HARRY TRAVELS TO SCOTLAND BY TRAIN AFTER FLYING FROM CANADA 

FOR HIS ECOTOURISM CONFERENCE 

MIXES WITH THE HOI POLLOI 

NOT QUITE 

THE LADS WITH HIM ARE SAS, SPECIAL FORCES UK MILITARY,

NOT SCOTLAND YARD, RCMP, OR GREEN BERETS 

DEADLIER REAL ROUGH TRADE 

KILL YA BEFORE YOU CAN SAY HI HARRY

 Prince Harry has touched down in the U.K.!

© Provided by People SplashNews.com

After relocating with wife Meghan Markle and 9-month-old son Archie to Canada’s Vancouver Island following the couple’s decision to step down from royal life, Queen Elizabeth‘s grandson was spotted in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Tuesday. He is taking part in a working summit in support of his environmental tourism initiative, Travalyst, in the Scottish capital on Wednesday.

Keeping with the organization’s mission, Harry chose a sustainable method of travel — train. He arrived at the Edinburgh Waverley railway station dressed casually in jeans and a baseball cap. The father, 35, also wore a green backpack and carried a suit bag.

Wednesday’s outing marks Prince Harry’s first high-profile event in the U.K. since his unprecedented decision to step back from frontline royal duties in January.

Launched in September, Travalyst aims to help both companies and consumers adapt their travel habits to benefit the environment and destination communities. The Edinburgh event will see Harry work with more than 100 members of the Scottish tourism and travel industry to iron out the practical details of just how this can be achieved

Hosni Mubarak’s death and despotic rule, briefly explained

The former dictator died Tuesday at age 91. 

Here’s a brief look back at his legacy.

By Danna Takritidanna.takriti@voxmedia.com Feb 25, 2020

A file photo dated on April 13, 2013 shows Former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak is seen during his trial in Cairo, Egypt. He died on Tuesday at the age of 91. Mohammed Hossam/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images


Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s long-time former dictator, died Tuesday at the age of 91.

To understand just what a huge role Mubarak played in Egypt, you need to go back to January 25, 2011.

On that Tuesday, thousands of demonstrators packed the streets of Cairo’s central Tahrir Square demanding Mubarak’s removal from office, as they had done every day for over two weeks.

“All of us, one hand, asking for one thing: leave, leave, leave,” the protesters sang.


But after 18 long, painful days of protest, Mubarak stepped down. The revolution had succeeded.

The protests were motivated by a variety of grievances including arbitrary government arrests, widespread poverty, extreme economic inequality, the rising prices of goods, and rampant unemployment among the middle and lower classes.

In the years before the protests began, Amnesty International reported that the government “continued to use state of emergency powers to detain peaceful critics and opponents. … Torture and other ill-treatment remained widespread in police cells, security police detention centers and prisons, and in most cases were committed with impunity.”

To put it simply: The people were tired of the ruling government’s abuse and corruption, and they demanded change.

Egyptian demonstrators protest in central Cairo to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and calling for reforms on January 25, 2011. Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

Like the rest of the revolutions in the region that came to be known as the Arab Spring, the protests against Mubarak were met with immense violence from the government’s security forces.

During the demonstrations, the Egyptian security forces killed at least 840 protestors and injured numerous others according to an Amnesty report. The fatalities included deaths by snipers at the hands of Egyptian police. All in just 18 days.


The brutality continued until Mubarak’s then-Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that the dictator had finally stepped down from office.
Who was Hosni Mubarak, and what is the “state of emergency law” that he imposed?

Mubarak’s long journey to becoming Egypt’s longtime dictator essentially began with the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Mubarak was Sadat’s vice president at the time, and found himself unexpectedly thrust into the leadership role.

After he took office, Mubarak reimposed a “state of emergency law” in the country that granted the government the power to restrict freedom of assembly, arrest anyone deemed suspicious and try them in “special” state security courts, and monitor and confiscate publications, among other things.

The law — which remained in place for the next 30 years (as did Mubarak) — allowed for corruption and political repression to sweep the nation. The 2010 death of Khaled Said, an activist whom many deemed the “martyr of the state of emergency,” provides an instructive look at how the law enabled brutality in Egypt.

According to a report by Amnesty International, police dragged the 28-year-old Said out of an Internet café in Alexandria and beat him in public until he died. This prompted protesters to take to the streets, chanting: “We are all Khaled Said.”

The removal of the emergency law is one of the many things that the protestors demanded in 2011.
The corruption and abuses didn’t end after Mubarak stepped down

In 2012, Mubarak received a life sentence for his crimes, but that was later overturned in an appeals court for lack of evidence. Later, in 2014, he was again put on trial and sentenced to three years in prison — not for all of the above atrocities, but for embezzlement. He was released in 2017.

Although the public succeeded in defeating Mubarak, they didn’t succeed in defeating government corruption and abuse. The current president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is seen as continuing Mubarak’s legacy.

On June 30, 2012, Mohammed Morsi, took office as Egypt’s fifth president after he beat his opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, in the country’s first democratic elections. His time in office didn’t last long, however. Just one year later, on July 3, 2013, he was removed in a coup led by al-Sisi, who then was the Egyptian army chief general.

Al-Sisi resigned from the military and ran in the 2014 elections. He was sworn into office on June 8, 2014.

According to a 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “since al-Sisi came to power, the authorities have continued to aggressively enforce a de facto protest ban and routinely dispersed anti-government demonstrations with force.”

“Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s regular police and National Security officers routinely torture political detainees with techniques including beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, and sometimes rape,” reads another Human Rights Watch report from 2017.

Despite this, al-Sisi ran for a second term in 2018 and won 97 percent of the vote, with “little to no opposition” in the elections.

But on September 20, 2019, demonstrators once again took to the streets of Egypt to protest a president they view as another corrupt figure.

And, unsurprisingly, the government responded with force.

Amnesty International reported that “the Egyptian security forces have carried out sweeping arrests of protesters, rounded up journalists, human rights lawyers, activists, protesters and political figures in a bid to silence critics and deter further protests from taking place.”

To this day, nine years after Mubarak stepped down, the politics of Egypt remain corrupt, and the public remains unhappy with the person at the top.

Why Twitter says Bloomberg’s fake Sanders tweets don’t break its rules

The Bloomberg campaign’s controversial tweets fictitiously quoting Bernie Sanders, briefly explained

By Shirin Ghaffary Feb 25, 2020 VOX

Facing criticism, the campaign of Mike Bloomberg deleted a series of fictitious quotes by Bernie Sanders, which the campaign said was satire. Getty Images
IT WAS A JOKE EXCUSE

On Monday, presidential hopeful and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s campaign posted — and then deleted — several controversial tweets about rival Sen. Bernie Sanders that prompted confusion and tested the rules of what political campaigns can share on social media.

The tweets, which Bloomberg’s campaign called satire, featured fictitious quotes attributed to Sanders, in which Sanders appeared to praise dictators like Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad, and Vladimir Putin, with the hashtag “#BernieonDespots.”

While the tweets are now gone, people are continuing to debate social media companies’ responsibilities when it comes to policing political speech online. Though Twitter and other platforms have implemented rules that limit the sharing of certain types of political misinformation, controversy abounds.

The Bloomberg campaign posts are another example of how much confusion exists online about what’s true and what’s not, and what’s the difference between a joke or an attack — and how finding a clear answer often depends on context and nuance that doesn’t always come through clearly in a tweet or a Facebook update.

The Bloomberg campaign just tweeted out 6 fake/mock quotes attributed to Bernie Sanders.

Then, in a separate tweet, the campaign said that "to be clear" the tweets were satire.

Has Twitter commented on whether the string of tweets violate its policies on misinformation? pic.twitter.com/g8pPL8YyYV— Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) February 24, 2020

With the Bloomberg campaign’s tweets about Sanders, for example, the account followed up on the thread by tweeting, “To be clear — all of these are satire — with the exception of the 60 Minutes clip from last night.” (Sanders recently said on the CBS program that he opposes the authoritarian regime of Cuba’s late Fidel Castro, but that it’s “unfair to simply say everything is bad” about the leader, such as a mass literacy program he implemented).

To many, it was obvious these tweets were an attempt at a joke. But others criticized the Bloomberg campaign for posting what they saw as a misleading attempt to smear Sanders using fabricated quotes.

When the series of tweets were viewed together, it was more obvious that they were satirical. But the fake Sanders quotes appeared on some people’s Twitter feeds in isolation — lacking context, seemingly serious to some, and all the more confusing. It’s just one of several recent instances where Bloomberg’s tweets, sponsored memes, and other social media activity have tested the boundaries about what is allowed on social media

Not sure who's running this twitter feed, but these aren't real quotes & it's misleading for them to be in quotation marks. You might think the "joke" is obvious but a lot of people on the internet won't know it's satire. This is how disinformation spreads https://t.co/6TCATqsD2n— Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) February 24, 2020

Even when they’re not being satirical, politicians generally have a lot of leeway in what they can say on social media without violating company rules around misinformation or hate speech. President Trump has repeatedly tweeted false statements about everything from his impeachment proceedings to immigration, and he has posted media that some see as inciting violence toward political opponents. All of this has remained on Twitter because the company considers Trump’s posts newsworthy, despite calls for the company to take them down.

And Facebook (unlike Twitter and YouTube) continues to enforce a controversial policy that allows lies in political ads, such as the Trump campaign’s ad making false claims about the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine. Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren has tested those boundaries by running a fake ad claiming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Donald Trump for president, meant to be a critique of the rule.

Twitter, like other major social media companies, doesn’t ban content just because it’s false or potentially misleading, but it does have a set of rules barring any content that’s considered “platform manipulation” or “spam.” A spokesperson for Twitter told Recode that the Bloomberg campaign’s specific tweets falsely quoting Sanders didn’t violate any of its current rules on the site.

If Bloomberg’s campaign had posted an edited image, like a fake screenshot (as opposed to text) of Bernie making fictitious statements, then it would likely be a violation of Twitter’s upcoming manipulated media policy that is rolling out on March 5.

The spokesperson also told Recode, “Admittedly, satire is a challenging one. Context of the content is important. As it pertains to the synthetic and manipulated media rule it is pretty well explained in the blog in that we evaluate the potential impact of the media i.e. is the content in question ‘shared in a deceptive manner.’”

Twitter’s policy is far from clear and will continue to require some subjective calls on what is and isn’t a joke. The rules on Facebook or YouTube are not much clearer because every major tech company is grappling in 2020 with how to balance users’ free speech with their ability to do harm.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg consistently (and perhaps smartly) continues to push the boundaries of these platforms’ rules — garnering criticism, but also getting free publicity.

Last Friday, Twitter suspended 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts run by people paid by the Bloomberg campaign who were posting identical tweets in favor of the candidate. Twitter said the accounts violated its policies on “platform manipulation and spam.” In this case, because the language of many of the posts were word-for-word copies of the same coordinated language, it was a clear violation of the platform’s rules.

The campaign also posted a doctored video of the last Democratic presidential debates that made it seem as though Bloomberg had an “epic mic drop” moment that stumped his opponents — even though, as my colleague Alex Ward explained, he didn’t.

The campaign has more broadly been paying people $2,500 a month to post positive content about Bloomberg on social media and text their friends about him. And it’s paying much more to big-name influencer Instagram accounts to post ironic memes about the candidate.

In every case, Bloomberg has received criticism, and in some cases, social media companies have hit the candidate with a slap on the wrist for these tactics that blur the lines between spam, misinformation, and clear advertising.

But in the end, the publicity may be well worth any criticism. Whether you agree with it or not, Bloomberg is smartly exploiting the gray areas social media companies have established around politics and free speech online. It’s a difficult problem that will only get more complicated for social media platforms as we get closer to Election Day.

TIME TO COME IN FROM THE COLD

Once Cold War heroes, ‘Miracle on Ice’ team struggles 

with backlash from donning ‘Keep America Great’ hats

 at Trump rally


'Greatest sports story': Trump praises ‘Miracle on Ice’ team
NO THAT WAS THE CANADIAN TEAM BEATING THE SOVIETS IN 1972

If he had to do it again, hockey legend Mike Eruzione said, he would not put on the red “Keep America Great” hat.

DUH OH

President Trump listens as Mike Eruzione, captain of the 1980 U.S men’s Olympic hockey team, speaks at a campaign rally on Feb. 21 in Las Vegas. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

He and his teammates from the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey squad hadn’t meant to make a grand political statement when they appeared onstage as President Trump’s surprise guests at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Friday. They happened to be in town to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “Miracle on Ice” — their shocking upset of the Soviet Union en route to the gold medal, perhaps the most unifying moment in American sports history — when they got a call from Trump’s campaign inviting them to a private photo line with the president.

The next thing they knew, Eruzione said, Trump was introducing them at the rally and a campaign aide was handing them the caps as they took the stage. Four of the former players chose not to wear them — but 10 others did, prompting a huge backlash on social media from Trump’s critics, who view the distinctive red campaign hats as sharply politicized symbols of hate, racism and xenophobia.

“You going to light into me, too? We’re getting killed!” Eruzione said in an interview. Now serving as the director of special outreach at his alma mater, Boston University, Eruzione said he has received angry calls and messages from the school’s alumni. One said he purchased Eruzione’s new book about the 1980 team but no longer intends to read it. His Twitter mentions are a nightmare

One message read: “In 1980, you beat the Russians, and yesterday the Russians beat you.”“If we knew we were going to piss off this many people, we probably would not have put the hats on,” said Eruzione, 65, who served as the team’s captain and scored the game-winning goal against the Soviet team. “That’s the big question here. A lot of the stuff I got was, ‘You guys said it’s not political, but when you put the hats on, you made it political.’ ”

The “Miracle” team is the latest group to become entangled in the fierce cultural fight over the meaning of the Trump campaign’s most successful piece of merchandise, one that has raised tens of millions of dollars since 2016, according to Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager. Last spring, Parscale said, the campaign surpassed 1 million sales of the $25 red “Make America Great Again” hats, featuring the 2016 campaign slogan in white lettering. That was before Parscale’s team unveiled a 2020 update with the new slogan, “Keep America Great.”

Though Trump campaign officials this week declined to provide an updated tally of how many hats have been sold, their ubiquity was evident at the Las Vegas rally, where it appeared that a majority in the crowd of thousands were wearing them.

Beyond their fundraising prowess, the “MAGA” and “KAG” hats have served as potent marketing for the president’s specific brand of nationalistic, us-versus-them politics, through which he has risen to power by provoking and accentuating the nation’s deep divisions of race, ethnicity and gender.

Over the years, the hats have become suffused with the divisive rhetoric of a president whose campaign rally refrains of “Build a wall,” “Send her back” and “Lock her up” have stirred up his conservative base and outraged his liberal and moderate critics. The MAGA slogan has been impugned by critics as an implicit desire to return to an era in American history when the white male ruling class did not feel threatened by minorities and women.

“It’s hard to believe there are still people who don’t get that it means, ‘Keep America white,’ and ‘Keep America free of Mexican immigrants,’ ” said Matthew A. Sears, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick in Canada who has written critically about the Trump hats.

“When people say it’s ‘just a hat,’ and you can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t attribute racism to it — that’s how symbols work,” Sears added. “It’s basically like a uniform: It’s a way to signal in shorthand something that stands for a whole realm of policies or positions.”Regardless of the intent of those who wear the Trump hats, they have been at the center of a number of highly charged incidents.

In November, Washington Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki enthusiastically donned a MAGA hat during the team’s White House celebration with Trump after winning the World Series, prompting the president to physically embrace him. The scene provoked an outcry on social media from fans pledging to no longer support him, but Suzuki professed he was “just trying to have some fun” and not being political.

Two weeks ago, Trump tweeted a short clip from HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” in which comedian Larry David de-escalates a road rage confrontation with a tough-looking biker by donning a red MAGA hat. “Tough guys for Trump!” the president tweeted, though his critics quickly noted that he appeared to miss the punchline. The episode features a recurring gag in which David employs the pro-Trump accessory as a “great people repellent” in liberal Los Angeles.

Trump’s supporters have accused his critics of overreacting to the hats and, in doing so, demonstrating their own political intolerance. Some Trump supporters have been physically assaulted for wearing MAGA hats, and some restaurant owners have declined to serve anyone wearing them.

In an email, Tim Murtagh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said: “The 1980 Olympic hockey team reminds us of a time when as a nation we came together to defeat communism. It is a shame that today’s liberals are so intolerant of other political viewpoints that they threaten to cancel such great sports heroes from our history.”

But critics said the hats, which have been worn by far-right groups and white supremacists, have made racial and ethnic minorities feel intimidated.

Alexandre Bissonnette, a Canadian man who reportedly spent hours scouring Trump’s Twitter feed, was sentenced last year to 40 years in prison for killing six Muslims in a Quebec City mosque in 2017; a photograph of him wearing a MAGA hat was found on his computer.

Last summer, Jeffrey Omari, a visiting assistant professor at Gonzaga University School of Law, wrote an essay titled, “Seeing Red: A professor coexists with ‘MAGA’ in the classroom,” in which he explained his reaction to a student wearing a Trump hat.

“I was unsure whether the student was directing a hateful message toward me or if he merely lacked decorum and was oblivious to how his hat might be interpreted by his black law professor. I presumed it was the former,” wrote Omari, who is African American. “As the student sat there directly in front of me, his shiny red MAGA hat was like a siren spewing derogatory racial obscenities at me.”

Omari said that after his piece was published in the ABA Journal, a legal trade magazine, he received so many threatening calls and emails that he stopped answering his phone and engaged campus police.

“I never anticipated the vast amounts of hate mail and threats we received,” he said.

Eruzione also expressed surprise at the outrage provoked by his appearance with Trump. A member of the president’s golf club in Jupiter, Fla., Eruzione, who said he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016, once appeared on Trump’s former reality show “Celebrity Apprentice.”

After the team took photos with him backstage in Las Vegas, Trump invited them to join him onstage. “What are you going to say?” Eruzione said. “To us it was, ‘Sure.’ ”

When he was handed the red hat, he said, “I just put it on. I wasn’t thinking. Maybe this shows I’m naive, shows I’m stupid. I don’t know. I don’t follow politics. I know he’s had some issues and said a lot of things people don’t like.”

Eruzione ruefully compared the backlash against the team with the joy in 1980 when they were hailed as heroes amid Cold War tensions. During the interview, he called up his Twitter account and began reading some of the angry tweets over the phone: “Did they have to wear those hats? … A shame on all of you for wearing those divisive, racist hats. … 40 years ago, you brought joy, but tonight it’s deep sadness.”

“I told my wife, ‘People think we are a disgrace,’ ” he said.

SAN FRANCISCO 
Feds order South Bay reservoir drained amid fears of catastrophic dam failure


By Bob Egelko and Michael Cabanatuan 

SF CHRONICLE

Video by ABC 7 San Francisco


Federal water officials have ordered Silicon Valley’s chief water supplier to start draining its largest reservoir by Oct. 1 because a major earthquake could collapse the dam and send floodwaters into communities from Monterey Bay to the southern shore of San Francisco Bay.

But Valley Water, the agency that manages the Anderson Dam and Reservoir, says it has already lowered the reservoir’s water below the level initially sought by federal officials — and that the total drainage the federal government now demands would actually make the dam more vulnerable to earthquake damage, while also reducing water supplies and causing environmental harm.

The reservoir, in a gorge 3 miles east of U.S. 101 between Morgan Hill and San Jose, is one of 10 storing water for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, now known as Valley Water. Built in 1950, it can hold 89,073 acre-feet of water, more than half of the 170,000 acre-feet stored in all of the district’s reservoirs.

Valley Water officials have known since 2008 that a 6.6 magnitude earthquake on the Calaveras Fault at the 240-foot earthen dam could cause it to collapse. Over the years, the agency has lowered water levels and reported its progress to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The reservoir, at current levels, “provides a buttressing effect” for the dam’s intake structure, Christopher Hakes, a Valley Water dam safety official, said in a Dec. 31 letter to FERC. “Lowering reservoir levels beyond the current level would decrease the structural reliability of the intake structure” and its protection against earthquakes.

FERC’s dam safety director, David Capka, was unconvinced. He ordered Hakes in a letter Thursday to drain the reservoir “as quickly as you can,” starting the process by Oct. 1 and completing it before the winter of 2021-22. In the meantime, Capka said, Valley Water can look for emergency water supplies and work with federal, state and local agencies to “minimize environmental impacts.”

“It is unacceptable to maintain the reservoir at an elevation higher than necessary when it can be reduced, thereby decreasing the risk to public safety and the large population downstream of Anderson Dam,” Capka wrote. “Your actions to date do not demonstrate an appropriate sense of urgency.” 

© Tom Stienstra, Tom Stienstra / The Chronicle

Coyote Creek downstream of the outlet from Anderson Dam near Morgan Hill west of U.S. 101.

In response, Valley Water’s chief executive, Norma Camacho, said in a statement Monday that “the demand to empty Anderson Reservoir could result in unsafe consequences.”

But the local district lacks authority to defy federal regulators. Valley Water spokesman Matt Keller said the district’s Board of Directors would address the issue shortly.

The district is due to start work in 2022 on a five-year earthquake retrofit for the dam. Camacho said legislation has been introduced in Sacramento to speed up the regulatory process for the retrofit.

The district reduced the storage level of the reservoir to 68% of capacity in 2008, then to 58%. It says it has now lowered the level to 45 feet above drainage, 10 feet below the level demanded by Capka in December.

Still, a spillover from the dam during heavy rains three years ago sent water pouring down Coyote Creek and into San Jose, inundating neighborhoods in one of the region’s worst floods in decades.

The district has alternate sources of water, including the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, which combined furnish more than half its supply, along with groundwater.

But Camacho, the chief executive, said draining the reservoir would not only be unsafe but also environmentally destructive.

“The inability to keep a consistent flow in Coyote Creek downstream of the dam year-round would significantly impact sensitive native fish, amphibians, reptiles, wetlands, and riparian habitats,” she said. “Water quality could also be significantly impacted downstream of the dam.”

The dispute coincided with, but was apparently unrelated to, the latest round of water wars between the Trump administration and California.

On Thursday, the state sued the federal government over new rules that supply more water to Central Valley farmers by increasing pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The suit said the diversion violates environmental laws and would harm salmon and other endangered fish in the delta estuary.

SOUTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY DEBATE LOSERS

WASHINGTON POST PICKS THE BIGGEST LOSERS

 MSNBC MODERATORS 

CANNOT RUN A DEBATE (PROVEN YET AGAIN, AD NAUSEUM)

The moderators: There were two big problems here. One was that this was a complete free-for-all for much of the debate, with candidates talking over one another and no one enforcing the rules. Playing loose can work when it means the candidates actually debate, but many times Tuesday night, they were just allowed to talk past the moderators and game the system. The Post’s Josh Dawsey said it well:

And second — and speaking of gaming the system — was that the booing and cheering were out of control. There is a reason many debates prohibit outward shows of support or dissent: Because it encourages people to stock the room and play to the cameras. We don’t yet know if that’s what happened Tuesday, but Bloomberg’s supporters were especially vocal, and Sanders found himself booed a surprising amount, given he’s competing for a South Carolina win.

Meet the moderators of the South Carolina Democratic debate

Seven candidates take the stage ahead of the state’s primary this week

By Li Zhouli@vox.com Feb 25, 2020

Gayle King attends as ViacomCBS Inc. rings the opening

 bell at the Nasdaq on December 5, 2019, in New York City. 

John Lamparski/Getty Images


Journalists from CBS News will moderate the 10th Democratic debate in Charleston, South Carolina on Tuesday, February 25. The debate, which the network is co-hosting with the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, will air just days before Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

The network’s moderators will be CBS Evening News’s Norah O’Donnell, CBS This Morning’s Gayle King, Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, CBS’s chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett, and 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker.

The effects of the debate could be significant: A sizable chunk of voters made their decisions in the last few days before the New Hampshire primary and cited the debate before the race as an important factor. The same dynamic could play out in South Carolina, where there is absentee voting but no formal early voting.

The criteria to qualify for this debate was very similar to the requirements for the Nevada debate: Candidates needed to hit a 10 percent polling threshold in at least four Democratic National Committee-sanctioned polls, or 12 percent in two South Carolina polls released between February 4 and February 24. They could also qualify for the debate by winning one delegate to the Democratic National Convention from the Iowa, New Hampshire, or Nevada races.

Seven candidates have qualified: Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar; former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg; former Vice President Joe Biden; and billionaire activist Tom Steyer.

The moderators, who will play a major role in shaping the night’s conversation, all cover politics in different capacities at CBS:
Norah O’Donnell is an anchor of the daily CBS Evening News program and the network’s election specials.
Gayle King is a host of the daily CBS This Morning program. She’s also editor-at-large of O, The Oprah Magazine and longtime best friends with Oprah.
Margaret Brennan is the network’s senior foreign affairs correspondent and the moderator of the weekly Face the Nation program.
Major Garrett is the chief Washington correspondent for CBS News.
Bill Whitaker is a correspondent for the weekly 60 Minutes program.
The Democratic National Committee is making a concerted effort to increase the diversity of debate moderators

The DNC has made a commitment to increase the diversity of debate moderators in the 2020 cycle and has mandated that at least one person of color and one woman serve as a moderator in every debate.

Given how historically white and male the debate space has been, greater diversity among moderators has been a priority for advocacy groups including NARAL, Emily’s List, and Color of Change.

In an open letter last spring, the groups urged media outlets and other organizations to ensure that at least 50 percent of the moderators running the debates were women and at least 50 percent were people of color. UltraViolet, an organization dedicated to gender equity, spearheaded the letter, which also called out sexism in political media coverage writ large.

Though the roster of moderators hasn’t always hit activists’ bar thus far, the DNC has lived up to its pledge. It began the debates in Miami last June with a diverse group of moderators. The 10th debate will continue that trend: Of the five moderators, three are women and two are people of color.

Hours after eulogizing Gigi and Kobe Bryant, Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu makes NCAA history

Ionescu entered the NCAA record books yet again on Monday against No,. 4 Stanford with her ninth rebound of the night, the 1,000th of her career.

That board made her the first player in college basketball history — man or woman — to record 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists in her career.


HISTORY!! 🐐👑

Sabrina Ionescu is the first NCAA player EVER with 2,000 points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds!!#GoDucks | @sabrina_i20 pic.twitter.com/TrJPrWLUW0— Oregon Women’s Basketball (@OregonWBB) February 25, 2020

It’s hardly the first time Ionescu has reached a milestone in her career, but that collection of her numbers — as well her NCAA record 26 triple-doubles — perfectly captures the well-roundedness of her game that has made her one of the biggest stars in women’s basketball as an amateur.

Ionescu’s success is also a reflection of her relationship with Bryant and his daughter Gianna. The elder Bryant once took Gianna and friends to one of Ionescu’s games at Oregon, and she had since struck up a personal relationship with the pair that included training with them and helping coach Bryant’s team.

She posted a lengthy tribute to the pair after their deaths last month, pledging to personally live out their legacy.

That relationship was further shown hours before the game at the Staples Center memorial service, where Ionescu spoke about Bryant’s impact on women’s basketball.


"I wanted to be a part of the generation that changed basketball for Gigi and her teammates. Where being born female didn't mean being born behind."

Sabrina Ionescu pic.twitter.com/HaaJEhHFbp— AJ McCord (@AJ_McCord) February 24, 2020

“I wanted to be a part of the generation that changed basketball for Gigi and her teammates,” Ionescu said. “Where being born female didn’t mean being born behind, where greatness wasn’t divided by gender.”

“‘You have too much to give to stay silent.’ That’s what he said. That’s what he believed. That’s what he lived. Through Gigi, through me, through his investment in women’s basketball. That was his next great act, a girl dad.

Ionescu is widely expected to be selected first overall in the upcoming WNBA draft, and seems well on track to becoming the kind of global star that can expand the reach of women’s basketball. Just like Kobe would have wanted.

Video player from: NBC Sports (Privacy Policy)Oregon basketball star Sabrina Ionescu spent her Monday morning paying tribute to Kobe Bryant as one of many speakers at the Los Angeles Lakers legend’s memorial service. She spent her Monday night doing the same thing on the court.

Military Will Study Brain Injuries From Iran Attack for Years: Pentagon

Military scientists will be studying injuries sustained in Iran's ballistic missile attack on American troops for years to come, a top Pentagon official has said.

© AYMAN HENNA/AFP via Getty Images/Getty A picture taken on January 13, 2020 shows damage at the Ain Al Asad military airbase housing U.S. and other foreign troops in the western Iraqi province of Anbar.

Joint Staff Surgeon Air Force Brigadier General Paul Friedrichs told reporters at a Monday briefing it was "extraordinary" that no U.S. troops were seriously injured in the January 8 attack on two Iraqi military bases hosting American soldiers.

U.S. forces initially reported no casualties, but it later emerged that at least 110 soldiers sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) from the 11 impacts at the Ain al Asad base in Iraq's Anbar province. Those affected exhibited a range of symptoms, Friedrichs explained Monday, but none were classified as serious. Most have now returned to active duty.

Though normal examinations and MRI scans reveal much about TBI, Friedrichs said it is difficult to establish the extent of the injuries without taking samples from affected brains to study under microscopes, something done post-mortem.

Friedrichs—a neurologic surgeon by training—said TBI can be in the form of bruising on or bleeding in the brain—which can be seen on MRIs—or microscopic damage to nerves, which can only be identified in tissue samples with microscopes.

"The most definitive diagnosis is done after someone has died," he said. "But we'd prefer not to get to that point."

"We're a learning organization," Friedrich continued. "We're going to tear this data apart, in all likelihood, for years, comparing it with other datasets [from other conflicts and incidents]." He said the Pentagon intends to "learn as much from this as we can" through a "continuous learning process" that will last "a long time."

The Iranian attack—named Operation Martyr Soleimani after the major general assassinated by the U.S. days before—involved more than a dozen Fateh-110 missiles, 11 of which landed at the Asad base.

The missiles can carry a warhead of some 1,000 pounds—far larger than any U.S. forces have faced in recent low-intensity guerrilla wars in the region.

"No one lost a leg. No one lost an eye. No one lost a limb, which, you know, was remarkable, given the strength of these munitions," Friedrichs explained.

U.S. forces were pre-warned of the attack and most were able to take shelter in bunkers, though this did not entirely protect them from the concussive shock waves.

TBI symptoms include headaches, dizziness, memory problems, balance problems, nausea, vomiting, difficulty concentrating, irritability, visual disturbance and ringing in the ears.

Freidrichs said that six service members are still going through diagnosis, but that "every single person that we've identified is getting the treatment that they need."

Friedrichs noted that the bunkers were "very effective at protecting people from acute traumatic injuries.

"And that's a good news story that these service members who were exposed to a very significant attack did not have shrapnel or other life, limb or eyesight-type injuries there."

The Pentagon is already field testing pressure sensors that in future could give a clearer picture of who was exposed to dangerous blasts, Friedrichs said. "If your tracker shows that you were exposed to a blast event, then we're going ahead and evaluating those folks to see whether they have traumatic brain injury."

Corporate monopolies are hiding in your grocery aisle

Psst: The same company is selling you Q-Tips, mayonnaise, and Ben & Jerry’s.

By Emily Stewartemily.stewart@vox.com Feb 25, 2020

The typical American grocery aisle has an abundance of choice, but in reality, a handful of corporations control the majority of household brands. Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images


At your local pharmacy, the options can feel overwhelming, even in the deodorant aisle. Dove, Axe, or Degree? Or maybe Secret, Gillette, or Old Spice? Or maybe Speed Stick?

While the brands and labels are different, you actually don’t have that many choices at all. Three companies basically own the aisle — Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Colgate-Palmolive. They’re three of the biggest consumer goods conglomerates in the world.

That’s the thing about the choices you think you have in spending your money: A lot of the time, they’re just not real.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from the American Economic Liberties Project. The organization launched in February and is headed by Sarah Miller, former deputy director of the anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute and an antitrust expert. Its mission is to combat monopolistic behavior and corporate power and their effects on democracy and the economy. It’s part of a growing push for antitrust enforcement on the left.

The Economic Liberties Project report delves into the “illusion of choice” — basically, the fact that across industries, a handful of corporations control the majority of products, brands, and services. It ranges from cereals, beers, and snacks to car rental services, hotels, and even eyeglasses.


“We assume that we have all of these choices and that all of these products are competing for our dollars on price and quality, and it’s really not the case,” Miller said in an interview. “It’s one other tactic in a set of tactics around how monopolistic conglomerates leverage market power.”  

Ben and Jerry do not own Ben & Jerry’s

You might vaguely know of Unilever, but you definitely know its products: Vaseline, Q-tips, Pond’s, Caress, and St. Ives. And that’s just what’s in the pharmacy. Unilever also owns Lipton and Tazo Tea, Seventh Generation and Cif, and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Perhaps most surprising about Unilever’s catalog is its ice creams, including Breyers, Popsicle, Klondike, Talenti, and Ben & Jerry’s. The latter was acquired by Unilever in 2000.

There’s nothing particularly nefarious about companies such as Unilever owning a ton of brands, but it’s something that consumers just don’t realize. And in an age when people are trying to be more conscious of their purchasing choices, like seeking natural or local brands, it’s, well, jarring.

You think the money you spend on a pint of Cherry Garcia is going to Bernie Sanders-loving Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield up in Vermont. It’s actually going to London-based Unilever, which clocked over $50 billion in revenue last year across more than 100 brands. (Ben & Jerry’s is still headquartered in Burlington, though, and says it’s been able to largely stick to its socially conscious mission.)
A lot of the choice you see when you travel isn’t real

Three companies — Enterprise, Hertz, and Avis — control about half of the car rental industry, even if the names of the stands at the airport are different. Avis, for example, owns Zipcar, Enterprise owns Alamo, and Hertz owns Thrifty and Dollar.

And next time you’re planning a trip and trying to find the best prices on your flight or hotel, you might want to note that a lot of the websites you’re surfing aren’t actually competing with one another. Booking Holdings owns Booking.com, Kayak, and Priceline, among others.
A look at Big Eyewear

Among the most eye-popping (pun intended) multi-brand monopolies is in eyeglasses. $50 billion European conglomerate EssilorLuxottica essentially owns the eyewear industry — it manufactures brands such as RayBan, Oakley, and Ralph Lauren. It also owns LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, and Vision Direct.

In 2018, journalist Sam Knight for the Guardian did a deep dive into EssilorLuxottica’s eye monopoly, which it achieved in 2017 when Essilor, a French company, bought Luxottica, an Italian company, for $24 billion:

If Luxottica has spent the last quarter of a century buying up the most conspicuous elements of the optical business (the frames, the brands and the high-street chains) then Essilor has busied itself in the invisible parts, acquiring lens manufacturers, instrument makers, prescription labs (where glasses are put together) and the science of sight itself.

The company holds more than 8,000 patents and funds university ophthalmology chairs around the world. In deals that rarely make the business pages, Essilor buys up Belgian optical laboratories, Chinese resin manufacturers, Israeli instrument makers and British e-commerce websites.
Why this matters

Corporate consolidation and monopolies aren’t the most headline-grabbing issues, but they’re really present in our everyday lives. New York University economist Thomas Philippon, author of The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, estimates that corporate consolidation is costing American households an additional $5,000 a year.

The idea is that the more competitors there are in a space, the more pressure there is to keep prices down and the quality of a product or service high. But because of how antitrust laws have been enforced (or, rather, not) in recent decades, competition has declined, and fewer players have been allowed to dominate. Even though, as the illusion of choice shows, people don’t even realize it.

But as I recently explained, monopolies and corporate concentration can impact much more than your grocery store receipt:

Corporate concentration means companies have to compete less for workers, and therefore could push wages down. Monopolies and oligopolies can also harm suppliers — if Amazon gets big and powerful enough, it could control what shippers such as FedEx and UPS can charge it.

Consumers also lose the ability to vote with their wallets and eyeballs — basically, to say, I don’t like what a company is producing, what it’s charging, or how it’s behaving and go somewhere else.

Corporate power is a hard problem to solve. It’s also often invisible. So the next time you go shopping, maybe check the label.

Elizabeth Warren takes aim at Amazon’s taxes again during speech at Seattle rally

BY JAKE GOLDSTEIN-STREET on February 23, 2020 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at a rally in Seattle on Feb. 22. (Photo courtesy of Jake Goldstein-Street)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren called out Amazon in its own backyard at a rally in Seattle on Saturday evening.

The Democratic presidential candidate again criticized the Seattle-based tech giant for skirting federal taxes at an event that her campaign said drew more than 7,000 people.

“You know that last year, Amazon, Eli Lilly, and Halliburton reported billions of dollars in profits and paid zero in taxes,” she said, responding to an attendee during a Q&A session at end of her rally. She added that “rich people and giant corporations ‘ought to be paying their taxes, too.”

It was the only Amazon-related mention of the night at the Seattle Center Armory, just blocks from Amazon’s campus in South Lake Union. Warren, who previously spoke in Seattle this past August, also did not discuss her headline-grabbing proposal to break up and more closely regulate Amazon and other big tech companies.

The tax claim has become a rallying cry of Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, among others on the left. Amazon has been mentioned far more than any other tech company during the 2020 Democratic presidential debates, with candidates frequently citing the company’s tax bill.  

(GeekWire Photo)

Elected officials, progressive activists, and academics frequently take aim at Amazon for reportedly paying nothing in federal income taxes. Researchers and journalists came to that conclusion by calculating the tax deferrals and credits Amazon is eligible for. CNBC reported Amazon paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2018 and received a $129 million tax rebate from the federal government, for example.

Amazon last month disclosed new details about its U.S. taxes for 2019, saying its federal income tax expense for the year was more than $1 billion, in addition to more than $2 billion in other types of federal taxes. It was the first time Amazon has published this level of detail about its federal tax obligations, after enduring years of criticism for not paying its fair share.
Related: Bernie Sanders takes on the ‘billionaire class’ at rally near Seattle, home to Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates

However, the federal income tax is still a small fraction of the company’s profits, representing about 6 percent of the $14.5 billion in operating income that Amazon reported in its year-end financial report.

Warren’s event in Seattle comes after a “dominant” performance at a Democratic debate in Las Vegas last week when she heavily criticized former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Warren attacked Bloomberg again on Saturday, saying that Bloomberg is “hiding his taxes” and would be like “substituting one arrogant billionaire for another.” She also criticized President Donald Trump for putting the interests of the rich over the poor.

“What Donald Trump hopes is that if we’re spending our time fighting each other, no one will notice that he and his corrupt family and his corrupt buddies are stealing the wealth and dignity of this country,” she said.

Warren’s call for a wealth tax drew some of the loudest applause of the night. The plan would implement a 2% annual tax on fortunes worth more than $50 million, and 3% on fortunes worth more than $1 billion.

“Democrats like a 2% wealth tax and a majority of Republicans like a 2% wealth tax,” she said.

Warren congratulated Sanders for winning the Nevada caucuses. Sanders spoke in the Seattle area last week, criticizing the “billionaire class” in the home of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — the two richest people in the world.

Other candidates have been visiting Washington. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vice President Joe Biden attended recent private fundraisers and Sen. Amy Klobuchar came to the University District in September for a public event at a coffee shop.

Washington is set to play more of a role in the primary with its contest moved up to March 10 and ballots being sent out last week, but the race could look wildly different come early next month with South Carolina voting next week and the 14 Super Tuesday states just days later.