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<p>White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo attempted to quash a story about his relationship with Axios reporter Alexi McCammond “by issuing threats and using derogatory language to another reporter pursuing it,” according to a stunning new report from Vanity Fair. The reporter Ducklo threatened with “derogatory and misogynistic comments” in addition to threats such as “I will destroy you” was Politico’s Tara Palmeri.</p>

BEIJING—Chinese authorities refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw, personalized data on early Covid-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China, according to WHO investigators who described heated exchanges over the lack of detail. The Chinese authorities turned down requests to provide such data on 174 cases of Covid-19 that they have identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. The investigators are part of a WHO team that this week completed a monthlong mission in China aimed at...

House Republicans are already feeling confident of taking back the majority in 2022, and some key Democrats are focused on the warning signs. Both centrist and liberal Democrats are concerned that if Speaker Nancy Pelosi drags the party too far left, it will be doomed to defeat. “You know, 2022 is already looking like a pretty formidable challenge for reelection,” said California Rep. Scott Peters, the vice chairman for policy for the New Democrat Coalition. In a discussion about party politics with Simon Rosenberg of the liberal think tank NDN, Peters echoed other top Democrats who said that the GOP...

Analysis: The Communion Controversy Could be Far Greater Than Just Pro-Abortion PoliticiansCanon 915 of the Code of Canon Law states that those “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.” WASHINGTON — Once again, U.S. bishops are debating whether to apply the canonical penalty of denying Communion to unrepentantly pro-abortion Catholic politicians.While this conversation has been occurring for years within the conference, what is new is that some bishops are now framing this discussion within the broader topic of general worthiness to receive Holy Communion. Catholics in general, they argue—not just pro-abortion politicians—need...

Too few Americans understand the threat that China’s governing philosophy and structures pose to the US. China envy runs strong among America’s progressive elite. The Communist Party of China’s hold on power and centralized decision-making has long appealed to progressives infuriated with their inability to mandate solutions to global warming (and other progressive priorities). Tom Friedman, an established bellwether of elite opinion, has been voicing this exasperation for more than a decade. Last weekend he reduced the genocide in Xinjiang to “bad stuff with the Uighurs,” of less concern than Chinese excellence in high-speed rail. Far too few Americans grasp...

February 12 is the anniversary of Lady Jane Grey‘s beheading at the Tower of London. The Protestant teenager was the designated successor of sickly boy-king Edward VI, but popular and aristocratic support went for Mary Tudor in a landslide. The Nine Days’ Queen landed in the Tower and copped to a treason charge on a tenuous deal for mercy (not applicable to her sponsors and allies, many of whom went to the block). But a January 1554 Protestant rebellion that had Protestant restoration as part of its programme made it a dangerous indulgence for Mary to keep her cousin’s neck...

South Korean television MBC recently started broadcasting season two of its hit documentary, 너를 만났다 (“I Met You”), a unique program that uses state-of-the-art VR gear and software to reunite people with their departed loved ones and allow them to make one more memory together. The network spends months on each case, putting together an emotional reunion in virtual reality, but while the response from the public has been generally positive, there are critics who describe it as emotionally manipulative. 51-year-old Kim Jung-soo was the protagonist of the second season of I Met You, after signing up for the opportunity...

CONROE, Texas — A Texas woman who spent about five years in prison for the 2011 death of her premature son has once again been accused of injuring her child, this time a baby girl she gave birth to at her mother’s home and left to drown in a toilet, according to police. Denette Elizabeth Williams, 33, of Conroe, is charged with felony child endangerment, according to the Houston Chronicle. She is out on $50,000 bond.(snip) In Williams’ previous criminal case, she was initially sentenced to 15 years in prison for the death of her 5-week-old son, Braylan Preston Hood....

Three Fox News hosts — Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro — are seeking the dismissal of claims against them and their employer as part of a $2.7 billion libel lawsuit brought by the voting technology company Smartmatic. Bartiromo, Dobbs and Pirro, as well as Donald Trump lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell, were sued this month for the eye-popping amount by Smartmatic, which accused them of conspiring to spread false claims that the company was involved in an effort to steal the presidential election from Trump. In its motions, lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis, which is also defending...

Rush Limbaugh's staffers said they are "praying for a remission" for his advanced lung cancer, which on Wednesday appeared to cause him to miss a taping of his eponymous radio show. Limbaugh's producer James Golden tweeted Wednesday that Ken Matthews would fill in for the controversial conservative host "as he continues to fight the illness." There was also a fill-in for Limbaugh's Thursday episode. A ticker on the show's official website noted that "it's treatment week and Rush will be off the air today." Limbaugh, 70, was diagnosed with lung cancer in late January 2020, telling fans while on the...

The March flyby won't be nearly as stunning as the 2029 close approach; Apophis will come only one-tenth of the average distance between the Earth and the sun, more than 40 times as distant as the moon is from Earth. But scientists have big goals for Apophis' 2029 flyby, and in order to get the most out of that opportunity, they need to know as much as possible about the space rock. An animation shows Apophis' 2029 path compared to the swarm of satellites orbiting Earth. (Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech) Apophis has been rattling around the inner solar system for millennia,...

2021 is the Year of the Ox according to Chinese zodiac. This is a Year of Metal Ox, starting from Feb. 12, 2021 (Chinese New Year) and lasting to Jan. 31, 2022. Ox is the second in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac sign. Years of the Ox include 1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009, 2021, 2033.... ...It is said that Ox ranks the second among the Chinese zodiacs because it helped the Rat but was later tricked by it. The myth goes that the Jade Emperor declared the order of zodiac signs would be based...

TWO teenagers are facing homicide charges after a woman was savagely raped and beaten to death by a gang of up to 11 boys. Ee Lee, 36, was relaxing in a park when the teens dragged her under a tree, stripped and abused her in a sickening assault filmed on cell phones, prosecutors say. Kamare Lewis, 17, and Kevin Spencer, 15, each face a charges of first-degree intentional homicide, as party to a crime, and first-degree sexual assault. Ee was found half-naked and barely breathing by a pond at Washington Library Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on September 16 last year....

Republicans are "radicalizing against democracy" because they rely on our constitutional process when governing. This is the essence of Chris Hayes' recent Atlantic piece contending that the GOP is descending into authoritarianism. The MSNBC host notes, without any suggestion of self-awareness, that "the Constitution puts a wind at the backs of Republicans and makes them more competitive than they would be otherwise." What does "otherwise" mean here, exactly? A return to the British Empire? Or does it mean functioning as the centralized direct democracy that progressives covet, but that's never existed in this country? There is no "otherwise." The idea...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to issue new guidelines to agents this week that could sharply curb arrests and deportations, as the Biden administration attempts to assert more control over an agency afforded wide latitude under President Donald Trump, according to internal memos and emails obtained by The Washington Post. While ICE’s new operational plans are not yet final, interim instructions sent to senior officials point to a major shift in enforcement. Agents will no longer seek to deport immigrants for crimes such as driving under the influence and assault, and will focus instead on national security threats,...

At his news conference Thursday, Gov. Larry Hogan said he hopes the coronavirus vaccine by Johnson & Johnson is approved by the end of February. The single-dose vaccine would be a game changer and help speed up vaccination statewide, but it’s different than the mRNA vaccines the public has heard so much about from Pfizer and Moderna. The J&J vaccine is already being manufactured at Emergent BioSolutions in East Baltimore in the hope that the FDA will grant them emergency use authorization in the next couple of weeks, but it’s very different from the vaccines already in circulation. “I think...

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WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers are rebutting the case made by House impeachment managers as they take their turn to present arguments on day four of his trial. The former president’s defense team has 16 hours to make their case but lead impeachment lawyer David Shoen said they would likely only use three to four hours to present their arguments.

Bloomberg News on Thursday began notifying a group of employees they were being terminated, according to three people familiar with the matter, the latest in an ongoing string of layoffs at media companies as they grapple with the economics of the digital age. Some staffers were given the sense the company hoped to enact a restructuring among a group of veteran editors, according to one of these people, who noted that some employees affected had been with Bloomberg for decades. Some employees at Bloomberg were of the belief, this person said, that the company was hoping to open its ranks...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said his show was being targeted by groups funded by some of America’s most notorious liberal billionaires. Carlson said that within the past 24 hours and recent weeks, “the call to take this show off the air by groups funded — for real — by the Ford Foundation or by George Soros, by Michael Bloomberg, by Jeff Bezos has become deafening.” Carlson argued on the Feb. 11 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight that this hornet’s nest of billionaire-backed groups was going after the show’s “advertisers” and the “companies that carry” its signal into viewers’ homes....