Washington Linda Greenhouse was once the New York Times’ reporter for the Supreme Court. Now I take it she is in retirement, though she apparently comes out of retirement from time to time to heave bouquets to President-elect Joe Biden. Last weekend, she heaved several of her floral encomiums his way when she told “My Joe Biden Story” to the Times’ gullible readers. The result was warm, effusive, and mostly claptrap. She wrote that in 1987 when Joe was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Mr. Biden presided with confidence and grace [over the hearings for Judge Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination], all the more notable because during those weeks, his presidential candidacy imploded over what now seems like one of the sillier scandals of modern politics: his unattributed appropriation, at the end of a candidates’ debate at the Iowa State Fair, of a few catchy lines from a speech by a British politician.” The British politician that originated the lines that Biden plagiarized was no ordinary politician. He was Neil Kinnock, the British Labour leader, and he was running to become Prime Minister. Biden not only stole Kinnock’s words but a part of his life, claiming to be a
LONDON (REUTERS) - Britain will ban arrivals from Brazil, other South American states and Portugal due to concerns over a new coronavirus variant, transport minister Grant Shapps said on Thursday (Jan 14). "I've taken the urgent decision to ban arrivals from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela - from tomorrow, Jan 15, at 4am following evidence of a new variant in Brazil," Shapps said on Twitter. Portugal was also added to the banned list because of close travel links with Brazil, he said. Workers transporting essential good from Portugal would be exempt. Shapps said the new measures would not apply to British and Irish nationals and third country nationals with residence rights, but passengers returning from those destinations must self-isolate for 10 days. On Sunday, Japan said the variant had been found in four travellers from Brazil's Amazonas state. It shares some characteristics with variants in Britain and South Africa which are believed to be more transmissible than normal. In December, Brazil suspended flights from Britain due the emergence of the British variant of the coronavirus.
DUBAI: Iran's Revolutionary Guards fired "abundant" surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and tested locally manufactured new drones in a military exercise on Friday, state television reported.The drill, which it said was overseen by Guards commander Major General Hossein Salami in the central desert region, came in the waning days of high tensions with US President Donald Trump’s administration.It followed short-range naval missile tests on Wednesday, as well as exercises earlier this month that featured a wide array of domestically produced drones."The bomber drones struck the hypothetical enemy missile shield from all directions, completely destroying the targets," the state TV broadcast said of Friday's drill."Also, an abundant number of a new generation of ballistic missiles were fired at selected targets, inflicting deadly blows to the hypothetical enemy bases."Iran, which routinely boasts of technological advances in its armed forces, has one of the biggest missile programmes in the Middle East, regarding them as a deterrent and retaliatory force against U.S. and other adversaries in the event of war.There have been periodic confrontations between Iran's military and US forces in the Gulf since 2018, when Trump abandoned Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reinstated harsh sanctions against Tehran.US President-elect Joe Biden, who takes