Iran's president: Trump doesn't want war ahead of 2020 vote

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that he doesn't believe the U.S. will pursue war with his country, because it will harm President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection bid. Rouhani said that Trump knows that war with Iran will “ruin" his chances of winning the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The Iranian leader added that war would be harmful to U.S. interests and those of its regional allies, as well as Iran.

6-year-old girl was committed to mental health facility without parent consent

A 6-year-old Florida girl was committed for two days to a mental health facility without her mother's consent after allegedly throwing a temper tantrum at school, an attorney for the family said. The child was allegedly given anti-psychotic medications at the center, also without the permission of her mother, Martina Falk. Falk's lawyer, Reganel Reeves, said a mental health counselor was called to the school because Nadia was reportedly having a tantrum and throwing chairs.

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  Police officer questions why she's taking Florida girl to mental facility in new video

  CBS News Videos
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  Mom speaks out after Florida school asks police to escort 6-year-old to mental health facility

  WPVI – Philadelphia

Push for universal basic income will outlive Andrew Yang's 2020 presidential campaign

Andrew Yang focused his surprisingly successful long-shot presidential campaign on a seemingly radical policy idea: universal basic income, or giving people monthly cash payments with no strings attached. He has dropped out of the 2020 race, but the push for UBI will live on. While the roots of this concept run through our country's history, with supporters who include Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King Jr., Yang is rightly credited with moving the idea of unconditional cash out of think tanks and academia and into living rooms across the country.

Harvey Weinstein faces moment of truth as jury weighs case on Tuesday

The jury at Harvey Weinstein's rape trial in New York will begin deliberations on Tuesday, with the world's media and the expectations of the #MeToo movement bearing heavily upon them. If they find him guilty of two of the five counts against him, of “predatory sexual assault”, he could be sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors and Weinstein's lawyers have frequently directed jurors' vision to the overflowing press benches in courtroom No 99 at the New York supreme court, and alluded to the sound of keyboards rattling as one way of highlighting the high-profile nature of the case.

Joe Biden blasts Bernie Sanders over health care, gun control, and his supporters' online behavior

Former Vice President Joe Biden zeroed in this weekend on one of his top competitors, who many consider to have eclipsed him as the Democratic presidential frontrunner. In an interview set to air on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Biden waded into a controversy surrounding Sanders supporters who have been accused of threatening members of Nevada's Culinary Workers Union for not backing Sanders' Medicare-for-all proposal. Biden said Sanders isn't necessarily directly responsible for such behavior, but he's not sure he's done enough to put a stop to it, either.

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  Sanders campaigns in Texas, as he heads to Nevada

  Associated Press Videos
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  Biden says he'd 'disown' anyone who made online attacks like Bernie Sanders' supporters

  Business Insider

Japan suffers worst economic slump in five years

Japan has suffered its worst quarterly GDP contraction in more than five years, with a tax hike and a deadly typhoon taking a toll on the world's third-largest economy. The nation's gross domestic product in the three months to December shrank 1.6 percent from the previous quarter, even before the novel coronavirus outbreak in China hit Japan, according to official data published on Monday. The quarter was marked by a rise in consumption tax from eight percent to 10 percent, as well as Typhoon Hagibis, which killed more than 100 people and caused widespread flooding.

Police allegedly held a black student at gunpoint. Now the governor wants an investigation

The governor of Illinois on Thursday called for an investigation into allegations that police held a black college student at gunpoint after misidentifying him as a suspect. Gov. J.B. Pritzker's statement comes after Jaylan Butler, 20, sued the six officers involved for unlawful searches and seizure, excessive force and false arrest on a Sunday night last February. Butler, a swim team member at Eastern Illinois University, said he was walking back to the team bus near a rest stop off Interstate 80 when patrol cars pulled up to him.

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  Black college swimmer on team trip had gun pointed at head by police

  NBC News
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  Black College Swimmer Files Lawsuit Against Illinois Police Who He Claims Held Him at Gunpoint

  Time

A cruise-ship passenger tested positive for the coronavirus after hundreds of other passengers disembarked and dispersed all over the world

Associated Press/Heng Sinith Health officials on Saturday said they'd found a coronavirus case among the hundreds of passengers who disembarked a cruise ship in Cambodia, The New York Times reported. The Westerdam cruise ship spent weeks stranded at sea after five ports rejected it over coronavirus fears. Now, more than 1,000 passengers from the ship have proceeded to destinations around the world, and health officials are struggling to determine how to handle the situation.

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  Granite Bay couple evacuated from coronavirus-quarantined ship

  KCRA - Sacramento Videos
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  Hundreds of Americans flown home from cruise ship, 14 with coronavirus

  Reuters

The Latest: Nevada's lieutenant governor endorses Biden

Buttigieg told a largely African American audience at a luncheon for the Nevada Legislative Black Caucus on Sunday that he worked with black leaders of South Bend, Indiana, to deliver affordable housing and improve the black unemployment rate. The former mayor has faced criticism for the racial disparity in marijuana arrests in South Bend and decisions that led him to have no African American leaders in his administration during a crucial stretch of his tenure. More than a quarter of South Bend residents are black.

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  Buttigieg: I won't 'take lectures on family values' from Rush Limbaugh

  Yahoo News
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  Pete Buttigieg 'won't take lectures' from Rush Limbaugh or any Trump supporter

  The Guardian

Judge sets Tuesday phone hearing in Roger Stone case

The judge handling the criminal case that set off a white-hot, national political controversy last week — the prosecution of President Donald Trump's longtime adviser Roger Stone — has ordered both sides to take part in a telephone hearing Tuesday to discuss the status of the case. U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the unusual Sunday order after the entire four-person prosecution team withdrew from the case following Attorney General Bill Barr's intervention to rescind their recommendation of a seven-to-nine year sentence for Stone. The move set off a furor inside and outside the Justice Department, with Barr facing accusations he was politicizing the department by seeking to favor Trump's friends.

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  Fearful of Trump's Attacks, Justice Dept. Lawyers Worry Barr Will Leave Them Exposed

  The New York Times
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  Over 1,100 Former Justice Department Officials Call for Attorney General Barr's Resignation

  Time

Rouhani says Iran will never yield to U.S. pressure for talks

Iran will never hold talks with the United States under pressure, President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday, adding that Tehran's help was essential in establishing security in the Middle East. Relations between Tehran and Washington reached crisis point in 2018 after U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned a 2015 pact between Iran and world powers under which Tehran accepted curbs to its nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions. Tensions spiked further following the killing of Iran's most prominent military commander Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3 by U.S. drone attacks at Baghdad airport.

Man who left puppy to drown in cage sentenced to 1 year for animal cruelty

A New Jersey man who tried to leave an 8-month-old puppy to drown in a cage was sentenced to a year in state prison Friday. Aaron Davis, 36, was convicted of fourth-degree animal cruelty in December after leaving the pit bull in a cage along the rising tide of Sandy Hook Bay in July 2018, according to the Monmouth County Prosecutor. Luckily, a passerby noticed the crate in the early morning hours and climbed down a rocky barrier to save the puppy, who was later named River.

Inside the Family's Manhattan Apartment

undefined Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

India women facing sedition charges over school play get bail

Two women held for two weeks by Indian police on sedition charges over a school play which allegedly criticised a contentious citizenship law have been granted bail, officials said Sunday. Teacher Fareeda Begum, 50, and parent Nazbunnisa, 36, were arrested on January 30 for helping the children stage the play at Shaheen Public School in Karnataka state. The play depicted a worried family talking about how they feared the government would ask millions of Muslims to prove their nationality or be expelled from India.

Hitler's Submarines Almost Launched A Missile Attack On America

Key point: Most Allied commanders were skeptical that there was a genuine threat to the continental United States—save for certain leaders of the U.S. Navy. In the closing weeks of World War II in Europe, American intelligence determined that a detachment of German submarines had been dispatched to launch a cruise missile attack on the East Coast of the United States. The U.S. Navy deployed forty-six ships and dozens of aircraft to annihilate the incoming submarine wolf pack.

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  This U.S. Nuclear Submarine Smashed Into an Underwater Mountain (And Survived)

  The National Interest
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  See This Submarine? Iran Would Use It To Try and Sink the U.S. Navy

  The National Interest

Chinese President Xi knew severity of coronavirus weeks before going public; 40 Americans on cruise ship infected

President Xi Jinping on Sunday published a timeline of his actions to combat the coronavirus racing through China as the Communist Party worked to tamp down criticism of the government's handling of the crisis. The latest revelation comes as a U.S. health official said at least 40 Americans on a cruise ship in Japan are infected with the deadly new virus. “I issued demands during a Politburo Standing Committee meeting on Jan. 7 for work to contain the outbreak," Xi said in the speech.

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  Why Xi's 'defensive' coronavirus speech could backfire

  The Week
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  Xi Details Early Hands-On Approach in Virus Fight, Risking Anger

  Bloomberg

Ocasio-Cortez faces 13 challengers – but can anyone unseat her?

We don't see a lot of young people accomplish a lot because they're afraid – and she's not afraid. We knew who she was when we sent her, that she'd make a noise, and making a noise was why we sent her Abdul Abbas That's not how all see it. The first-term congresswoman is facing eight Republican and five Democratic candidates aiming to unseat her.

Egypt’s top prosecutor denies activist was tortured

Egypt's chief prosecutor on Sunday denied allegations that the police tortured a human rights activist and vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Police detained Patrick George Zaki, 28, an Egyptian student at the University of Bologna in Italy, after he arrived in Cairo earlier this month on what was supposed to be a brief visit home. Zaki told his lawyers he'd been tortured with electric shocks, beaten and blindfolded during interrogations about his activism, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

U.S. State Dept. says fourteen test positive for coronavirus from cruise ship in Japan

Fourteen U.S. citizens tested positive for the new coronavirus during the evacuation of over 300 U.S. nationals and their family members from a quarantined ship in Japan, the U.S. State Department said on Monday. The passengers were preparing to return to the United States on a chartered aircraft when U.S. officials received notice that 14 people had tested positive for COVID-19, according https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-by-u-s-department-of-state-and-u-s-department-of-health-and-human-services-on-repatriation-of-american-passengers-from-the-diamond-princess-cruise-ship to the statement. The 14 were moved to a containment area on the evacuation aircraft, the statement said.

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  14 test positive among US plane evacuees from Japan virus ship

  AFP
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  US evacuates Diamond Princess cruise passengers; 40 Americans on board test positive for coronavirus

  USA TODAY

Costa Rican police find six tonnes of cocaine in biggest ever haul

Police in Costa Rica have found almost 6 tonnes of cocaine in a shipping container, leading to the country's biggest ever drug seizure. The drugs, which weighed 5,800kg, were discovered on Friday evening in Limón in a container of flowers due to be sent to Rotterdam, Holland, according to the Costan Rican national newspaper La Nación. In a press conference on Saturday afternoon, interior minister Michael Soto Rojas confirmed it was the largest ever drug seizure in Costa Rica.

Trump reportedly urged the CIA to hunt and kill Osama bin Laden's son instead of more pressing terrorist threats

President Donald Trump wanted his intelligence officials to focus on killing Osama bin Laden's son over other terrorist targets because he was the only one Trump was familiar with, NBC News reported Sunday. Two military and intelligence officials said Trump did not recognize many other names on the CIA's list of potential targets. Trump has also approved successful strikes on other top terrorist targets, including the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Yemen's Al Qaeda chief Qasim al-Rimi.

Questions over fate of Saudi crew in Yemen jet crash

The fate of the crew of a Saudi warplane that crashed in Yemen remained uncertain Sunday after Iran-linked Huthi rebels claimed to have shot down the aircraft. The Riyadh-led military coalition fighting the rebels said the two officers ejected from the plane before it crashed in northern Al-Jawf province Friday but that the rebels opened fire at them "in violation of international humanitarian law". "The joint forces command of the Coalition holds the terrorist Huthi militia responsible for the lives and wellbeing of the Tornado air crew," the coalition said in a statement released by the official Saudi Press Agency late Saturday.

Remember When Iran Took Out Saddam Hussein's Navy In One Day—With American-Made Jets?

Key Point: In Operation Morvarid (“Pearl”) not only did they hope to take the Iraqi radars out of the picture but also Baghdad's vital oil infrastructure. On September 22, 1980 Saddam Hussein launched Iraq into a full-scale invasion of Iran—hoping to capitalize on Iran's instability due to the Iranian Revolution. Khorramshahr and Abadan, two major Iranian port cities just across and downstream the Shatt-al-Arab river from the major Iraqi oil-exporting port of Basra, were priority targets.