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Today's News: January 15, 2020

World News

 

Entire Russian Govt Resigns After Putin State-of-Nation Address… Developing…

RT – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has announced that the entire government is resigning in a surprise statement released shortly after President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address.

Accepting the resignation, Putin thanked the ministers for their hard work and asked them to function as a caretaker government until a new one can be formed.

Medvedev and Putin had met for a work meeting to discuss the state-of-the-nation address earlier on Wednesday, the Kremlin said. Medvedev explained that the cabinet is resigning in accordance with Article 117 of the Russian Constitution, which states that the government can offer its resignation to the president, who can either accept or reject it.

During his speech, Putin said he intended to create the position of deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, which would be offered to Medvedev.

Medvedev’s move to the new role will mean Russia will have a new prime minister when a new government is formed.

Putin also proposed multiple amendments to Russia’s constitution. His proposals would entail “substantial changes” to the constitution as well as to the “entire balance of power, the power of the executive, the power of the legislature, the power of the judiciary,” Medvedev explained.

“In this context, it is obvious that, as the government, we must provide the president with a capability to make all decisions,” which are required to implement the proposed plan, Medvedev said announcing the en-masse resignation.

Medvedev became prime minister in 2012, after serving four years as president. He currently heads the ruling United Russia party.

 

U.S. News, Politics & Government

 

PELOSI NAMES IMPEACHMENT MANAGERS

Politico – Speaker Nancy Pelosi has appointed a team of seven House Democrats to serve as prosecutors in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

She named Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Val Demings (D-Fla.) and Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) as managers.

“What is at stake here is the Constitution of the United States. This is what an impeachment is about,” Pelosi said, flanked by her new managers, whose names had remained strictly secret.

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The House will vote on a resolution later Wednesday sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, the last major House act before the trial can begin.

Senators are expected to be sworn in this week but the trial won’t begin in earnest until Tuesday, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Pelosi made clear she hand-picked the Democrats who will present the strongest possible case against Trump — both substantively and procedurally — to the Senate. Leading the team will be Schiff, who was one of the main public faces of impeachment over the last four months.

“The emphasis is on litigators. The emphasis is on comfort level in the courtroom,” Pelosi said, explaining the team she assembled. “The emphasis is on making the strongest case to protect our Constitution.”

 

McConnell makes case for Trump acquittal ahead of trial

The Hill – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday ripped House Democrats and made the case for the upper chamber acquitting President Trump as he waits for the articles of impeachment to be transmitted.

McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, did not directly call for senators to vote to acquit Trump but argued that senators cannot follow the House’s lead and agree that the president deserves to be impeached and ultimately removed from office.

“Speaker Pelosi and the House have taken our nation down a dangerous road. If the Senate blesses this unprecedented and dangerous House process by agreeing that an incomplete case and subjective basis are enough to impeach a president, we will almost guarantee the impeachment of every future president,” McConnell said.

He added that the House impeachment inquiry was “the kind of anti-democratic recall measure that the founding fathers explicitly, explicitly did not want.”

 

1,000 Honduran migrants preparing new US-bound caravan

AFP – Close to 1,000 people have gathered in Honduras’ second city forming a migrant caravan that will soon head for the United States, a human rights activist told AFP.

Thousands of Central American migrants have been braving the risk of extortion, kidnap and even murder as they flee poverty and gang violence in their homelands in a bid to reach the American dream, much to the annoyance of US President Donald Trump.

“Right now we’re close to 1,000 people but there are buses arriving from different parts of the country,” Bartolo Fuentes, a journalist, human rights defender and former lawmaker told AFP on Tuesday night.

The government accused him of organizing the first such caravan in October 2018, a charge he denies.

Under a light drizzle, men women and children congregated in parks and the central metro station in the city of San Pedro Sula, around 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

Would be migrants, “mostly from rural areas,” according to Fuentes, were alerted to the caravan through social media, which was then picked up by television channels.

 

Senate Democrats Vow to Force Vote on Pentagon Funds Transfers for Border Wall

Sputnik – US Senate Democrats said in a statement on Wednesday that they will fight President Donald Trump’s plans to divert funds from the Defense Department’s budget to build a wall on the border with Mexico by forcing a vote to terminate the president’s national emergency declaration that makes such transfers possible.

“We… will force yet another vote to terminate the President’s sham national emergency declaration and return these much-needed military construction funds back to our military,” the statement said.

Democrats pointed out in the statement that Trump is intending to rob the Defense Department of the much-needed funds in order to boost his own ego to build a border wall that he initially promised Mexico would pay for.

 

This contractor says he can build border wall faster and cheaper than govt can…

LA Times – President Trump took office vowing to build “a big, beautiful wall” along the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but so far the federal government has managed to build only about one mile of new border wall.

Texas may be the biggest obstacle. Unlike in other states, most of the United States borderland in Texas is privately owned, which has delayed construction by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal lawyers have had to comb property records, track down landowners, make offers to buy the land and — if owners refuse to sell — file lawsuits to seize the land.

Tommy Fisher, a contractor with a Trump-like knack for dealmaking, says he can do much better.

His company has built around 1,500 feet of what it says will be a three-mile fence. The cost, he estimates, will be $42 million, faster and cheaper than government contractors who have spent months surveying and building more expensive border fences nearby. The estimated time of completion: two weeks.

Fisher, 50, said he hopes to sell or lease his section of the fence to the federal government, and to persuade them to contract with him to build more. Already, he has bought a hundred miles of land elsewhere along the river in Texas from about two dozen private owners. He has also attracted fierce criticism — and a federal audit.

“We’ll protect southern Texas faster than they ever dreamed,” he said Tuesday, as he helped workers pour concrete and place 18-foot steel bollards along the banks of the Rio Grande, a few miles west of the border city of McAllen. So far, they’ve built about 1,500 feet.

 

Sanders, Warren clash over USMCA trade deal at debate

Fox – Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts see eye to eye on many issues, but their sharp differences on a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico grabbed prime-time attention during Tuesday’s debate.

At issue was the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a renegotiation of the quarter-century-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The new deal – known as the USMCA – was negotiated by the Trump administration. A revised deal was overwhelming approved last month in a bipartisan vote by the House of Representatives.

 

Economy & Business

 

Bezos promises $1 billion in bid to see off Indian e-commerce storm

AFP – Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos promised Wednesday a new billion-dollar investment in India, just two days after authorities launched an anti-trust investigation into the e-commerce giant.

A three-day visit by Bezos, whose worth has been estimated at more than $110 billion, sparked protests in New Delhi and other cities by traders who accuse Amazon and its main US-owned rival Flipkart of killing off India’s army of street traders.

Bezos, who has spent heavily to make his company an e-commerce titan in the world’s second most-populous nation, sought to head off critics by promising one billion dollars to digitise small and medium-sized Indian businesses.

“We will use our global footprint to export $10 billion worth of ‘Make in India’ products across the world by 2025,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign to boost national production.

Bezos highlighted India’s growing importance, saying “the 21st century will be the Indian century” and that the US-India alliance will be the most important.

Amazon and Flipkart — founded in India but taken over by Walmart in 2018 for $16 billion — face increasing scrutiny and resentment despite their popularity among customers.

The Competition Commission of India announced Monday that it was investigating both companies over accusations they undermine traditional traders by favouring “preferred sellers” on their platforms.

 

Federal Spending Sets Record $1.16 Billion in First 3 Months of Fiscal Year 2020

CNSNews – The federal government spent a record $1,163,090,000,000 in the first three months of fiscal 2020 (October through December), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released Monday afternoon.

That was up $48,008,200,000 from the $1,115,081,800,000 (in constant December 2019 dollars) that the federal government spent in the first three months of fiscal 2019.

While spending a record amount of money in the first quarter of fiscal 2020, total federal tax collections were only the third highest in the nation’s history.

 

Science & Technology

 

Brave New World Of Retail: WALMART Robots Just Beginning

Forbes –  It’s a refrain heard repeatedly at this week’s National Retail Federation trade show and convention: Let the robots do what they do best, and free up human employees to do what they do best.

And the retail industry has decided that what robots do best (and what humans are bad at) is spotting when bottles of shampoo are sold out, or cans of soup are in the wrong place, and keeping track of when store shelves need to be replaced.

A clear sign that shelf-scanning robots and other automated inventory tracking systems have reached the tipping point came Monday with the news that Walmart is expanding its use of shelf-scanning robots to another 650 of its stores, bringing the number of robot-assisted Walmart stores to 1,000.

That news gave Bossa Nova, the robotics and retail tech company supplying Walmart’s robots, a boost at the trade show, where it was demonstrating its robots.

A number of other companies at the show also were showing off their versions of scanning robots, including Badger Technologies, a division of tech corporation Jabil; and Savioke, which has partnered with Brain Corp to add shelf-scanning capabilities to its floor cleaning and hospitality robots.

 

Health

 

FDA Approving New Drugs Faster, With Less Testing

Newsmax – New drugs are being approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for patients based on less and less solid evidence, thanks to incentive programs that have been created to promote drug development, a new study shows.

Researchers report that more than 8 out of 10 new drugs in 2018 benefitted from at least one special program that streamlines the approval process.

The result is that patients are being prescribed pricey new medications that have not been tested as rigorously, said lead researcher Jonathan Darrow, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

“The evidence standards have changed, but it’s not clear that physicians, let alone patients, understand either the basic FDA approval standard or that requirements have become increasingly flexible over the past 40 years,” Darrow said.

The share of new drugs supported by two strong clinical trials, rather than just one, decreased from 81% to 53% between the 1990s and the 2010s, researchers found.

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