Caught Snoozing? Impeachment Sketch Artist Shows Sen. Jim Risch Zonked Out During Trial

The Idaho Republican was reportedly asleep for about 15 minutes during the proceedings.

• 
  Mich. residents react to ongoing impeachment trial
  USA TODAY
• 
  Trump impeachment trial: Three takeaways as president jets back to Washington
  The Independent

This £40 suitcase has hundreds of five-star reviews: 'Light, sturdy and spacious'

It's lightweight, it comes in 11 colourways and it means you can afford to spend more on your actual holiday.

School headmaster charged in fatal gold robbery in Thailand

An elementary school headmaster said Thursday he planned a gold shop robbery in Thailand due to personal and financial problems and apologized to the families of the three people who were killed. A 2-year-old boy was among the victims of the shooting earlier this month that caused public outrage and increased pressure for a swift arrest. Police arrested Prasitthichai Khaokaew, 38, early Wednesday and said he confessed to his crimes during interrogation.

The Australian Dream Is Dying in the Wildfires

(Bloomberg) -- Australia has some big decisions to make about its future. For insight into the stories that matter, sign up for our new weekly newsletter.The fabric of Australian life, that sun-licked, healthy, outdoor way of living that has drawn people to the continent for decades, is under assault.The unprecedented wildfires that have killed at least 28 people, incinerated an area almost the size of England and blanketed cities with toxic smoke, have also dealt a psychological blow to the nation. Behind the debris of the disaster lies the dread among many Australians that more of these extreme, weather-driven catastrophes could threaten the outdoor lifestyle for which the nation is famous.“This is going to change the whole way we organize our lives,” said Angela Rintoul, a 39-year-old health policy researcher from Melbourne, who was stranded in the beachside resort of Mallacoota on the southeast coast with her 17-month-old son Rex, partner and parents when fire swept into town in the final days of 2019.They sheltered in a cinema with about 650 others as flames raced through the main street. Rintoul and her family were eventually evacuated on an Australian Navy transport ship, the 16,000-ton HMAS Choules. She fears it may become too risky to spend summer vacations at the beach or in the wilderness.First-World Refugee Camps in Australia Highlight Climate FearsRintoul said the crisis, which has burned through more than 10 million hectares across all six Australian states, destroyed or damaged more than 3,000 homes and killed an estimated 1 billion native animals, is making her think about bigger things than just holiday plans: “Our future in general, what we are leaving our children, and the world we are creating for them.”Coordinating a nationwide response, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has sent in 3,000 army reservists to help the largely volunteer rural fire services and committed A$2 billion ($1.4 billion) for the recovery. Still he’s refused to step up efforts to curb carbon emissions at the expense of jobs and growth, instead focusing on practical steps Australia can take to become more resilient to climate-driven threats, including building dams, clearing land and being more discriminating about where homes can be built.But it’s beyond any government to control the climate. Australia’s crisis is a wake-up call for individuals to shake off the lethargy that has long blighted efforts to slow global warming, and take personal responsibility for the impact it’s having on their lives.While heavy weekend rains bought some relief to firefighters, more than 60 blazes are still burning across New South Wales, according to the Rural Fire Service. Conditions are set to worsen again, with temperatures in parts of Sydney forecast to top 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday.Australian school kids, reared on a diet of outdoor play and sunscreen, have been shuttered inside this fire season to escape what at times has been the most dangerous air on the planet. Cherished beaches have been turned into refuges of last resort for thousands of holidaymakers escaping massive fires tearing through forested coastal communities. Dozens of national parks -- home to remote walks and camping grounds, eucalyptus trees, wallabies and koalas -- have closed, if they haven’t burned out.It’s a trajectory with parallels in wildfire-ravaged California, perhaps Australia’s most obvious equivalent in the northern hemisphere. Both Australia and the Golden State have hot and dry summers, beaches, forests and vineyards, and both appear to be on a collision course with a changing global climate.The warnings about the frequency and severity of Australia’s bushfires have been sounded by government scientists and the United Nations since at least 2007. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, dangerous bushfire conditions are becoming more common, with the season starting earlier in southern and eastern parts of Australia.It’s difficult to overstate Australians’ affinity with the ocean, the beach and the “bush,” a catch-all reference to rural life. During the southern hemisphere summer holiday season that peaks in January, Australia’s urban populations drain into bays along the coast and the green hinterlands. Regional towns swell with visitors and campgrounds that are empty in winter suddenly throng. It’s where the fires have hit the hardest.For those left in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, summer is typically a period of barbecues, outdoor festivals and cooling swims in open-air pools. Bushfires are normally a distant distraction.That changed on Nov. 11, when authorities said Sydney faced a “catastrophic” fire-danger rating for the first time. Since then, winds have sporadically blown in thick smoke from outlying blazes.The rhythm is now different in the city, where grassy parks and famous sandy strips such as Bondi Beach usually bustle with runners, exercise classes and families.Nicholas Chapman, who runs outdoor training sessions about 3 kilometers from the Sydney Opera House at Rushcutters Bay, says the smoke on the worst days last month made his clients light-headed, dehydrated and short of breath, and his own eyes started weeping. He’s started moving classes indoors.“It’s a big shift in how you think, how you live,” said Chapman. “I’ve got a little girl, and there’s been days when I haven’t taken her to the park to run around. When has an Australian had to think about that as a thing? That’s really sad.”Kids are among those most at risk from the harmful particles in woodfire smoke, doctors say. The tiny matter can embed itself deep in the lungs, heightening the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory disease, and cancers.It’s this fallout that particularly worries Kathy Patrick, the general manager of Kidz Child Care, which has five centers for pre-schoolers in eastern New South Wales. This season’s smoke has kept children indoors more than ever, and Patrick said she had to temporarily close the southernmost site after fires reached Batemans Bay just before New Year.“I feel it might be part of the new normal,” said Patrick, who’s worked in the childcare industry for more than two decades. “It’s going to be very sad for our children that they don’t have that outdoor play.”Wildfires More Than Double Australia’s Annual Carbon EmissionsPatrick, an asthmatic, said she’s had to increase her medication and she fears the children will develop more health issues, too. That enviable life she loved? “It’s kind of disappeared,” she said.Even Australians who haven’t been directly impacted by the fires have been saturated with viral images of the disaster: Charred livestock; dying koalas, blow-torched properties; and mid-morning rural skies that have turned midnight black with smoke.The pictures have been so distressing that it may deter people from visiting regional Australia, said Simon Westaway, executive director of the Australian Tourism Industry Council, which represents more than 8,000 tourism businesses.“Our worry is this is really going to infringe on people’s minds,” said Westaway.A new Tourism Australia advert fronted by singer Kylie Minogue, designed to target potential visitors from the U.K., instead highlights what’s been lost in the bushfires. The three-minute video features golden beaches, koalas under blue Sydney skies, and haze-free cricket matches.Rob Vickers, owner of the Aussie Boatshed hire business in Forster, a coastal town about a 3 1/2-hour drive north of Sydney, says the fires are already putting people off.Bushfires north of Forster blanketed the town with smoke in October and deposited a scum of ash onto surrounding beaches. Vickers says kayak rentals dried up and demand hasn’t yet recovered.“I think everyone was a bit too scared to leave their houses,” said Vickers, who was evacuated from his home twice last year because of the fire risk. “If we get this every summer, it would be devastating.”Critics of those who link the crisis to climate change argue that Australia, the world’s driest-inhabited continent, is no stranger to fire and drought. But data suggests this is no ordinary cycle. Last year was the hottest since 1910 and the driest in data going back to 1900, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.“This isn’t a flash in a pan,” said David Bowman, a professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania who has studied bushfires in Australia for 40 years. “We’re going to have to change.”(Adds number of fires still burning in New South Wales in eighth paragraph.)\--With assistance from David Stringer.To contact the reporter on this story: Angus Whitley in Sydney at awhitley1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Edward Johnson at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net, Peter VercoeFor 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.

China Locks Down 11 Million in the Ground Zero City of Wuhan as New Coronavirus Shows Up in U.S.

HONG KONG—The city of 11 million where China’s deadly coronavirus outbreak originated is now under total quarantine, a massive lockdown that marks a dramatic shift from the Chinese government’s previous reaction, which was focused on limiting what the public could learn about the spread of the disease.China’s Deadly Coronavirus Cover-Up Is Getting Worse as First Case Hits U.S.But the move comes after the virus has spread far and wide, including at least one case in the United States. Sixteen people who came into contact with the country’s sole confirmed coronavirus patient, in Washington State, are being monitored for pneumonia symptoms.It is still far from clear that Beijing is revealing all that it knows about the disease and its transmission at a moment when hundreds of millions of people are expected to be on the move as the Chinese New Year approaches on January 25.Wuhan, a major city in central China and a key transport hub, is now cut off from the rest of the country. Flights out of the city have been canceled, as have outbound trains. Public transportation in Wuhan has been shut down. Before the lockdown took effect, many people rushed to train stations and bus depots to purchase any tickets that would take them out of the city. Now soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army prevent them from even entering those buildings. Police vans are parked in front of toll booths on highways leading out of the city, turning back anyone who attempts to get out.The Wuhan government requires all who remain within the city limits to wear face masks when they are in public places. Pharmacies are limiting sales, allowing customers to purchase only one mask at a time. Hospitals are turning away people who are requesting health tests because of the lack of trained personnel to handle the volume. At least 14 medical workers who were tending to the sick have fallen ill themselves. One doctor who has recovered believes that he became infected after the virus was transmitted through his eye.Following the complete quarantine of 11 million people in Wuhan, smaller cities in the same province, Hubei, are doing the same. Huanggang, a city east of Wuhan with a population of 7 million, will suspend all public transport and close all public venues beginning at midnight local time. Ezhou, a smaller city south of Huanggang, is also halting all train and bus services for its 1 million residents until further notice. Both cities share borders with Wuhan.Some large-scale events in Beijing, the nation's capital, have been canceled by the city government. These include temple fairs that are part of Lunar New Year celebrations.The novel coronavirus, or CoV, was first detected in Wuhan in mid-December. It causes pneumonia-like symptoms and can be deadly, particularly for children and the elderly. Scientists believe that the virus may have originated in bats or snakes before making the leap to human hosts, and it can be transmitted from human to human. (Snakes, which hunt bats, are consumed as food in some parts of China, and they have been sold at the market where the first batch of patients worked.) CoV, like its cousins SARS and MERS, has an incubation period of up to two weeks, meaning anyone who is infected may not present symptoms until nearly half a month later—at which point the infection may have traveled around the world.On Wednesday, Chinese officials put the official death toll at 17, nearly doubling the nine that were announced just hours earlier. All 17 deaths were in Hubei, the province where Wuhan is the capital. In mainland China, there are 571 confirmed cases of infection, with another 11 in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. The Chinese government has acknowledged that infections are present in 25 of its provinces and municipalities—in other words, the coronavirus has spread all over the country.Estimates by experts tell a more dire story. Scientists at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London believe at least 4,000 people have succumbed to the coronavirus. Doctors in Wuhan who spoke to Chinese media outlet Caixin believe the number to be even higher, possibly at 6,000.There are persistent concerns that the Chinese government is suppressing information about the scale of the outbreak. The front page of People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, made no mention of the virus, infection numbers, death tolls, or the situation in Wuhan on Thursday morning. Instead, the headlines referred to various recent activities of Chairman Xi Jinping in other areas while paying tribute to his “leadership.”Some social media posts about the outbreak have been removed from various platforms. More tellingly, Zhong Nanshan, the head of a team of high-level medical professionals at China’s National Health Commission, is no longer speaking to the media. (During the SARS epidemic of 2002–03, Zhong was the head of the Guangdong research institute for respiratory diseases. He is one of the top respiratory health experts in the country.)There may already be a scapegoat in the making. Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, was featured on state television, where he tried to explain his government’s slow response to the coronavirus outbreak. The Chinese public’s anger is temporarily focused on Zhou, and there are public, open calls for his resignation, while many have also expressed sympathies toward the people of Wuhan, where the quarantine may last for two months.At the moment, there is just the one confirmed infection in the United States—a U.S. citizen who returned to the country after a trip to central China. He was diagnosed in Seattle and was admitted to a hospital in Everett, Washington, where doctors are using robots to treat him. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control have said the coronavirus originating in Wuhan carries low risk for the American public. However, a vaccine may take months to develop—scientists in the United States and China are working on this—and it may be more than a year before it is available to the public.Airports around the world are stepping up health screenings for incoming passengers, though the relatively long incubation period means these measures may not hinder the spread of the virus. Late Wednesday in a brief press statement, World Health Organization Secretary General Tedros Adhanom described the situation as “evolving and complex.” While diplomatically praising the “detail and depth of China’s presentation,” he also noted, “we need more information.” The WHO may yet declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” a move that the secretary general said he takes “extremely seriously.”Please Pay Attention to the MERS WarningsRead 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.

• 
  Traveller leaves Wuhan despite city lockdown after new virus outbreak
  Reuters Videos
• 
  China coronavirus: big-city Wuhan in lockdown with travel ban meant to stop spread
  South China Morning Post