Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich held his first scheduled press event Wednesday since President Donald Trump commuted his sentence for political corruption, answering questions about his future plans and the crimes that landed him in prison.
The Democrat spoke outside his family home in Chicago. A large sign hanging on the home read, “Thanks Mr. President.”  One man wore a rubber Blagojevich mask and hoisted the former governor’s 2006 campaign sign.
“We want to express our most profound and everlasting gratitude to President Trump,” Blagojevich said from outside his house. “He didn’t have to do this …. this is an act of kindness.”
Blagojevich, 63, walked out of a federal prison in Colorado on Tuesday after serving eight years of a 14-year sentence for wide-ranging political corruption, just hours after Trump granted him a commutation.
“I’m a Trumpocrat,” Blagojevich said. “If I had the ability to vote, I would vote for him.”
Blagojevich, a one-time contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice,” has been radioactive politically since his arrest as governor in 2008. It’s not clear who might be willing to offer him a job or a lead role in organization or movement.
His convictions included seeking to sell an appointment to the U.S. Senate seat Barack Obama vacated to become president, trying to shake down a children’s hospital and lying to the FBI.  
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China has revoked the press credentials of three journalists with the U.S.-based Wall Street Journal  newspaper over a recent editorial headline the government deemed racist.  Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing Wednesday that the paper refused to apologize for the editorial in its February 3 edition, titled “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” The editorial, written by American academic Walter Russell Mead, criticized China’s response to the outbreak of the new coronavirus that has killed over 2,000 people on the mainland since it began two months ago.  Tens of thousands of people both in China and several other countries have also been infected by the virus.The phrase “sick man of Asia” has been historically used to stereotype Chinese people as disease-ridden and unclean. The headline, however, was written by someone on the editorial staff, not Mead nor the reporters.The Journal has identified the three staffers as deputy bureau chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, both U.S. nationals, and reporter Philip Wen, an Australian national.  All three have five days to leave China.Another Wall Street Journal reporter, Chun Han Wong, was effectively expelled last year after he wrote an article about a relative of President Xi Jinping.Wednesday’s decision to expel the reporters comes a day after the Trump administration announced it would treat five Chinese state-run media outlets, including Xinhua news agency and China Global Television Network, the same as foreign embassies, requiring them to register their employees and U.S. properties with the State Department.
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Iran’s foreign minister said Wednesday that he believes his recent meeting with a U.S. senator had spooked the Trump administration because it was an opportunity to talk directly to “the American nation.”Mohammad Javad Zarif met last week with Sen. Chris Murphy on the sidelines of an international security conference in Germany. The Connecticut Democrat defended the meeting on Tuesday after his actions were questioned in conservative media, and as President Donald Trump suggested they may have violated U.S. law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hoped anyone who meets with Zarif would be reflecting the U.S. position with Iran.“Trump and Pompeo are afraid of a senator hearing facts from the Iranian foreign minister,” Zarif said, speaking to reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting. He said this wasn’t his first face-to-face chat with an American lawmaker in the last 20 years. It was not immediately clear which senators he’d met with.Murphy said meeting Zarif was important because it is “dangerous not to talk to one’s enemies,” adding: “I have no delusions about Iran — they are our adversary.”Tehran and Washington came close to an open conflict in January, when a U.S. drone strike in Iraq killed Iran’s top general. Iran retaliated with missile strikes on a base housing U.S. troops in Iraq.Tensions have been escalating steadily since 2018, when Trump pulled the U.S. out of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. The Trump administration reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran as part of its “maximum pressure campaign” on the Islamic republic.On hearing of Saturday’s meeting, Trump said it sounded as though Murphy had violated an obscure, little-used federal law known as the Logan Act, which bars private citizens from conducting official diplomacy.Pompeo said the U.S. has long designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, and pointed out Iran’s recent accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger jet over Tehran. Pompeo has criticized other Americans for meeting with Zarif, including his immediate predecessor, John Kerry.
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A group of more than 1,100 U.S. military veterans from all five branches have signed a statement lashing out at President Donald Trump for firing Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council.Vindman testified before a House committee during the Trump impeachment hearings in November. He expressed his concerns about Trump’s drive to push Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.The Military Times newspaper published the statement, whose signatories invited other veterans to add their names.The statement said the president’s “actions and insults” toward Vindman “appear to be motivated by nothing more than political retribution, and deprives the White House of expertise necessary to defend our collective national security.”Long-standing U.S. military code of conduct requires servicemen and women to report wrongdoing and illegal acts through the proper military channels. But U.S. law forbids them from speaking out in public.The veterans say Trump knows this and believes he can verbally attack Vindman with “impunity.””We consider President Trump’s sustained attacks on an active duty Army officer … to be an affront to the constitution that we have all sworn to uphold. We are speaking out precisely because neither LTC Vindman nor his fellow active-duty service members can,” the statement said.The veterans’ statement also criticizes what they say is Trump’s association with those they call war criminals, his public threat of war crimes, and minimizing the traumatic brain injuries some troops suffered in January’s Iranian missile attack on a military base in Iraq.The White House has not yet responded to the statement.The Ukrainian-born Vindman was the NSC’s Director for European Affairs until he was reassigned three weeks ago.The White House said Vindman was not fired and gave the official reason for his reassignment as downsizing within the NSC.However, Trump has publicly accused Vindman of being a poor worker who did “a lot of bad things,” including allegations of leaking classified information — charges Vindman’s supporters deny.
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South Korea reported 15 new cases of the coronavirus Wednesday, intensifying concerns of an outbreak following a lull in reported South Korean infections.A total of 46 people in South Korea have been infected with the highly contagious virus, which causes a pneumonia-like illness recently named COVID-19. South Korean health officials this week warned of a possible “new phase” of the outbreak, following five days in which no new infections were reported.Thirteen of the latest cases are in the area around Daegu, South Korea’s fourth largest city, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).More than 1,000 people are being checked for the virus or are under quarantine, the Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday, citing figures from the KCDC. The virus has killed more than 2,000 people and infected more than 75,000 worldwide. Almost all of the infections have been in China.No South Koreans are reported to have died from the virus. Twelve of the patients have made full recoveries and were discharged from quarantine. But the virus could have a major impact on South Korea’s economy, which was already experiencing lagging growth.A woman wearing a face mask stands behind lanterns decorated for upcoming celebration of Buddha’s birthday on April 30, at Jogye temple in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020.Citing the virus scare, Moody’s Investor Service on Monday cut its forecast for South Korea’s economic growth in 2020 to 1.9% from 2.1%. Moody’s also said China is now expected to experience 5.2% growth in 2020 — down from an earlier estimate of 5.8%.Economic turmoil in China is acutely felt in South Korea, since Beijing is Seoul’s top trading partner. Some South Korean automakers, including Hyundai and Kia, were forced to temporarily halt or reduce production due to a shortage of parts from China, where many factories have closed.”China is the second largest economy in the world, and we are closely tied to the Chinese economy, so I believe that a sizable shock will be inevitable,” Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-beom said Tuesday, according to Yonhap.South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that the situation is “more serious than we thought,” adding that “emergency steps” are needed to contain the economic fallout.Moon, whose party faces a tough legislative election in April, is facing increased pressure to implement tighter virus prevention measures. 
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Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign plans to ask for a partial recount of the Iowa caucus results after the state Democratic Party releases the results of its recanvass.Sanders campaign senior adviser Jeff Weaver told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that the campaign has had a representative in contact with the Iowa Democratic Party throughout the recanvass process. “Based on what we understand to be the results, we intend to ask for a recount,” Weaver said.Slim margin separates Sanders, ButtigiegThe campaign expects that the already slim margin separating Sanders from Pete Buttigieg for the lead in Iowa will remain small enough that a recount would make a difference in the outcome.The caucuses were roiled by significant issues in collecting and reporting data from individual precincts on caucus night. There were also errors in the complicated mathematical equations used to calculate the results in individual caucus sites that became evident as the party began to release caucus data throughout the week.The AP reviewed the last reported results of the Iowa caucuses and decided that it remains unable to declare a winner based on the available information. The results, the AP says, may not be fully accurate and are still subject to potential revision.In a recanvass, the Iowa Democratic Party would only update their reported results; they would not correct errors in the math, and party officials have said publicly that the only opportunity to correct the math would be a recount.In a recount, party officials use the preference cards that caucusgoers filled out outlining their first and second choices in the room on caucus night and rerun all the math in each individual precinct.The Iowa Democratic Party states in its Recount and Recanvass manual that “only evidence suggesting errors that would change the allocation of one or more National Delegates will be considered an adequate justification for a recount.”Errors must be significantThat means the errors must be significant enough to change the outcome of the overall caucus.Iowa awards 41 national delegates in its caucuses. As it stands, Buttigieg has 13 and Sanders has 12. Trailing behind are Elizabeth Warren with eight, Joe Biden with six and Amy Klobuchar with one.The 41st and final delegate from Iowa will go to the overall winner. The caucus won’t formally come to an end until the recount is completed.In its recanvass request, the Sanders campaign outlined 25 precincts and three satellite caucuses where it believes correcting faulty math could swing the delegate allocation in Sanders’ favor and deliver him, not Buttigieg, that final delegate.  
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Many wealthy nations are letting the world’s younger generations down by failing to curb planet-warming emissions, a U.N.-backed report said Wednesday, warning climate change posed an urgent threat to the health and future of every child and adolescent.A new global index showed children in Norway, South Korea and the Netherlands had the best chance at survival and well-being thanks to good health care, education and nutrition.
 
But a ranking of countries by per-capita carbon emissions put those and other rich nations, including the United States and Australia, close to the bottom on that measure, as major contributors to global health threats driven by climate change.”Countries need to overhaul their approach to child and adolescent health, to ensure that we not only look after our children today but protect the world they will inherit in the future,” said former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, co-chair of the international commission that produced the report.Child flourishing, sustainability and equityIt said dramatic progress had been made in improving children’s lives in the past five decades but economic inequalities meant the benefits were not shared by all.And the heating up of the planet and damage to the environment, among other stresses, meant every child faced an uncertain future, it added.”Climate disruption is creating extreme risks from rising sea levels, extreme weather events, water and food insecurity, heat stress, emerging infectious diseases, and large-scale population migration,” said the report by more than 40 experts.Commission member Sunita Narain, director general of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said that in her region of South Asia the main environmental threats came from water shortages and contamination, as well as air pollution.Children’s health today “is at grave risk because of environmental degradation,” she added.They are victims of a problem they did not cause — a situation that is particularly acute for the poor, she noted.”The biggest inequity that we need to confront today is the inequity (of) climate change,” Narain told journalists.The “sustainability” part of the index ranks countries on how their per-person emissions compare with a 2030 target giving a two-thirds chance of keeping global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.Of the top 25 countries with the best score on emissions, all but two were African.That contrasts starkly with the “flourishing” part of the index, where many African nations did badly on children’s health, education, nutritious food and protection from violence.Not one country performed well on all three measures of child flourishing, sustainability and equity, concluded the commission convened by the World Heath Organization, The Lancet medical journal and U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.Protect and respondAnother key threat identified was exploitative marketing practices that push fast food, sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco at children, increasingly through social media channels.Report author Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainability at University College London, said children’s data was being harvested via online games and sold to big technology firms which then target youth with advertising.”This is totally unregulated,” he said. “We think that there needs to be much greater attention to the protection of children around the world.”They should also be placed at the center of efforts to achieve the global development goals agreed in 2015, he added.Few countries have recorded much progress toward achieving those goals, which include ending poverty and hunger by 2030 and tackling climate change, the report noted.Children should be given a bigger voice in policy decisions that affect their futures, it said — something they are already demanding through social movements like the school climate strikes that have mobilized students worldwide since mid-2018.Jennifer Requejo, a UNICEF adviser on statistics and monitoring, said children could be involved through measures such as setting up local youth committees, informing them about their rights and having them participate in data collection.Costello said young people’s calls for a cleaner, safer world must be heeded by politicians.”They are simply not responding at the moment in a way that is mature and evidence-based,” he added.
 
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