U.S. health officials are taking a new tack to encourage Americans to wear masks: They're emphasizing recent research that a mask protects the person who wears it. Previously, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised people to wear masks because of evidence that it stops people who are infected with coronavirus — whether they know it or not — from spreading it to others. It continues to advise Americans to wear masks to stop the virus from spreading.

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For Mike Pence, a second term for President Donald Trump would have been a 2024 ticket to Republican frontrunner status. The situation is made even more complicated by Trump's refusal to accept defeat and private flirtations with running again himself four years from now.

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OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 12, 2020 /CNW/ -  The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) condemns the exclusion of its voices from a high level meeting on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

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Black policy leaders will play a pivotal role in President-elect Joe Biden’s transition, marking one of the most diverse agency review teams in history. Of the 500-plus team members announced this week, more than half are women, and Black men and women are leading more than one-quarter of the teams. “The agency review process will help lay the foundation for meeting these challenges on Day One," said Tony Allen, a transition advisory board member and president of historically Black Delaware State University.

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The House of Lords voted resoundingly to remove controversial clauses from Boris Johnson’s Brexit legislation on Monday night, as peers accused the Government of behaving like a “third world dictatorship”. In a major defeat for the Prime Minister, peers sought to expunge sections of the Internal Market Bill which ministers admitted would break international law in a “very specific and limited way”. Peers voted by 433 to 165 to strip out the clauses which would allow the UK to renege on its obligations in the Withdrawal Agreement. During the debate, Tory grandee Lord Clarke warned that the legislation was a “rather Donald Trump-like gesture” and urged peers to join him in voting against the Government. “I’ve never heard anybody describe any particular proposal that is being forced upon us in these negotiations by Brussels which should have such a horrendous and catastrophic consequence that we need to be allowed to behave like the government of a third world dictatorship,” he said. The former chancellor said that no government he served in would have “contemplated for one moment” proposing the powers set out in the Bill. “It would have been rejected as incompatible with the way we govern this country, so it is the duty of this House to reject it,” he said. Lord Howard, the former Conservative leader, said the UK would set a “lamentable example” if it were to break international law. He said he was “dismayed” that the Government would choose to “break its word, to break international law and to renege on a treaty” as its first act of independence. He added: “I voted for Brexit and I do not regret or resign from that vote. But I want the independent, sovereign state that I voted for to be a country which keeps its word, that upholds the rule of law and honours its treaty obligations.” Meanwhile, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warned that it could have “unintended and serious consequences for peace and reconciliation” in Northern Ireland. He said that process “did not end with the Belfast Agreement”. “It remains an ongoing process, which requires awareness from leaders that almost every decision taken in relation to Northern Ireland will have an impact,” he added. Opponents claim the legislation risks violating the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, leading to fears it will put the Prime Minister on course to clash with Joe Biden, the US president-elect. During his campaign, Mr Biden warned that a trade deal with the US was “contingent” on the prevention of a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland. The Government confirmed last night that it would retable the clauses peers voted against. A Government spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the House of Lords has voted to remove clauses from the UK Internal Market Bill, which was backed in the House of Commons by 340 votes to 256 and delivers on a clear Conservative manifesto commitment. We will retable these clauses when the Bill returns to the Commons. “We’ve been consistently clear that the clauses represent a legal safety net to protect the integrity of the UK’s internal market and the huge gains of the peace process. “We expect the House of Lords to recognise that we have an obligation to the people of Northern Ireland to make sure they continue to have unfettered access to the UK under all circumstances.”

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Marty, a black Maine coon cat, succumbed to “an unforeseen illness," Mount Washington Summit Operations Manager Rebecca Scholand said in a news release Monday. “As a past observer who lived on the summit for four years, I can tell you Marty was a special companion, entertainer and so incredibly loved by observers and state park staff and will be sadly missed,” she wrote. The Mount Washington Observatory staff have had a cat at the 6,288-foot (1,915-meter) summit, called the “home of the world's worst weather," since 1932.

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Instead, the Trump campaign's election night watch party in the White House East Room has become another symbol of President Donald Trump's cavalier attitude toward a virus that is ripping across the nation and infecting more than 100,000 people a day. Polls suggest that attitude was a serious drag on the president's reelection bid as voters chose to deny Trump a second term in favor of his Democratic rival, now President-Elect Joe Biden. The White House has repeatedly refused to say who else has tested positive, even as the virus continues to spread.

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The Trump campaign’s strategy to file a barrage of lawsuits challenging President-elect Joe Biden’s win is more about providing President Donald Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can’t quite grasp and less about changing the election’s outcome, according to senior officials, campaign aides and allies who spoke to The Associated Press. Trump has promised legal action in the coming days as he refused to concede his loss to Biden, making an aggressive pitch for donors to help finance any court fight. Trump and his campaign have leveled accusations of large-scale voter fraud in Pennsylvania and other states that broke for Biden, so far without proof.

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A bipartisan group from the last three White Houses is urging the Trump administration to move forward “to immediately begin the post-election transition process.” The call from the Center for Presidential Transition advisory board comes as the General Services Administration has yet to formally recognize Democrat Joe Biden as the president-elect. The statement was signed by Bush White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and Health and Human Services secretary Michael Leavitt as well as Bill Clinton-era chief of staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty and Obama Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.

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Andrew Gift believes his wife would still be alive had she followed the doctor's advice.

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(Bloomberg Opinion) -- An election that takes days toconclude? An incumbent who says he’s been cheated, and threatens not to leave? Armed vigilantes outside counting centers? The 2020 U.S. presidential election has been watched with bemusement in the rest of the world, and none have enjoyed the show more than the autocrats long criticized and preached to by Washington. They are wrong to cheer.There are clearly grave problems with an unusually complex electoral system that has shown itself to be outdated, and with a system that has allowed the falsehoods, abuses of power and traducing of democratic norms emanating from the White House over the past four years. After Joe Biden’s victory, American society remains deeply divided. Yet for all the dysfunction, angry rhetoric and court cases, votes were counted. That makes all the difference.Even before ballots were cast, state media in China and Russia were talking up the chaos. Since polls closed, the belligerence of President Donald Trump’s speeches alleging mass electoral fraud has allowed them to go much further. “Americans used to believe that only developing countries would witness serious disputes over their election process… with the losing side refusing to accept the outcome,” China’s state-backed tabloid Global Times said in an editorial. Its Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin wrote Thursday that there was no longer a “collective feeling of envy” among Chinese citizens, while watching their U.S. counterparts vote. Hu had already posted footage of workers boarding up store windows ahead of the election on a Twitter account he uses to broadcast a mix of threats, vitriol and taunts over America’s failures in containing the coronavirus pandemic.RT, Russia’s state-funded international broadcasting arm, has long been a cheerful chronicler of America’s problems, depicting crime, racial violence and the shortcomings of democracy. It has reported on the 2020 poll with glee. “You gotta be kidding me,” Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan wrote, in mock Cyrillic English, in reaction to the description of the U.S. presidential election as competitive and well-managed by the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, or OSCE. She had already tweeted that the elections were neither free nor fair.Officials haven’t been far behind. One Russian deputy compared America to Kyrgyzstan, where a disputed parliamentary vote last month ended in turmoil, with opposition supporters storming buildings. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it was all evidence of “severe civil, political and moral decline.”It’s the schadenfreude that stands out among those often lectured on democratic values. Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has faced mass protests since a disputed presidential election in August, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone call last week that included a discussion of U.S. election results. It’s not hard to imagine the conversation.The truth isn’t simple, though. As Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London, put it, the U.S. election has been something of a Rorschach inkblot test, where autocrats and democrats alike see what they want to see.Clearly, U.S. credibility has taken a hit. When Trump said after his election-night speech that the whole event was embarrassing, he wasn’t wrong. His own speeches in the past week have marked low points for American democracy, to the point that the OSCE has accused him of harming democratic institutions by making unfounded allegations of fraud.Trump’s rhetoric, which included declaring victory from the White House while battleground states were still counting votes, has raised understandable alarm. The politicization of the judiciary during his term has been more than uncomfortable. But Trump isn’t a despot, in large part because institutions have reined him in. For all the sound and fury, he has had to contend with checks and balances. Most importantly, he hasn’t been able to do what any self-respecting authoritarian would have done: take control of the administration of elections. The decentralized U.S. process, left to local governments, never allowed it.Instead, the world has seen wall-to-wall footage of people in precincts across the United States proceeding with the most fundamental of democratic exercises, and tallying votes. Turnout was higher than it has been in more than a century — no small feat in a country where in 2016 more people didn’t vote than backed either Trump or his opponent, Hillary Clinton. When the president made outrageous claims on television, he was cut off, and viewers were told the statements were false. “I woke up and went to Twitter to find out who won. It’s still not clear,” Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny tweeted on Nov. 4. “That’s a real election.”This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues. Previously, she was an associate editor for Reuters Breakingviews, and editor and correspondent for Reuters in Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Before all votes were counted in the states that will determine the next president, conversations within Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s foreign policy orbit had intensified around one person: Tony Blinken.According to multiple sources who spoke to The Daily Beast, Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state during former President Barack Obama’s second term, is being considered for two influential positions in a potential Biden administration: secretary of state and national security adviser. The talks have occurred more frequently in recent days and weeks as the campaign has neared a tentative close, sources familiar said.The discussions come as Biden campaign officials have insisted that their focus is simply to win the still-ongoing election against President Donald Trump.“He’s up for two jobs,” said a source with knowledge of the conversations, referring to secretary of state and national security adviser. “He’s going to be one or the other.”Blinken has been a central fixture in Bidenworld for decades. He was Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where his geopolitical convictions—and profile as a negotiator—were honed. He then followed Biden to the White House in Obama’s first term, serving as the vice president’s national security adviser. As deputy secretary of state, Blinken was a key figure in selling Congress on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.While secretary of state remains perhaps the most sought-after prize for which Blinken is a top contender, two sources familiar told The Daily Beast that he is also being reviewed for national security adviser and that Biden’s decision would depend on whether he wants to keep one of his closest political hands nearby in the White House.“Because he’s so close to Biden and has been for years, that kind of relationship usually leads first to national security adviser, then maybe you move over to State,” the source familiar said. “The logic seems pretty strong.”Blinken was the Biden campaign’s premiere foreign policy surrogate and spokesperson during the general election, presenting a Biden agenda as a return to traditionalist multilateralism, particularly on a restoration of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate-change accords. Biden himself has embraced that posture on the trail.“Not a single one of the big challenges we face, whether it's climate change or mass migration or technological disruption or pandemic disease, can be met by any one country acting alone, even one as powerful as our own,” Blinken told the “Intelligence Matters” podcast last month, echoing a line from Biden’s July 2019 foreign policy speech.Blinken did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Biden-Harris transition spokesperson said: “The Biden-Harris Transition team is not making any personnel decisions pre-election.”Blinken’s expected nomination for either job will come as little surprise to Biden observers. He was long thought to be one of the likeliest picks for secretary of state. Others up for running Foggy Bottom include Obama’s United Nations ambassador and national security adviser Susan Rice, and the relative longshot Sen. Chris Coons, Biden’s fellow Delawarean. Close friend Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is also a dark-horse candidate, one source said.Rice, for her part, still stands a chance to be secretary of state, provided the Biden team could convince partisan Senate Republicans to not block her nomination, the source familiar with the discussion said. Conversations about senior positions are expected to escalate among Biden aides and advisers this weekend.Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) interviewed Blinken in September as part of his investigation into Biden, his son Hunter, and Burisma, the Ukranian energy company. Johnson sought testimony from Blinken and other former top Biden advisers in an attempt to glean more information about whether the Obama administration changed policy toward Ukraine because of Hunter’s Burisma board membership. Johnson’s report was inconclusive and only mentioned Blinken twice in passing.While Blinken is deeply associated with Biden, whose foreign policy has often been far too hawkish for the progressives with whom he has promised to work closely, he has made a point of reaching out to a rising branch of dovish policy professionals during the election. Some have taken it as an indication that Biden’s expedited agenda for government work abroad may incorporate some left-leaning priorities.The Biden campaign has been quiet about their transition process since its formation publicly became known. But they have dropped clues, some rather overt, in recent days signaling that they were taking the usual steps associated with a changing of administrations.Earlier this week, officials launched a website landing page meant to vaguely tease the upcoming appointments. As of Friday afternoon, it featured just one paragraph: “The American people will determine who will serve as the next President of the United States,” the text read. “Votes are still being counted in several states around the country. The crises facing the country are severe—from a pandemic to an economic recession, climate change to racial injustice—and the transition team will continue preparing at full speed so that the Biden-Harris Administration can hit the ground running on Day One.”Election 2020: Live ResultsRead 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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One of the armed men arrested while traveling to Philadelphia’s vote-counting center is a QAnon obsessive who posted violent, anti-Semitic comics online. The other is a President Trump super-fan who urged social media users to poll watch and suggested the 2020 election was being stolen from the president.QAnon conspiracy theorist Antonio Lamotta, 61, was arrested Thursday with 42-year-old Joshua Macias, the co-founder of “Vets for Trump,” on federal firearms charges after authorities reportedly received a tip that a group was headed from Virginia to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the site of the city’s ballot count, to “straighten things out.” The pair drove from Virginia with pistols, an AR-15 rifle, and roughly 160 rounds of ammunition, according to Philadelphia police. They lacked valid Pennsylvania firearms permits to carry, and were charged with carrying a concealed firearm without a license, a third-degree felony, and carrying a firearm on public streets or public property, the District Attorney’s office said Friday. Both men, who are from Chesapeake, Virginia, were accompanied by a woman who was not charged with any crime.“We will be requesting that both be held without eligibility for bail when they are arraigned later this evening, as this alarming incident is still very much under investigation regarding additional charges,” the district attorney’s office added.The arrests come as QAnon promoters stoke outlandish theories that the ballot count in Pennsylvania is a scheme to steal the election from Trump.Alleged QAnon Goons With AR-15 Arrested Near Vote CenterLamotta’s Hummer was discovered near the convention center with QAnon bumper stickers on it and a QAnon hat inside. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said at a Friday press conference that the pair may have had an affiliation with QAnon. Photos of a silver Hummer parked near the Convention Center also show a parking violation envelope tucked under the windshield.“At this time we do not have indications that the story is bigger than these two individuals,” Krasner said, adding there was no indication the men were part of any extremist group. He declined to comment on possible motivations for their trip to Philadelphia but noted the FBI is also assisting in the investigation.But Lamotta’s interest in QAnon, which the FBI considers a potential source of domestic terrorism, goes beyond his truck. Social media posts on Facebook and Twitter reveal Lamotta to be a dedicated QAnon promoter who has embraced the conspiracy theory’s darkest, most anti-Semitic corners.QAnon believers follow cryptic “clues” posted on anonymous message boards by a mysterious figure named “Q,” who QAnon supporters claim is a figure in the Trump administration. QAnon adherents string these clues together to create a bizarre worldview in which the world is controlled by a nefarious cabal of pedophile-cannibals in the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and banking. Trump is a near-messianic figure for QAnon believers, who await the day that Trump and the military will arrest and execute his political opponents in a much-awaited purge they call “The Storm.”Lamotta echoed a core tenet of QAnon in a Facebook post, which was preserved by extremism research J.J. MacNab before Lamotta’s account was deleted.“QAnon is a positive military operation that is working to take down the deep state,” Lamotta wrote.> pic.twitter.com/DxBDldEn4S> > — JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) November 6, 2020On one of his websites, Lamotta touted his access to weapons and claimed to be an “international security contractor.” The website, headlined with a picture of a sword, also features pictures of a gun and bullets.A blog post on a business page for Lamotta’s private security firm also suggested that COVID-19 is “an entirely man-made fake ‘natural pandemic’ psyop crisis with a patented, laboratory ‘gain of function’ bioweapon as its disease.” The Aug. 25 blog post then falsely states that the coronavirus is a plot equivalent to “crimes against humanity causing premeditated deaths, suffering, and economic hardship, in combination with the suppression of preventive medications and natural treatments.”“Killing these people is a legitimate act of self-defense and not a crime,” the entry reads.The blog post then erroneously suggests the pandemic—which has killed over 236,000 Americans—is nothing more than a “eugenics program at work” before commending Trump for taking a shot at Big Pharma.An Aug. 21 post took direct aim against Democrats and the upcoming election, stating: “Folks, I saw the DNC whatever that is...if I was a democrat, I’d shoot myself in the head right now, (right after seeing Trump's rally.) I would save myself a ton of ammo. They ain't worth 65-cents each to shoot at.”The 62-year-old also claims to be a U.S Army vet, and the site associated with this private security firm posted a link to the Facebook group “Vets for Trump” on Sept. 4. > Our president as CommanderInChief has done more for Vets in his 3 years then decades of politicians. We stand behind our @POTUS @realDonaldTrump as will the 85% of the Veterans who vote as VetsFortrump just like 2016! VeteransForTrump https://t.co/CRBVAedQ86> > — Joshua E Macias ⭐⭐⭐ (@JoshuaMacias) September 4, 2020Social media for Macias, a Navy vet, revealed the 42-year-old is an enthusiastic Trump supporter who co-founded the veteran's group supporting Trump. A Twitter account appearing to belong to Macias frequently posts in support of the president and has shared several posts that allege the 2020 presidential election—which has yet to be called—was stolen from Trump.“We are the Veterans who support our 45th President of the United States of America. We have stood the watch, we have survived the firefight. We are the backbone of the MAGA Movement in your backyard. For every Rally, every community meeting we are there for courage and strength as well as security!” Macias, who appears in a picture with Trump on his personal website, wrote on his LinkedIn page.In 2015, Macias was even a featured speaker at a Trump rally in Manassas, Virginia. A year later, just days after Trump was elected president, Macias also spoke to reporters at Trump Tower. After being introduced by Kellyanne Conway, Macias talked to reporters on Nov. 17, 2016 about how “veterans have been behind Donald Trump since Day 1.” “There are millions of veterans across the country that support Donald Trump,” he said, adding that they also “support Steve Bannon and the campaign efforts and General Flynn.” When asked why he was at Trump Tower, Macias said there to “augment and support on a volunteer basis.”Vladimir Lemets, executive director of Vets for Trump, confirmed to the Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday that Macias went to Philadelphia to monitor ballot counting.“They just went up there to see if they could be of any assistance and scope out what’s happening,” Lemets said, insisting that Macias had no violent intentions and probably thought his Virginia gun permit was valid out of state. (According to state law, Pennsylvania permits are honored in Virginia, but not the other way around.)Republican Candidate Who Openly Backed QAnon Wins a Seat in the HouseAnd Macias alleged accomplice, Lamotta, isn’t the first QAnon believer to be accused of plotting violence. QAnon conspiracy theorists have been charged with a number of crimes, including two murders, child kidnapping plots, and a terrorist incident near the Hoover Dam involving guns and an armored truck.Lamotta also made a comic, dubbed “The Trumpinator,” that portrayed Virginia State Sen. Amanda Chase (R) and a “Rambo”-like Trump taking on the cabal portrayed in QAnon conspiracy theories. At one point in the comic, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) promises to provide a nefarious figure with “adrenochrome,” a rejuvenating blood-like substance QAnon believers claim world elites drink after sexually torturing children.Despite his fringe beliefs, Lamotta has ties to at least one Republican official. He’s been photographed repeatedly alongside Chase, an outspoken opponent of gun control who has carried a pistol onto the statehouse floor.Chase posed for a picture in front of Lamotta’s Hummer and a QAnon flag while holding an AR-15-style rifle, and took a picture with him with the Hummer in the background.A spokesman for Chase said that Lamotta was not an official member of Chase’s campaign or security detail. Lamotta applied to join Chase’s campaign, according to the spokesman, but was rejected.“He did not meet the qualifications or standards within the campaign,” the spokesman said.The comic even references a QAnon faction, fringe even within the broader QAnon movement, that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death in a 1999 plane crash and disguised himself as Trump supporter Vincent Fusca. In his comic, Kennedy is portrayed putting on a costume to disguise himself as Fusca and help Trump.Lamotta’s comic also makes references to the anti-Semitic Khazar conspiracy theory, which posits that the Jewish people are not “genuine” Jews. At one point in the comic, Vladimir Putin is shown coordinating with Trump to arrest “the zionist-fake-jews.” A suspect in a 2019 attack on a kosher grocery store in Jersey City was also a Khazar conspiracy theorist.Lamotta also posted on Twitter about Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that inspired both a shooting and an arson attack at a Washington pizzeria and eventually was subsumed into QAnon.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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A look at false and misleading claims and videos that followed voting in the Nov. 3 presidential election. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. CLAIM: A video shows election workers in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, stamping clean ballots as received and then filling them in, which proves that voter fraud is taking place.

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President Donald Trump has held himself up as a champion of U.S. troops without rival. Now, with his presidency on the line, he’s casting suspicion on a tool of participatory democracy — the mail-in ballot — that has allowed U.S. military personnel to vote while serving far from home since the War of 1812. The president has shouted from Twitter to “STOP THE COUNT” and leveled unsubstantiated charges that "surprise ballot dumps" after election night are helping rival Democrat Joe Biden “steal” the election.

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