband’s medical evacuation, but still the negotiations dragged on. (The Kremlin did not ban Navalny from traveling abroad after a previous attack. Somebody doused him with brilliant green antiseptic, damaging his eye, outside of his Anti-Corruption Fund, or FBK, in 2017. Shortly after the attack, Navalny underwent an eye surgery in Madrid.)Now, Navalny’s family will get the chance to seek treatment for him in Berlin.Navalny Poison ‘Is Dangerous to Those Treating Him’In the meantime, pro-Kremlin publications, some quoting anonymous sources, downplayed the possibility of poison and unspooled a long list of possible reasons why a healthy 44-year-old could have suddenly collapsed in a coma. Alternative causes and diagnoses for Navalny’s coma proliferated on state media: He “ate or took something the evening before” was one idea, or “he drank moonshine.” Other reports, which suggested the stricken opposition leader is a drug addict, angered even his critics.Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite who ran as a token candidate in the last presidential election from which real opposition figures were excluded, often disagreed with Navalny in political debates. But she defended her rival on Friday: “I have no doubts that this is a political reprisal, and reading about him getting ‘drunk on moonshine in the village’ is simply disgusting,” Sobchak wrote on social media. “Alexey was never seen drunk and there was no question of drugs at all. I am still horrified by the video of his voice on the plane: it's just awful. There are no words to describe the feelings of horror and helplessness in front of such a despicable reprisal.”The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, initially said that Navalny would not leave Russia as the doctors treating him in Siberia thought the flight could be “a threat to life,” so long as there is no clarity about what caused Navalny’s sickness. Navalny’s friends and supporters insisted that what actually threatened his life was poison in the tea he drank at a café in the airport before boarding his flight on Wednesday night. The politician lost consciousness on the plane early in the morning on Thursday. Video shot by another passenger showed him moaning in pain.The director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov, told journalists that he and his colleagues were in the head doctor’s office when a representative of the local transport police entered the room with a cell phone in her hand and said, “Here is the substance they found in him.” Zhdanov asked the name of the substance. “She told us it was classified information but that the substance was deadly dangerous for life, threatening not just Aleksey’s life but also everybody around him, everybody should be wearing protective costumes.” The intensive care unit treating Navalny has been flooded by police, according to Zhdanov.The head doctor at the hospital, Aleksander Murakhovsky, admitted to reporters that some chemicals had been discovered on the opposition leader’s nails and on his clothes. But he said that the chemicals, which he did not name, had nothing to do with Navalny’s coma. He later said “metabolic disorders” had caused the coma. The chief editor of Russia Today, a pro-Kremlin outlet, Margarita Simonyan, immediately posted: “They should have given him a spoon of sugar on the plane, nothing would have happened.”The Siberian doctors insisted that the conditions and doctors at their hospital were “not any worse,” than at the Charité hospital, where Germany was going to provide medical treatment for Navalny. Charité is a leading university hospital in Berlin, treating 152,693 inpatient cases a year. In contrast, photographs of the Omsk hospital, posted by Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, showed toilets covered in corrosion, holes in the walls, and missing paint and tiles. By evening, after a day of standoffs over the evacuation, the situation sounded completely bizarre: Navalny’s family and supporters said they felt as if they were trying to organize his escape from prison and not transportation from one hospital to another.Navalny’s wife, Yulia, spoke to journalists outside the hospital. She was breathing heavily: “I tried to see doctors in the intensive care but some people wearing overcoats inside forced me out in a brutal way,” she said. Doctors had stopped talking with her four hours before. “They hide the German doctors from us, this is an outrageous situation. It is obvious that something is being kept in secret from us. We demand they give us Aleksey immediately, so we could take him to doctors who we trust.”Navalny’s personal doctor denied he had diabetes. After seeing the video of Navalny screaming in pain on the plane, Russian doctors both in Moscow and St. Petersburg expressed their doubts about low blood sugar being the cause of Navalny’s coma. “As a rule, a fairly healthy person does not have hypoglycemia unless they starve for two days and work out.” Navalny did not starve himself in Siberia. He met with local opposition politicians, and continued his corruption investigation of Tomsk governor Sergey Zhvachkin; he had tea in Tomsk’s airport.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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2 tropical storms a potential double threat to Gulf Coast

Tropical Storms Laura and Marco are projected to reach the Gulf Coast at or near hurricane force, with the current track taking them to Texas or Louisiana.

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WHO says children aged 12 and over should wear masks like adults

The World Health Organization (WHO) said children aged 12 and over should wear masks to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic under the same conditions as adults, while children between six and 11 should wear them on a risk-based approach. Children aged 12 and over should particularly wear a mask when a one-metre distance from others cannot be guaranteed and there is widespread transmission in the area, the WHO and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a document on the WHO website dated Aug. 21. Whether children between six and 11 should wear masks depends on a number of factors, including the intensity of transmission in the area, the child's ability to use the mask, access to masks and adequate adult supervision, the two organisations said.

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Sarah Cooper lip syncs to Trump at DNC – and speaks out in support of Biden

The lip-synching comedian and viral star Sarah Cooper made an appearance at the DNC and did what she does best – poked fun at Donald Trump.On a night when comedy at times mixed uneasily with the sombre tone of the final night of the convention as a result of the lengthy tributes paid to Joe Biden’s late son, Beau, who died from a rare cancer in 2015, Cooper managed to find the perfect words.

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Maduro insists a Venezuelan airline evacuate Americans, a ‘non-starter’ in Washington

The U.S. has offered private direct and indirect flights to evacuate Americans. Maduro wants to use Venezuela’s sanctioned airline.

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Slate of proposed bills could change policing in California

“What we’ve seen in this country in the last four months, let alone in the last 50, 60 years as it relates to police killings of Black and brown people, calls for addressing,” said state Sen. Steven Bradford.

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Health officials in 3 states have traced new COVID-19 cases to the Sturgis motorcycle rally where hundreds of thousands of bikers gathered

Phone-location data revealed that visitors came to Sturgis from all parts of the US, including states that recently saw surges in COVID-19 cases.

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Portland protest turns violent, federal police clear plaza

Federal authorities on Saturday forced demonstrators away from a plaza near a federal building as dueling demonstrations in Portland by right-wing and left-wing protesters turned violent. The area includes county and federal buildings and has been the site of numerous recent protests. A federal courthouse is also near that area.

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Opinion: A made-for-TV Democratic convention that drew mixed reviews from our readers

A virtual convention that had a surreal quality failed to draw an outpouring of strong opinions by readers.

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Judges Keep Buying the GOP’s Bogus Mail-In Voting Fraud Claims

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee filed lawsuits recently against New Jersey and Nevada to prevent expansive vote-by-mail efforts in those states.These high-profile lawsuits make the same argument that Republicans have made in many lesser known lawsuits that were filed around the country during the primary season. In all of these lawsuits, Republicans argue that voting by mail perpetuates fraud—an argument President Donald Trump makes daily, on various media platforms.Yet, study after study has shown that there is no basis for these claims. Indeed, the opposite is true—voting by mail is rarely subject to fraud. Twitter has even slapped warnings on President Trump’s tweets that link vote-by-mail to voter fraud, because they perpetuate false information.Courts, for the most part, have sided with Republicans, and in some cases even adopted the unsubstantiated fraud assertions. The effect of these rulings has been that Americans had to vote in person during the global pandemic, risking their lives. By filing these lawsuits, Republicans are forcing voters to choose between being safe and exercising their fundamental right to vote in November.The Data Proves Mail-In Voting Is Safe From Fraud & COVID-19Here is a representative sample of these lawsuits:• In April, when public health officials were not entirely sure how COVID-19 spread, and stay-at-home orders were in place throughout the country, the Republican-led Wisconsin legislature sued to stop Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ executive order extending voting-by-mail deadlines for the primary election. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court sided with the Republicans.• That victory was not enough. In a parallel suit, Wisconsin Republicans secured an opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that all mail-in ballots had to be postmarked by primary election day. Dissenting, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated: “The Court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement.”• In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton argued in multiple lawsuits that voting by mail should be available only to actual COVID-19 victims, and not to voters who feared being infected at polling sites. After initially losing in court, Paxton publicly threatened, in writing, to arrest and prosecute any election official who distributed information about voting by mail. This left election officials in a quandary because Paxton’s threat conflicted with a state court order that expanded Texas’s vote-by-mail measures to all voters.A federal trial court called Paxton’s threats “voter intimidation.” Undaunted, Paxton successfully appealed both the federal and state court decisions that ruled against him. Both the Texas Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Paxton though, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of those cases, allowing those judgments to stand.In ruling for the Republicans, the Texas Supreme Court stated: “For the population overall, contracting COVID-19 in general is highly improbable” and that “a lack of immunity alone could not be a likely cause of injury to health from voting in person.”But, by July 9, primary day, Texas was in the grips of a massive COVID-19 crisis. For each of the 10 days preceding the primary election, there were record numbers of COVID-19-related hospitalizations in the state. Houston hospitals were in danger of running out of hospital beds. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott urged everyone to stay home unless it was an emergency, and issued executive orders reclosing the state. While the pandemic raged around them, Texas voters had to vote in person.• In Missouri, lawsuits by advocacy groups, including the NAACP, sought to expand vote by mail efforts. A state court sided with Republican officials who vigorously opposed the suit and held that “fear of illness” does not qualify as a reason to receive a mail-in ballot.• In Iowa, after a successful vote-by-mail primary on June 2, the Republican legislature tried to prevent the Iowa Secretary of State from running future elections using mail-in ballots. This was not a lawsuit, but mirrors many of the legal actions mounted by the GOP across the country. In response, a bipartisan group of local election officials sent a letter to the legislature, stating: “The 2020 primary was very successful, based on a variety of metrics largely due to the steps taken by the Secretary. Counties experienced record or near-record turnout. Election Day went very smoothly. Results were rapidly available. Why would the state want to cripple the process that led to such success?”Several of the courts discussed above have nonetheless embraced the idea that mail-in voting leads to fraud.For example, in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sanctioned the Texas Republicans’ opposition to voting by mail, Judge James C. Ho wrote a gratuitous supplemental concurring opinion, focusing solely on mail-in ballot fraud. Similarly, the Missouri trial court that refused to expand the pool of voters who could vote by mail discussed voter fraud at length, to justify its decision.Without providing any explanation or evidence to the contrary, these decisions essentially erase scientific findings, cementing into law unsubstantiated and discredited claims linking voting by mail to fraud. This gives these faulty legal decisions tremendous power to impact how Americans vote this November, regardless of the strength of the COVID-19 virus.Judges who preside over newly filed Republican National Committee and Trump campaign lawsuits will undoubtedly look to those opinions because of the similarity in claims. While those decisions do not have to be followed to the letter in New Jersey and Nevada, they still represent a body of law that judges will need to consider. Even flawed judicial opinions have the power to shape the future.Penny Venetis is a clinical professor of law and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Rutgers University NewarkRead 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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