| Post-debate and hospitalization, Trump falls further behind Biden in national polls Posted: 06 Oct 2020 12:09 PM PDT  With the 2020 election exactly four weeks away, former Vice President Joe Biden is leading President Trump in every national poll, opening up a significant advantage in surveys taken since the first presidential debate.
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| Experts call for including pregnant women in COVID-19 vaccine trials Posted: 06 Oct 2020 11:13 AM PDT  The data on whether pregnancy increases the risk for coronavirus or leads to more complications is incomplete, but preliminary indications are that it is a potential risk factor. Yet so far, manufacturers and U.S. regulators have held off on including pregnant women in coronavirus vaccine trials.
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| CDC officials are reportedly horrified their boss wrote a letter excusing Mike Pence from their own quarantine guidance Posted: 07 Oct 2020 04:07 PM PDT  Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are reportedly flabbergasted that their boss, CDC chief Robert Redfield, took the extraordinary step of signing a letter excusing Vice President Mike Pence from quarantining.While Pence has so far tested negative for coronavirus, over a dozen people in Trump's orbit have been diagnosed with the disease since last week. Nevertheless, following a "detailed discussion" with Trump's doctor about Pence's chances of exposure to the disease, Redfield determined that "from a public health standpoint, it is safe for the vice president to participate in the upcoming vice-presidential debate.""To me, if we are not involved in the investigation, I don't know how we could make that determination," one CDC official told The Washington Post anonymously. "We should stick to our guidance. You should be quarantined for 14 days if exposed." Another CDC official expressed dismay that such a letter was written by the agency's chief at all: "Pence should have asked for a private entity to endorse he was 'clean.' Using his special privileged access to the nation's top public health official is disturbing."According to the CDC website, "For COVID-19, a close contact is anyone who was within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes." But the Post points out, "Pence attended the Rose Garden ceremony two Saturdays ago marking the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett — an event attended by several others since diagnosed with COVID-19."More stories from theweek.com The myth of Mike Pence's appeal Trump is shockingly bad at this Is Joe Biden the Konrad Adenauer of the U.S.?
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| NYC Orthodox Community Holds Protest Over New COVID Restrictions, Chants ‘Jewish Lives Matter’ Posted: 07 Oct 2020 05:28 AM PDT  Hundreds of members of the Borough Park Orthodox community filled the streets Tuesday night to protest new restrictions imposed on neighborhoods with a surge in COVID-19 cases, which include a limit on synagogue attendance and the closure of schools and non-essential businesses.The demonstrations, held into early Wednesday morning, grew more chaotic as the night wore on and protesters resisted orders to disperse: one person was injured "from a physical confrontation with other congregant(s)," protesters set a fire in the middle of a crosswalk and threw cardboard boxes and masks into the flames, according to NBC New York.A significant part of Borough Park faces the new tightened restrictions which limits houses of worship to 10 people or 25 percent capacity and completely closes schools and non-essential businesses. The area is subject to the most restrictive of three color-coded categories which are assigned by coronavirus case data.The neighborhood is among nine in New York City's "red zone" where the coronavirus positivity rate has held above 3 percent for seven straight days. Some members of the Orthodox community say they feel they have been unfairly blamed for the rise in cases.Community activist Heshy Tischler spoke to a large crowd that gathered on the corner of 50th Street and 15th Avenue around 9 p.m., blasting New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio over the restrictions which must be enforced no later than Friday, the New York Post reported. "It's called civil disobedience, we can fight back," Tischler said after tearing up his face mask. "Do not allow them to torture you or scare you," he said, referring to elected officials. At another protest on 13th Avenue, councilman Kalman Yeger told the crowd: "We are not going to be deprived of the right that we have in America, like everybody else in America, the right to observe our religion," according to Boro Park News.As demonstrations continued late into the night, the number of protesters grew, with a group shutting down 13th Avenue to vehicular traffic at one point. According to the New York Post, after two city sheriff's deputies responded to a rubbish fire at the intersection of 46th Street and 13th Avenue after midnight, protesters chased them away and chanted "Jewish lives matter" as they held their ground. The fire was later extinguished around 1:30 am by FDNY firefighters and police. Police say no arrests or summonses were issued, according to NBC.Yeger and three other Jewish lawmakers — State Senator Simcha Felder, Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein and Councilman Chaim Deutsch — released a joint statement earlier on Tuesday sharply criticizing the governor for the restrictions and the Cuomo administration's "lack of coordination and communication with local officials.""We are appalled by Governor Cuomo's words and actions today. He has chosen to pursue a scientifically and constitutionally questionable shutdown of our communities," the statement read."His administration's utter lack of coordination and communication with local officials has been an ongoing issue since the start of the pandemic, and particularly recently as we face this uptick," the lawmakers continued.The group said though they represent areas where COVID-19 has spiked, Cuomo's administration had not kept them in the loop leading up to Tuesday's decision to shut down the hot spots.They also slammed Cuomo's use of images of large gatherings of New York's Jewish community — one of which was a 14-year-old photo — in a PowerPoint during his Monday press briefing. "Governor Cuomo's choice to single out a particular religious group, complete with a slideshow of photos to highlight his point, was outrageous," the lawmakers wrote. "His language was dangerous and divisive, and left the implication that Orthodox Jews alone are responsible for rising COVID cases in New York State."
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| US surgeon general cited for being in closed Hawaii park Posted: 06 Oct 2020 01:20 PM PDT  The U.S. surgeon general was cited for being in a closed Hawaii park in August while in the islands helping with surge testing amid a spike in coronavirus cases, according to a criminal complaint filed in court. A Honolulu police officer cited Jerome Adams after seeing him with two men "looking at the view taking pictures" at Kualoa Regional Park on Oahu's northeastern coast, the citation said. Adams told the officer he was visiting Hawaii to work with the governor for COVID-19 and didn't know parks were closed.
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| New questions arise after chemical weapons body confirms Novichok in Navalny's blood Posted: 07 Oct 2020 07:01 AM PDT  "This publicly unknown nerve agent has, to date, not been officially listed by the OPCW," the German government said.
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| Biden: If Trump still has COVID-19 'we shouldn’t have a debate' Posted: 06 Oct 2020 04:59 PM PDT  Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that if President Trump is still testing positive for COVID-19 that the two candidates "shouldn't have a debate."
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| Rhea Chakraborty: Bollywood actor granted bail after nearly a month Posted: 07 Oct 2020 01:40 AM PDT  She was arrested in a drugs case related to the death of her actor-boyfriend Sushant Singh Rajput.
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| Katie Miller mocked Kamala Harris’ Covid debate precautions. Then her husband tested positive Posted: 07 Oct 2020 03:20 PM PDT  Katie Miller traveled to Utah to help the Vice President ahead of Wednesday's debate
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| Postal worker charged after nearly 2,000 pieces of mail, including ballots, found in trash Posted: 07 Oct 2020 04:47 PM PDT  U.S. Attorney Sara Merin said Nicholas Beauchene admitted to dumping the mail, though there was "no indication that there was any political motive."
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| Violence erupts in Brooklyn as Hasidic community objects to new coronavirus curbs Posted: 07 Oct 2020 10:07 AM PDT  Angry protests erupted in Brooklyn as hundreds of members of the local orthodox Jewish community took to the streets to demonstrate against strict coronavirus restrictions imposed by New York's state governor, Andrew Cuomo. At least one person was injured in chaotic scenes in the Borough Park neighbourhood in which Hasidic men, mainly without masks, started fires as the protests intensified around midnight. Chanting "Jewish lives matter", the crowd chased away two sheriffs deputies. Shouting "snitch", the mob turned on a Hasidic man who was suspected of disloyalty; he was treated overnight at a nearby hospital, A photographer was also knocked to the ground.
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| German Official Suppressed Intel Report on China to Protect Business Ties: Report Posted: 06 Oct 2020 10:31 AM PDT  A senior German government official suppressed a 2018 intelligence report on China's influence in Germany for fear of damaging business relationships between the two countries, Axios reported on Tuesday.The report detailed China's growing attempts to influence German society, business, and politics, two U.S. intelligence officials said. However, a high-ranking official moved to prevent the report from being disseminated throughout the German government. Only small number of senior officials have read the report, including Chancellor Angela Merkel."As a matter of principle, the German government does not comment on matters concerning intelligence findings or activities of the intelligence services," a government spokesperson told Axios.The news comes after Chancellor Merkel in September refused to ban Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from operating on 5G networks in the country, bucking U.S. pressure to block the company. The U.S. considers Huawei a threat to national security, contending that the Chinese government can use Huawei networks to conduct espionage operations.The U.K. banned Huawei in July after a U.S. pressure campaign, while France has tightened controls on its 5G networks that prevent Huawei from operating freely.German businesses have invested heavily in partnerships with China. Automaker Volkswagen currently operates a factory in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Province, where China is conducting a campaign of mass imprisonment and indoctrination of Muslims in detention camps. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess claimed in 2019 that he was "not aware" of the existence of the camps.
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| Republican poll watchers begin to mobilize at sites as early voting begins Posted: 07 Oct 2020 12:52 PM PDT  Republicans are mobilizing thousands of volunteers to watch early voting sites and ballot drop boxes leading up to November's election, part of an effort to find evidence to back up President Trump's unsubstantiated complaints about widespread voter fraud.
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| Migrant caravans restart as pandemic deepens the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border Posted: 06 Oct 2020 05:20 AM PDT  Members of a U.S.-bound migrant caravan from Honduras have been detained in Guatemala and deported before they could reach Mexico. Though their journey was cut short, the formation of a new caravan reveals that – as in 2018 and 2019 – Central Americans are still fleeing violence, hunger and climate change en masse.The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border also persists despite the coronavirus drawing media attention toward other matters. As a scholar of Mexican migration, I have watched the pandemic create new hardships for immigrants while giving the Trump administration leeway to impose further restrictions on the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers. The result is a continuation of dehumanizing and dangerous conditions on the border, with less public scrutiny than ever. Crisis at the borderDuring my research for a 2019 documentary, "Waylaid in Tijuana," I observed firsthand the difficult conditions facing thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers who were stranded at the U.S.-Mexico border well before the pandemic. Under international and domestic law, the United States must offer asylum to people with a "well-founded fear" of persecution based on their political beliefs, racial or ethnic background, religion or other special characteristics that make them a target for violence.But in April 2018, the Trump administration began "metering" asylum-seekers by requiring that they get on a waiting list for their initial appointment with U.S. officials. By August 2019, 25,000 people were on the list, mostly in Tijuana. In February 2020, just before the global pandemic was declared, 15,000 people were still waiting.Nine months after metering began, the Trump administration introduced the Migration Protection Protocols, which require asylum-seekers who pass their initial interview to return to Mexico to wait for each subsequent court hearing. By March 2020, over 65,000 asylum-seekers had been returned to Mexico, mostly through ports of entry in Texas.Under pressure from the Trump administration, the Mexican government acceded to this policy, giving asylum-seekers the right to wait for their interview in Mexico. Migrants in the caravans that arrived in late 2018 and early 2019 were also given a special work permit. But the Mexican government has since drastically curtailed these permits, and today's migrants receive almost no government support. The lucky ones find food and lodging at a church-run migrant shelter, an informal job waiting tables or working construction and access to health care and legal counsel through local or U.S.-based nonprofit organizations. Most migrants are not so lucky. Shelters cannot keep up with the demand, leaving thousands on the streets or in tent camps with no plumbing or electricity, especially along the Texas border. Asylum-seekers outside the shelters rarely have access to social assistance or legal counsel. Asylum-seekers are also targeted by criminals and local police for extortion, mugging, kidnapping and assault – adding another layer of trauma to the violence suffered back home and along their journey. During the interviews with asylum-seekers conducted for "Waylaid in Tijuana," my colleagues and I could see the fear and anxiety in their body language. Barred by the pandemicThese two policies – the metering system and the Migration Protection Protocols – had vastly reduced Central American migrants' chances of gaining asylum in the U.S. even before the pandemic. As of August 2020, only 570 of the 44,000 asylum-seekers sent back to Mexico whose cases had been decided were granted refuge in the U.S. That's an approval rate of 1.3%, compared with 21% in 2018 for asylum-seekers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.The pandemic has now enabled the Trump administration to effectively end asylum as an avenue for Central Americans to legally enter the United States.In March 2020 the Department of Homeland Security closed the waiting lists for asylum interviews and suspended asylum hearings. The Trump administration also invoked Title 42, a little-used rule of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention intended to prevent the spread of infectious disease, to expel all migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border immediately and without the hearing to which many of them would normally be entitled. Under this rule, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has turned away more than 147,000 people since March, over the objections of top scientists. Most of the migrants, including non-Mexicans, are stuck in Mexico. [Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter and get expert takes on today's news, every day.]That puts even more pressure on Mexico's already overextended shelters, many of which stopped taking new residents or closed down completely when the pandemic hit. And with much of Mexico's economy on lockdown, jobs are nearly impossible to find. A recent International Labor Organization report finds Mexico lost 10.4 million informal jobs during the first two months of the pandemic, particularly in areas like hospitality and construction that used to employ migrants. Dual crisesDespite the obvious health risks, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol continues to require that migrants check in regularly at ports of entry to keep their asylum cases active. Yet pandemic restrictions mean U.S.-based aid workers and lawyers are unable to cross the border to help their clients.Mexico, like the U.S., is struggling to contain COVID-19; over 81,000 people have died of the disease. Many asylum-seekers waiting at the border cannot practice social distancing in crowded encampments or apartments and have nowhere to turn if they get sick. Hunger, sickness, violence and generally dangerous conditions in Central America mean many asylum-seekers will brave the obvious health risks at the U.S.-Mexico border rather than return home. And others, like the migrants in the new Honduran caravan, will continue to flee. The U.S. asylum system has been crippled by politics and the pandemic while the humanitarian crisis at the border continues.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * How Central American migrants helped revive the US labor movement * More Central American migrants take shelter in churches, recalling 1980s sanctuary movementKatrina Burgess does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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| Trump falsely accuses Biden of support for abortion 'up until the time of birth, and beyond' Posted: 06 Oct 2020 08:36 AM PDT  President Trump on Tuesday responded to Joe Biden's vow to make the Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion the "law of the land" with a tweet falsely suggesting Biden wants to kill babies after they are born.
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| Delta intensifies into a Category 4 hurricane and sets aim toward the Gulf Coast Posted: 06 Oct 2020 10:13 AM PDT  Delta now forecast to become a powerful 140 mph Category 4 hurricane. The U.S. Gulf Coast should prepare for a major hurricane strike later this week.
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| The plexiglass barriers that will separate Harris and Pence at the debate probably won't stop coronavirus-laden aerosols, scientists say Posted: 07 Oct 2020 07:48 AM PDT  A plexiglass divider won't do much to stop coronavirus aerosols, microscopic particles that can hang suspended in the air like smoke.
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| When cruising comes back, will the buffet return with it? Here's what the cruise lines say Posted: 07 Oct 2020 09:45 AM PDT  One question that remains unanswered about the resumption of cruising in November: Will the buffet, a cruise ship staple, ever return?
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| Lawmakers: North Korean ex-envoy to Italy defected to South Posted: 06 Oct 2020 11:45 PM PDT  A senior North Korea diplomat who vanished in Italy in late 2018 lives in South Korea under government protection, lawmakers said Wednesday. If confirmed, Jo Song Gil, North Korea's former acting ambassador to Italy, would be the highest-level North Korean official to defect to rival South Korea since the 1997 arrival of Hwang Jang-yop, a senior ruling Workers' Party official who once tutored leader Kim Jong Un's father, late leader Kim Jong Il.
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| White Male Prof Allegedly Posed as Woman of Color to Bully Women Posted: 06 Oct 2020 01:45 AM PDT  "The Science Femme" claimed to be a female academic. She claimed to have upended efforts by her social justice-obsessed department to draft a statement condemning racism.And when Twitter users accused her of racism, she claimed to be a woman of color herself—and an immigrant to boot.But The Science Femme, who tweeted from the handle @piney_the, wasn't any of those things, digital sleuths began alleging late last month. Instead, they claimed, "she" was Craig Chapman, a white male assistant professor of chemistry at the University of New Hampshire. The allegations, bolstered by an internal chemistry department email, would make Chapman at least the fourth white academic revealed to have posed as a person of color in recent weeks.In three of those cases, academics are accused of shamelessly trying to further their own careers. But in Chapman's case, Twitter users who came into contact with @piney_the say the account harassed real women working in science.The University of New Hampshire said the incident was under investigation."UNH was recently made aware of allegations on social media about a member of its faculty," a spokesperson told The Daily Beast. "We are deeply troubled by what we've learned so far and immediately launched an investigation. The employee at the center of allegations on social media is on leave and not in the classroom. In order to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation the university is unable to comment further."Chapman did not return repeated requests for comment for this story. Both his account and @piney_the were deleted last week.Susanna Harris, a microbiology Ph.D. holder who currently works in science communications, first noticed the @piney_the Twitter account in July."They put out this huge long thread about how they, as a woman of color in science, a professor, made a big change in their university by shutting down diversity, equity, and inclusion work," Harris, who is white, told The Daily Beast.Harris wasn't the only person to make note of the thread, in which @piney_the claimed to have been "successful in killing my dept's woke statement on recent social unrest." The viral thread earned write-ups in conservative publications like RedState, which lauded the efforts to derail an anti-racism statement. Some academics were suspicious of the claims, coming from an anonymous professor at an unnamed university."I did a little bit of poking around to see if there was any chance this was a real person," Harris recalled. "I've been on Twitter for a while and nothing about their account said anything to make me think this is a genuine account."Other Twitter users had raised similar concerns earlier this year. @piney_the was an especially combative Twitter personality, who frequently tangled with the left online. The account described a female opponent in explicit anatomical terms on at least one occasion, repeatedly railed against transgender people, and posted censored nude pictures of former Rep. Katie Hill. Hill, a former California politician, resigned last year after those pictures were made public in an alleged revenge-pornography campaign.When users accused the account of "attacking POC [people of color]," as one did in September, @piney_the frequently claimed to be one. "You know I'm a woman of color, right? Racist," the account responded.But some of @piney_the's tweets teased highly specific personal details, like that their brother owned a brewery. Later, the account tweeted a recommendation for a small New Jersey brewery, owned by Craig Chapman's brother, as Twitter sleuths like the account @drama_science noted. (His brother could not immediately be reached for comment.) Other similarities between @piney_the and Chapman, like fandom for Chicago sports teams, New Jersey origins, and knowledge of niche chemistry fields, abounded.Some of the similarities were more glaring than others.In April, both @piney_the and Chapman tweeted the same picture of a coffee homebrewing setup, within minutes of each other, with similar captions. The picture does not appear to have been uploaded anywhere else on the internet. And both accounts tweeted about marinating meat, with both appearing to tweet pictures of the same baking tray on the same marble countertop.Although a few Twitter users had noted their suspicions about the account for nearly a year, those whispers grew louder in late September, after @piney_the came into conflict with several female academics, Harris included. She was among those who had previously tweeted in opposition to Mike Adams, a University of North Carolina professor, who was famous for his anti-feminist stances. Adams and UNC arrived at an agreement by which he would retire in August and receive a half million-dollar settlement upon leaving. He died by suicide in July.@piney_the, which had more than 13,000 followers at the time of its deletion last week, was one of the key actors stoking what Harris said was a subsequent harassment campaign against her."They were were literally saying that I had killed [Adams], that I had blood on my hands, that I had pushed him into suicide," she said. "That was when the tide changed, and when I started getting emails from anonymous people saying that they hope I die, that they will dox me."The bile renewed some of Harris's previous suspicions about @piney_the's authenticity. If she was right that this was a bogus twitter personality claiming to speak for the marginalized, it wouldn't be the first time.White academics faking their racial or ethnic identity has emerged as a troubling trope in a year of racial justice protests. In September, white George Washington University professor Jessica Krug resigned after she was revealed to have faked a series of Black and Hispanic identities in order to further her career as an Africana academic. Later that month, University of Madison-Wisconsin graduate student CV Vitolo-Haddad resigned from a teaching position after it was revealed that they had also falsely claimed to be Black.Those scandals came a month after former Vanderbilt University assistant professor BethAnn McLaughlin was revealed to have been behind a long-running Twitter account that claimed to be a Native American science professor at Arizona State University. McLaughlin had previously used the fake professor's popular Twitter account to promote a petition to give McLaughlin a tenure position at Vanderbilt. The ruse was only exposed when McLaughlin claimed the non-existent professor died of COVID-19.Ironically, @piney_the made fun of race-faking when it came from liberals, sharing a meme of Sen. Elizabeth Warren with the caption "growing up Chinese in South Detroit I struggled as an African American Jewish Boy." (Warren has dubiously claimed Native American ancestry, and subsequently apologized.)Harris was thinking about McLaughlin's case in late September when she decided to tweet her doubts about @piney_the. She asked the anonymous account to provide evidence that they were a woman of color, and offered to delete her own account if proven wrong. Other academics soon seized on the similarities between @piney_the's account and Craig Chapman's, shortly before both accounts were deleted last week.An internal email (shared by department members and previously reported by local media) from UNH chemistry chair Glen Miller suggests those fears were well-founded."The fake twitter account was in fact set up and run by Craig," read the email, obtained by The Daily Beast. "There were a large number of things written by Craig that ranged from unfortunate to hurtful to deeply offensive. These statements do not represent me, nor the collegial, collaborative, accepting department in which I have had the privilege to work for the past 25 years. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but when those opinions are dismissive or hurtful or harmful to others, it is not ok with me. I reject those statements and their intent, wholeheartedly. But even so, I do not reject Craig. I am not giving up on Craig."The letter went on to describe Chapman as "embarrassed and overwhelmed and shell shocked. He fears that this could be the end of his academic career. I hope it is not and I told him so." Chapman would "come clean" and express remorse to colleagues soon, Miller wrote.Miller, who did not return requests for comment, also accused Chapman's accusers of being "highly motivated to reveal Craig as the person responsible for the fake twitter account, and to inflict damage on him." He urged readers not to speak to the media about the incident.Some UNH graduate students protested what they believed to be the rogue professor's Twitter activities last week, marching with signs on campus. "Craig Chapman does not speak for us," one sign read."Miller said sorry, we say get out," read another.Harris argued the incident—and other recent cases of academics feigning their identities—sap resources from some of the very people Chapman posed as."It's sort of the extreme version of cultural appropriation," she said. "They take the small protections or the scraps of support that women of color and other people have, and they use them as leverage against that exact population."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| Family’s battle with hospital over ‘brain dead’ son to be decided in Texas court Posted: 06 Oct 2020 11:32 AM PDT  Nick Torres was found unresponsive in bathtub in September
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| Allegations of personal misconduct by Democrat Cal Cunningham causes turmoil in N. Carolina senate race Posted: 07 Oct 2020 04:50 AM PDT  A race in North Carolina critical to control of the U.S. Senate has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of personal misconduct by Democrat Cal Cunningham, a married man who reportedly had an extramarital relationship this summer with a consultant.
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| Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Trump loses support among 3 key demographics after debate, COVID-19 diagnosis Posted: 06 Oct 2020 08:35 AM PDT  Voters who disapprove of both candidates, those who voted for different parties in 2016 and 2018, and college-educated white women are moving toward Biden.
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| St. Louis Couple Who Pointed Guns at Protesters Indicted by Grand Jury Posted: 07 Oct 2020 06:00 AM PDT  The St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters outside their house in a June incident that was caught on video were indicted Tuesday by a grand jury in St. Louis.Mark and Patricia McCloskey were charged with two felonies, unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering, after they stood outside their home on Portland Place, a private street, on June 28 and pointed firearms at hundreds of protesters, some of them armed, who marched by, chanted and threatened the couple as they made their way over to St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson's residence to demand her resignation. Mark McCloskey, 63, held a semiautomatic rifle while Patricia McCloskey, 61, stood beside him and held a semiautomatic handgun, the prosecutor's office said.The McCloskeys, both personal injury lawyers, had been inside their home that Sunday evening when they heard loud activity outside and saw "a large group of subjects forcefully break an iron gate marked with 'No Trespassing' and 'Private Street' signs," St. Louis police said."The group began yelling obscenities and threats of harm to both victims," police said.The indictment against the couple is sealed. None of the protesters have been charged, although police were investigating the incident to determine whether the demonstrators committed trespassing and fourth-degree assault by intimidation.In an interview shortly after the incident, Mark McCloskey said he and his wife feared for their lives when they observed the "huge and frightening crowd.""We were threatened with our lives, threatened with the house being burned down, my office building being burned down, even our dog's life being threatened. It was about as bad as it can get," he said.Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt in July promised to seek the dismissal of charges against the couple, citing Missouri's Castle Doctrine, which allows homeowners to use deadly force to defend their private property from intruders. The street the McCloskey's live on is private property since it is situated within a gated community."Enough is enough," the attorney general said after the charges were filed. "A political prosecution such as this one would have a chilling effect on Missourians exercising the right to self defense."The McCloskeys gave remarks during the first night of the Republican National Convention in August.
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| Hurricane Delta heads into Gulf, on patch toward U.S. after hitting Mexico Posted: 07 Oct 2020 05:45 PM PDT  The storm is expected to hit the Gulf Coast later this week, which would mark the 10th hurricane landfall on the mainland U.S. this season, setting a new record.
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| Cocaine-laden plane crashes in Mexico after airborne pursuit Posted: 07 Oct 2020 12:44 PM PDT |
| Tesla has reportedly accused an employee of 'maliciously sabotaging' part of its factory in a leaked email Posted: 07 Oct 2020 08:33 AM PDT  Tesla told workers the alleged incident affected "a few hours" of factory run time and that the person had been fired, according to a new report.
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| Hunt on for Indian tiger after eighth human kill Posted: 07 Oct 2020 05:23 AM PDT  Indian authorities are hunting for a tiger which has killed eight people in the last two years after another fatal attack, officials said Wednesday.
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| ‘We watched him fade away’: Judge recalls the moment her son was shot dead by disgruntled anti-feminist lawyer Posted: 06 Oct 2020 05:17 PM PDT  'I know that he hated me because I was a woman. He hated me because I was Latina. And that was the source of hate. I had the 'nerve' to become a judge'
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| Iran's Rouhani slams sending fighters to Nagorno-Karabakh Posted: 07 Oct 2020 02:19 AM PDT  Iran's President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday warned that his country will not tolerate the presence of foreign fighters — "terrorists that Iran has fought for years" — near its northern border, where a conflict is raging between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Rouhani did not elaborate but Armenia accuses Ankara of sending Turkish-backed Syrian fighters to the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.
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| Trump spends a morning at home tweeting his heart out Posted: 07 Oct 2020 10:52 AM PDT  Plummeting in the polls and confined to the White House with nothing on his public schedule, President Trump spent much of Wednesday morning in a frenzy of tweets and retweets.
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| Tana Mongeau says her promise to send free nudes to Biden voters was sarcastic: 'That would be illegal and weird' Posted: 07 Oct 2020 03:28 AM PDT  Numerous outlets and commentators speculated that Mongeau had committed election fraud by offering nudes for Biden votes.
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| Duo win Nobel Prize in chemistry, a first for a women-only team Posted: 07 Oct 2020 07:03 AM PDT  A women-only team has won a Nobel science prize for the first time, for their work on a gene-editing technique.
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| College student: I was in quarantine on campus. They gave me a bag lunch and little help. Posted: 06 Oct 2020 04:00 AM PDT  I thought the end of my senior year of high school was disappointing. But then I noticed coronavirus symptoms on my first day of college classes.
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| The IRS is under investigation for buying Americans' smartphone location data from private surveillance companies Posted: 06 Oct 2020 12:54 PM PDT  Buying location data directly from private companies lets government agencies sidestep the need for a court-issued search warrant.
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| Supreme Court turns away Republican appeal on ranked voting Posted: 06 Oct 2020 04:16 PM PDT  The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away a last-ditch effort by the Maine Republican Party to stop ranked choice voting from being used for the first time in the state's presidential contest. Justice Stephen Breyer rejected the request for the high court to intervene after the GOP sought to delay ranked voting in this November's presidential election until state voters had the final say through a "People's Veto" referendum. The Maine GOP's appeal was filed after the first votes had been cast by overseas voters.
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| Trump 'symptom-free for over 24 hours' and has produced coronavirus antibodies, doctor says Posted: 07 Oct 2020 11:16 AM PDT  President Trump's doctor has released an oddly informal update on his health.Just a day and a half after leaving the hospital, Trump is displaying no symptoms of coronavirus, and hasn't for the past 24 hours, Trump's physician Dr. Sean Conley said in a Wednesday release. Trump apparently said "I feel great!" this morning, has normal vital signs, and has not used supplemental oxygen since his release from the hospital. In addition, Trump has produced detectable levels of COVID-19 antibodies — something that was undetectable when he first tested positive for COVID-19 last week.> POTUS doctor says he's symptom-free for over 24 hours and that his blood demonstrates detectable levels of antibodies compared to last week pic.twitter.com/goZ8qLhGAY> > — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 7, 2020As previous releases from the White House have noted, Trump's doctor has released only the information Trump has allowed him to, meaning there may be more details of his medical status left unpublicized. The note makes no mention of what drugs Trump may be taking, or if he stopped taking medication altogether. Trump's medical team still has not answered when Trump last tested negative for COVID-19.More stories from theweek.com The myth of Mike Pence's appeal Trump is shockingly bad at this Is Joe Biden the Konrad Adenauer of the U.S.?
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| Fact check: Joe Biden faces friendly fire – partly false – over age, pot, prisons and more Posted: 07 Oct 2020 11:46 AM PDT  An Instagram user levels strong charges against former Vice President Joe Biden but says he will vote for him against Trump
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| Stolen $300m Mao scroll found 'cut in half': Hong Kong police Posted: 07 Oct 2020 04:46 AM PDT  A stolen poetry scroll written by Mao Zedong and valued at hundreds of millions of dollars has been recovered, Hong Kong police said Wednesday -- but not before it was cut in half.
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| Russia fires hypersonic missile in birthday blast for Vladimir Putin Posted: 07 Oct 2020 04:20 AM PDT  Russia's armed forces marked birthday of President Vladimir Putin's 68th birthday with the successful test launch of a hypersonic missile. The Tsikron missile, which can travel at 8 times the speed of sound, was launched on Tuesday from a vessel in the White Sea in Russia's north-west, said the chief of the General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. It successfully hit its target in the Barents Sea, he added. The missile covered a distance of 450 kilometres in four and half-minutes after reaching a hypersonic speed of more than Mach 8. President Putin takes pride in hypersonic weapons, contrasting Russia's status as world-leader in their development with the Cold War when Moscow played catch-up to the US in terms of military technology. Mr Putin praised the test in remarks broadcast on television: "This is a major event not only in the life of the armed forces but also for all of Russia, for the whole country." Mr Putin has previously argued that Russia had to develop new weapons in response to the development of the US missile defence system that threatens to erode Russia's nuclear deterrent.
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| Where’s Jim Cantore? Sign urges weatherman to ‘stay home’ as hurricane nears Louisiana Posted: 07 Oct 2020 10:56 AM PDT  Here's how the weatherman responded.
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