February 6th, 2020

... scientists are now discovering a light in the catastrophe, after finding a strand of fungi which could help protect humans from radiation... The fungi, named Cryptococcus neoformans fungi, contains large amounts of melanin – a pigment found in skin which turns it dark. The copious melanin levels absorb the harmful radiation, turning it into chemical energy, in the same way plants convert carbon dioxide and chlorophyll into oxygen and glucose via photosynthesis.

President Trump on Thursday confirmed the death... Trump said the U.S. carried out a successful counterterrorism operation that killed Qasim al-Rimi, the founder and leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an affiliate of the terrorist group. One of al-Rimi's deputies, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was also killed... The AQAP leader has ties to the group dating back as far as before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and he has been linked to multiple other plots targeting Americans. The State Department previously offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will soon become the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, after the House Republican Steering Committee voted unanimously Thursday to have him replace Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), multiple sources told The Hill. Separately, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) will take over Jordan's top GOP post on the House Oversight Committee... Collins is running in the Georgia Senate primary election against incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.).

“The defendant’s anonymous web service hosted dozens of insidious criminal communities dedicated to the sexual exploitation of children and spread millions of images of that abuse,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “His guilty plea is proof of the department’s fierce commitment to rooting out those who hide behind anonymous networks to commit serious child exploitation offenses.”

The Treasury Department has complied with Republican senators’ requests for highly sensitive and closely held financial records about Hunter Biden and his associates and has turned over “‘evidence’ of questionable origin” to them, according to a leading Democrat on one of the committees conducting the investigation.

• Americans' satisfaction with personal life highest in four-decade trend
• Two in three Americans say they are very satisfied, also a new high
• High-income households, Republicans, married adults the most satisfied

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) became the latest senator to propose a change when he announced on Thursday that he will introduce a constitutional amendment to raise the threshold for passing articles of impeachment in the House from a simple majority to three-fifths. The change would impact impeachment of any public official, not just a president.

Days before his death, Li explained to CNN that he attempted to warn his friends about the virus before Chinese authorities reported it to the World Health Organization (WHO). In a message to his medical school alumni group on WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app, he said seven people were diagnosed with an illness similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS... Li intended for the message to serve as a warning to his classmates to "be careful" and give them a chance to warn their loved ones privately. However, it quickly circulated on social media and on January 3, he was called into the local police station. Officers reprimanded him for "spreading rumors online" and "severely disrupting social order" and forced him to sign a statement promising he would not commit additional "unlawful acts."

Like the Constitution, this legislation is designed to create a whole new country. The bill would entirely remake our immigration system, with the explicit purpose of ensuring that criminals are able to move here, and settle here permanently, with impunity. You may think we’re exaggerating for effect. We’re not – not even a little. The New Way Forward act is the most radical single piece of legislation we’ve seen proposed in this country. It makes the Green New Deal look like the status quo...

... a ruling that will be reduced to around $185 million because of state laws, according to a lawyer for the plaintiffs and the company... J&J said in a statement it would quickly appeal both phases of the trial, citing “numerous legal errors that subjected the jury to irrelevant information and prevented them from hearing meaningful evidence.”

The warning will come as a shock to users who have used the service to store videos they don’t wish to be made public, precisely because of Google's promise to protect their data and keep unshared Photos private. According to the warning, sent directly via email to all affected users, the blunder caused Google’s ‘Download your data’ service to incorrectly export some stored videos to the wrong user’s archive when bundling them up for download.

Mississippi's former welfare director, four colleagues and a former pro wrestler have been charged with carrying out a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme to siphon public money from needy families for their own personal use — from business investments to a luxury rehab stay in California.

• 59% in U.S. say they are now better off financially than last year
• 74% say they will be better off financially in a year
• Strong partisan divide in optimism on personal financial situation

And even though Albano's orphaned daughters pleaded more than a decade ago with Joe – then a senator - for help recovering the money from his brother it was to no avail, telling them he had 'deep sympathy' but his brother was penniless. Since then Frank Biden has reportedly earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from a series of positions that appear to trade heavily on his family name - but Joe appears to have done nothing to persuade him to pay his debts.

The move comes as China's economy is being battered by the coronavirus outbreak, and Beijing was moving to soothe concerns in international markets...

“Enough is enough,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez tweeted Thursday afternoon. “In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.”