Ice Cube has been adamant that Democrats told him to hold off until after the election before making demands for his “Contract With Black America.” The NWA rapper and actor recently revealed to Fox Soul’s Cocktails with Queens, that features Claudia Jordan, Vivica A. Fox, LisaRaye McCoy, and Syleena Johnson, that he turned down a request by the California senator to be a part of a Zoom call.
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Journalists claim they can’t cover the New York Post’s Hunter Biden email scoop because the underlying evidence has yet to been verified. Also, they won’t look for any verifying evidence because there isn’t enough evidence.It’s quite the conundrum.Because other than the now-corroborated emails, the laptop, the on-the-record source who was a CEO of a Biden corporation, a trove of text messages and documents, and a lack of denials, the Hunter Biden email story reminds me of the “Russian collusion” story. Surely it deserves a modicum of scrutiny and follow-up.Anyone who watched Tony Bobulinski’s interview on Tucker Carlson’s show this week -- apparently it pulled over 5 million viewers -- was confronted with a seemingly credible character. Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden in 2017, and that the former vice president was intimately involved in the family business. Maybe someone will ask the candidate about this. Because Biden, widely seen as the frontrunner, has on numerous occasions emphatically denied any knowledge of what Hunter was doing. So even if he didn’t benefit from his son’s leveraging of the family name to strike deals with Chinese Communist energy interests, it is still newsworthy.Bobulinski alleges that during a meeting with Joe Biden’s brother, he asked how the former vice president gets away with this sort of thing: “I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying how are you guys getting away with this? Aren’t you concerned? He looked at me, and he laughed a little bit, and said ‘plausible deniability.’”Perhaps my favorite part of yesterday’s interview, though, was learning that Adam Schiff’s ugly and mendacious habit of smearing anyone he disagrees with as a Russian asset is what allegedly helped spur Bobulinski, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant, to come forward.Hunter’s ex-business partner, in fact, confronted Rob Walker, a Biden “family representative” about it.“If [Schiff] doesn’t come out, on record, I am providing the facts,” Bobulinski said in a recording.“Ah, Tony, you’re just going to bury all of us, man,” responded Walker, which sounds odd coming from someone charged with representing a supposedly completely innocent venture.To put all of this context as a journalistic matter, the week before the Post broke the Hunter Biden story, every major news network was reporting on surreptitiously taped conversation in which the First Lady was grousing about Christmas decorations.Indeed, these are just allegations. Some of them more compelling than others. We still know very little, for example, about potentially damaging emails that purport to show Biden helping his son while he was vice president — namely, by meeting with a Burisma energy executive on behalf of Hunter at the White House.In a strange way, the lack of coverage has perpetuated the story, not only through the Streisand effect, but because suppressing it -- the New York Post’s Twitter account is still frozen -- allows the imagination to run wild. While no conservative pundit has penned 8,000 words of Chait-style crackpottery pondering whether Joe has been Chinese asset since the 1980s, some have certainly jumped the gun.Does it matter? Yesterday, a number of journalists were retweeting an Axios interview in which Senator Ted Cruz, asked about the “Hunter Biden stuff,” said the story won’t move a single vote. Perhaps that’s true. It’s also irrelevant. The journalist’s job is to provide transparency, not to worry about elections or be society’s hall monitor.It is certain -- and, boy, am I sick of framing coverage in this way, but what can you do? -- that if a credible witness and former business partner of one of Donald Trump Jr.’s companies came forward to offer specific accusations and evidence that the president was profiting off of business dealings his shady son was striking with authoritarians, teams of investigative journalists would be descending on every tangential character as if they were a defunct Chinese bank account.And the assertion made by many reporters that journalistic ethics prohibit them from even mentioning these allegations is a new and concocted standard. There are thousands of allegations against Republicans reported without verification. Not one outlet had a problem referring to the recent Atlantic piece citing unnamed sources who claimed Trump belittled soldiers, even though the story came from one writer at a partisan outlet. Allegations by whistleblowers are covered all the time, whether they have been fully vetted or not. Major outlets were eager to amplify not only the uncorroborated accusations of Christine Blasey Ford, but a host of other very obviously dubious claims about Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.But much of the reticence about investigating the Hunter Biden story is in reaction to the fallout from the Hillary Clinton email scandal. No matter what evidence emerged, political media were never going to repeat 2016. One assumes even good reporters don’t want to be perceived as tipping the election (which speaks to the poor health of journalism).Lest we forget, as with this Biden story, the Clinton email scandal was newsworthy. There was, after all, an open FBI investigation into the frontrunning presidential candidate of the United States because of her reckless and potentially criminal behavior. It was Hillary who initially set up a secret server to circumvent transparency, likely to hide favor-trading related to her foundation, and sent unsecured classified documents through that illegal server, although she almost surely knew it threatened national security. As the New York Times reported at the time, the chance that her correspondences were being captured by foreign powers was extremely high. It was Hillary’s staff that destroyed evidence related to that server -- or as James Comey noted in his testimony, they “cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” Any government employees conducting themselves in a similar manner would have been sent to jail.I’m not in the habit of defending Comey, but he saved Clinton by letting her and her staff slide on richly deserved charges. The letter Comey sent to Congress informing them that the bureau had found a cache of new evidence relating to a criminal investigation was Clinton’s fault, not his. It was her top aide and confidant Huma Abedin who failed to inform the FBI about her laptop. And it was Abedin’s then-husband who used that computer to court teenage girls. Comey had an ethical obligation to inform Congress when he was apprised that new evidence had been found -- as he had promised to do under oath during his testimony. If he didn’t, and the story leaked, as it surely would have, the perception would have been that he was attempting to cover up the potential wrongdoing of one of the candidates.Or, in other words, he would have been doing exactly what most of the political media are engaged in right now.
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A lawyer for a senior executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei on Wednesday accused a Canadian police officer of lying about why he didn’t arrest her immediately at Vancouver’s airport two years ago. Richard Peck told Constable Winston Yep during cross-examination that he did not believe Yep was honest when he told the British Columbia Supreme Court this week why the arrest happened only after Canada Border Services Agency officers questioned Meng for three hours. Yep is the first in a series of witnesses called to testify at the request of lawyers for Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. to face fraud charges.
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Trevor Noah had a good laugh on Tuesday's Daily Show about a Florida man who stole a bulldozer from an Arby's and tore up Joe Biden lawn signs in people's yards, followed by a good-natured lecture on how politics has taken over our lives. "Meanwhile, President Trump, the Florida Man in chief, is holding coronavirus giveaways all across the Midwest -- and he clearly is getting tired of attacking Joe Biden because now he's putting effort into getting Kamala Harris," he said. Trump's attacks on the Democratic vice presidential nominee are outlandish, mendacious, and a little revealing."I love that a 'female socialist' president is Trump's worst nightmare," Noah said. "Because now I can just picture him waking up in a cold sweat and Melania just being like, 'Oh no, honey, was it the female socialist president again?' I'm just kidding, Melania and Trump don't share a bedroom." He also found it amusing that Trump is criticizing Harris' laugh, or anything else about her. "My man, you look like you were built by the same company who made the Tower of Pisa," Noah said. "I'm surprised people don't pose in front of you as well."At The Late Show, musical director Jon Batiste went the other direction and created a whole song about Harris, his MVP, "most vice presidential."The Late Show also mocked Jared Kushner's comments on Black people not wanting success. You can watch that below. More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement
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Three people have been killed—including one elderly woman and another person by decapitation—and several others injured in a suspected terror attack inside the Notre-Dame basilica in the French city of Nice. The knife-wielding assailant, who was wounded by police gunfire, allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” several times, including while he was being detained, in what has come to be known as a battle cry for Islamic extremists in Europe.The city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, wrote immediately after the killings that “everything suggests a terrorist attack,” and said the unnamed suspect had been arrested and taken to a hospital in the city. The Paris’ anti-terror prosecutors office said it has opened an investigation. Italian police said late Thursday that the killer is a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant who was smuggled to the Italian island of Lampedusa in September. After he completed the mandatory two-week COVID-19 quarantine, he left the migrant camp and made his way to France. Authorities have his details and fingerprints as part of the immigration process and are working with French police. “The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained. He is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” Estrosi told reporters at the scene. Although a motive has not been confirmed by officials, the mayor expressed his wish to “wipe out Islamo-fascism” from the country.French President Emmanuel Macron declared a state of emergency and ordered security to be strengthened at places of worship across the nation. On Wednesday night, Macron had put France back into lockdown because of its out-of-control resurgence in coronavirus cases. Hours after the attack, he visited the basilica and met with security and rescue personnel.The Nice slashings occurred on the same day that an assailant was shot dead by police near another French city, Avignon, after he reportedly waved a gun at officers, and also as a guard was reportedly attacked outside the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.Local reports in the French Riviera city say the elderly woman and a man who died were attacked inside the heart of the Nice basilica. The BBC reports a woman who fled to a nearby cafe was stabbed many times and died at a hospital, and that a witness at the scene managed to set off an alarm on a “special protection system” set up by city officials. One eyewitness told the BBC: “We heard many people shouting in the street. We saw from the window that there were many, many policemen coming, and gunshots, many gunshots.”In July 2016, Nice was the scene of unthinkable carnage when an armed French delivery driver attacked a waterfront Bastille Day fireworks party with a truck, killing at 84 people, including 10 children. France has been under high alert for terrorist acts in recent weeks as 14 people suspected of murdering 12 Charlie Hebdo staffers, a female police officer, and four men in a Jewish supermarket in 2015 in retaliation for the publication of cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad went on trial.As the courtroom proceedings opened, two people were stabbed near the publication’s old offices in Paris on Sept. 25 in what the French interior minister then declared was “clearly an act of Islamist terrorism.”The Nice attack also comes less than two weeks after the beheading of middle-school teacher Samuel Paty in Paris after he had shown his students cartoons published by the satirical magazine.Estrosi said the two attacks were similar. “The methods match, without doubt, those used against the brave teacher in Conflans Sainte Honorine, Samuel Paty,” he said.Family of Moscow-Born Teen Who Beheaded Teacher Were from Chechnya Where Charlie Hebdo Cartoons Are DemonizedPresident Macron delivered the eulogy at Paty’s funeral, and said France would not abandon its right to free speech. “We will continue, Professor. We will defend the freedom that you taught so well and we will promote secularism, we will not renounce caricatures, drawings, even if others retreat,” Macron said. “We will continue the fight for freedom and the freedom of which you are now the face.”Macron’s comments have drawn sharp criticism in the Islamic world with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for a boycott of French goods. In response, Charlie Hebdo published a caricature of Erdogan in his underwear lifting a Muslim woman’s skirt on Wednesday, drawing scorn from Erdogan for what he referred to as a “a grave insult to my prophet.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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With the presidential election just days away, the Guardian is tracking the latest polling in eight states that could decide the electiondefault Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump in the national polls for the presidential election.But that doesn’t guarantee the Democratic candidate victory. Hillary Clinton also had a clear lead over Trump in the polls for almost the entire 2016 campaign. She ended up losing in the electoral college.Because the presidential voting system assigns each state a number of electoral college votes, which go to the state’s victor regardless of the margin of victory (with the exception of Nebraska and Maine), a handful of swing states will probably decide the election and be targeted heavily by campaigners.Each day, the Guardian’s poll tracker takes a rolling 14-day average of the polls in eight swing states.In order to track how the race is developing in the areas that could decide the election, six of the eight states we focused on were those that flipped to Trump in 2016 after backing Barack Obama in 2012. Arizona and North Carolina were also added due to what they might tell us about a shifting electoral landscape – they could emerge as vital new swing states this year.We must caution that the polls – particularly some swing state polls – severely undercounted Trump supporters in 2016. We are not certain, despite assurances, that they they have corrected this. Additionally, they may be over-counting Democratic support (more people may say they will vote for Biden than actually turn out).We present the latest polls with those caveats in mind.default The national pollsThe latest polling average puts Biden ahead of Trump nationally.While the national poll tracker is a poor indicator of how the crucial swing states will sway the election, a strong polling lead across the country can point to how the race will develop.Each day, the Guardian’s national poll tracker takes a 14-day average of national voting intention polls.default On Tuesday 3 November 2020, Americans will vote for their next president, with a choice between Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent, or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.default MethodologyThe Guardian poll tracker tracks the latest polls in eight crucial swing states. For Biden to win, he needs to reclaim some of these swing states.The Guardian is collating polls in each of these states, as well as another set of national polls. Polls are assessed for their reliability by looking at factors such as their sample size.Our polling average is a 14-day rolling average: on any day, we collate any polls published in the last 14 days and take a mean average of their results.If any company has conducted multiple polls in the last 14 days, we average out their polling results in order to give them just one entry. After this standardization process, we take a mean average of these daily entries to present the polling average. * This article was amended on 28 October 2020 to clarify that Maine and Nebraska are alone in assigning their electoral college votes in proportion to the popular vote.
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday said the country's Amuay oil refinery was victim of a terrorist attack on Tuesday that involved a "powerful weapon", but said the country had gasoline reserves equivalent to 20 days of consumption. An explosion hit a distillation unit at the 645,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) plant on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said, though there were no reports of injuries. "Yesterday, the Amuay refinery - one of the most important refineries in Venezuela and Latin America - was attacked with a long, powerful weapon," Maduro said at a press conference, adding that the government was seeking to determine what kind of weapon was involved.
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Speaking at a drive-in campaign rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, former Vice President Joe Biden said that there weren’t a lot of pundits in 2016 who would have guessed that the “Democratic candidate for president in 2020 would be campaigning in Georgia” in the final week of the election.
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Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, has accused Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of "lying" about whether he was directly involved in his son's foreign business dealings."When he states that, that is a blatant lie," Bobulinski said in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was aired Tuesday.The former U.S. Navy lieutenant and corporate investor added that he almost walked out of the second presidential debate, which he attended as President Trump's guest, when the former vice president claimed again that he had no knowledge of his son's business dealings and was not involved in them."In that debate, he made a specific statement around questions around this from the president," Bobulinski said. "And I'll be honest with you, I almost stood up and screamed 'liar' and walked out because I was shocked that after four days or five days that they prep for this, that the Biden family is taking that position to the world."Bobulinski was the former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, which he said was a partnership between the CEFC China Energy conglomerate and the Biden family. He was the recipient of a May 13, 2017 email that discussed a plan to have 10 percent in their related joint venture, Oneida Holdings, “held by H for the big guy?” The "big guy" was Joe Biden, and "H" was Hunter, Bobulinski confirmed.Bobulinski also slammed Democratic efforts to discredit his claims about the Bidens' business dealings by dismissing it as Russian disinformation, singling out for particular criticism Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who said on television that this "smear" of Biden "comes from the Kremlin.""To have a congressman out there speaking about Russian disinformation or Joe Biden at a public debate referencing Russian disinformation when he knows he sat face to face with me, that I was traveled around the world with his son and his brother, to say that and associate that with my name is absolutely disgusting to me," Bobulinski said.Bobulinski told Carlson that Schiff's baseless disinformation claim motivated him to come forward with what he knew of Biden family corruption.The former business associate of the Bidens also said he was warned by former partner Rob Walker that going public with information about the Bidens would "bury all of us."In a recording of a phone call between Bobulinski and Walker, which Carlson aired, he told Walker that if the elder Biden "doesn't come out on record, I am providing the facts.""Don't say this Tony, you're just gonna bury all of us, man," Walker responds in the recording."Throughout 2015 and 2016 while Joe was still the sitting vice president of the United States, these guys had been doing extensive work around the world," Bobulinski said, adding that "the only qualification they had was the Biden name.""They're able to set up meetings and get people to jump through hoops in an interest to garner favor with the sitting vice president, Joe Biden," he said.The American people "can form their own conclusion" about the Biden family's business dealings, Bobulinski added.
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Thousands of Californians were allowed to return to their homes Wednesday as calmer winds helped firefighters beat back two wind-driven wildfires that had spurred widespread evacuations. Roughly 100,000 people were ordered to evacuate Monday after the wildfires broke out in brushy hills above cities in Southern California’s Orange County amid fierce winds and extremely dry weather conditions. On Wednesday, evacuation orders were lifted for all residents in the city of Irvine about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Los Angeles, which saw more than a quarter of its 280,000 people forced from their homes.
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