China locking down cities with 18 million to stop virus
BEIJING — Chinese authorities Thursday moved to lock down at least three cities with a combined population of more than 18 million in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year travel period.
The open-ended lockdowns are unmatched in size, embracing more people than New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago put together.
The train station and airport in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, were shut down, and ferry, subway and bus service was halted. Normally bustling streets, shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces in the city of 11 million were eerily quiet. Police checked all incoming vehicles but did not close off the roads.
Authorities announced similar measures would take effect Friday in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. In Huanggang, theaters, internet cafes and other entertainment centers were also ordered closed.
In the capital, Beijing, officials canceled major events indefinitely, including traditional temple fairs that are a staple of holiday celebrations, to help control the spread of the virus. The Forbidden City, the palace complex in Beijing that is now a museum, announced it will close indefinitely on Saturday.
US imposes visa rules for pregnant women on ‘birth tourism’
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is imposing new visa rules aimed at restricting “birth tourism,” in which women travel to the United States to give birth so their children can have U.S. citizenship. The regulations, which take effect Friday, address one of President Donald Trump’s main political priorities.
The regulations seek to chip away at the number of foreigners who take advantage of the constitutional provision granting”birthright citizenship” to anyone born in the United States, a particular peeve of Trump’s. Under the new rules, pregnant applicants will be denied a tourist visa unless they can prove they must come to the U.S. to give birth for medical reasons and they have money to pay for it or have another compelling reason — not just because they want their child to have an American passport.
Officials said that consular officers will not be asking all female visa applicants of child-bearing age whether they are pregnant or intend to get pregnant. Rather, they said consular officers would ask the question only if they had reason to believe the applicant is pregnant and likely or planning to give birth in the U.S.
Visual cues such as appearing to be pregnant or listing “medical treatment” as a reason for wanting to travel to the United States might trigger such questioning, the officials said. Even if a woman is found to be pregnant and likely to deliver her child in the United States, she could still be granted a visa if she was able to demonstrate a valid reason for the travel such a visiting an ailing relative or attending a business meeting or conference, they said.
Officials said the rule will not apply to foreign travelers coming from any of the 39 mainly European and Asian countries enrolled in the Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens of those countries to come the U.S. without a visa for temporary stays. The rule will only apply to applicants for so-called “B” class visas that permit short-term stays for business or pleasure.
From wire sources
Questions linger over investigation into Jeff Bezos’ hacking
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Cybersecurity experts said Thursday there were still many unanswered questions from an investigation commissioned by Jeff Bezos that concluded the billionaire’s cellphone was hacked, apparently after receiving a video file with malicious spyware from the WhatsApp account of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince.
The experts said the evidence in the privately commissioned report does not show with certainty that Bezos’ phone was actually hacked, much less how it was compromised or what kind of malware was used.
The report on the investigation, which was managed by FTI Consulting and overseen by Anthony Ferrante, a former head of the FBI’s Cyber Division, was made public Wednesday.
In it, investigators said a digital forensic review concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Bezos’ phone was compromised via malware sent from a WhatsApp account used by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Two U.N. experts issued their own take on the report’s findings, calling on the U.S. to investigate further. They said it appeared the Amazon founder may have been targeted because of his ownership of The Washington Post, which was publishing reports critical of the crown prince by columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Impeachment trial not ready for broadcast prime time
NEW YORK — The first night of arguments in favor of President Donald Trump’s impeachment before the U.S. Senate was judged not ready for prime time by many of the nation’s television executives.
ABC, CBS and NBC all stuck with regularly scheduled programs like “Chicago Med,” “Criminal Minds” and “Modern Family” Wednesday evening instead of showing the House managers’ evening session at the impeachment trial. That lasted about two hours, 15 minutes.
CNN and MSNBC carried the trial in full. Fox News Channel, after showing Rep. Adam Schiff speak for about a half hour, interrupted for a story about a child support case involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, and never returned.
Even two PBS stations in the New York area showed science programming and “Antiques Roadshow” instead of the trial Wednesday evening. PBS said it gave its local stations the option to show the trial or not.
The calls Wednesday night are significant because if the top networks decided not to pre-empt programming on the first full night the case against Trump was laid out, chances are they won’t reverse course later unless the unexpected happens.
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`Sopranos’ actress says Weinstein raped her in the mid-1990s
NEW YORK — “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra confronted Harvey Weinstein from the witness stand Thursday, testifying that the former Hollywood studio boss overpowered and raped her and made other crude overtures that included sending her X-rated chocolates and showing up uninvited in his underwear with a bottle of baby oil in one hand and a video in the other.
In a quivering voice, Sciorra told the jury that the burly Weinstein barged into her apartment in the mid-1990s, threw her on a bed and forced himself on her as she tried to fight him off by kicking and punching him.
She said that roughly a month later, she ran into him and confronted him about what happened, and he replied: “That’s what all the nice Catholic girls say.”
Then, she told the jury, Weinstein leaned toward her and added menacingly: “This remains between you and I.”
“I thought he was going to hit me right there,” Sciorra testified.
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Canada’s TSB says Iran has invited it to examine black boxes
TORONTO — Canada’s Transportation Safety Board said Thursday it has been invited by Iran to participate in the download and analysis of the flight recorders from the downing of a Ukraine International Airlines jet “whenever and wherever” that takes place.
Iran has acknowledged that its armed forces fired two Russian anti-aircraft missiles at the jetliner that crashed after taking off from Tehran’s main airport earlier this month, killing all 176 people on board. Fifty-seven Canadians died and 138 of the passengers were headed to Canada.
The Transportation Safety Board said in a statement it understands that the plane’s flight-data recorders — commonly known as black boxes — are still in Iran and said Iran is assessing options for their download and analysis, including doing it in Iran.
Iranian officials have offered contradictory remarks on whether they’ll send the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders abroad to be analyzed. A preliminary report by the Civil Aviation Organization said Iranian officials had asked French and American authorities to send them “up-to-date equipment” to pull the data in Iran.
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board said it will deploy a second team of investigators to examine the recorders whenever and wherever that activity takes place.
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Islamic leaders make ‘groundbreaking’ visit to Auschwitz
WARSAW, Poland — Muslim religious leaders joined members of a U.S. Jewish group at Auschwitz on Thursday for what organizers described as “the most senior Islamic leadership delegation” to visit the site of a Nazi German death camp.
The interfaith visit came four days before the 75th anniversary of the camp’s Jan. 27, 1945, liberation by Soviet forces and as world leaders gathered in Jerusalem to commemorate the Holocaust.
The secretary general of the Muslim World League, Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, and the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, led the tour to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial in Poland. The Nazis operated extermination and concentration camps in Poland when Germany occupied the country during World War II.
The American Jewish Committee said that Al-Issa, who is based in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, led a delegation of 62 Muslims, including 25 prominent religious leaders, from some 28 countries during the “groundbreaking” visit. At one point, they prayed with their heads pressed on the ground at Birkenau, the largest part of the camp and the most notorious site of Germany’s mass murder of European Jews.
The AJC delegation included members of the organization, among them children of Holocaust survivors.