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BEIJING -- China on Friday suspended more punitive tariffs on imports of U.S. industrial goods in response to a truce in its trade war with Washington that threatened global economic growth. Financial markets have welcomed announcements by both sides of reductions in penalties on each other’s goods, though they have yet to resolve much of the conflict that erupted in 2018 over Beijing’s technology ambitions and trade surplus. Goods affected by the latest reduction include industrial components and medical and factory equipment, according to the Finance Ministry. It gave no details of the value of goods affected but said penalties...

Many have noted the dilemma the socialists -- er, I mean the Democrats -- are in over the prospect of Sen. Bernie Sanders winning their nomination. If nominated, they're running a socialist. If not, their base will be out of sorts. It's time for a reckoning. The Democratic Party is going to have to be honest with itself -- and the American voters -- sooner or later. It is already mostly socialist. But is it ready to embrace the label? While a majority of Democrats now have a favorable view of socialism (just think about that for a second), a...

After being pummeled by opponents in his 2020 debate debut, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg put his video team to work Thursday with a misleading mashup. In a video tweeted from Bloomberg's account, a sequence where he asserts he's the only candidate on stage to ever start a business is followed by clips of each candidate in awkward silence. Filling almost the entirety of the video, the silence makes it appear as though Bloomberg dumbfounded his opponents by touting his business record. However, in the debate a back-and-fort between the candidates proceeded as normal after Bloomberg made his...

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Virginia Second Amendment Sanctuaries in Green, 8 January, 2020 The Virginia bill to ban "assault weapons", HB 961, is highly controversial. It is one of the items credited with bringing over 22,000 Second Amendment supporters to the Virginia Capitol to lobby their legislators. 91 of 95 counties in Virginia have passed Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions, saying they will not comply with such legislation.  The Virginia legislature, with a new Democrat party majority in the House of Representatives (55-45) and the Senate (21-19) and a Democrat Governor, has been energized to pass bills long considered to be outside acceptable limits....

Many Republicans are crossing their fingers. After President Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he’s considering nominating Representative Doug Collins to be the next Director of National Intelligence, the benefits of such a move were not hard to calculate. It would be a huge win for the GOP on multiple fronts, not the least of which would be to put someone in the critical position the President could actually trust. The President has already assigned Richard Grenell to be acting DNI, replacing Joseph Maguire who, as an acting DNI as well, was required to step down soon. There...

President Trump said late Thursday night he is considering nominating Rep. Doug Collins, Georgia Republican, as director of national intelligence. The president made the disclosure to reporters aboard Air Force One on a flight to Las Vegas, Nevada, a day after he selected U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell to serve as acting DNI. The DNI oversees the 17 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community. Joseph Maguire has served in an acting role since last year, when Dan Coats resigned.

Players on the U.S. women’s national team are seeking more than $66 million in damages as part of their gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The damages were included in slew of papers filed Thursday night in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ahead of a trial scheduled to start May 5. Among the documents filed were the separate collective bargaining agreements of the U.S. men’s and women’s teams, which had not previously been made public. Players on the women’s national team sued the federation last March alleging institutionalized gender discrimination that includes inequitable compensation between the men’s...

NFL owners have voted to approve their proposal for a new collective-bargaining agreement, leaving it all up to the NFL Players’ Association to decide if the new CBA will go into effect. However, if the reaction from the NFL world is any indication to part of the CBA proposal, fans shouldn’t get their hopes up for labor peace. According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the addition of a 17th game into the NFL season would also result in many star players getting paid less for their work. While a 17-game season might not into effect until at least 2022, NFL...

Just when one thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cannot exploit her lack of economic knowledge and her worthless college degree any more than she already has, think again. After defending Bernie Bros the other day, she took to twitter to throw billionaires under the bus last night: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ✔ @AOC In a time when ~60% of American workers make less than $40,000 a year, billionaires should not exist.

Responding to criticism that its initial diversity version of Moby Dick was merely a "fish tale in blackface", Barnes and Noble vowed to radically restructure Melville's ponderous tome To begin with, the whale will no longer be a neutral symbol of unstoppable, remorseless nature. Rather, it will be recast as a sort of immense guardian whale shepherd who protects the more vulnerable members of the "oppressed cetacean community" from the "genocidal depredations of a heartless, hypocritical Christo-fascist patriarchy who would despoil the Earth itself in its hysterical racist fear of ….. The Darkness."

On Thursday, however, the conservative Club for Growth released a poll that showed former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville surging into first place, getting the nod from 32% of those polled to top Mr. Sessions’ 29%. The Club for Growth has campaigned aggressively against contender Rep. Bradley Byrne.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) drafted a document her primary opponent Mike Bloomberg can sign to release his former employees from nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). Warren, who has been calling on Bloomberg to release people who used to work for his company from the secrecy agreements for months, unveiled her document Thursday during a CNN town hall in Nevada. “So I used to teach contract law. And I thought I would make this easy. I wrote up a release and covenant not to sue. And all that Mayor Bloomberg has to do is download it. I'll text it. Sign...

Last night MSNBC hosted the Democrat debate in Las Vegas, but it was the presidential town hall event hosted by CNN was that has many people now talking. A new video has surfaced of the event that is raising eyebrows. Here’s the set up: Tom Steyer is being interviewed either before the event starts or during a break – but either way, it’s not Steyer I want you to focus on. Look beyond him and you’ll see what appears to be a CNN employee in the background working as a “warmup person” for the audience. What’s odd about this, is...

Democratic presidential candidates discussed climate change at length on the debate stage Wednesday night, addressing energy sources ranging from natural gas to lithium batteries. White House hopefuls fielded questions on the topic for 15 minutes, dwarfing the amount of time devoted to environmental issues at earlier debates. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slightly walked back from her pledge to stop mining and oil and gas drilling on public lands. "You got to have lithium, you got to have copper for renewable energy. How do you do that?" moderator Jon Ralston asked her, referring to minerals needed to make batteries. "If we...

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By: Hassan.Mahmoudi The eleventh parliamentary elections in Iran will be held on February 21, 2020. The number of seats in the 11th parliament is 290. Candidates are screened and then approved or rejected by the Assembly of Experts that its members are appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. According to the Iranian constitution, three branches of government are under the supervision of the supreme leader. The Guardian Council, which is responsible for interpreting the constitution, in cases where the decisions of other bodies contradict the decisions of the leader's affiliated institutions, considers them illegal because of their inconsistency with the...

Less than a month after the chaos in Iowa, Democrats aren’t promising to release same-day results from Saturday’s Democratic caucuses in Nevada either. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez said the early vote and the multistage caucus process with three sets of results could affect when the results come out and they plan to emphasize accuracy over speed. “We’re going to do our best to release results as soon as possible, but our North Star, again, is accuracy,” Perez said Tuesday, giving no timetable. **SNIP** The DNC scrapped its plan to use an app to report votes in Nevada that...

The Court of Appeal, the second-highest court in England and Wales after the Supreme Court, has ruled that the Islamic marriage contract, known as nikah in Arabic, is not valid under English law. The landmark ruling has far-reaching implications. On the one hand, the decision strikes a blow against efforts to enshrine this aspect of Sharia law into the British legal system. On the other hand, it leaves potentially thousands of Muslim women in Britain without legal recourse in the case of divorce.

For several days the press sounded the alarm due to the fact that MEPs from the "Green" and "Progressive Alliance of socialists and Democrats" want to raise the price of meat, and thereby to allegedly deprive people of access to this product and to destroy agriculture. Giving up meat or limitation of consumption is regarded as an attack on tradition. Is it possible to get rid of meat? The topic is important and complex, so we should explain what is behind the idea to raise taxes on beef cattle, and why we need to think to do it for a...