Three Barclays bankers cleared of fraud over £4bn financial crisis deal with Qatar

Serious Fraud Office alleged £322m in fees were hidden from the market and other investors through bogus agreements

Reuters

Three former Barclays bosses have been cleared of fraud over a £4bn investment deal with Qatar at the height of the banking crisis.

Scotsman Roger Jenkins, 64, was said to be Barclays’ “gatekeeper” to the wealthy Middle Eastern state, and in 2008 helped the bank with two large capital raisings to avoid a government bailout.

In June, Barclays secured £4.4bn, with £1.9bn invested by Qatar, followed by a second tranche in the autumn of £6.8bn, of which £2bn was from Qatar.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) alleged the lucrative terms given to Qatar, including an extra £322m in fees, were hidden from the market and other investors through bogus advisory service agreements (ASAs).

But multi-millionaire Jenkins, who was linked to a string of glamorous women including supermodel Elle MacPherson, was on Friday acquitted of fraud, alongside former colleagues Thomas Kalaris, 64, and Richard Boath, 61 at the Old Bailey.

The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for around five and a half hours following a five-month trial.

At the time of the alleged fraud, each of the defendants held very senior positions at Barclays, jurors heard.

Jenkins was Barclays Capital (“BarCap”) executive chair of investment banking and investment management in the Middle East and North Africa; Kalaris was Barclays’ wealth management CEO and Boath was Barclays Capital head of financial institutions group for Europe, Middle East and Africa.


Prosecutor Ed Brown QC told jurors: “They acted dishonestly in order to preserve the future of the bank and to preserve their own positions.”

The defendants denied wrongdoing, with Bill Boyce QC, for Boath, describing the allegation as “preposterous”.

Mr Boyce told jurors: “The SFO have to prove that Roger Jenkins and Sheikh Hamad agreed a sham contract ... this despite the fact that it was obvious to both sides that a long-term strategic relationship was in both their interests.”

Jenkins, of Malibu, California; Kalaris, of Thurloe Square, west London; and Boath, of Henley-on-Thames, were acquitted of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and fraud by false representation between 1 May 2008 and 31 August 2008.

Jenkins was also acquitted of two similar offences dated between September 2008 and November 2008.

Jurors were told that a fourth man, Christopher Lucas, had been found unfit to face trial due to illness.

The three bankers had originally been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud alongside former Barclays chief executive John Varley.

However in April last year a judge dismissed the charges against Mr Varley, saying the SFO did not have enough evidence against the former boss to proceed.

The SFO appealed against the decision, but it was upheld by the Court of Appeal.

The SFO is yet to disclose the cost of the investigation, which began in August 2012.

It is understood that a core team of eight people worked on the case at any one time, consisting of investigators and lawyers.

Barclays is now facing a civil suit from a private equity firm for allegedly deceiving it over emergency fundraisings in 2008 that were designed to avoid a UK government bailout.

Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners is seeking damages of up to £1.6bn from the bank.

The case is expected to be heard later this year after it was postponed several times to allow the criminal trial to proceed.

A spokesperson for PCP said: “The criminal case brought by the SFO against Jenkins, Kalaris and Boath involved different issues, tried before different tribunals, with different parties and different standards of proof. PCP’s claim is not brought against individuals at the bank. It is brought against the bank itself for civil liability. PCP’s claim is not impacted by the outcome of the criminal trial.”

The case is expected to start in June.

'Big Dog' and the 'omnipotent sheikh' - how Qatar saved Barclays

Kirstin Ridley, Lawrence White

LONDON (Reuters) - When Roger Jenkins was asked to help Barclays avoid a state bailout at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, he was expecting a bonus not a prosecution for his efforts.

More than a decade later, Jenkins and former Barclays colleagues Richard Boath and Tom Kalaris, were unanimously acquitted by a jury on Friday in a case that revealed how the British banking giant secured a 4 billion pound ($5.2 billion) investment from Qatar.

With its survival at risk, Barclays was relying on Jenkins’ persuasiveness and personal relationship with Qatar’s then prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani.

But the tiny emirate, which has punched above its weight for years after the discovery of oil and gas, was playing hardball. Barclays’ response was to pursue a deal which Jenkins conceded during his trial was optically “close to the line”.

The four month trial at London’s Old Bailey criminal court shone a light on the punishing globe-trotting schedules, meetings in luxury hotels and often surreal negotiations which pulled Barclays back from the brink.

Jenkins, known as “Big Dog” to colleagues, sat in the witness box for weeks, shedding some light on how one of the world’s biggest banks pulled out the stops to court a man referred to during proceedings as “the omnipotent sheikh”.

TOUGH NEGOTIATOR

The Gulf state had a reputation as a tough negotiator and in June 2008, Qatar Holding, part of the $300 billion Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) sovereign wealth fund, demanded more than twice the fees Barclays had promised other investors.

The Qatari investment was key. It helped pave the way for other financial backers, such as Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi, Singapore’s state investor Temasek and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, allowing Barclays to raise around 11 billion pounds that year across two capital raisings.

But the deals struck by the bank — an extra 322 million pounds paid to Qatar under two Advisory Services Agreements (ASAs) — landed the former bankers in court with fraud charges.

Prosecutors had alleged the side deals were shams, designed only to pay Qatar extra fees.

Jenkins, Boath and Kalaris maintained they were intended as genuine, commercial agreements and had been approved by directors and lawyers as mechanisms to secure lucrative advisory and banking business generated by Qatar.

Sheikh Hamad and Qatar, still a leading investor in Barclays and Britain after a 35-billion-pound acquisition spree of trophy assets, were not accused of wrongdoing.

A statement released on behalf of Sheikh Hamad said the ASAs proposed by Barclays had been genuine.

“Out of respect for the due processes of English law, Sheikh Hamad and the other Qatari parties did not seek to intervene during the course of the trial to correct those errors of fact and misleading interpretations that appeared to be given currency in some quarters,” Friday’s statement said.

BRIDGING THE GULF

In the Gulf, personal relationships and trust are paramount and banks pay millions to those who can gain and sustain it.

Jenkins had forged a relationship with billionaire Sheikh Hamad, who caused a stir in early 2008 when he told world leaders in Davos that he wanted to pump $15 billion into banks.

The pair were first introduced in 2007 through a friend of Jenkins’ former wife Diana while on holiday on the Italian island of Sardinia, he told the court.

Bonding over dinner and discussions about supermarket investments on the sheikh’s yacht, Jenkins and his wife were later invited to Sheikh Hamad’s French house in Cannes.

As the relationship blossomed, Jenkins flew to Doha and helped arrange meetings with Barclays directors and the sheikh and his officials at luxury London hotels as well as at Jenkins’ mansion in London’s Mayfair district, in Doha and New York.

Without such introductions, things were bleak.

Bob Diamond, the charismatic American executive who would become Barclays chief executive in 2010, was left sitting in a lobby in Abu Dhabi “for days on end” when he first tried to forge a relationship with UAE sheikhs, the court was told.

Diamond was not accused of any wrongdoing. His spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

GAME OF BLUFF

With Barclays under pressure in roiling markets, Jenkins knew he had a poor negotiating hand in June 2008.

In a culture in which meetings were unscheduled, could be at any time within a two-day period and might be over in 15 minutes, he was asked to wait overnight for a meeting with Sheikh Hamad. But he did not want to betray weakness.

His tactic, he told the jury, was to fly to Dubai, fabricating a meeting there to give the impression he was in high demand in the Middle East, before returning to Doha.

“I did not want to sit in Doha and wait for His Excellency for 48 hours ... That would be a sign of weakness in the negotiation,” he said during cross-examination.

Four months later, Barclays extended the ASA with Qatar for another 280 million pounds as the Gulf state again invested in the British bank alongside Abu Dhabi investors.

Factbox: Barclays bosses cleared of credit crisis-era fraud

LONDON (Reuters) - Three former Barclays executives were cleared of credit-crisis era fraud charges by a jury on Friday after a landmark London trial over undisclosed payments to Qatar in 2008.

Below are some details about the three defendants.

ROGER JENKINS
Once dubbed Britain’s best-paid banker, Jenkins held the golden key to the Qatari deal — a personal relationship with former prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani.

Jenkins owned 60 million pounds of Barclays stock and was recommended for a 25 million pound bonus for his work on the 2008 fundraisings.

The Scottish-born former sprinter, who earned millions at Barclays devising complex tax structures, helped secure a second deal with Qatar in October 2008 despite suffering a heart attack two months earlier.

On June 26, 2008, Barclays’ then CEO John Varley emailed Jenkins saying: “We could not have done what we have done without the pivotal role you played. Thank you for the extraordinary skill and tenacity.”

By the time he left Barclays in 2009 to become an independent consultant, he had amassed a 120 million pound fortune, according to the 2009 Sunday Times Rich list.

'It looks unreal': Homes encased in ice as extreme weather transforms neighbourhood into real-life Frozen

Gale-force winds across Lake Erie behind remarkable spectacle in town of Hamburg



One fairytale home in Hamburg, which has been layered in a thick coating of ice after two days of storms ( AP )

A ferocious storm left a neighbourhood in a lakeside town in New York state entirely encased in ice.

The population of Hamburg, which lies on the edge of Lake Erie on the border between America and Canada, woke up over the weekend to discover their homes had been covered by a thick layer of ice.

Driven gale force winds from the nearby lake, huge waves of spray were forced up on to the houses next to the water.

And because the temperature was below zero, the water froze tight to the houses, creating an extraordinary visual effect.

Pictures from Hamburg show the town now resembling a scene from Disney movie Frozen, with all the detail around doors, windows and roofs perfectly reproduced in sheets of ice.

"It looks fake, it looks unreal," resident Ed Mis told CNN.  "It's dark on the inside of my house. It can be a little eerie, a little frightening."

As well as about half a metre of ice plastered to his house, Mr Mis said his backyard was even worse, covered more than three metres thick of frozen water.

Although the ice coverings are remarkable to look at, some inhabitants of the winter wonderland are concerned about possible damage to their homes.

(Reuters)
"We're worried about the integrity, of structure failure when it starts to melt, because of the weight on the roof," Mr Mis said.

"It's a beautiful sight, but I don't want to live through it again.

SPACEX STARSHIP EXPLODES DURING TEST IN DRAMATIC FAILURE


YouTube/Nasa Spaceflight

Footage shows intense explosion – and its aftermath

Andrew Griffin

SpaceX's huge Starship spacecraft has exploded during a test.

The explosion was documented in dramatic footage taken from the ground at SpaceX's development facility Boca Chica, Texas, where the test took place.

The cryogenic pressure test that led to the explosion was part of the development of the Starship, which Elon Musk's SpaceX hopes will one day carry humans to Mars.

Video taken from the site by NasaSpaceFlight appears to show the prototype known as "SN1" exploding and falling to the ground.

It follows a similar failure of another prototype known as "Mk1", late last year.


Further footage taken the following day showed the wreckage of the crashed spacecraft. It also showed another of the company's prototypes, which is still being worked on.



SpaceX did not respond to a request to comment from The Independent.



But Elon Musk tweeted out the footage with the words "So … how was your night?", alongside a series of jokes about being able to put the prototype back together with tape.

The shooting of John Lennon: Will Mark David Chapman ever be released?


In December it will be 40 years since the murder of The Beatles’ founder and before then a parole board will consider for the 11th time whether his killer should walk free. James McMahon looks back at the events of that fateful day in 1980, and at the man who ended the life of a legend

United by a murder: Fans in mourning in 1980, the late John Lennon and his killer Mark David Chapman ( Rex )


Two summers ago, in August, Mark David Chapman took off his prison uniform, put on his smartest clothes and – under the watchful eyes of the Wende Correctional Facility guards – made his way to the New York Parole Board building complex. This was the 10th time Prisoner 81A2860 had made such a journey, all of which had taken place within the past 20 years, having made his first appeal two decades after his initial conviction for the murder of John Lennon. Ten journeys there. Ten journeys back. And 10 rejections, despite this time Chapman seeming more contrite than he’d ever been in his many appearances in the now familiar setting. “Thirty years ago, I couldn’t say I felt shame and I know what shame is now,” he told the parole board. “It’s where you cover your face, you don’t want to, you know, ask for anything...”

The man who violently ended the life of Lennon – and any hope that The Beatles may reunite 11 years after their messy split in 1969 – is now 64. He is losing his hair and resembles little the doughy, socially inept young man who announced himself to the world 40 years ago. Five shots. Four bullet-holes in the back of Lennon, who was pronounced dead on arrival at Roosevelt Hospital, New York, a little after 11pm on the evening of 8 December 1980.

He told us to imagine no possessions and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music

Chapman was arrested metres from where the murder took place, outside the Manhattan Dakota apartment that Lennon and wife Yoko Ono shared with their five-year-old son Sean. There was the killer, leaning silently against the wall of the Dakota, reading the JD Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye. The book, he would tell police upon their arrival, doubled as his “manifesto”. “I acted alone,” he said as handcuffs were applied.

Lennon was 40 at the time of his death. He had only just returned from a self-imposed five-year musical absence in which he had “baked bread” and “looked after the baby”. Then that October he released his first new music in years, with the release of the single “(Just Like) Starting Over”. His album with Ono, Double Fantasy, followed the next month, featuring songs he had written or finessed during a sailing trip in the summer of 1980. The trip was to be ill-fated; journeying from Newport, Rhode Island to Bermuda, Lennon’s yacht entered a prolonged storm. With most of the crew suffering from seasickness, the musician was forced to take control of the wheel alone. What followed was much meditation on the fragility of life. “I was so centred after the experience at sea,” he said, “that I was tuned into the cosmos – and all these songs came…”

Lennon and Chapman shared little in common, but both were searching for something. Just a few years prior, Chapman had made his own journey. He travelled to Tokyo. To Seoul. Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Delhi and Beirut, then London, Paris and Dublin. Through his adventuring, Chapman met his wife, a Japanese American woman several years his senior called Gloria Abe. She’d been his travel agent. They married on 2 June 1979 (and remain wed to this day). They settled in Hawaii. He took a job as a night security guard and started drinking heavily. In September 1980 he wrote a letter to a friend. “I’m going nuts,” it read. It was signed “The Catcher In The Rye”. Salinger’s meditation on alienation has a dark legacy; the book was found in John Hinkley Jr’s hotel room after his attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981. Robert John Bardo was carrying the book when he murdered the model and actor Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989.

The Beatles’ studio albums ranked in order of greatness
Show all 12





It’s long been believed that Chapman’s plan to kill his idol was formulated in the midst of his heavy drinking. In recent years Chapman has claimed that his hit list extended beyond Lennon. In 2010, he claimed he’d chosen Lennon “out of convenience”. It could have been Paul McCartney, Elizabeth Taylor, talk-show host Johnny Carson, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, actor George C Scott (famous for turning down the Best Actor award at the 1970 Oscars), even the aforementioned Ronald Reagan. Hawaii governor George Ariyoshi rounded out the list. It’s been said the musician Todd Rundgren was a target (Chapman was wearing a promotional T-shirt for Rundgren’s album Hermit of Mink Hollow when he was arrested). David Bowie once claimed he was “second on the list”.

So at that point, I had abandoned all of the plans and was going to throw the gun in the river and that type of thing and come back and everything was going to be OK. Of course, that didn’t happen

The question as to why Chapman killed John Lennon has never truly been answered. He’s given conflicting versions of his rationale for decades – citing his spiritual beliefs, his own desire to become famous, even that killing Lennon would help promote his beloved Catcher in the Rye – almost as if he’s still trying to make sense of the event himself. He had no criminal convictions prior to the murder. He’d loved The Beatles almost all his life. Lennon was his hero. As a teenager, the British band’s vivid, colourful pop provided him with a place to escape to when the fists of his violent US Air Force sergeant father reigned down upon him. By 14, he was experimenting with LSD and missing classes at Columbia High School, Decatur, Georgia. “The Beatles then were into long hair, beards, meditation, and drugs,” he said. “The Beatles were into things that fit my life perfectly.”

Unquestionably, the teenage Chapman was also already showing signs of mental instability. Most nights he would lay in his bedroom, imagining he was the “king” of a tiny race of people who lived in the walls. Generally, the appeal of his sovereignty over the “Little People” was their adoration (“I was their hero and was in the paper every day and I was on TV every day!”) but, he would later tell the journalist Jack Jones, “sometimes when I’d get mad I’d blow some of them up. I’d have this push-button thing, part of the [sofa], and I’d like, get mad and blow out part of the wall and a lot of them would die. But the people would still forgive me for that, and, you know, everything got back to normal. That’s a fantasy I had for many years.” Prior to killing Lennon, Chapman would say that the little people in the walls had come back.

A recent mugshot of Mark David Chapman (Shutterstock)

And around this time he also discovered religion, attending a retreat held by the Chapel Woods Presbyterian Church when he was aged 15. He found the experience deeply affecting. He stopped taking drugs. Put away his hippie clothes. Started wearing a suit and carrying a bible at all times. He even began to leave religious tracts in the school lockers. “At some point I lifted my hands and I said, ‘Jesus come to me. Help me,’” he recalled. “And that was my time of true spiritual rebirth. That night I came to a door. When I opened the door and let God come physically into my heart, I felt cleansed. I felt totally forgiven and totally renewed.” Crucially, he also began to sour on Beatle John.

When Lennon had told the Evening Standard in March 1966, as part of the paper’s regular franchise “How does a Beatle live?”, of his belief that the Beatles were now more “popular than Jesus”; that perhaps rock music would outlive Christianity, it drew little controversy. When the quote made it to the United States a few months later, via a reprint in the teen magazine Dateline, it induced apoplexy. Across the bible belt, Beatles records were set alight on huge bonfires. Radio stations stopped playing their songs. The Ku Klux Klan picketed performances in Washington, DC and Memphis, Tennessee. At the latter, someone threw a firecracker on stage. Briefly the band thought it was gunfire. The Beatles had headed to America to promote their seventh studio album, Revolver. They talked little about the record. They, and John – right until the very end – would never tour again.

Chapman was smarting. His dislike would only intensify with each passing year. Lennon, he decided, was a hypocrite. The release of “Imagine” in 1971 – a song Chapman considered communist – was perhaps the final straw. “He told us to imagine no possessions,” he would say, “and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music.” The cod theological pondering of “God” on 1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album – “I don’t believe in Jesus, I just believe in me” – probably didn’t help.

Mourning: a fan holds a sign remembering the murdered Lennon at a New York memorial in December 1980 (Shutterstock)

Chapman had made a trip to New York in October with the intention of doing the deed then. While there, he watched the film Ordinary People, notable for being the directorial debut of Robert Redford. Something about the movie spoke to him. “I came out of the theatre and called my wife and for the first time, I told her,” he said. “I told her what I was going to do, and I was crying. And I said I thought about life and thought about my grandmother, and I told her, I said: ‘Your love has saved me. I’m coming home.’ And she said, ‘Just come home. Please, come home.’ So at that point, I had abandoned all of the plans and was going to throw the gun in the river and that type of thing and come back and everything was going to be OK. Of course, that didn’t happen.” After returning home and making an appointment with a clinical psychologist he wouldn’t keep, he returned to New York on 8 December.

Chapman spent most of that day at the Dakota. No-one thought anything of it; as well as Lennon and his family, an assortment of celebrities including Leonard Bernstein and Lauren Bacall called the complex their home. Fans would lurk outside the building all the time. Chapman had left his £64 ($83) a night room at the Sheraton Centre downtown early, but had missed Lennon when he stepped out of a cab and entered the Dakota that morning after becoming distracted. He was much more focused a few hours later when he spotted Lennon’s housekeeper, returning from a walk with then five-year-old Sean. “You’re a beautiful boy,” said Chapman, referencing the song John had written about his younger son, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”, and shaking the little boy’s hand.
Read more

The Beatles’ White Album at 50: The story behind the controversial LP

At 5pm, Lennon and wife Yoko Ono left the building. They had an appointment at the Record Plant Studios on West 44th Street. As the pair walked towards their limousine, Chapman approached John and asked if he’d sign his copy of Double Fantasy. Lennon did, writing “John Lennon 1980” on the sleeve. During his wait at the Dakota, Chapman had befriended an amateur photographer called Paul Goresh. He captured the act of Lennon signing the album for Chapman on camera. When Lennon had gone, Chapman panted excitedly: “John Lennon signed my album! Nobody in Hawaii is going to believe me!” He tried to talk Goresh into waiting around with him for Lennon to return later. He could get his album signed too. “You never know if you’ll see him again!” Chapman told his new friend. Six hours later, John Winston Ono Lennon was dead. Lennon and Ono had returned a little after 10.50pm. As their limousine pulled up to the Dakota’s archway entrance and Lennon stepped out onto the pavement, Chapman dropped to one knee, firing five hollow-point bullets from his .38 special revolver into Lennon’s back and shoulder. His lung was punctured, his left subclavian artery torn. Two hours after that, Chapman would get on his knees and pray to God, pleading for the ability to rewind time.

This August, four months before the world unites to pay tribute to four decades without John Lennon – one half of the most consistently brilliant songwriting team pop has ever seen – on the planet, Mark David Chapman will take off his prison uniform, put on his smartest clothes and make his way to the New York Parole Board building complex once more. There the three-member board will be in possession of a letter from Yoko Ono – still a resident of the Dakota, incidentally – in which she pleads for Chapman to remain incarcerated, as she’s written and sent to every previous appeal for the past 20 years. It is unthinkable that the judgment, in this year of all years, will be any different to the 10 that have preceded it. It’s most likely that Chapman will return to his cell, strip and put on his prison uniform once more. Just him and his Little People. Just him and his regret.

What do Trump, Farage and Hitler have in common? 

A reliance on fiery, antagonistic rhetoric

Hitler at the Nuremberg rally in 1938: his fascist language was 

recycled in the Brexit ‘debate’ ( Getty )

Victor Klemperer’s moving diaries about the Second World War are of huge historic importance. But the volume he valued most is a short and devastating treatise on the linguistics of the Nazi regime, a lingua franca the far right continues to recycle to this day, 

says Robert Fisk 

Victor Klemperer was perhaps the most eloquent and academically brilliant survivor of the Holocaust. He was never sent to Auschwitz – although he was only hours away from that fate in February 1945 when the Allied bombing of Dresden allowed him to dispose of his Jewish Star – but as a philosopher, French scholar, professor, linguist and humanist, he wrote by far the most moving diaries of the Second World War.

Scarcely days pass when I do not think of Klemperer. His three volumes of diaries are a testimony to viciousness, cruelty and courage from the heart of darkness, trying (and just succeeding) to survive as a German Jew in Hitler’s Reich. But only now have I been able to obtain a translation of the one volume this fine Jewish intellectual valued most: his own short, devastating treatise on the linguistics of the Nazi regime.

He called it LTI – short for his Latin title, Lingua Tertii Imperii, The Language of the Third Reich – and it hangs like a cloak over us today, in the shadow of the new right, of east European nationalism, of racism and I suppose, of Trumpism too. And of the crisis of dictatorship in the Middle East. It shows how language can be used as a prison rather than a means to liberty, how it can wrap us in chains when we always thought it offered a path to freedom. “Nazism,” he wrote, “permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously.”

BEHIND PAYWALL 

AMERICANS KEEP TELLING US THAT THE ONLY REASON THEY CANNOT QUARANTINE SCHOOLS, OR WORK OR MALLS FROMTHE CORONAVIRUS
 IS THEY ARE A DEMOCRACY SO ITS CHAOS OF LAZY FAIRE 

WHILE CHINA CAN DO IT BECAUSE THEY ARE AN AUTHORITARIAN REGIME 

WAIT A MINUTE  JAPAN JUST SHUT DOWN ALL ITS SCHOOLS FOR A MONTH, AND THEY ARE A DEMOCRACY

SILVER LINING
Coronavirus: Space images reveal drastic fall in pollution over China as factories closed
‘This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event,’ says Nasa scientist

Jane Dalton @JournoJane

Satellite images show a dramatic drop in pollution over China after the coronavirus outbreak shut down swathes of the country’s industry and travel.

US space agency Nasa said the change was at least partly related to the economic slowdown caused by efforts to contain the virus.

Nasa maps show how levels of nitrogen dioxide, a toxic gas from vehicles, power plants and factories, plummeted after the mass quarantine, compared with before.

Scientists have previously found the coronavirus wiped out at least a quarter of China’s emissions of damaging greenhouse gases in just two weeks in mid-February.

Closing industrial plants and asking people to stop at home has led to sharp drops in the burning of fossil fuels — a key cause of the climate crisis — in the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer. 

Pollution levels in January contrast with those in February (Nasa)

China, where the outbreak began, has nearly 80,000 cases of coronavirus, by far the largest number of any country, with nearly 2,900 deaths.


Nasa’s maps compare pollution levels between the first three weeks of the year and 10-25 February.

Coronavirus: Life in a Wuhan suburb besieged by China’s outbreak

The space agency’s scientists said the fall in pollution was first apparent near Wuhan, the source of the outbreak, but eventually spread across the country.

“This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event,” said Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre.

She said she had seen a decline in nitrogen dioxide levels during the economic recession of 2008 but said that decrease was more gradual.
This year, pollution levels did not rise again after Chinese new year, unlike last year (Nasa)

The map of the world according to who every country thinks is most dangerous

Posted Monday 20 February 2017 

Picture: Reddit/Loulan

Feeling apocalyptic right now? You’re probably not the only one.

But of course, who you think the bad guys are depends a lot on where you live. Which is what makes this map really interesting.

It uses data from a 2013 poll, which asked people from 65 different nations who they thought the biggest threat to world peace was.

The map was put together by Redditor Loulan.

It turns out the USA is the country most were concerned about. And while there were plenty of nations that you’d expect to put them top of the list -like Russia and China – there were also several that you’d consider Western allies of the US, like Spain, Germany and Australia.

Pakistan was second on the list, followed by China.

Iran was the most dangerous country according to the US, Canada and Britain.

It’s important to remember that this data is a couple of years old – and therefore doesn’t take into account Donald Trump….

AND THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT IN 2013 WAS STILL HARPER AND THE CONSERVATIVES WHO HAD DECLARED THEMSELVES THE LAPDOGS OF ISRAEL
SO THEY CLOSED OUR EMBASSY IN IRAN AND CUT OFF ALL RELATIONS.
SOMETHING ABOUT CUTTING ONE'S NOSE TO SPITE ONE'S FACE COMES TO MIND

Pete Buttigieg has surprised everyone by dropping out 
— but was it because of a back-room deal?


Theories range from the vaguely conspiratorial — the Bernie-hating DNC want to back a moderate, so told Klobuchar, Biden and Buttigieg that one of them had to drop out — to the slightly more likely

Holly Baxter New York @h0llyb4xter

Many were surprised by Mayor Pete’s announcement today that he was suspending his campaign. Less than a month ago, amid a chaotic caucus in Iowa, he proclaimed to his supporters that they had “made history” and "shocked the nation". For a brief moment, when he and Bernie were neck-and-neck in Iowa and New Hampshire, many of us believed a President Buttigieg was a serious possibility.

But South Carolina was the first real test of whether the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana had managed to connect with the African American voters he’d been accused of failing. At the ballot box, their judgment was unequivocal. He had not done enough. Exit polls showed younger black voters were slightly more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt, but almost no middle-aged black voters came out for him at all. They didn’t know who he was, he hadn’t put decades of work in with their communities, and he had blundered when faced with racial controversies in South Bend.

Despite a less than encouraging performance in South Carolina, however, most of us were expecting Mayor Pete to stay on for Super Tuesday in two days’ time. Just yesterday, on Saturday morning, his campaign manager was talking about their Super Tuesday strategy to a reporter at the New York Times. It’s no exaggeration to say that something must have changed overnight.

Multiple theories are afoot, ranging from the vaguely conspiratorial — the Bernie-hating DNC want to back a moderate, so told Klobuchar, Biden and Buttigieg that one of them had to drop out — to the slightly more likely — a back-room deal made with a candidate still in the race. Has Pete agreed to run as VP on a joint ticket with Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar or Elizabeth Warren in an effort to prevent Bernie Sanders from rising easily to the top? It’s possible. If it’s true, then my bet would be on Warren as his running-mate: she has been publicly distancing herself from Sanders in the past few weeks, while at the same time quietly winding back a lot of her most left-leaning proposals, including Medicare for All. Warren has been struggling in caucuses and primaries, but has promised to stay in until the Democratic convention in July; so she’s either bluffing or she’s been concocting a strategy to inject new energy into her campaign with someone else behind the scenes. If it’s not a case of a VP deal, however, it could be a much more straightforward and less risky case of throwing his weight behind Biden and guaranteeing himself a prestigious cabinet position in the event of a future Biden administration.

Equally, Pete may genuinely have no plans for this presidential race. At 38 years old, he was only just old enough to qualify to run for president in the first place (the highest office in the land is reserved for over-35s only.) In debates, Buttigieg made the most of his youthful status, somewhat mischievously interrupting both Biden and Bernie at least once to say, “When I’m as old as you, I hope to look back and think…” Unfortunately, leaning so heavily on his age may have backfired. It underlined his lack of experience; being responsible for a city of 100,000 people is very different to being responsible for a country of 327 million, and few Democrats are in the mood for a gamble after Donald Trump.

Buttigieg is young enough to hold back and wait until he’s accrued a bit more of that vital political experience now that he’s made a national name for himself. No one can deny that he is a fantastic orator and a solid debater. This first presidential run may well be just the beginning of his outreach, and we may see a President Buttigieg in the White House yet. If he is planning a future run, then he may have decided that quitting while he was ahead rather than facing further damaging losses in Super Tuesday would be reputationally smarter, providing him with a springboard from which to launch a similar campaign in 2024 or 2028.

Why go this far, take all those donations, attend all those rallies and print out all that merchandise if the plan was to drop out all along then, you may wonder? I doubt this was the plan all along, but in the past few weeks, Buttigieg and his advisers may have sat down and talked about the fact that Bernie Sanders has an excellent shot at being the Democratic nominee this year. Being the moderate who blocked Bernie in 2016 did nothing for Hillary Clinton. It would be risky for Pete as well. And if Bernie did end up losing badly to Trump in November — if a “reds under the bed” socialist scare campaign does serious damage to the Senator from Vermont and the entire party with him — then Buttigieg may well want to dissociate himself with the Democrats of 2020, in the same way that many British Labour politicians sought to distance themselves from the party during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Walking away now means he protects himself either way: he avoids the ire of the Bernie Bros and he avoids being painted with the socialist brush during his long political career ahead.

In a moving speech in Indiana tonight opened by his husband Chasten, Buttigieg declared that he felt he had a political "responsibility" to step away, and spoke of supporting a candidate with a "broad base" (so, not Sanders) who offered a "new kind of politics" (which didn't exactly sound like Biden either.) He spoke humorously and energetically. His supporters chanted, "2024, 2024!" while he put on a bashful smile.

For more clues about why he made his decision tonight, we’ll have to keep an eye out for who he endorses after Super Tuesday.

South Korean cult church leader claiming to be Messiah could face coronavirus ‘murder’ charge

Lee Man-hee, whose followers believe he is immortal, accused of knowingly providing flawed information to officials

Andy Gregory

Army soldiers wearing protective suits spray disinfectant in front of a branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu ( Newsis/AP )

A cult church leader claiming to be the Messiah could face “murder” charges in connection with the worst coronavirus outbreak outside of mainland China.

The majority of cases in South Korea — where the virus has killed at least 18 people and infected more than 3,700 — are thought to be members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus.

Officials have accused the church of exacerbating the outbreak by deliberately failing to provide an accurate list of its more than 200,000 worshippers and thus interfering with government attempts to curb the virus’ spread.

Amid growing public outrage, Seoul city government has filed a criminal complaint to prosecutors against the church’s leader Lee Man-hee — who himself is awaiting the result of a coronavirus test — and 11 other senior members.

Seoul’s mayor Park Won-soon alleged the church’s actions amounted to “murder through to willful negligence” in a widely shared Facebook post on Sunday, translated by the Korea Herald.

The response to Coronavirus in Daegu South Korea
Show all 11

The legal complaint accuses the church leaders of homicide, causing harm and violating the Infectious Disease and Control Act, according to the BBC.

South Korean law follows the principle of dolus eventualis, meaning a person can be convicted of murder if they foresaw the possibility of their actions resulting in the death of someone but continued regardless.

The church —​ which teaches that only Mr Lee can interpret the Bible’s true meaning — strenuously denies all accusations and insists it is the victim of a “witch hunt”.

While followers believe Mr Lee is immortal and will take 144,000 people to heaven with him on Judgement Day, some former members have now turned on him.

This week, a group of former worshippers visited district prosecutors and alleged that “by submitting fake documents, he has impeded the government in its epidemiological efforts against the new coronavirus”, the Korea Times reported.

The doomsday cult at the centre of South Korea’s coronavirus outbreak

The church is also accused of lying about its missionary work in Wuhan, regarded as the outbreak’s epicentre.

South Korea’s justice ministry said on Saturday that 42 members of the church had entered the country from China since July, with some visiting Wuhan in January. The church had repeatedly denied making new converts in the Hubei city until last week.

The virus was first discovered to have infected a 61-year-old woman dubbed “Patient 31” who had attended services at the church’s Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony branch in the country’s fourth largest city, Daegu.

The city of 2.5 million people was swiflty put on lockdown, and was likened to a “zombie apocalypse” by one resident. While cases have been identified around the country, it remains the most affected city.

A second outbreak was then discovered at a hospital in Cheongdo county. It soon emerged that several of the church’s followers visited the hospital to attend a funeral for Mr Lee’s brother.

Shortly afterwards, the church said it had closed all of its 74 sanctuaries in South Korea and told followers to instead watch its services on YouTube.
“We are deeply sorry that because of one of our members, who thought of her condition as a cold because she had not travelled abroad, led to many in our church being infected and thereby caused concern to the local community,” it said in a statement.

At Shincheonji, attending church-related gatherings “isn’t an option, but a requirement,” Ji-il Tark, a professor of religion at Busan Presbyterian University in South Korea, previously told the Associated Press.

Mr Tark said Shincheonji followers are more vulnerable to virus infections as they often sit very closely together on the floor during services.

While all of the church’s members have now been interviewed by officials, according to the BBC, roughly 9,000 of them are displaying symptoms.

While the church now acknowledges the virus, a recording emerged of one leader having previously said: “No Shincheonji member in Wuhan has contracted the virus thanks to their faith.”

As public anger over the outbreak grows, some members have said they fear being outed as Shincheonji followers.

“We’re being treated like criminals. We had a bad image before and now I think I’d be lynched if passers-by knew I belonged to Shincheonji,” 26-year-old Ji-yeon Park told The Guardian.

“Our church didn’t invent the virus. This is just an excuse to shift blame. Throughout history, minority groups have always been blamed for bad things happening in society. The same is happening to us.”

---30---

WTF 

Woman faces jail in UAE for using ‘strong language’ towards man who sent her unwanted sexual images, campaigners say

PATRIARCHY 

US national Melissa McBurnie could face up to two years in prison, according to criminal justice group

Zoe Tidman

Melissa McBurnie has been arrested on suspicion of slander

 in the UAE ( Detained in Dubai )

An American woman has been arrested in United Arab Emirates after sending a strongly-worded email to a man who was harassing her with sexual images, a campaign group says.

Melissa McBurnie was detained in Abu Dhabi after being accused of slander, a US embassy spokesperson told The Independent.

The woman, from California, messaged a man to tell him to stop sending pornographic images of himself and sexually explicit texts to her, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.

She “lashed out” in the message to the Egyptian national, who has also shared sexual images of Ms McBurnie with others in the past, the organisation said.

Ms McBurnie was detained after the man reported her email to authorities, they added.

Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained In Dubai​, said: “Melissa has been going through one of the worst nightmares a person can suffer in the age of the internet for the past four years; she has been inundated with abusive messages of an extremely sexual nature.

“Yet, somehow she is the one facing prosecution in the UAE for cybercrime violations, simply because she used strong language against her abuser.”

Ms Stirling added the American woman could face up to two years in prison if convicted.

The US embassy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) told The Independent Ms McBurnie had been arrested for slander and later released on bail.

Ms McBurnie claims the man involved has slandered her and is using a series of explicit messages against her, according to an embassy spokesperson.

She had been in the country since November on a tourist visa and the Egyptian national had lived in the UAE for over 20 years, officials told The Independent.

Ms McBurnie and the married man had been romantically involved, according to Detained in Dubai.

Their relationship turned sour when Ms McBurnie put an end to their affair, the criminal justice organisation claimed.

The group said they expect the woman to held in Dubai until her case is heard in May.

The US State Department has been approached for comment.

INTERVIEW
Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma: ‘Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze’

The film-maker talks to Alexandra Pollard about growing up gay at a time before the internet, male privilege in cinema, and why Wonder Woman changed her life

Céline Sciamma and Adèle Haenel on the set of 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' ( Claire Mathon )

Céline Sciamma always knew she was gay. She just didn’t know what to do about it. “Without the internet, lesbianism didn’t exist,” explains the French director, who came of age in the Nineties. “I mean, it did exist, but we were our own island, and we had to learn everything by ourselves. Imagine being 14 years old and going to the public library looking for lesbian romance, and just not knowing where to start. It’s like, ‘A, B, C, D…’” Is that how she learnt? “Yeah,” she says, with a laugh. “And cinema. And you have to make your own.”

So she did. For over a decade, the 41-year-old’s films have explored the kinds of identities and desires that those public libraries were missing. Her coming-of-age debut Water Lilies (2007) – filmed in the middle-class suburb just north of Paris in which she grew up, and written when she was still at film school – focused on a teenage girl’s infatuation with her synchronised swimming teammate.

The swimming, she said when it premiered at Cannes, was a metaphor for “the job of being a girl” – beauty and serenity above the surface, struggle and sacrifice below it. Tomboy (2011), released when society had an even more rudimentary understanding of gender fluidity than it does now, centred around a 10-year-old who adopts a masculine moniker on summer holiday. Girlhood (2014) followed a group of black schoolgirls in a poor suburb of Paris.

Through her work, Sciamma has earned a reputation not only as a harbinger of social progress but as a gifted auteur – one whose work is known for its sparse dialogue and tender, empathetic gaze. But her latest – the ravishing, slow-burning Portrait of a Lady on Fire – has ramped things up a notch. Since competing for the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes, the film has been gaining momentum around the world, and Sciamma has found herself much in demand. Having visited 20 French cities, 20 more across Europe and attended 14 premieres, she’s now sitting upstairs in a London members club, strong of spirit and of accent.


Dressed in a bomber jacket, her blue eyes making unwavering contact, Sciamma has a gentle kind of intensity about her. She speaks swiftly, her English imperfect but poetic. “I decided to look at this love, and all its possibility, rather than doing the impossible love story narrative,” she says of Portrait of a Lady on Fire. “Which is a way to give back their presence and their present and their desire to these women, because you can’t run like you want to. I really wanted to show how a love story that is fulfilling is a love story that emancipates you.”

Set in 18th-century Brittany, the film stars Adèle Haenel – who worked with Sciamma on Water Lilies, and with whom the director was in a relationship for a number of years – as Héloïse. Mysterious and obstinate, she is soon to be married off to a Milanese nobleman, a prospect she dreads. Noémie Merlant is Marianne, a young artist hired to paint Héloïse for said nobleman ahead of the wedding. The bride-to-be refused to sit for the other (male) painters, so Marianne must attempt to do the portrait under the guise of being her chaperone, snatching glances as they walk along the clifftops.

They’re awkward at first, Héloïse stiff with suspicion, Marianne struggling to keep up the ruse. But gradually, that stiffness gives way to intrigue, then attraction. As the film progresses – at its own, teasing pace – their interactions become so heavy with desire that it’s almost unbearable. When they finally act on it, the consummation is as fiery as it is respectful. “Consent,” says Sciamma, “is sexy.”
Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant in ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ (Curzon Artificial Eye)

The first time the two women sleep together, Héloïse asks, “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” It’s a knock-out line. “A relationship is about inventing your own language,” says Sciamma. “You’ve got the jokes, you’ve got the songs, you have this anecdote that’s going to make you laugh three years later. It’s this language that you build. That’s what you mourn for when you’re losing someone you love. This language you’re not going to speak with anybody else.”

We know from the first scene that the two women don’t end up together. Was that to avoid giving the audience false hope? “Yes, and also because I wanted to question what a happy ending is,” says Sciamma. “We have the romantic-comedy philosophy – a frozen image of two people being together – and we also have the tragic ending. And I wanted neither. Why do we believe that eternal possession of somebody means a happy ending? Love educates us about art. Art consoles us from lost love. Our great loves are a condition of our future love. The film is the memory of a love story; it’s sad but also full of hope.”

By design, there are almost no men in the film – though the impending heterosexual nuptials loom like a cloud over every passionate embrace. “I wanted to use the tools of cinema so you would feel patriarchy without actually having to embody it with an antagonist,” says Sciamma. Free from the gaze of men, Marianne, Héloïse, and the servant Sophie (Luàna Bajrami) are in a sort of utopia. There, the women and their love can briefly flourish. “When a man comes back in the frame,” smiles Sciamma, “it’s a jump scare.”


The job of being a girl: Sciamma’s ‘Water Lillies’ (2007) (Balthazar Productions)

Earlier this month, Natalie Portman walked the Oscars red carpet with “Sciamma” sewn in gold stitching on the trim of her Dior cape. There, too, were the names of several other female directors snubbed by the Academy. Sciamma is a founding member of Le Collectif, a French movement aiming to correct the gender imbalance in international film-making. The fact that men are almost always front and centre of cinema, she says, leaves them “unaware of their privilege. Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze. They don’t see themselves anymore.”

She recalls recording the DVD commentary for Portrait with a male recording engineer, who watched the film alongside her. When – two hours in – a man’s hand appeared in the frame, the engineer looked down at his own. “He said, ‘I looked at my hand, because that’s the hand of a man.’ That’s what I wanted to do – there’s no man in the film, not as some kind of punishment, but as a way for them to go through someone else’s journey. You’ve been looking only at women and suddenly it feels different, weird.” She laughs. “And that’s cinema, you know?”

It’s not just arthouse cinema that can do this. Sciamma says that Wonder Woman, the 2017 superhero blockbuster directed by Patty Jenkins, changed her life. “It’s about feeling seen as a viewer,” she says. “Wonder Woman is thinking about me. It’s thinking about my pleasure, about my sisters, about the history of cinema and women’s representation. It gives us joy but also rage. Like, ‘Why do I not get this more often?’ Now, we get it more and more, because there’s new writing for women, but it’s an addictive feeling. Once you know it, you want it.” 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire review: Gorgeous and romantic period drama

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is the first of Sciamma’s films to centre women in adulthood. The rest of them have been, in one way or another, coming-of-age stories. I bring up something she said once – that for women, losing the androgyny of childhood is a “tragedy, because you lose your freedom”. Did that happen to her? “Wow,” she says. There’s a 10-second pause. “I was such a gay child. I played by these rules, of course, but knowing that it was a performance. And I suffered from the fact that it was a performance. You have to be patient. You have to just wait for your life to start.”

That’s one of the reasons she makes films. So that young people don’t have to wait quite as long as she did. “We’re losing time, wasting time, because our culture is not being transmitted,” she says. “But we keep reinventing it. Discovering it. And that’s also the beauty of it.”

TRUMP DUCKS AND COVERS AT CPAC

President Donald Trump ducked behind his lectern on Saturday while giving a political speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland. 

AND HE COMES UP WITH THIS

H/T THE RAW STORY

California Santa Cruz dismisses 54 graduate assistants striking for pay raise

FORMER DEMOCRAT ATTORNEY GENERAL JANET NAPOLITANO IS UCSC PREZ
We are graduate students @UCSC on a wildcat strike for a living wage. We can't survive in Santa Cruz on $21k/year the UC is paying us. We spend 50-70% of our wages on rent alone. We can't afford to live where we work and we demand a Cost of Living Adjustment (#COLA).#ucscstrike pic.twitter.com/daOyeLjPiH- ON STRIKE!!!: #COLA 4 UCSC (@payusmoreucsc) February 25, 2020

March 1 (UPI) -- The University of California Santa Cruz terminated 54 graduate teaching assistants for failing to meet a university-imposed deadline on a strike for increased wages.

Interim Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer said in a letter to students and staff on Friday that the students who had been withholding fall grade information as part of the strike would not receive spring appointments and those that had already received appointments for the spring quarter would be dismissed.

"Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to find an amenable resolution, 54 teaching assistants have continued to withhold fall grade information. As a result, we have been left with no choice but to take an action that we had truly and deeply hoped to avoid," Kletzer said.

The student activists said that 54 students who already had teaching jobs for the spring quarter were dismissed and 28 others who were part of the strike were notified they would no longer be considered.

About 200 graduate assistants began withholding grades in December as they demanded the university increase their wages by $1,412 in addition to their approximate income of $2,400 to help them pay for rent near the school.

Graduate assistants also began holding protests on campus and stopped teaching, holding office hours and conducting research this month.

The students called for a cancellation of classes on Monday as they plan to respond to the university's decision in a press conference on Monday.

UAW 2865, the union representing the students said they were shocked by the university's "callousness and by the violence that so many protesters experienced as they peacefully made the case for a cost of living increase."

"Instead of firing TAs who are standing up for a decent standard of living for themselves, UC must sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate a cost of living increase," said Kavitha Iyengar, president of the union.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders called the university's decision "disgraceful" and called for UCSC President Janet Napolitano to continue talks with the graduate assistants.

"All workers deserve the right to bargain and strike for better wages and benefits," said Sanders. "To Janet Napolitano and USSC: stop this outrageous union busting and negotiate in good faith."

KAKISTOCRACY

Judge rules Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed to head U.S. immigration agency

Deputy Secretary of Department of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli makes remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Friday, February 28, 2020, in National Harbor, Maryland. Thousands of conservative activists, elected officials and pundits gathered to hear speakers on the theme "America vs. Socialism". Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI | License Photo

March 1 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Sunday ruled that Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed to his position atop the agency responsible for processing U.S. immigration requests and invalidated a pair of his directives.

Advocacy groups last year filed a lawsuit challenging Cuccinelli's role as acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and asking that asylum policy he instituted after taking office be reversed.

The suit stated that Cuccinelli didn't satisfy legal requirements to serve in the role under the Federal Vacances Reform Act.

U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss ruled that Cuccinelli was not lawfully appointed as acting director of the USCIS in 2019 because the position of principal deputy he assumed before taking the role was not a "first assistant" job as outlined in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.

"Under that commonsense understanding of the meaning of the default provision, Cuccinelli does not qualify as a 'first assistant' because he was assigned the role of principal on day-one and by design, he never has served and never will serve 'in a subordinate capacity' to any other official at USCIS," Moss wrote.

He added that the acting secretary created a position that is "second in command in name only."

"Cuccinelli may have the title of principal deputy director and the Department of Homeland Security's order of succession may designate the office of the Principal Deputy Director as the 'first assistant' to the director, but labels -- without any substance -- cannot satisfy the FVRA's default rule under any plausible reading of the statute," he wrote.

Cuccinelli currently serves as acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees UCIS.

Moss also ruled that due to Cuccilenni's unlawful appointment he lacked authorities to issue directives reducing the time asylum-seekers in "credible fear" proceedings have to receive counsel from lawyers and barring asylum officers from granting extensions allowing migrants to prepare for interviews.

Coronavirus Is 2020 Democrats’ New Case Against Trump

The Democratic 2020 candidates are building new messages around the coronavirus, pivoting off their more typical arguments as the outbreak soaks up media attention

Reporting From
Summerville, South Carolina
Posted on February 29, 2020

Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images

The remaining Democratic presidential candidates have united in the last week on a core message: The coronavirus outbreak proves how important it is to defeat President Donald Trump.

The global health crisis — which has rattled global markets and has now been reported in multiple western US states without known connections to the virus’ spread in Asia — has been woven into virtually every Democratic candidates’ messaging in the last week, with just days to go before the biggest primary day of the year.

Michael Bloomberg is airing an ad titled “Pandemic” across TV nationwide. Elizabeth Warren put out an early plan for preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Amy Klobuchar has talked about containing the virus as a way of transcending partisan politics. And Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Tom Steyer are all talking about the virus as they campaign ahead of the South Carolina primary on Friday and in 16 Super Tuesday contests next week.

The common factor: Each candidate has turned the outbreak into a new, potent critique of Trump, hitching their individual campaign messaging to a story that has otherwise begun to pull Americans’ attention away from the presidential election.

As the president has contradicted warnings from health officials and focused on controlling messaging around the outbreak by placing Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the response, Sanders, the frontrunner in the Democratic primary, has sent a series of statements from his campaign this week on Trump’s “inadequate, misleading, and dangerous” handling of the crisis.

“It turns out that Donald Trump is in Charleston today,” he said at a Friday morning campaign event in St. George, South Carolina, of the rally Trump had planned later that night.

In stops across the state on Friday, the day before the South Carolina primary, Sanders repeatedly accused Trump of meddling in the Democratic nominating process by holding a rally here when he should be focusing on the ongoing health crisis.

“Now, I want you to think — think about what it says about this guy,” Sanders said in St. George. “Everybody knows there is a coronavirus spreading all over the world. Very frightening, stock market is tanking. You would think that you'd have a president of the United States leading — working with scientists all over the world, bringing people together to figure out how we're gonna deal with this crisis. He is here in South Carolina. He doesn't even have any opposition in the Republican primary — why is he here? He's here to try to disrupt the Democratic primary. How pathetic and how petty can you be?”

Elsewhere in the state, Buttigieg centered his more typical argument for generational change in politics on the virus. “This is not a kind of national security issue that we’re used to dealing with from the past,” he said in Charleston on Friday. “This virus does not care what country it is in. It’s not going to be stopped by a big wall. These kinds of issues, whether it’s global health security, cyber security, election security, are going to require a focus on the future, just as right here at home.”

In Summerville, SC, Steyer told an audience that coronavirus would have a profound economic impact on the United States and other countries and slammed the Trump administration’s response.

“This is Trump’s incompetence in a neon sign going like, ‘I stink at my job. Yeah, I am a dummy! Ok?’ by Donald Trump,” Steyer told the crowd. “This was announced on December 31st, he is so late on this that it’s crazy. He’s two months late to do anything.”

Steyer told the crowd that Trump’s response had been inadequate and that the spread of coronavirus was Trump’s “Katrina.”

“It’s his moment where he’s like, ‘whoa! I have a job to do? Who knew!’”


Scott Olson / Getty Images

Bloomberg has talked about the US response to the virus as a management failure from the Trump administration, contrasting it with his own experience in New York City and at his company. He mentioned the coronavirus epidemic at the top of his remarks during campaign events on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in several Super Tuesday states. Bloomberg slammed Trump’s “incompetence” in dealing with the virus and accused the president of “burying his head in the sand.”

“This week, the stock market has plunged partly out of fear,” Bloomberg said on Friday morning at a rally in Memphis. “But also because investors have no confidence that this president is capable of managing the crisis.”

“The market is pricing in the president’s management incompetence and we are going to pay a heavy cost for that, in addition to the more serious health crisis we face,” Bloomberg said. “We have to first worry about our health, but the economy is also the way we make a living.”

Biden has also been sticking closely to his own experience when he’s talked about coronavirus this week, frequently beginning by talking about the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola crisis in 2014. On Friday, Biden directly criticized how the Trump administration has reportedly asked Anthony Fauci, head of of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, not to speak about the virus without White House approval.

“We didn’t do it by silencing scientists,” the former vice president said Friday night in Spartanburg, South Carolina. “You notice what has been recently said. The president of the United States and Vice President Pence told Mr. Fauci, one of the leading scientists in the world on pandemics, he was not able to speak out. The scientists have been silenced. This president makes everything personal. He thinks that this coronavirus is a conspiracy to defeat him. No, I mean, look at what they’re saying."

Biden got more pointed from there.

"This may be the one place and a concrete example of where the reputation for a president to tell the truth is of great consequence,” he said. “No, I really mean it, think about it. When he tells you, don’t worry, or worry, how many of you can go to the bank on that?"

Candidates are also beginning to reckon with the fact that an outbreak in the US, along the lines of what the Centers for Disease Control suggested is possible, could radically disrupt normal campaigning in the coming weeks.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News in McLean, Virginia, on Saturday, Bloomberg wouldn’t rule out cancelling upcoming campaign events if the virus continues to spread.

"I think you can't say never,” he said. “I think it's unlikely that it will get that bad. But you have to prepare for everything, that's the problem with Trump, he doesn't prepare for anything.”

Bloomberg criticized Trump for calling the virus a “hoax” — “how dumb can you be?” he said — and said, “you have to assume the worst when you're preparing, [it] doesn't mean you have to change your life until you find out how bad it is. But the president is supposed to be way ahead and getting ready for the worst case scenario just because that's the way you have to do it, you're going to save lives."

Ryan Brooks, Ruby Cramer, and Henry J. Gomez reported from South Carolina. Rosie Gray reported from Virginia.

BUZZFEED NEWS

AND THE WINNER OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY IS



SENATOR JIM CLYBURN'S FISH FRY
WITHOUT HIS LAST MINUTE ENDORSEMENT 
BIDEN WOULD NOT HAVE WON!

Pete Buttigieg Is Ending His Campaign. He Was The First Gay Candidate To Seriously Contend For The Presidency.
"After a year of going everywhere, meeting everyone, defying every expectation, seeking every vote, the truth is that the path has narrowed to a close for our candidacy, if not for our cause."

Henry J. GomezBuzzFeed News Reporter

Katherine MillerBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on March 1, 2020

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg has ended his presidential campaign, the former mayor told a crowd in his home city of South Bend, Indiana on Sunday evening.

His narrow victory in Iowa marked the first time a gay candidate and a millennial won a presidential nominating contest in US history. Buttigieg, in a speech from South Bend, announced his decision first by recalling some of the values that guided his campaign.

“Today is a moment of truth,” Buttigieg said. “After a year of going everywhere, meeting everyone, defying every expectation, seeking every vote, the truth is that the path has narrowed to a close for our candidacy, if not for our cause. Another of those values is responsibility. And we have a responsibility to consider the effect of remaining in this race any further. Our goal has always been to help unify Americans to defeat Donald Trump and to win the era for our values. And so we must recognize that at this point in the race the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and our country together."

Buttigieg's decision could help moderate Democrats consolidate their support around a single candidate as they look to keep Bernie Sanders, the independent democratic socialist, from winning the party's nomination. Buttigieg, who in recent weeks frequently criticized Sanders' policy proposals as too extreme, did not encourage his supporters to unite behind anyone else. But Virginia Rep. Don Beyer — the first member of Congress to endorse Buttigieg — quickly did, shifting his endorsement to former vice president Joe Biden just days before Virginia votes with other Super Tuesday states.

The Sunday announcement brings to an end Buttigieg's stunning rise from unknown mayor of Indiana's fourth largest city to major presidential candidate.

“He surprised everyone through the whole campaign and continues to do the best thing for our party and our country,” Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, and one of the earliest supporters of Buttigieg’s campaign said Sunday after word of his plans to drop out spread.

And his rise from relative anonymity to Iowa caucus winner echoed Jimmy Carter’s victory nearly 45 years ago — an outsider with the promise of understated, honest political restoration. 

(WHICH IS WHY HE MET WITH CARTER THIS MORNING BEFORE ANNOUNCING, EP)

But Buttigieg couldn't turn his successes in Iowa and New Hampshire — close finishes with or behind Bernie Sanders — into the broad coalition needed to secure a Democratic nomination. His struggles in reaching black and Latino voters dominated coverage for months, and resulted in poor showings in Nevada and South Carolina as the primary moved into states with more diverse electorates.

Facing tough results for a second week in a row, Buttigieg told supporters late Saturday night, "I am determined to earn every vote on the road ahead."

But on Sunday, after meeting with Carter himself and attending events to commemorate the Civil Rights movement in Alabama, Buttigieg decided to end his campaign, cutting short a trip that would have taken him to Texas.

One adviser to the campaign, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, attributed Buttigieg’s downturn in recent weeks to delayed results in Iowa that “stole coverage” from what was Buttigieg’s most successful night as a candidate.

Buttigieg, ultimately, won the most delegates in the caucus state where the campaign heavily organized and the candidate spent months, balancing a national media-friendly strategy and the local presence. (Sanders won the first and second alignment in the state under the unusual rules that caucuses follow.) But those results came weeks after, and never — despite Buttigieg's caucus-night victory address — delivered the emphatic fundraising and media bounce the campaign had planned.

The adviser also noted the swell of media attention around Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar after her third-place finish in New Hampshire — behind Buttigieg — and around Mike Bloomberg, who didn’t compete in the first four states.

There was, the adviser argued, a “preoccupation with the media on everything besides actual results from Iowa and New Hampshire.”

Signs of money troubles began to show after New Hampshire, when sources told BuzzFeed News that dozens of field organizers were told their jobs were ending for budgetary reasons. In the days before Nevada, Buttigieg announced a $13 million fundraising goal he said he needed to hit by this week's Super Tuesday contests. The campaign, according to updates it had been issuing publicly, hadn't yet hit the mark by the time South Carolina results were announced Saturday.

Buttigieg had hoped to use Iowa and New Hampshire as a spring board to greater things, a strategy in part presaged by Barack Obama's 2008 campaign.

Buttigieg, in fact, modeled much of his approach on the Obama campaign, which galvanized millennial voters a decade ago. He spoke in the aspirational language about the day after Trump, projects the same kind of detached intellectualism, and centered his identity as the first gay candidate (and the perceived electoral risk that accompanies that identity) in how Barack Obama approached his own position as the party’s first black nominee and then the first black president.

It didn't work the same for Buttigieg after the first two states.

And despite also being the first millennial candidate to win a presidential nominating contest, Buttigieg's appeal resonated most with older Democrats, not peers and certainly not the next generation of voters, who prefer Sanders to all others. Buttigieg's actual political views remained somewhat opaque to the electorate — but over the course of the campaign, he shifted toward a considerably more moderate presentation and policy purview.

But his candidacy — especially in the muted response at times to its historical nature — marks off just how much has changed in the United States. When Obama ran for office in 2008, most Democrats and even he did not support marriage equality.

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Henry Gomez is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Contact Henry J. Gomez at henry.gomez@buzzfeed.com.

Katherine Miller is an editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. Contact this reporter at katherine.miller@buzzfeed.com