The Senate voted Wednesday to acquit … Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, ending a historic Senate trial that was centered on his conduct toward Ukraine but that did not include live witnesses or new documents.
One Republican — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — crossed party lines to join Democrats in voting to convict Trump on the first charge, abuse of power.
Trump stonewalled the House impeachment probe, blocking witnesses and denying documents. He stands as the third president to be impeached.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign is trying to conserve cash and pulled down TV ads in Nevada and South Carolina after a disappointing third-place standing in Iowa that failed to provide a fundraising bump.
“I just always want to be careful about how we spend our money,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Wednesday after being asked about the roughly $375,000 of TV ads pulled in two states that vote later this month.
She added that her cash comes from people who make small donations. “I just want to be very careful with this money,” she said.
Three-quarters of the world’s ocean waters have sped up their pace in recent decades, scientists reported Wednesday, a massive development that was not expected to occur until climate warming became much more advanced.
The change is being driven by faster winds, which are adding more energy to the surface of the ocean. That, in turn, produces faster currents and an acceleration of ocean circulation.
It’s the latest dramatic finding about the stark transformation of the global ocean — joining revelations about massive coral die-offs, upheaval to fisheries, ocean-driven melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, increasingly intense ocean heat waves and accelerating sea level rise.
Pete Buttigieg held a slim lead over Bernie Sanders on Wednesday in the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses with 92% of the precincts reporting.
Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Ind., held 27% of the state delegates, followed by Sanders, the Vermont senator, at 26%; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 18%; former Vice President Joe Biden, 16%; and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 12%.
It remained unclear when the Iowa Democratic Party would complete its tally of the results from its Monday night caucuses.
For nearly half a century, the deserts and plains of the American West have been punctuated by coal-burning furnaces and towering smokestacks — hulking power stations that have sustained small-town economies and fueled the growth of the region’s major cities, from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Seattle…
The numbers tell the story: There are just 20 coal plants in the continental West whose owners haven’t committed to fully retiring them by specific dates, data compiled by the Sierra Club and additional research by The Times show. That’s compared to 49 coal-burning generating stations withunits that are slated for closure or have shut down since 2010.
Coal is being pushed off the power grid by competition from cheaper, cleaner energy sources, as well as rising public alarm about climate change and state policies meant to reduce emissions. Nationally, coal supplied just a quarter of the country’s electricity last year, down from nearly half in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Griffin Sikes, a seventy-year-old civil litigator in Montgomery, identifies as a “liberal Democrat”—liberal for a white man in Alabama, at least— “part of the rare, endangered species of Democratus Alabamia,” as he put it to me. “I don’t have much but contempt for Donald Trump,” Sikes said on Monday, describing the President as “an absolute thug or a psychopath.” He has a lot of sympathy, on the other hand, for Doug Jones, Alabama’s Democratic senator, who, Sikes said, “is trying to make the best of what is an absolutely awful situation for him.” Sikes was referring to Trump’s impeachment trial, and the need for Jones to cast a vote to acquit or convict … Trump, who won Alabama by nearly twenty-eight points in 2016. Sikes believed that Jones would be “principled” in his judgment, and that he would act with “a sense of history,” just as he had in his work as a civil-rights attorney, “in a way that was not very politically expedient for him.” (Twenty years ago, Jones successfully prosecuted two members of the Ku Klux Klan for their roles in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, which killed four black girls.) In other words, Sikes believed that Jones would vote to convict and remove the President.
“The horns of what he’s on is he can vote for impeachment knowing that it will largely be political suicide for him,” Sikes continued. “But I think he’s realistic enough to know that he had a very low or minimal chance of being reëlected anyhow in a Republican state, even if he tried to sit on the fence with this.” Sikes put Jones’s odds of reëlection in November, against an as yet undetermined Republican, at “maybe ten per cent.” Those chances would dwindle “to about one per cent” if Jones votes to remove the President, Sikes figured.
For the second time in less than four weeks, a streetcar line in the United States has bitten the dust. This one is Philadelphia’s Route 15, operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), and which ran for 8.4 miles along Girard Avenue, an east-west street about one mile north of Market Street.
Not only did Route 15 run for the last time on Friday night, Jan. 24, but SEPTA gave little notice of its demise, having posted a “service advisory” on its website the preceding Tuesday, but no press release. […]
The line was also unique in the city, because it operated with Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC) cars, which were popular in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, and first ran in Philadelphia in 1938. The nostalgic streamlined cars still run in San Francisco, Boston and Kenosha, Wis., and in limited service in San Diego. They were also recently re-introduced in El Paso, but it appears unlikely that they will ever run in Philadelphia again.
[Patrick] Goddard, 43, is president of Brightline, an intercity passenger rail startup backed by Fortress Investment Group LLC, a private equity firm in New York. It’s the first new private company to move paying customers between American cities by rail in almost a century. It's also far from profitable, behind on ridership projections and recovering from a canceled initial public offering.
Passenger rail hasn’t been easy for a long time in America. The private kind all but vanished in the 1970s when the nation’s corporate railroads talked the U.S. Congress into creating Amtrak. That enabled rail owners to ditch their sickly nonfreight routes at a time when riders were choosing cars and planes over trains. Amtrak, which isn’t known for pampering anyone, has for almost 50 years been the only option for Americans journeying far from home by rail.
That is until 2018, when Brightline began running trains between Miami and West Palm Beach, Fla. The seats are wide and made of leather. Blue-jacketed attendants greet passengers. Drinks are free in first class. The company plans to extend the line to Orlando by 2022 and possibly on to Tampa.
[…] The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another
“That’s the end of it for this winter,” said waste technician Michael Bratvold, watching a bulldozer bury them forever in sand. “We’ll get the rest when the weather breaks this spring.”
Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It’s going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.
The death toll from coronavirus has passed 550, it was confirmed on Wednesday, as Chinese media reported that a baby had been diagnosed with the virus just 30 hours after birth, the youngest case recorded so far. The disease claimed 73 more victims on Wednesday, taking the number of casualties so far to 563.
More than 28,000 people have now been infected globally, including the baby born in Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak. The baby’s mother had tested positive for the virus before she gave birth, according to the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
Early signs of cancer can appear years or even decades before diagnosis, according to the most comprehensive investigation to date of the genetic mutations that cause healthy cells to turn malignant.
The findings, based on samples from more than 2,500 tumours and 38 cancer types, reveal a longer-than-expected window of opportunity in which patients could potentially be tested and treated at the earliest stages of the disease. […]
“What’s extraordinary is how some of the genetic changes appear to have occurred many years before diagnosis, long before any other signs that a cancer may develop, and perhaps even in apparently normal tissue,” said Clemency Jolly, a co-author of the research based at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
The dance of lights emanating from fireflies is among the most spectacular nocturnal sights in the natural world but experts have warned certain species may be at risk of extinction.
Amid a range of threats, an academic survey of firefly experts from around the world found that habitat loss is considered the heaviest pressure on the insects, which include more than 2,000 species. Pesticide spraying and the use of artificial lights at night are the other leading threats to the creatures, which are in the beetle family. […]
“If people want fireflies around in the future we need to look at this seriously,” said Sara Lewis, a professor of biology at Tufts University in Massachusetts, who led the survey. “Fireflies are incredibly attractive insects, perhaps the most beloved of all insects, because they are so conspicuous, so magical.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have begun fingerprinting unaccompanied immigrant children over the age of 14 who are not in their custody but are in shelters across the country, BuzzFeed News has learned.
ICE officials called it a way to protect unaccompanied minors in custody.
“In January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued field guidance to juvenile coordinators to work with Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to identify and collect fingerprints on unaccompanied alien children (UACs) at ORR facilities who are over the age of 14, to mitigate and prevent the risk of their victimization by human traffickers and smugglers, and to reduce misidentification,” a senior ICE official said in an email to BuzzFeed News.
A new report shows that environmental organizations are improving diversity among staff, but they’ve still got a long way to go.
For five years, environmental group watchdog Green 2.0 has been putting out an annual report card of sorts on how different environmental nonprofits and foundations are doing when it comes to hiring and promoting people of color and women. Since 2017, many of the major environmental organizations in the U.S. have seen an increase in the number of people of color on staff, especially among senior staff and board members. Unfortunately, this statistical difference only appears when the report removes the largest organization (which is unnamed in the report) from the mix that’s largely white staff skewed results.
Without it, the average number of full-time people of color in the organizations increased by 2 percent to 52 in 2019. Among senior staff, however, there was a 4 percent increase from 2017 to an average of 6 senior staff at these organizations, including the largest one surveyed. For board members—one of the highest and respected positions at these institutions—the increase was 3 percent, which translates to an average of one person of color added to groups’ boards.
The Senate today voted largely along party lines to acquit … Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment. The acquittal, in the simplest sense, is a declaration that the House of Representatives failed to prove its case. But it is also a statement of values by the Senate—an embrace of certain basic propositions about the president’s conduct, the House’s conduct in impeaching him, and its own responsibilities.
At least in those circumstances in which the president and the majority of the Senate are of the same political party, the Senate has adopted the following propositions:
It is not an impeachable offense for the president of the United States to condition aid to a foreign government on the delivery of personal favors to himself.
India's arms imports account for nearly 10% of the global total, with Russia being the country's main supplier. However, New Delhi is now seeking to become a big exporter of weapons to the rest of the world. […]
The announcement, made by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a defense fair on Wednesday, is part of New Delhi's "Make in India" initiative. Modi said the country was already manufacturing artillery guns, aircraft carriers and submarines, and that India's share in global defence exports had increased.
"Now our aim is to increase defense exports to 5 billion dollars," Modi said at the Defence Expo in Lucknow, the capital city of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the Mississippi prison system after a string of inmate deaths in the past few months, officials said Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors are looking into conditions at four state prisons after the deaths of at least 15 inmates since late December. The investigation is examining whether state corrections officials are adequately protecting prisoners from physical harm and will look into whether there are adequate health care and suicide prevention services.
The investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division will specifically focus on conditions at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, the Justice Department said.
Britain’s government announced Wednesday it is considering a change in the way the BBC is funded that would severely dent the coffers of the nation’s public broadcaster.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government — which is increasingly at odds with the country’s news media — said it would hold a “public consultation” on whether to stop charging people with a criminal offense if they don’t pay the annual levy that funds the BBC.
The broadcaster gets most of its money from a license fee paid by every television-owning household in the country, which currently stands at 154.50 pounds ($201) a year. Failing to pay can result in a fine or, in rare cases, a prison sentence.
A video posted by the Peninsula Open Space Trust captures a coyote and badger crossing through a culvert together, proving that the animals do peacefully coexist and perhaps share a stronger bond than we realized.
There have been observations of coyotes and badgers being chummy, but many were skeptical of the unusual pairing, considering they are both predators. But wildlife experts have observed the unique partnership when the animals hunt together, especially when it comes to a favorite meal: ground squirrels.
In most human languages, the most frequently used words are short. Think "the," and, "of " and "a." It turns out the same thing goes for penguins too.
A team of researchers based in Italy have found "compelling evidence" that African penguins use the same speech patterns as we do -- the first time this has been found in an animal other than a primate.
The team recorded 590 breeding calls known as "ecstatic display songs." They were sung by single birds during the mating season, from 28 adult African penguins in three different colonies in Italian zoos.
Faith and Power, a new political action committee with ties to Republicans, formally launched on January 29 and quickly placed a $1.56 million broadcast ad in the Democratic primary, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission and the Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group.
The ad aims to boost Smith over Cal Cunningham, who has been endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and has raised significantly more money.
Chief Justice John Roberts' legacy will be forever entwined with … Donald Trump's.
It's not just that Roberts was in the chair presiding over the two-week hearing… Roberts now faces unprecedented litigation at the Supreme Court involving the President's personal business dealings. The justices will hear three cases in March testing Trump's efforts to block subpoenas from the US House and a Manhattan district attorney for his tax returns and other financial records.
The disputes challenge the respective powers among the branches of government and could ultimately determine whether Trump makes his tax returns public, as his recent predecessors chose to do. […]
If Trump wins another four-year term, Roberts could be in the position of ruling on a Trump-dominated docket until 2025.
People often ponder how the world might be different if more women were in political power. In Finland, where women lead the five parties in the coalition government, here's one change they're making: equal paid leave for both parents in a family.
Finland's government, led by 34-year-old Prime Minister Sanna Marin, has announced a new policy that will grant nearly seven months of paid leave to each parent, for a total of 14 months of paid leave. The pregnant parent also can receive one month of pregnancy allowance even before the parental leave starts.
The new policy is designed to be gender-neutral and will come into effect as soon as fall 2021. It will eliminate gender-based allowances that currently grant about four months of paid leave to mothers and about two months to fathers.
Parents will be permitted to transfer 69 days from their own quota to the other parent. A single parent will have access to the allowance for both parents.
After living in the U.S. for five years, cousins Walter T. and Gaspar T. were deported to their home country of El Salvador in 2019, where they were ripped from their beds one night and beaten by police, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. […]
The pair's experience is one of more than 200 cases uncovered by Human Rights Watch in which Salvadorans are put in harm's way — at risk of violence at the hands of gangs, law enforcement or security forces — as a result of tightening asylum and immigration policies in the U.S.
"Salvadorans are facing murder, rape, and other violence after deportation in shockingly high numbers, while the US government narrows Salvadorans' access to asylum and turns a blind eye to the deadly results of its callous policies," said Alison Parker managing director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch and coauthor of the report.
Donald Trump’s trade war with China was a bruising exercise that tanked business investment, weighed down manufacturing, and resulted in a stop-gap deal that will probably help out America’s soybean farmers but doesn’t really address the core tensions between the two countries. There was, however, at least one nation that came out of the ordeal a clear winner: Vietnam.
U.S. imports from China fell by $87 billion during 2019, or 16 percent, according to data released by the Census Bureau on Wednesday. That sharp decline was largely driven by the White House’s tariffs, which significantly disrupted trade between the two countries. (Shipments from Hong Kong, which are tracked separately, also shrank.) But overall, goods imports only dwindled $42.6 billion, or 1.7 percent, as other countries picked up business the Chinese lost. The biggest gainer was Vietnam, which many American companies have turned to as a reliable supply-chain alternative for things such as clothing manufacturing. Imports from there surged by 36 percent, or $17.5 billion.
Climate experts expect some 13 million coastal residents in the U.S. to be displaced by the end of this century. A new PLOS One study gives some indication of where climate migrants might go.
“A lot of cities not at risk of sea of level rise will experience the effect of it,”says Bistra Dilkina, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California, who led the study. “This will require an adjustment in terms of the [increased] demand on the cities’ infrastructure.”
Dilkina and her team used migration data from the Internal Revenue Service to analyze how people moved across the U.S. between 2004 and 2014.
Blue indicates counties where flooding will displace residents if sea levels rise by six feet by 2100. Counties in shades of pink and red will see higher-than-average migration, with the darker shades representing larger population increases.