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China Calls US Capitol Chaos “Beautiful Sight”

US Capitol Hill Violence: On Thursday, state media tabloid Global Times tweeted photo comparisons of Hong Kong protesters occupying the city’s Legislative Council Complex in July 2019 with Wednesday’s Washington riots.

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China Calls US Capitol Chaos “Beautiful Sight”

NDTV

Beijing: 

China’s internet erupted in mirth at America’s troubled democracy after supporters of President Donald Trump broke into the US Capitol, with Beijing criticising the “sharp contrast” between Washington’s response to the chaos and the 2019 Hong Kong anti-government protests.

On Thursday morning, state media tabloid Global Times tweeted side-by-side photo comparisons of Hong Kong protesters occupying the city’s Legislative Council Complex in July 2019 with Wednesday’s Washington riots.

The latter saw hardcore Trump fans invade the US Capitol to protest the election defeat, taking selfies, scuffling with security and ransacking parts of the building.

“@SpeakerPelosi once referred to the Hong Kong riots as ‘a beautiful sight to behold’,” the Global Times said in the tweet, referring to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s June 2019 comment about Hong Kong’s mass pro-democracy demonstrations, which at that time were mostly peaceful.

“It remains yet to be seen whether she will say the same about the recent developments in Capitol Hill.”

China’s Communist Youth League also described the unrest as a “beautiful sight” on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.

Beijing’s foreign ministry echoed those sentiments, saying “the reaction of some people in the US, including that of some media outlets, is completely different.”

Speaking at a press briefing Thursday, ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the “sharp contrast (in reactions) makes one ponder, and deserves serious and profound reflection.”

The hashtag “Trump supporters storm US Capitol” pinballed across China’s Weibo on Thursday, racking up 570 million views, as users compared the global support for Hong Kong’s protesters with the outpouring of condemnation for the pro-Trump mob.

“At present, all European countries’ leaders have shown double standards and condemned it (Washington rioting),” read one Weibo comment which gained over 5,000 likes.

Health

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Has Been Diagnosed with Terminal Cancer

This follows his transfer to a medical facility in December

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The new comes from a letter he wrote:

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Politics

Foreign-born population soars to new record under Biden; highest rate of immigrants since 1910

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Foreign-born population soars to new record under Biden; highest rate of immigrants since 1910

The U.S. has had a massive surge in immigration this year, with as many as 1.5 million newcomers and a record 46.2 million foreign-born people, according to a report for the Center for Immigration Studies.

After a deep trough last year, likely because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel and migration restrictions imposed to control the spread, the flow of people rebounded around the time President Biden was elected.

In numbers never seen before, they are coming legally through airports and land border crossings and illegally across the Rio Grande and remote regions of Arizona and California.

“There was pent-up demand for legal immigration, and illegal immigration has exploded in one of the greatest surges, if not the greatest, we’ve ever seen,” said Steven A. Camarota, the demographer who was the chief author of the report. “It’s driving the numbers up and up and up.”

As it stands, 14.2% of the U.S. population is foreign-born, or 1 out of every 7 people. That is the highest rate of immigrants in the population since 1910, when the number was 14.7%. At current trends, the government says, the U.S. will break that record well before the end of this decade.

Those numbers are even starker given the reversal of trends.

The data showed a drop of 1.2 million immigrants from February to September 2020, likely the result of coronavirus restrictions blocking new entrants, even as outmigration continued. That left the population of the foreign-born — the Census Bureau’s term — at 43.8 million.

It was up to 45 million by January and marched steadily to the current 46.2 million total shown for last month.

In the year after President Trump’s election, the immigrant population flattened.

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Health

Biden Vaccine Mandate for Contractors Blocked Nationwide

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Biden Vaccine Mandate for Contractors Blocked Nationwide
  • Mandate one of a set of Biden vaccine initiatives
  • States say contractor requirement violates Constitution

The Biden administration’s mandate for federal contractors’ employees to be vaccinated will be halted nationwide, amid a slew of challenges from states that say the president overstepped his authority in requiring the Covid-19 shots.

Led by Georgia, the seven states that challenged the mandate set to take effect on Jan. 4 are likely to succeed in their lawsuits against the administration’s order, U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker of the Southern District of Georgia said in an order issued Tuesday.

The Biden administration mandate applies to roughly a quarter of the U.S. workforce and affects companies that do business with the federal government, including Lockheed Martin Corp., Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, and General Motors Co.

Baker’s order follows a Kentucky federal judge’s grant last week of a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit involving Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Baker echoed what his Kentucky counterpart said, that blocking the mandate didn’t indicate that the vaccine wouldn’t be effective to stopping the spread of Covid-19, but rather that Biden didn’t have the power to issue such an executive order.

Representatives from Georgia universities testified during an injunction hearing earlier this month, arguing that implementation of the mandate would be expensive, onerous, and cost them valuable employees who haven’t yet presented proof of vaccination. Those schools receive millions from the federal government.

The court found that the states could likely prove that Congress didn’t clearly authorize the president to issue the mandate, and that it “goes far beyond addressing administrative and management issues in order to promote efficiency and economy in procurement and contracting.” The 2017 nominee of President Donald Trump said, instead, the executive order works as a “regulation of public health.”

Neither the lawyers representing the state coalition nor the U.S. government immediately responded to emailed requests for comment.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little cheered Tuesday’s ruling in a statement. The state is part of the Georgia-led contractor mandate challenge, as well as lawsuits against the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration’s shot-or-test emergency regulation for large U.S. businesses, and another inoculation rule for healthcare workers.

“Yet another one of President Biden’s vaccine mandates have been temporarily shut down because the states—including Idaho—took a stand against his unprecedented government overreach into Americans’ lives and businesses,” Little said in the statement. “All three mandates are now completely stalled. We will continue to press forward in our fight against the federal government’s bad policies.”

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