DECEMBER 20, 2018

NEWS AND VIEWS

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46639099
Gatwick airport: How countries counter the drone threat
20 December 2018
Related Topics -- Gatwick drone shutdown

PA
Image caption -- London's Gatwick Airport was forced to close after drones were spotted over the airfield

Rogue drones "deliberately" flown over one of the UK's busiest airports have caused travel chaos for tens of thousands of passengers - because of the potential risk of a collision with other aircraft.

Incoming planes have been forced to divert to airports up and down the country as the drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have repeatedly appeared over the airfield at London's Gatwick Airport.

The situation is so serious that the Army has been called in to support the local police in tackling the issue.

For some time now, governments around the world have been looking at different ways of addressing the dangers of drone use in areas where they pose safety risks. Here we look at some of the solutions - ranging from bazookas to eagles.

Gatwick Airport: Drones ground flights
How can a drone cause so much chaos?
Bans and restrictions
While it is illegal to fly a drone within 1km of an airport or airfield boundary in the UK, regulations in other countries vary.

For example, drone users in the US have to notify air traffic control in advance if they plan to fly their devices within 8km of an airport. All drones must also be registered, according to the drone community website UAV Coach.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
In Canada, drones cannot be flown within 5.6km of any airport, seaplane base or area where aircraft can take off and land. This is reduced to 1.9km for heliports. Similar laws apply in Sweden.

Permits are also required in Germany - although the restrictions for airport boundaries are similar to those the UK, at 1.5km - and Spain, where devices must also be insured.

Laws in South Africa, however, are strict. It is illegal to fly a device within 10km of an airport, helipad or airstrip, and they can only be operated elsewhere during daylight hours and in clear conditions.

Radar and 'jamming' systems
Rogue drones can be detected or located using cameras, radar and radio frequency sensors.

Such technology can be integrated into existing airport systems and can have a reach of several miles.

It can then be used to effectively "jam" the communication between a device and its operator, causing it to initiate a default mode that sends it back to where it came from.

Fighting back against rogue drones
One company that has developed this method is Quantum Aviation, which provided the technology to counter possible threats from drones targeting the London 2012 Olympics.

China has also developed a signal-jamming gun that can reportedly down drones from half a mile away.

Shoulder-mounted 'guns'
One way, and perhaps the most obvious, is to shoot them down.

But police dealing with the issue at Gatwick Airport have said they will not use this method because of the risk of stray bullets.

However, a number of companies have produced hand-held or shoulder-mounted devices that can be used to fire nets at rogue drones, trapping them and preventing the blades from rotating, causing them to fall from the sky.

British engineering company OpenWorks has also developed a large bazooka, the SkyWall100, which fires a net and parachute at a target, using a scope for accuracy.

Image copyrightOPENWORKS
Image caption -- The SkyWall100 bazooka allows users to physically seize drones in high-risk areas
The SkyWall100 system has been issued to security forces and government agencies in Asia, Europe and North America.

Security firms have also found a way of using "interceptor drones" that can lock onto a target, release a net and disable it in mid-air.

This type of system was deployed at the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, and has been used by police in Tokyo for the last three years.

France has also used this technique, successfully demonstrating that one drone equipped with a net can catch another.

Anti-drone lasers
Lasers are another option and both the US and China have experimented with technology that can shoot down a device within seconds of locating it.

Engineering company Boeing has developed a high-energy beam that locates and disables small drones from several miles away. It is said to use infrared cameras that can work in low visibility, such as fog.

Earlier this year, China demonstrated a laser gun at a weapons exhibition in Kazakhstan. The so-called "Silent Hunter" was claimed to be effective in helping police intercept drones and other small aerial targets with "high accuracy".

Specially trained eagles
Meanwhile, the Netherlands has discovered a low-tech solution to the high-tech problem.

Police there have trained eagles to bring down "hostile" drones by latching on to the propellers with their talons, instantly disabling them.

Trainers say the eagles see the drones as prey and are not interested in attacking anything else when released.

Dutch police are believed to be the first in the world to have implemented this method.


Media captionDutch police train eagles to take down unauthorised drones
Related Topics


MO POWER, MO POWER, MO POWER! FAIR IS UNFAIR!

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan/articles/2018-12-21/michigan-gop-lawmakers-pass-bills-before-dem-governor-starts
Michigan GOP Lawmakers Pass Bills Before Dem Governor Starts
Michigan Republicans have voted to give themselves a power to intervene in court cases that now is reserved for the state attorney general.
BY DAVID EGGERT, Associated Press
Dec. 21, 2018, at 12:35 a.m.

PHOTOGRAPH -- Sen Pat Colbeck, R-Canton is stocked-up with popcorn, but holds his head in his hands, facing a long night as the Michigan senate considers a flurry of bills on what should be the last day of the "lame duck" session, Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018. (Dale G. Young/Detroit News via AP) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Republicans have voted to give themselves a power to intervene in court cases that now is reserved for the state attorney general.

It is the latest measure pushed through a lame-duck period that critics say would weaken the power of Democrats or voters. Bleary-eyed lawmakers remain in session overnight in the final hours of voting, before a Democratic governor takes over in January.

The bill is criticized by opponents as an attempt to undercut Dana Nessel, who will be the first Democratic attorney general in 16 years. Republicans deny the allegation, saying the legislation would ensure that the legislative branch has a voice as more laws are challenged in the courts.

Another item on the GOP agenda is a bill that would toughen rules for citizen-initiated ballot drives.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


THE GATHERING IN BURLINGTON

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/yes-bernie-should-run-771260/
Yes, Bernie Should Run
You have to be crazy to take on the donors who run Washington. Bernie Sanders doesn’t care
By MATT TAIBBI
DECEMBER 19, 2018 3:20PM ET

PHOTOGRAPH -- Sen. Bernie Sanders
Alex Edelman/Getty Images

It had the vibe of a campaign event, even if it wasn’t one.

A few hundred of America’s highest-profile liberal politicians, academics and journalists, many of them old friends — a “progressive Bar Mitzvah,” as one friend jokingly put it — met on a crisp Thursday night in late November in Burlington, Vermont, at an event hosted by Jane Sanders.

The wife of the Vermont Senator shows an excitement, even ebullience, about the possibilities of politics that her relentlessly on-message husband often does not. Jane beamed as the likes of Cornel West* and Danny Glover filed into a lakefront museum to kick off a three-day event hosted by her Sanders Institute, bearing the Game of Thrones-style title, “The Gathering.”

Simon Sinek*, a British-American motivational speaker, was the first to address the crowd.

Sinek’s presence threw me a little. Ten years ago I could never have imagined a TED Talker and Bernie Sanders sharing the same stage. Frankly, having any planned introduction at all was sort of not-Bernie.

The way he announced for president the last time — impromptu, on a random strip of grass a dozen yards from the Capitol, after having a request for a bit of space in the dusty DNC headquarters rejected — was pure Sanders. This politician does not have a comfortable relationship with fanfare.

Sinek led off with a war metaphor. He asked the crowd why America lost in Vietnam, despite winning almost every battle and suffering a fraction of the casualties.

“Because the Americans were fighting to win,” Sinek said. “The Vietnamese were fighting for their lives.”

This line drew cheers. This turned into a theme of the conference, that in the age of Trump, with climate change just one of a dozen dire emergencies spiraling out of control, there’s no more “next time.”

“I have two kids, and they’re going to fucking die if we don’t fix all this. That’s how I look at it,” is how Heidi Harmon, the colorful mayor of San Luis Obispo, put it.

The core argument of progressives who recently elected the likes of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib to Congress is that canonical modern-Democrat precepts like the Third Way, “transactional politics” and triangulation — which focus narrowly on the how of winning elections — no longer work, in addition to being wrong.

They instead believe they must win the battles and the war, on issues like global warming, health care and economic inequality, not later but now. For a hundred reasons, it has to be now.

The latest iteration of the progressive movement is young (data suggested last time around that more young people voted for Sanders in the primary than for Trump and Clinton combined), but its leader is not.

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Right after the midterms, there were whispers that Sanders might announce anytime, perhaps even there in Vermont. Maybe even that night?

He was introduced by West.

“My love for this brother runs deep, even when I think he’s wrong,” West said, adding that Sanders was “still bearing witness to poor and working people.”

He motioned for Bernie to come onstage. The two embraced with the mother of all awkward Bern hugs, then Sanders faced the crowd. It was a Mrs. Robinson moment: look around and all you see are sympathetic eyes. Bernie paused, gathered himself, and said — exactly the same things he’s been saying, for as long as anyone here could remember.

He blasted the “corporate-owned Congress.” He took a shot at the media (he was doing this long before Trump) for ignoring “a word that is never heard on TV — It’s called poverty.”

My notes indicate he uttered to cheers the phrase, “handful of corrupt companies,” which could have come from any Sanders speech at any time in the last 30 years.

I exhaled in relief. The one thing you can never know about a politician is how they’ll respond to increased attention. Sanders as recently as 2015 was such an unknown that 76 percent of American voters had no opinion of him. He seemed comfortable in that role.

That number is down to 9 percent today. After seizing 43 percent of the Democratic vote in the 2016 primaries and winning high-profile battles against companies like Amazon and Disney to raise their workers’ minimum wages to $15 an hour, Sanders in some circles is something it would have been hard to imagine him being years ago: a celebrity.

But if Sanders himself has processed this, it’s not obvious. What’s both maddening and endearing about him as a politician is that he never changes. There are slight stylistic compromises he could probably make to sell himself a little better by traditional metrics, but he doesn’t do it. Which, frankly, is funny.

It’s also what makes him interesting, and a virtual lock to lead, as perhaps the last major act of his unusual career, a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party in 2020. The only question is, will he do it as a presidential candidate, or in some other capacity?

The Democratic political establishment has made its views on this subject very clear. The Washington Post last year basically ran an article calling Sanders the Kremlin candidate. Other op-eds in major outlets keep warning that a repeat Sanders run would somehow drive the Democratic Party into an unelectability ditch at the exact moment it needs to be unified to oust Donald Trump.

Even someone I know and like, Hamilton Nolan at Splinter, recently ran a BERNIE DON’T RUN article. Nolan noted Sanders was “old as hell” and could shave off enough progressive votes to push the Democrats toward a “nightmare candidate” like Mike Bloomberg or Mark Cuban if he ran.

I disagree. We’ve been so trained to think about how other people might vote down the line that we forget: Our long-term thinking about elections is often wrong. Even Sanders himself didn’t see the last election coming.

IN BURLINGTON, where Sanders has become a larger than life figure – both revered and much groused about, like a State Dad – almost everyone seems to know him. A shockingly high percentage of people you meet can do expert Sanders impersonations. I met a kid who did a whole routine imagining Bernie gesticulating his way through a complex order at an Arby’s drive-thru.

Many Vermonters are personally familiar with the Bern Stare, that disapproving look you get when you ask Bernie a question he considers frivolous. In off years, the presidential question summons the Stare faster than any other. He’s spent the past two years going full Belichick* on any reporter who even hinted about 2020.

He still hasn’t said anything concrete, not even, seemingly, to those close to him. Although the New York Times reported last week that he and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren met and both are “probably” running, there’s been no announcement.

As Rolling Stone reported, a draft movement led by 2016 campaign staffers has been set up, but Sanders himself hasn’t acknowledged it.

Still, Sanders almost has to decide soon. Neither he nor his wife (the Gathering “was a launch for Jane, too,” is how one attendee put it) can escape the fact that they’ve become not only synonymous with a larger movement, but one that likely preceded them.

When Sanders launched his longshot “send-a-message” campaign in 2015, he and his skeleton staff were stunned in early visits to places like Denver, Madison and Portland, Maine, to be met by overflowing crowds, in some cases so big they had to quickly rebook bigger arenas.

They had to adjust on the fly to the realization that something significant was going on with voters across the political spectrum. The self-proclaimed socialist from a tiny dairy state who railed against corporate excess and money in politics in relative obscurity for decades was about to be carried to national prominence by a surprise wave of outrage and impatience.

Sanders was benefiting from the same electoral shifts that prompted the Great Punditry Miss of the last election. High priests of conventional wisdom spent much of 2015 prepping for another Bush-Clinton general election, blowing off — to catastrophic effect — clear evidence of voter revolts in both parties.

The oversights were more graphic on the Republican side. Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com swore Donald Trump would play in the NBA finals before winning the nomination. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post similarly promised to (and later did) physically eat his own column if Trump became the nominee.

What they missed was that the electorate in America had transformed in a fundamental way. By 2016, the worst thing to be in the eyes of a huge plurality of voters was a representative of the political establishment, meaning especially the two major parties, corporate donors and the national media.

Being on the wrong side of those groups, which Sanders was, was suddenly an electoral plus.

The phenomenon was tied to decades of voter frustration over everything from war to trade to health care to the role of money in politics, and remains poorly understood by politicians, business leaders and editorialists at major daily newspapers, who have never been able to come to terms with the roots of their own unpopularity.

It’s possible the Democratic brand has been rehabilitated in the public’s eyes since 2016, and a combination of a new candidate, better tactics and voter experience of two years of a Trump presidency would spell victory for any Democrat in 2020.

It’s also possible this is not the case, however, and the absence of someone like Sanders in the race would mean surrendering all that populist anger out there into Trump’s cynical hands, again.

Campaign reporters constantly make the mistake of thinking politicians are causes, not effects. They’ve been trained to think of candidates as consumer creations that succeed or fail on the strength of concept (and if not the concept, the execution).

Bill Clinton is the sui generis* of Third-Way-ism, a southerner who offered a mix of aw-shucks stump charisma, fiscal conservatism and a whiff of post-Sixties social liberalism. His 1992 run perfectly executed the plan for victory that folks in the Democratic Leadership Council dreamed might work, after the catastrophe of Walter Mondale in 1984. Offer voters the right political product, they thought, and they will buy.

But in the real world, these things can work backwards. The 2016 electorate was so profoundly dissatisfied with the usual choices that when Donald Trump slipped in the polls briefly in late October and early November of 2015, the immediate beneficiaries were two other non-politicians, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.

Pundits had been predicting that a Pat Buchanan-style protest curiosity like Trump would sooner or later fade, and he did. But he didn’t stay “faded,” among other things because 2016 Republican voters could not and would not consider any establishment alternative, not even fringy, mean ones like Ted Cruz.

Sometimes voters go through drastic changes of mind before parties even have a chance to offer them choices. After years of not embracing big shifts, they may suddenly decide they want universal health care, free college tuition, a slashed defense budget, a national minimum wage, and other sweeping ideas.

Other younger politicians may end up offering those same things, which would be great. But with Sanders, voters burned by past broken promises have probably guessed by now he’s constitutionally incapable of deviating from his platform. I don’t even think Sanders would know how to betray his own ideas for political gain.

About that: He was roundly mocked in 2016 for describing his campaign as a revolution, but as the policy discussions at the Gathering showed, his platform is actually revolutionary, in a specific way.

UMass-Amherst economist Robert Pollin appeared to unveil a massive plan to cost out the Medicare-for-All proposal Sanders is likely to spend the next years stumping.

Pollin’s plan is to reduce medical costs in America from 18 percent of GDP to between 9-11 percent, using a single-payer plan that mainly targets the waste in the system (read: corporate profits). He addressed the “biggest insurance companies in America,” saying half-wryly, half sternly: “We’re going to put you out of business.”

Sanders is no Lenin or Trotsky. He doesn’t want to overthrow free enterprise or establish a national ice cream. But the movement he and his wife are leading has goals that are genuinely threatening to the traditional funders of presidential campaigns of both parties in America: banks, defense contractors, pharmaceutical and energy companies, etc.

Sanders and co. hope to plow the proceeds of these conquests into an FDR-scaled “Green New Deal,” aimed at a fundamental transformation of the country’s transportation, housing, energy and agricultural systems.

It’s ambitious and drastically different from what Democratic voters have been offered by any viable candidate for a while. If voters aren’t behind such a program, that’s what primary seasons are for, finding that out. If they are, however, it would be a huge error not to have someone in the running backing it.

IN THE mid-2000s, then-congressman Sanders invited me to tag along to work in the House for nearly a month. He explained he wanted national audiences to know how money-dominated and dysfunctional our national legislature could be.

I found him odd at first. Sanders almost never asked to go off the record, and he seemed so indifferent to how some of his more blunt observations about his workplace might play in print that I wondered at first if there might be something wrong with him.

It took a while to realize that Sanders simply is who he appears to be. There’s no second-level calculation there, no chilled-out off-duty version who stops babbling about public heating oil programs or VA coverage once you turn off the recorder.

This makes him odd, and an abject fail according to the “candidate you want to have a beer with” standard, but it doesn’t make him dishonest, a fact voters picked up on four years ago. It’s one of the reasons why the septuagenarian did well with young people, and why he currently polls better with nonwhite voters than white ones, despite legends to the contrary.

This is why cynics always respond negatively to Sanders. In their world he doesn’t compute at all, so they keep inventing angles to explain him: he’s an “egomaniac,” or in it for personal gain somehow (“He has three houses!”), or a delusional bumbler out to poison the electorate with irresponsible and unrealistic expectations.

As to that last point: Sanders in 2015-2016 went from harmless, terminally ignored fringe-left curiosity to despised, possibly Russian-backed Hillary Spoiler virtually overnight. He’s probably second only to Trump as a target of press and social media invective, which paints him as a racist, socialist serpent in the fallen Eden of the should-have been Clinton presidency.

Some of this negativity is predictable, given that the Sanders platform would massively disenfranchise the traditional financial backers of the modern Democratic Party: Wall Street, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, Silicon Valley, lobbyists and corporate law firms, etc.

Whether it’s now or later, whoever takes on those interests is going to take a hell of a beating. That Sanders seems willing to be that person seems reason enough to embrace another run. Someone has to take up those fights eventually. It might be a while before anyone else volunteers for the job.

In This Article: 2020 election, Bernie Sanders


Cornel West* --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_West

Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, author, and public intellectual.[2][3] The son of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness". A radical democrat and democratic socialist,[4][5] West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the black church, Marxism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism.[6][7][8][9] Among his most influential books are Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004).

West is an outspoken voice in left-wing politics in the United States, and as such has been critical of members of the Democratic Party, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.[10][11][12] He has held professorships at Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Pepperdine University, Union Theological Seminary, and the University of Paris during his career. He is also a frequent commentator on politics and social issues in many media outlets.[13]

From 2010 through 2013, West co-hosted a radio program with Tavis Smiley, called Smiley and West.[14][15] He has also been featured in several documentaries, and made appearances in Hollywood films such as The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, providing commentary for both films. West has also made several spoken word and hip hop albums, and due to his work, has been named MTV's Artist of the Week.[16] He has also been portrayed on Saturday Night Live by Kenan Thompson.[17]

Early life
West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma,[18] and grew up in Sacramento, California, where he graduated from John F. Kennedy High School. His mother, Irene (Bias), was a teacher and principal, and his father, Clifton Louis West Jr., was a general contractor for the Defense Department.[19] Irene B. West Elementary School in Elk Grove, California, is named for his mother.[20]

As a young man, West marched in civil rights demonstrations and organized protests demanding black studies courses at his high school, where he was class president. He later wrote that, in his youth, he admired "the sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party, and the livid black theology of James H. Cone."[21]

In 1970, after graduating from high school, he enrolled at Harvard College and took classes from philosophers Robert Nozick and Stanley Cavell. In 1973, West graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in Near Eastern languages and civilization.[22] He credits Harvard with exposing him to a broader range of ideas, influenced by his professors as well as the Black Panther Party. West says his Christianity prevented him from joining the BPP, instead choosing to work in local breakfast, prison, and church programs.[23] After completing his undergraduate work at Harvard, West enrolled at Princeton University where he received a Ph.D in 1980, becoming the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D. in philosophy.[24] At Princeton, West was heavily influenced by Richard Rorty's neopragmatism.[25] Rorty remained a close friend and colleague of West's for many years following West's graduation. The title of West's dissertation was Ethics, historicism and the Marxist tradition,[26] which was later revised and published under the title The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought.[25]

sui generis* –

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sui%20generis
sui generis adjective
: constituting a class alone : UNIQUE, PECULIAR

English contains many terms that ultimately trace back to the Latin forms gener- or "genus" (which are variously translated as "birth," "race," "kind," and "class"). Offspring of those roots include "general," "generate," "generous," "generic," "degenerate," and "gender." But "sui generis" is truly a one-of-a-kind "gener-" descendant that English speakers have used for singular things since the late 1600s. Its earliest uses were in scientific contexts, where it identified substances, principles, diseases, and even rocks that were unique or that seemed to be the only representative of their class or group. By the early 1900s, however, "sui generis" had expanded beyond solely scientific contexts, and it is now used more generally for anything that stands alone.


Simon Sinek*

SINEK IS VERY CHARMING AND HANDSOME IN A SCHOLARLY WAY. HE’S A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER, AND HIS APPROACH IS ANALYTICAL AND EXPLANATORY RATHER THAN BOMBASTIC. I ENJOYED HEARING HIM TALK IN THIS YOUTUBE INTERVIEW. SEE WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT HIM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sinek
Early life and education

Sinek was born in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom and as a child lived in Johannesburg, South Africa, London, and Hong Kong before settling in the United States. He graduated from Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest in 1991.[3] He studied law at London's City University and received a BA in cultural anthropology from Brandeis University.[4]

Sinek has written five books. His first book, Start With Why, was published October 2009. His second book, called Leaders Eat Last, appeared on the best seller lists of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.[4]

As a motivational speaker, Sinek has given talks at The UN Global Compact Leaders Summit,[5][third-party source needed] and at the TED conference.[6]

In June 2018, The Young Turks reported a $98,000 no-bid contract from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for "customized Simon Sinek leadership training" to take place between April 26 and May 15 2018.[7]

Sinek is also an instructor of Strategic Communications for Master's students at Columbia University[8], and is an adjunct staff member of the RAND Corporation[9].


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU
Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace


BERNIE WILL SOMETIMES “GO FULL BELICHICK*” –

BILL BELICHICK (I JUST WATCHED HIS VIDEO HERE TO LEARN ABOUT HIM) IS AN INTERESTING GUY, AND BERNIE REALLY IS A LOT LIKE HIM SOMETIMES. WATCH THIS VIDEO. BELICHICK’S SPEECH IS SO UNDERSTATED, HIS THINKING SO METHODICAL AND PRACTICAL THAT IT MAKES CONSIDERABLE SENSE. HE WAS ASKED WHAT HE WOULD DO NEXT WHEN HIS TEAM LOST, AND HE SAID WE’LL GO BACK TO WORK.” THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE TO DO AS PEOPLE, OVER AND OVER. IT’S WORK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3oU5P1oF20
"We're going to go back to work and get ready for Buffalo"

MORE BILGEWATER (ONE OF THESE DAYS I'M GOING TO HAVE TO LOOK THAT WORD UP IN MERRIAM WEBSTERS TO SEE WHETHER OR NOT IT IS DIRTY, RATHER THAN SIMPLY FUNNY-SOUNDING. I USE IT BECAUSE IT IS AN ENTERTAINING WORD.)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/house-passes-stopgap-funding-bill-5-billion-trump-s-border-n950666
House passes stopgap funding bill with $5 billion for Trump's border wall, at odds with Senate
The vote comes after the president said Thursday he would not sign a spending measure that does not include money for a border wall.
Dec. 20, 2018 / 7:59 PM EST / Updated Dec. 20, 2018 / 9:24 PM EST
By Rebecca Shabad and Doha Madani

Photograph -- Republican Speaker of the House from Wisconsin Paul Ryan, from center, leaves the House floor as lawmakers prepare to vote on a new budget resolution to avert a government shutdown at the US Capitol on December 20, 2018.Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA

WASHINGTON — The House passed a stopgap measure Thursday night to fund the government that includes $5 billion for a border wall sought by President Donald Trump. The bill is expected to be rejected in the Senate, and does little to prevent a shutdown on Saturday.

The vote of 217 to 185 on Thursday night puts the House at odds with the Senate, which on Wednesday night passed a funding bill that does not include border wall money.

The Senate will now have to consider the House version before midnight Friday to avert a partial government shutdown, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaled to members to be ready for a possible vote on Friday at noon.

Democrats, however, will most certainly block the measure in the Senate. With 60 votes needed to advance an appropriations bill to a final vote, Republican senators need Democratic votes to make it over that threshold.

Schumer: Trump 'plunging the country into chaos'
DEC. 20, 201805:31

If and when the Senate rejects the House measure, it’s unclear how House GOP leaders plan to proceed. Their only viable options on Friday are either to pass the so-called “clean” spending bill already passed by the Senate or to let the government shut down as Trump recently said he would be “proud” to do.

The House’s approval of billions for border security comes after Trump said Thursday he would not sign a short-term spending bill that did not include such funding.

“Any measure that funds the government has to include border security — not for political purposes, but for our country,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments came after an emergency meeting earlier Thursday at the White House with top House GOP leaders and several conservatives, including House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio, a former Freedom Caucus chairman.

The House’s continuing resolution, which would fund the government until Feb. 8, also includes $8 billion for disaster relief.

Recommended -- Founder of viral fundraiser for Trump's border wall has questionable news past

On the wall, Trump caved first to the 'swamp,' then to the base

The House vote Thursday comes after Democratic leaders had repeatedly told Trump that a bill with $5 billion in border-wall funding couldn’t pass either chamber of Congress.

Trump and Congress must come to agreement on a funding bill by Friday night, or parts of the federal government will shut down Saturday. That would mark the third time this year that the government has at least partially shut down.

The president has been scheduled to leave Washington for a 16-day vacation to Mar-a-Lago in Florida, but White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Thursday night that he would remain in the capital if a shutdown occurs.

If the shutdown lasts until the new year, House Democrats, who are set to take the majority on Jan. 3, will have to come to a deal with a Republican president and GOP-controlled Senate on reopening the government.

Meanwhile, Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., criticized the vote in a Twitter post late Thursday, questioning how the GOP "discovers $5.7 billion for a wall."

"What if we instead added $5.7B in teacher pay?" Ocasio-Cortez wrote. "Or replacing water pipes? Or college tuition/prescription refill subsidies? Or green jobs? But notice how no one’s asking the GOP how they're paying for it."

Rebecca Shabad reported from Washington, and Doha Madani reported from New York

Rebecca Shabad
Rebecca Shabad is a congressional reporter for NBC News, based in Washington.

Doha Madani
Doha Madani is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.


IS THIS HOW THE WORLD WORKS? I’M AFRAID IT IS.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46639187
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: Argentina ex-president faces trial
DECEMBER 21, 2018 7 hours ago

PHOTOGRAPH -- Cristina Fernández de Kirchner denies all the charges AFP

Argentina's former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is to go on trial for corruption, a federal court has ruled.

She is accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes over a 12-year period in what has become known as the "corruption notebooks" scandal.

Ms Fernández, who is now a senator, denies any wrongdoing and claims the charges are politically motivated.

She has immunity from imprisonment, but not prosecution.

Three of her homes were raided in August as part of the criminal investigation.

Image copyrightAFP
Image caption -- Police outside one of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's homes in Santa Cruz Province in Patagonia

Ms Fernández, 65, is accused of being at the centre of a massive corruption racket that allegedly saw millions of dollars in bribes paid by businessmen to government officials.

The allegations stem from a batch of records kept by Oscar Centeno, a driver for a public works official, between 2005 and 2015.

In the notebooks, Mr Centeno writes about delivering bags of cash from construction bosses to government officials, which prosecutors say totalled some $160m (£125m).

Mr Centeno's notebooks include a reference to money exchanging hands at the home shared by Ms Fernández and her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, as well as the presidential residence and government headquarters. However, none of this has been proved.

More than a dozen people, including businessmen and former government officials, were arrested after the notebooks were handed to authorities by La Nación newspaper earlier this year. They are also due to stand trial.

Ms Fernández served as president for two consecutive terms, from 2007 to 2015, having succeeded her husband who was president from 2003 to 2007. He died in 2010.


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