The CDC asked on Tuesday to extend the "no-sail order" first imposed in March 2020 to February 2021, but Pence refused, according to Axios.
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A staffer on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign on Monday suggested that Orthodox Catholics, Jews and Muslims should not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court because of their “intolerant” beliefs.The comments came during a Twitter conversation between Biden campaign deputy data director Nikitha Rai and Brookings Institute senior fellow Shadi Hamid in which Rai attacked Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic beliefs. A search for Rai's Twitter account now yields a message saying, "This account doesn't exist."Hamid had responded to a tweet that said Barrett was a trustee at a Catholic school that opposed same-sex marriage as homosexual acts are "at odds with Scripture." Hamid replied, “Wait, why is this news? Isn’t this the standard position for any orthodox Catholic?” “Unfortunately yes,” Rai said. When Hamid pointed out that Orthodox Muslims and Jews generally hold the same view, Rai said, “True. I’d heavily prefer views like that not be elevated to SCOTUS, but unfortunately our current culture is relatively intolerant. It will be awhile before those types of beliefs are so taboo that they’re disqualifiers.”> Here’s a @JoeBiden staffer saying that orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Judaism should be made “taboo” and driven from the public sphere. Beneath all the talk of “interfaith” and “pluralism,” this is what they really believe. pic.twitter.com/PrN8S1qaLG> > -- Jeremy McLellan (@JeremyMcLellan) September 29, 2020The former vice president often touts his Catholic faith on the campaign trail, though critics note that some of Biden’s positions — such as his support for abortion and same-sex marriage — stand in opposition to Catholic teachings.Barrett’s faith has been widely scrutinized in the media as “extreme” and cult-like since the president announced he would nominate the 48-year-old Notre Dame professor to fill the vacancy on the Court left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Barrett, a former clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, has been attacked for her faith for years now, beginning with her 2017 confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee when Democrats questioned whether her Catholicism should disqualify her from being a judge.“Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said at the time.“The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein added. “And that’s of concern.”
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The bill, which is unlikely to pass the GOP-led Senate, is an updated version of earlier legislation. House Democrats introduced a new $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill aimed at breaking the impasse with Republicans on how to get financial assistance to Americans before the November election. The package, which is unlikely to pass the Republican-led Senate, is an updated version of earlier legislation.
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After preying heavily on the elderly in the spring, the coronavirus is increasingly infecting American children and teens in a trend authorities say appears fueled by school reopenings and the resumption of sports, playdates and other activities. Children of all ages now make up 10% of all U.S cases, up from 2% in April, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported Tuesday. About two times more teens were infected than younger children, the CDC report said.
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ISTANBUL, Turkey—On Sunday afternoon, a video depicting a large convoy of Islamist Syrian rebel fighters yelling enthusiastically as they drove off to war circulated widely on Arabic social media. Fighters in the packed trucks, driving quickly past the group of children filming with their phones, could be heard yelling “Allahu Akbar!” and, “Our leader, 'til the end of time, is our master, Muhammad!”However, what shocked those watching the video weren’t the shouts of the Syrian fighters but rather those of the children filming, who yelled back at the soldiers in a language unfamiliar to most Syrians following their country’s nine-year war. “That’s not Kurdish, right?” said one user in an online group where the video emerged. “If they were Kurds, you think they’d be cheering them on?” responded another with a laugh out loud emoji.Over the next several hours, rumors swirled that the video was shot in Azerbaijan, a small Turkic-speaking nation lodged between Iran and Russia, and that the Syrian rebel fighters had been sent there to prop up the Azeri government in its war against neighboring Armenia that had begun that day. According to high-ranking Syrian rebel sources that spoke to The Daily Beast, these rumors are true. The fighters that appeared in the circulated video were part of a group of 1,000 Syrian rebel soldiers sent in two batches from Turkey on September 22 and 24.“500 Hamza Brigade fighters were flown last Tuesday from southern Turkey to the Azeri airbase at Sumqayit [30 kilometers north of the Azeri capital of Baku]”, according to a source within the Syrian National Army (SNA) rebel outfit who requested anonymity. “Two days later, on Thursday, another 500 fighters from the Sultan Murad brigades rebel faction were similarly flown out to Azerbaijan.”These claims were echoed by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Syrian opposition body that monitors human rights violations in the country. SOHR sources suggest more batches of Syrian rebel fighters are preparing to be deployed to Azerbaijan.The Hamza and Sultan Murad brigades are known within Syrian rebel circles as factions that enjoy especially close relations with Turkey, the last remaining patron of the Syrian opposition. Sayf Balud, commander of the Hamza brigades, however, is also known for his checkered past, in particular, as a former commander within the radical jihadist group ISIS.An ethnic Syrian Turkman from the town of Biza’a in Aleppo city’s northern countryside, Balud originally joined the Abu Bakr Sadiq brigades, a moderate rebel faction near his hometown that received widespread support from Gulf states in the early years of the conflict. However, coming from a small, relatively unknown family, Balud failed to climb the ranks of Syria’s rebel movement as quickly as he would have liked, and as others from more prominent backgrounds regularly did. By early 2013, Balud had joined ISIS, whose ranks were staffed mostly by foreigners who couldn't have cared less about the social status of their Syrian recruits.In July 2013, Balud appeared in an ISIS propaganda video shot in the border town of Tal Abyad after the group successfully captured the city from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). In the video, Sayf appears next to an Egyptian foreign fighter addressing a room full of two dozen captured YPG soldiers, who were assembled before an ISIS camera crew to officially repent for having joined an armed faction that ISIS’ leadership described as being “at war with God.”Over the next several years, Balud’s star continued to rise, as the commander attained a level of status within ISIS that would have been unattainable in other rebel groups. Despite the large-scale defeat of ISIS across northern Syria at the hands of the YPG in 2016 and 2017, the cunning commander was able to leverage his history of fighting against Kurds to re-invent himself as a valuable client for another foreign patron: Turkey.By January 2018, when Turkish backed rebel forces launched “Operation Olive Branch” to take over the Kurdish canton of Afrin located in Syria’s uppermost northwest corner, Balud regularly appeared in the group’s propaganda videos as the official commander of the newly formed Hamza brigades. His status as an ethnic Turkman, a small minority within Syria whose likeness to their Turkish kinsmen across the border has pushed Ankara to grant many coveted privileges such as Turkish citizenship and sensitive leadership positions, further endeared Balud to his new patrons.According to SNA sources, Syrian rebel units now being sent to Azerbaijan by Turkey are almost exclusively led by ethnic Syrian Turkmen. “Sayf Balud is a Turkman. The Sultan Murad brigade’s commander, Fahim Aissa, is a Syrian Turkman, like Balud. Turkey only trusts factions led by Syrian Turkman to carry out these missions. These are sensitive for Turkey politically, and they don’t trust Syrian Arabs to lead them.”Turkey’s intervention in Azerbaijan is indeed sensitive. After a four-year lull in fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, fighting between the two countries erupted anew on Sunday in fighting that killed two-dozen fighters.Historically the Nagorno-Karabakh region has been internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. But in 1991 Armenian factions within the region declared themselves independent. Three years of war over the disputed territory ended in 1994 with a Russian brokered ceasefire. The newly declared Nagorno-Karabakh republic was soon occupied by Armenia, which has since maintained de facto control of the area. With the exception of four days of fighting in April 2016, Sunday’s clashes were the first major instance of renewed combat between both countries over the status of the area. Both sides accuse the other of having initiated the fighting on Sunday.Clashes continue, with dozens more casualties reported. Fighting alongside the Azeri regular forces were 1,000 Syrian rebel fighters, among them former jihadists led by ex-ISIS commander Sayf Balud. All About the OilTurkey's move to send Syrian rebels to face-off against Armenia, a longtime rival of Turkey, is just the latest in a long string of neo-Ottoman foreign adventures undertaken by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over the last 6 months. Ankara has deployed both its armed forces and Syrian proxies to crack down on Kurdish PKK and YPG forces in northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan throughout 2020.Turkey has also intervened in western Libya and waters throughout the eastern Mediterranean where its navy has threatened NATO allies France and Greece in an attempt to strongarm both countries and lay claim to gas reserves located within Greece's maritime borders.In Azerbaijan, Turkey is looking to demonstrate loyalty and prop up an oil-rich regime with which it has maintained close military ties since the 1994 ceasefire. Since 2005, they have launched numerous lucrative oil and gas initiatives including a pipeline that exports 1.2 million barrels of Azeri oil per day to the European Union (EU), earning Turkey upwards of $200 million in annual transit fees. In 2006, this cooperation expanded following the launch of the South Caucasus natural gas pipeline that annually exports 8.8 billion cubic meters of much needed Azeri gas to the Turkish market, a net importer of energy.In 2011, Turkey began work on an expansive natural gas production network called the Trans Anatolian Pipeline, which is projected to export 31 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to the EU by 2026. Turkish shareholders, who own a 30 percent stake in the project, stand to make huge profits.Turkey’s push to transform Azerbaijan into a lucrative oil and gas export hub is also motivated by Ankara’s desire to come out from under Russia’s shadow. Turkey depends on Russia for 40 percent of its fossil fuels, a reliance that has forced Ankara to treat Russia as a friendly nation despite the fact that the two countries share almost no common interests.The “Southern Gas Corridor,” a term referring to the various pipelines emerging out of Azerbaijan, has been heavily cheered on by the EU, which also wants to break its dependence on Russian gas. No surprise then that Russia is on the other side in the ongoing dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.Nagorno-Karabakh is now the third theater where Russia and Turkey find themselves supporting opposite sides in an active Middle East conflict zone. In Syria, Russian support for dictator Bashar al-Assad and Turkey’s support for the country’s rebels such as Sayf Bulad and others led to direct conflict between both countries’ armies earlier this year, resulting in the death of dozens of Turkish soldiers. In Libya, the situation is reversed, with Turkey supporting Libya’s government and Russia supporting Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general and rebel leader who has sought to seize control of Libya’s lucrative oil sector and capture the capital of Tripoli.In both conflicts, Sayf Bulad and the Hamza brigades have proven extremely useful to Turkey. Thousands of the group’s fighters, including Sayf Bulad, were deployed to Libya last summer to help repel a major assault launched by Russian-backed Khalifa Haftar and in the bargain reclaim territory previously captured by the general. The Turkish backed authority in Tripoli is now safely guarded against external threats, while Turkish companies are set to gain lucrative contracts in Libya’s oil and gas and reconstruction sectors.Within this context of great power struggles, Syria's rebels, once idealistic and seeking to liberate their country from dictator Bashar al-Assad, have found themselves reduced to pawns compelled to serve as mercenaries and shock troops used by Turkey to advance its foreign policy in a world where Ankara finds itself increasingly isolated. In doing so, they find themselves led by and mixed with fighters from the most vicious jihadist group the world has ever seen.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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WHERE AND WHAT IS NAGORNO-KARABAKH? It's a mountainous, forested patch of land that sits inside the territory of ex-Soviet Azerbaijan and is recognised under international law as part of that country. Nagorno-Karabakh survives almost totally on budget support from Armenia and donations from the worldwide Armenian diaspora.
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Everyone knows that live television isn’t easy. Anything can go wrong—from a faulty connection, a verbal slip-up, or, as was the case on Tuesday morning’s Fox & Friends, Rudy Giuliani bellowing insane conspiracy theories at the nation with no obvious way to stop him.It’s always a risk to allow Giuliani to share his wildly unpredictable stream of consciousness live. The man who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001 has long since been reduced to sharing the latest Trumpist conspiracy theories on any cable news channel that has the budget to cover any possible subsequent defamation lawsuits.This time, his F&F hosts looked on with visible horror in their eyes as Giuliani shared his completely baseless belief that Joe Biden is suffering from dementia. If you have the time, it’s worth watching the clip at least three times so you can see each of the hosts panicking in their own unique way as the former New York City mayor rambles on and on.> On Fox & Friends, Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden "has dementia. There's no doubt about it. I've talked to doctors. ... The president's quite right to say maybe he's taken adderall." The hosts get visibly uncomfortable. pic.twitter.com/2Ma7DKNBpS> > — Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) September 29, 2020With a mischievous cackle, Giuliani began: “The man [Biden] has dementia. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve talked to doctors. I’ve had them look at a hundred different tapes of his five years ago and today.” Trying his very best to shut Giuliani down, host Steve Doocy interjected that Biden’s team has said the Democrat has no serious medical problems.Giuliani then made an extraordinary noise at Doocy that can best be typed as “Oowughawughawugh,” before continuing: “He can’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance and he’s fine? He was in the Senate for 160 years? I mean, he can’t do the prologue to the... to the... con... to the... uh... Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence, any of them.”Getting louder and increasingly excited about his armchair diagnosis, Giuliani went on: “He can’t do NUMBERS. Wow, are the numbers screwed up. He actually displays symptoms that two gerontologists told me are classic symptoms of middle level dementia.” Doocy and co-host Ainsley Earhardt both responded to that claim by softly saying, “Right.” The third host, Brian Kilmeade, can just be seen blinking rapidly.Fox News Lobotomizes Its ‘Brain Room,’ Cuts Fact-Based JournalismNevertheless, Giuliani persisted. “That’s when [Biden] does that ‘I pledge allegiance to the United States... uh... uh... um... I think,’ he’s done that twice,” said the ex mayor. “That’s a classic symptom in the DSM-V, it’s the fifth symptom, of dementia, he’s got eight of the 10.”Then, seemingly remembering that he was on the show to talk about tonight’s presidential debate, he went on: “Look, that isn’t the debate. He can get through it. I think the president is quite right to say maybe he’s taken Adderall or some kind of attention deficit disorder thing.”As Giuliani began pulling prescription medicine brands out of the air, Doocy had finally had enough and told him firmly, “None of us are doctors, that is your opinion.” Giuliani fought back, saying it was actually the opinion of some very professional-sounding doctors that he knows.But the game was up. Kilmeade, in his first verbal interjection of the entire exchange, said with exasperation, “We can stay away from that.” Earhardt then moved on to pick Giuliani’s brain on the Supreme Court.This particular line of attack is one that Giuliani—whose work as President Trump’s lawyer and top dirt-digger on Hunter and Joe Biden kicked off a chain of events that got his client impeached last year—has enthusiastically embraced as one of his primary functions now for Team Trump.Shortly before midnight on Monday night, Giuliani started texting The Daily Beast to say that Trump did “great” in recent White House debate prep (for which the president said on Sunday that Giuliani and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie took part), and to rail against Biden as a “senile,” “broken down old crook” who’s supposedly suffering from “dementia” and needs “ADD drugs” to get through the Tuesday debate. The Trump attorney also claimed that someone had told him how stupid Biden was in law school.Giuliani also mentioned late Monday evening that he’d be flying with Trump on Air Force One on Tuesday and would be at the Cleveland debate. Asked about what kinds of questions he peppered the president with during the prep, the former New York City mayor replied, “It really doesn’t work like that with him. It’s much more of a discussion rather than a rehearsal. Plus you are dealing with a very smart, very alert human being, not a senile old man.”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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Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s pick to replace Justice Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, warned in a private discussion at Notre Dame last year that the judicial nomination process “has gotten very brutal” due to “a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial role.”Footage of the event, which went public Tuesday, shows Barrett and Amul Thapar, a federal appeals judge for the Sixth Circuit who is also on President Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court, discussing their backgrounds and judicial philosophy in a far-ranging conversation.Barrett, already the topic of heavy scrutiny for her family’s involvement in a charismatic Christian group, spoke candidly on the topic of judicial confirmations — referencing comments made by Ginsburg after Justice Kavanaugh’s 2018 hearing, of which the late justice said “the way it was, was right. The way it is, is wrong."“Part of that is because people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial role,” Barrett explained. “If you think that the judge who is going to be confirmed to a court of appeals or to the Supreme Court is going to be imposing his or her policy preferences on you, then it leads to kind of this all in — 'we have to take this person down if we think we're going to disagree with the policy preferences.’”During Barrett's 2017 confirmation hearing for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a line of questioning from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) was widely publicized and condemned in conservative circles for its suggestion of anti-religious animus.“Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that, you know, dogma and law are two different things? And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma,” Feinstein said at the time. “The law is totally different, and I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”Speaking Saturday after Trump officially announced her nomination, Barrett stated that she had “no illusions that the road ahead of me will be easy, for the short term or the long haul,” and said that she would strive to earn the Senate’s support. She also offered a glimpse of her judicial philosophy, echoing the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom she clerked for. “His judicial philosophy is mine too: A judge must apply the law as written," she stated.In her April 2019 discussion at Notre Dame, Barrett spoke at length about her originalist background, and gave insights into how she strives to be impartial in rulings.“I try to put myself in the shoes of the party that I'm going to rule against. And so as I'm writing the opinion, or as I'm trying to decide how I'm going to vote at conference, I imagine that it was my daughter, or me, or my husband that was in that situation, and think, ‘could I still reach the same result?’” she revealed. “. . . Could I respect the reasoning? And am I really doing it in a way that smokes out any kind of policy impulse that I have to go the other way?”While Barrett warned that “judges are humans and they're fallible,” she stated that “everybody has to come up with mechanisms . . . to try to guard against you imposing your policy views on the law.”“Justice Scalia used to say, and it's right — and in my almost two years on the bench, I've already had this happen — if you don't write decisions that you disagree with — the results, Not the reasoning — if you don't reach results that you don't like, you're not a very good judge, you're doing something wrong,” she continued. “Because you shouldn't like the result in every case you decide.”Barrett said that the trend towards politicizing judicial appointments stemmed from a number of different sources.“I think it's really a feature of judges cultivating in some instances, this perception of the judicial role, of the public's perception of this as the judicial role,” she said. “It's not the judicial role, and it's very dangerous. It's dangerous because for our courts to function and fulfill their role in society and to function well people have to respect them. And if everyone thinks that courts are just policymaking arms, then they're not going to be respected, right? It's become a very toxic situation.”
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Authorities in Belarus have detained about 500 people during weekend protests against the country's authoritarian president, who has claimed a sixth term in office in an election widely seen as rigged. Belarus' Interior Ministry said Monday that 150 protesters were detained on Saturday and over 350 more on Sunday, when anti-government protests spanned 22 cities. Daily rallies have rocked Belarus for over seven weeks now, with the largest ones drawing up to 200,000 people, in the biggest challenge yet to President Alexander Lukashenko's long hard-line reign.
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Police called to Fort Lauderdale home said Parscale, who had access to firearms, accompanied officers willinglyDonald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale has been hospitalised after he threatened to harm himself, according to Florida police and campaign officials.Police were called to the home in Desota Drive in the Seven Isles community of Fort Lauderdale late on Sunday afternoon. The home is owned by Bradley and Candice Parscale.“When officers arrived on scene, they made contact with the reportee (wife of armed subject) who advised her husband was armed, had access to multiple firearms inside the residence and was threatening to harm himself,” Fort Lauderdale police said in a statement.“Officers determined the only occupant inside the home was the adult male. Officers made contact with the male, developed a rapport, and safely negotiated for him to exit the home.”Police identified the man as Parscale. He did not threaten police and accompanied officers willingly under Florida’s Baker Act, which gives police the power to detain a person who poses a potential threat to themselves or others for 72 hours for psychiatric evaluation.On Monday afternoon, police body-cam footage was released of Parscale being dramatically taken down and handcuffed by police.Parscale was taken to Broward Health medical center.The number and nature of the firearms in the Parscale home was not known.Fort Lauderdale’s mayor, Dean Trantalis, said he had been informed there was a Swat team standoff at Parscale’s home.“It was indicated to me that he had weapons,” Trantalis told the Sun-Sentinel.“I’m glad he didn’t do any harm to himself or others. I commend our Swat team for being able to negotiate a peaceful ending to this.”Parscale was removed as Trump’s campaign manager in July after a much-hyped campaign rally in Tulsa attracted an embarrassingly sparse crowd.He was replaced by the then deputy campaign manager, Bill Stepien, but has stayed on as a senior adviser to the campaign. On his Twitter account Parscale describes himself as “senior adviser, digital and data” for Donald Trump.The Trump campaign communications director, Tim Murtaugh, issued a statement late on Sunday offering support to Parscale.“Brad Parscale is a member of our family and we all love him. We are ready to support him and his family in any way possible.”A police report on Monday noted that officers were called by a woman reporting that Parscale had been heard “ranting and raving about something” before a gunshot was fired.Candice Parscale told police that she ran from the house because she was alarmed by her husband’s behavior, local TV station WPLG reported.According to the report, Parscale began to barricade himself inside the home, hanging up on callers, the police report said, adding that he later spoke to police negotiators.“I initiated a double leg take down,” wrote Sgt Matthew Moceri, a responding officer, noting that the 6ft 8in Parscale towered over him and would not get on the ground.When officers initially arrived, Candice Parscale said the couple had argued and Brad pulled out a handgun and loaded it.She said he had post-traumatic stress disorder and had recently become violent, showing police bruises on her arms from an argument two days prior. Police photographed the injuries, they said, and the Miami Herald reported.In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255, or you can text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counsellor. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
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A wind-driven wildfire erupted on Sunday in the heart of northern California's Napa Valley wine country to spread across nearly 2,000 acres (809 hectares), forcing the evacuation of a hospital and hundreds of homes, authorities said. Fire crews were out in force, scrambling to fend off flames threatening neighborhoods and vineyards at the northern end of the famed wine-growing valley and surrounding hillsides, about 75 miles (120 km) north of San Francisco. The blaze, dubbed the Glass Fire, broke out before dawn near Calistoga and raced toward the adjacent communities of Deer Park and St. Helena, with flames reaching within a mile of the Adventist Health St. Helena hospital.
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