Trump booed after slamming Obama economy during SOTU

ABOUT TIME 
WHY DIDN'T THEY CALL HIM 'LIAR' 
THEY SHOULD HAVE STOOD AND TURNED THEIR BACKS ON HIM 

As President Donald Trump attempted to attack President Barack Obama’s administration during his discussion of economic performance, Democratic members of Congress audibly hissed and booed his remarks:

Straight up boos in the chamber now as Trump continues to attack economic policies of the Obama administration. All of the applause coming from Republicans so far. #SOTU
— Leo Shane III (@LeoShane) February 5, 2020

Audible boos and hisses from Democratic side at this point
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 5, 2020


Audible and consistent groans and boos from the Democratic side.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 5, 2020

Wow, you can hear boos and groans from the room when Trump dings Obama era, says “failed” economic policies, and more murmurs when he claims minority gains. Pelosi sitting on her hands. #SOTU
— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) February 5, 2020

While many economic indicators have increased under Trump, most have just been continuations of trends that began in the Obama era.

Trump also bragged about how many people had been eliminated from food stamp rolls, conveniently omitting that at least some of the 7 million person decline is due to his decision to tighten eligibility restrictions, rather than people being lifted from poverty.

Watch the moment below:

WATCH: Bernie Sanders responds to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address

Here Are Some Memes About How Badly The Iowa Caucus Went

The Fyre Fest of the 2020 campaign.


Wellllllllllllllllllp. The 2020 campaign has officially begun, and it's not off to a great start.

The Iowa caucuses took place Monday night in 1,682 precincts around the state and 87 satellite locations around the country and the world. But, as the night wore on, it became clear that things weren't going quite as planned.

The Iowa Democratic Party revamped the process for 2020, taking a number of steps to make the caucuses more transparent and accessible, including a new app for precincts to report results. They did so after a contentious outcome in 2016, when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders finished neck and neck. But by late Monday, precinct chairs were struggling to report results to the party, and the party announced that the results would be delayed until sometime Tuesday.

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THE FBI’S CHINA OBSESSION

The U.S. Government Secretly Spied on Chinese American Scientists, Upending Lives and Paving the Way for Decades of Discrimination

Harry Sheng, a former mechanical engineer for Sparton Corporation, 

photographed in the 1960s. Photo: Courtesy of Ling Woo Liu

February 2 2020

IN 1973, Harry Sheng was working as a mechanical engineer for Sparton Corporation, a defense contractor in Jackson, Michigan, when his mother got sick back in China. Sheng was among thousands of ethnic Chinese scientists then living in the United States, the early pioneers in what would become a sizable swath of the American research force. A native of Jiangsu province and a naturalized U.S. citizen, he had left home just before Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, and he hadn’t seen his friends or relatives in China since. But now relations between the two countries were improving. In 1971, the U.S. pingpong team had toured the mainland, and the following year, President Richard Nixon had made the historic visit that restored contact between the countries’ leaders. Sheng had just started his job at Sparton, but he loved his mother dearly. He and his wife booked flights.

On Nixon’s trip, the two sides had agreed to set up exchanges in science, which, like pingpong, was seen as a way to improve ties between the United States and China. Washington hoped that rapprochement with China would destabilize the Communist-led independence forces the U.S. military was fighting in Vietnam and increase America’s leverage over the Soviet Union. For Chinese American scientists like Sheng, the thaw presented a simpler opportunity: a chance to return to their hometowns, eat their favorite foods, and hug the parents they had left behind decades earlier.

Sheng was a gentle man who collected coins in his spare time and never missed a church service. Before joining Sparton, he had worked for a decade for the defense contractor Lear Siegler, where he held a secret-level U.S. government security clearance. In 1972, he had been interviewed by an FBI agent in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for an undisclosed purpose. According to an FBI memo, Sheng “declared his anti-communist feelings, his love and patriotism for America” and “denied any contact between himself and Communist agents.” But after Sheng and his wife returned from their 1973 visit to China, the U.S. government’s scrutiny intensified. Agents from the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Defense grilled him about everything he had done on his sightseeing tour, he later said. Sparton inexplicably transferred him to a drafting position — a move that he perceived as a demotion — and then, in 1975, laid him off. He subsequently received two offers from other defense firms, Raytheon and Hazeltine, only to have them suddenly rescinded, he said. He never held a permanent position in his field again. 

Harry Sheng FBI Files FOIA OCR300DPI (2) 271 page


Sheng was baffled. He had served in the marines for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces in the Chinese Civil War, against Mao’s Liberation Army, and had no desire to live under Communist rule. The FBI sometimes investigated undocumented immigrants, including in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but Sheng had married a white woman from Iowa, and he knew few other Chinese Americans in the Grand Rapids area. Sheng flew the American flag outside his house, and in his encounters with federal agents, he had seemingly done everything right. In a 1973 interview, an FBI agent asked him what he would do if the Communists pressured his relatives living in China. Sheng replied that he would immediately report the matter to the FBI.

He spent years searching for answers, but he never got the one that would have explained all the undue scrutiny: He was one of what appear to have been hundreds of people surveilled under a previously unreported FBI program that targeted ethnic Chinese scientists and students living in the United States. Titled “Chinese Communist Contacts with Scientists in the U.S.” and listed under the umbrella “IS-CH,” or Internal Security-China, the classified program dates to the late 1960s, when Chinese weapons development spurred intense anxiety within the U.S. government. It continued until at least 1978. The program’s targets included several prominent scientists and scholars, most notably physicist Chang-Lin Tien, who later became chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.

Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI pursued a slew of misguided counterintelligence investigations, hounding civil rights activists, feminist groups, and left-leaning scholars. The bureau’s broader surveillance of scientists during the Cold War is well documented; among those targeted was theoretical physicist and Manhattan Project contributor Richard Feynman. The newly obtained documents show that alongside such efforts, the bureau singled out Chinese American scientists because of their ethnicity — and that it did so even after the Senate’s Church Committee, formed in 1975, exposed some of the most egregious intelligence abuses of the era, many involving government surveillance of Americans on U.S. soil.

Program documents that I obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, as well as the files of individual scientists who were surveilled, suggest a wide-ranging effort. They also show an early tendency within the U.S. national security establishment to assume that major scientific advances in China were the product of theft — a logic that would inform cases for decades to come. Zuoyue Wang, a historian at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona whose research focuses on U.S.-China scientific relations during the Cold War, said the documents show an inclination to assume that “American scientists with an immigrant background are the primary sources of illicit technological transfers,” when in reality the story of technological advancement is much more complex.

The program’s effects reverberate today, at a moment when combating economic espionage and scientific theft from China are among the FBI’s top priorities. Over the past decade, the Justice Department has brought dozens of cases involving ethnic Chinese scientists. It has also brought a number of cases against non-Chinese, most notably Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department, who was charged last week with making false statements in connection to grant money he received from the Chinese government. Critics allege that the broader campaign against intellectual property theft is often informed by the same thinking that drove the Chinese scientist program.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment about the program or about ongoing complaints of bias against Chinese Americans both within and outside the bureau.

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Migrants, refugees on Greece's Lesbos chant freedom in second day of protest

ATHENS (Reuters) - Hundreds of migrants rallied for a second day on the Greek island of Lesbos on Tuesday to demand the faster processing of asylum requests, while local residents staged a separate protest calling for the camps to close.

Riot police stand guard as refugees and migrants demonstrate outside the municipal theatre of the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, February 4, 2020. REUTERS/Elias Marcou

The migrants chanted “Freedom” and some held up a banner saying: “Our children are still alive”.

Riot police dispersed them without resorting to tough tactics, a Reuters witness said.

On Monday, police had fired teargas at protesters who marched from the congested migrant camps to the city of Mytilene. About 40 people were arrested.

Earlier on Tuesday, Lesbos residents rallied outside a government building to protest against having the camps on the island. A banner read “Lesbos is Greek land”.

Greece served as the gateway to the European Union for more than one million Syrian refugees and other migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond in 2015-2016.

The Aegean Islands, which are close to Turkey, have been struggling with a resurgence in refugee and migrant flows.

Lesbos’ main camp in Moria hosts more than five times its capacity. Aid groups have described living conditions in the camp as appalling.

A police official told Reuters more guards and riot police would be deployed on the island.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said on Tuesday the protests underscored the state’s duty to protect its citizens and the need to implement new policies.

Greece has adopted a tougher stance on migration since the conservative government led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came to power in July. The government wants to set up detentions centers and deport those whose asylum requests are being rejected.

“Some people may not like it but they need to understand it: The policy has changed,” Petsas told reporters.

Japanese robot could call last orders on human bartenders

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s first robot bartender has begun serving up drinks in a Tokyo pub in a test that could usher in a wave of automation in restaurants and shops struggling to hire staff in an aging society.

The repurposed industrial robot serves drinks in is own corner of a Japanese pub operated by restaurant chain Yoronotaki. An attached tablet computer face smiles as it chats about the weather while preparing orders.

The robot, made by the company QBIT Robotics, can pour a beer in 40 seconds and mix a cocktail in a minute. It uses four cameras to monitors customers to analyze their expressions with artificial intelligence (AI) software.

“I like it because dealing with people can be a hassle. With this you can just come and get drunk,” Satoshi Harada, a restaurant worker said after ordering a drink.

“If they could make it a little quicker it would be even better.”

Finding workers, especially in Japan’s service sector, is set to get even more difficult.
The government has eased visa restrictions to attract more foreign workers but companies still face a labor shortage as the population shrinks and the number of people over 65 increases to more than a third of the total.

Service companies that can’t relocate overseas or take advantage of automation are more vulnerable than industrial firms. In health care alone, Japan expects a shortfall of 380,000 workers by 2025.

Japan wants to use the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games beginning on July 27 to showcase service robot technology, with organizers planning to use robots built by Toyota Motor and Panasonic Corp to help visitors, workers and athletes.

The robot bartender trial at the pub, which employs about 30 people, will last two months after which Yoronotaki will assess the results.

“We hope it’s a solution,” Yoshio Momiya, a Yoronotaki manager, said as the robot bartender served drinks behind him.

“There are still a number of issues to work through, such as finding enough space for it, but we hope it will be something we can use.”

At about 9 million yen ($82,000), the robot cost as much as employing a human bartender for three years.

Hungarian teachers say new school curriculum pushes nationalist ideology

NATIONALISM IS FASCISM BY ANY OTHER NAME
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A Hungarian teachers’ union on Tuesday protested against a new school curriculum it says is designed by the ruling Fidesz party to promote its nationalist agenda and curb academic freedoms.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the leader of Fidesz, has often come under fire from the European Union and human rights groups for a range of policies they say harm democracy and the rule of law in Hungary.

In the education field, Orban has restricted the freedom of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and forced the Central European University to leave the country.

The Ministry of Human Resources announced the National Fundamental Curriculum (NAT) on Friday, specifying in detail the required material for study in elementary and secondary schools.

The Democratic Union of Teachers (PDSZ) called for protests against the changes, now cast in law.

“It is problematic when an educational framework is based on ideology rather than professional principles,” PDSZ said in a statement on its website. “It should be withdrawn.”

Teachers of history and literature issued separate statements complaining that the NAT favors nationalist authors and agendas.


For instance, the NAT names among what it considers the 10 most important Hungarian authors Ferenc Herczeg, who was an ardent supporter of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

It contains no mention of Hungary’s only Nobel-winning author, Imre Kertesz, who was honored in 2002 for his body of work on the human experience during the Holocaust.

“This curriculum expects a constant declaration of moral, ideological views,” wrote Gyorgy Fenyo, deputy director of the Association of Literature Teachers. “It leaves no freedom for thought but dictates what (we are meant to) think.”

“It... can only serve as a curriculum of a dictatorship,” he added.

Asked about the union’s criticism, a government spokesman said: “Hungary’s best experts prepared NAT after lengthy professional discussions.”

The human resources minister said on Monday Hungary had needed to update its school curriculum.

“Future generations can begin their lives leaning on a curriculum based on values and showing European, Hungarian values,” Miklos Kasler told state television.

Teachers protesting began to post photos on social media with the #noNAT hashtag and slogans such as “I will not teach fascism”.

German court rules medieval anti-Semitic sculpture can stay on church


A thirteenth century anti-Semitic sculpture is displayed at St. Marien church in Wittenberg, Germany, January 24, 2020. A court is expected to rule on a motion seeking the removal of the 700-year-old sculpture known as “Judensau” or Jew pig. It is one of around 20 such relics from the Middle Ages that still feature on churches across Germany and elsewhere in Europe. A sign underneath the plaque urges people to think about the anti-Semitism that prevailed at the time it was made. Picture taken January 24, 2020. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court on Tuesday ruled a 700-year-old anti-Semitic sculpture could stay on the exterior of a church in the city of Wittenberg, dismissing a claim by a member of the local Jewish community that it was defamatory and should be removed.
The court case comes amid a national debate in Germany about rising anti-Jewish hate, after an anti-Semitic gunman killed two people near a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle last year.

The “Judensau,” or “Jew pig”, on a wall of Wittenberg’s St Mary’s church is a reminder of widespread anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages. It depicts a rabbi lifting the tail of a sow and peeping at its behind, while Jewish children suckle on the animal.

Pigs are considered unclean in Judaism, which forbids both their rearing as well as pork consumption.

The Higher Regional Court in Naumburg ruled that displaying the “Judensau”, which is 4 meters from the ground did not constitute an offence.

“The sculpture in its current context has neither an insulting character, nor does it violate the plaintiff’s personal rights,” the judgment said.

Sigmount A. Koenigsberg of Berlin’s Jewish community said: “We don’t want this ‘Judensau’ to disappear. It should be on public display but not on the side of a church. It belongs in a museum alongside clear historical context about anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages.”

St. Mary’s Church said in a statement, that it acknowledged with sadness, that there were those who would feel hurt and offended by the sculpture. But it added that in 1988, in consultation with the Jewish community, it had created a site of remembrance incorporating the “Judensau”, a plaque on the ground beneath remembering the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, and an information board.

The court said the information board clearly stated that the parish “distanced itself from the persecution of Jews, the anti-Judaic writings of Martin Luther and the mocking aim of the defamatory sculpture”.

It was the second time in two years that a court has ruled against the removal of Wittenberg’s “Judensau”, one of about two dozen such sculptures from the Middle Ages that still feature on churches in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

The German government is trying to tame an alarming rise in anti-Semitism with stricter laws against hate speech online, tougher gun ownership rules and increased campaigns to raise awareness.

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Bombardier in talks to sell business-jet unit to Textron: WSJ
(Reuters) - Canada’s Bombardier Inc is in talks to sell its business-jet unit to U.S. maker of Cessna jets, Textron Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The move will help the struggling Canadian train and plane maker to pare billions of dollars in debt, the report said.

Bombardier’s shares have plunged more than 30% so far this year. On Jan. 16, company flagged a 2019 profit warning, citing problematic rail contracts, as well as warned of a potential write down in the value of a plane partnership with Europe’s planemaker Airbus.

Bombardier declined comment on the WSJ report, but a source familiar with the company’s thinking told Reuters it was holding talks over both rail and aviation assets to keep all its options open.

Acquiring Bombardier’s business jet unit would add the Global series of large-cabin aircraft to Textron’s portfolio, which mostly makes small- and medium-sized corporate planes.

Analysts have said that a deal would expand the U.S. company’s aircraft offerings, allowing it to offer a complete family of jets to a wider range of customers.


Textron declined to comment.

Shares of Textron rose more than 9%, while those of Bombardier’s were up over 10%.

Bolivian political camps struck as election race begins

FILE PHOTO: Bolivia's former President Evo Morales delivers a speech during a celebration of Bolivia's Plurinational State Foundation Day, in Buenos Aires, Argentina January 22, 2020. REUTERS/Mariana Greif

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia’s 2020 presidential election will be contested by eight candidates who registered by a Monday deadline to compete in the re-run of a fraught October ballot that sparked protests and led to the downfall of long-term leftist leader Evo Morales.

The May 3 election will see a fair share of controversy with caretaker President Jeanine Anez running despite criticism that she is overstepping her interim mandate, while Morales is eyeing a return from exile in Argentina to be candidate in the senate.

Conservative Anez, a former senator, will go head-to-head with a number of recent allies, including civic leader Luis Fernando Camacho, former President Jorge Tuto Quiroga and October runner-up Carlos Mesa.

They form a fragmented opposition against Morales’ own Movement for Socialism (MAS) party, which has former Economy Minister Luis Arce at the top of the ticket.

Anez, who took over in a political vacuum after the resignation of Morales and a number of his deputies in November, sparked a backlash from allies and opponents alike when she announced plans to run last month.

Morales is directing his party’s campaign from Argentina. MAS leads in recent polls against the divided opposition, but not by enough to avoid a second round run-off.

The country’s electoral tribunal still needs to formally rubber stamp the candidates as eligible to run, leaving a question mark over whether Morales will be allowed to be a candidate for the senate despite residing overseas.

The landlocked South American nation, which is grappling with economic slowdown, was plunged into political crisis last year over allegations of electoral fraud after Morales won an election handing him a fourth term in defiance of term limits.

Reporting by Daniel Ramos; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Richard Chang
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

U.S. deploys 'more survivable' submarine-launched low-yield nuclear weapon

THERE IS NO SUCH A THING AS A MORE SURVIVABLE NUCLEAR WEAPON

OR A SURVIVABLE NUCLEAR WAR
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department said on Tuesday the Navy had fielded a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, something the Pentagon believes is needed to deter adversaries like Russia but which critics say lowers the threshold for using nuclear weapons.

Low-yield nuclear weapons, while still devastating, have a strength of less than 20 kilotons. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, in August 1945, had about the same explosive power.

“This supplemental capability strengthens deterrence and provides the United States a prompt, more survivable low-yield strategic weapon,” John Rood, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in a statement.

“(It) supports our commitment to extended deterrence; and demonstrates to potential adversaries that there is no advantage to limited nuclear employment because the United States can credibly and decisively respond to any threat scenario,” Rood added.

A 2018 Pentagon document called for the military to expand its low-yield nuclear capability, saying the United States would modify a small number of submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads with low-yield options.

“The administration’s decision to deploy the W76-2 warhead remains a misguided and dangerous one. The deployment of this warhead does nothing to make Americans safer,” Democratic Representative Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

Arms control advocates and some lawmakers have argued that such low-yield weapons reduce the threshold for potentially using nuclear weapons and could make a nuclear conflict more likely. The United States already has air-launched, low-yield nuclear weapons and critics say that should be sufficient.

“President Trump now has a more usable nuclear weapon that is a dangerous ---30---- in search of a problem,” said Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association advocacy group.

The argument for these weapons is that larger nuclear bombs are so catastrophic that they would never be used, meaning they are not an effective deterrent. With less power and destruction, the low-yield option would potentially be more likely to be used, serving as an effective deterrent, military officials have said.

The Federation of American Scientists said last week that the Navy was scheduled to deploy the low-yield warhead on the USS Tennessee in the Atlantic Ocean.

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