The attorney for Anthony Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman who made rounds on social media for his outlandish outfit during the Capitol riot, is blaming former President TrumpDonald TrumpMcCarthy says he told Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene he disagreed with her impeachment articles against Biden Biden, Trudeau agree to meet next month Trump planned to oust acting AG to overturn Georgia election results: report MORE for his client’s involvement.
“He regrets very, very much having not just been duped by the president but by being in a position where he allowed that duping to put him in a position to make decisions he should not have made,” Al Watkins, a lawyer for Chansley, told Missouri’s NBC-affiliated television station KSDK.
Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli, was arrested on Jan. 9 for his role in the riot. At the time, Chansley told NBC News he saw nothing wrong with his actions.
The attorney is blaming Trump’s months of election fraud conspiracy theories for the riot and his client’s actions.
“Let’s roll the tape. Let’s roll the months of lies and misrepresentations and horrific innuendo and hyperbolic speech by our president designed to inflame, enrage, motivate,” Watkins told KSDK. “What’s really curious is the reality that our president, as a matter of public record, invited these individuals, as president, to walk down to the Capitol with him.”
Chansley went viral after the riot for wearing horns and fur and carrying an American flag. He is said to have left a threatening note for former Vice President Mike PenceMichael (Mike) Richard PenceTrump planned to oust acting AG to overturn Georgia election results: report Trump actions illustrate why Congress must pass the For the People Act Cheney tests Trump grip on GOP post-presidency MORE.
Trump peddled conspiracy theories that the results of the 2020 presidential election were fraudulent and that he was the winner. He also invited supporters to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 to support him in a protest.
Trump told supporters to walk toward the Capitol, where Congress was certifying the Electoral College votes, but he never said to break in or put people in harm’s way. However, he called the rioters “special people” in a video that same day.
Chansley has been involved in many protests in Arizona, where he was photographed carrying a “Q sent me” sign, referring to the far-right Qanon conspiracy theory that purports Trump is fighting an underground ring of Satanic pedophiles in the federal government.
Some rioters were hoping for a presidential pardon before Trump left office, but none of them got one. There have been more than 100 arrests, with more to come as the FBI continues to investigate the matter.
On Friday, Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT) announced a set of price raises for its Xbox Live Gold online gaming service, then reversed itself hours later after a wave of criticism.
The IT giant originally announced that Gold would cost $1 more for a one-month membership, lifting its cost to $10.99. A three-month membership was set at $29.99 (formerly $24.99). The longest term currently available, six months, would have increased to $59.99 (formerly $39.99). Microsoft is no longer offering a one-year option.
There would be no immediate price change for Gold subscribers with existing six- or 12-month memberships.
In its original announcement about the price hikes, Microsoft pointed out that in many of its markets, those rates had not changed in years.
Image source: Getty Images.
There was considerable speculation that Microsoft’s move was an attempt to convince subscribers to upgrade to the top online gaming tier, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. This bestows access to over 100 games, confers exclusive discounts, and provides other perks, of top of the benefits of Gold membership. Microsoft was to keep Ultimate’s price unchanged at $14.99 per month.
The outcry over the price raises was swift and, at times, vociferous. In response, shortly before midnight ET on Friday, Microsoft canceled the decision in an edit to its original announcement, writing that “We messed up today and you were right to let us know. Connecting and playing with friends is a vital part of gaming and we failed to meet the expectations of players who count on it every day.”
In addition to leaving Gold pricing unchanged in the end, Microsoft said that free-to-play titles will be accessible on Xbox without a Gold subscription, as previously required. It said it hopes to implement this change in the next few months.
Do you ever wonder about the many experiments that go on at the International Space Station (ISS)? What do astronauts study in this orbiting laboratory?
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Well, many things of course but one of them is the weather: particularly the kind of weather events that can not be seen from Earth. These are called blue jets, and elves (short for Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources), and their monitoring is made possible by a European tool named the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) observatory.
ASIM, installed in the space station in 2018, consists of a collection of optical cameras, photometers, and an X and gamma-ray detector and it’s there to detect electrical discharges from weather events that can only be spotted in space. Understanding these galactical weather events is crucial to understanding not only the weather on Earth but also the concentration of greenhouse gasses in Earth’s atmosphere.
What are elves and blue jets?
But what are blue jets and elves? Blue jets, as their name denotes, are streams of blue-colored lightning that do not head toward land but instead shoot upward into space. As the images show, they are quite beautiful to see.
Elves, on the other hand, are light emissions that appear as rapidly expanding rings in the ionosphere.
Both elves and blue jets were spotted by ASIM on Feb. 26, 2019 near Nauru, a small island in the central Pacific Ocean. They have now been described in a paper published in Nature on Jan. 20, 2021. The study describes these events in great detail capturing their awe-inspiring beauty even without the use of images.
It is definitely worth a read if you are a fan of space phenomena. It is also indicative of all we still have to discover on our precious planet.
“This paper is an impressive highlight of the many new phenomena ASIM is observing above thunderstorms and shows that we still have so much to discover and learn about our Universe,” said in a statement Astrid Orr, ESA’s Physical Sciences Coordinator for human and robotic spaceflight.
SHOULD BE AT THE FRONT OF THE LINE. >> THESE WORKERS, AGAIN, WORK SHOULDER TO SHOULDER IN THESE FACILITIES. THERE IS NO VENTILLATION OR VERY LITTLE VENTILATION. >> JOE HENRY IS THE POLITICAL DIRECTOR OF LULAC LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS OF IOWA, HE KNOWS THE STATES MEAT PACKING INDUSTRY EMPLOYS A LARGE NUMBER OF LATINO MEN AND WOMEN IN LOCATIONS LIKE THE TYSON PLANT IN PERRY. HE SAYS THE VACCINE SHOULD NOT BE DENIED TO WORKERS WHO DO NOT HAVE PROPER DOCUMENTATION. >> THEY NEED TO BE TREATED THE SAME AS THOSE WHO ARE US CITIZENS. >> GOVERNOR REYNOLDS WAS ASKED ABOUT VACCINATING UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS DURING HER PRESS CONFERENCE THURSDAY AFTERNOON SHE DID NOT DIRECTLY RESPOND TO THE QUESTION. >> THAT WAS A RECCOMENDATION THAT WE GET INTO THE AG AND FOOD PROCESSORS AND WORK WITH THE EMPLOYEES OF THOSE VARIOUS FACILITIES AND GET THEM VACCINATED. WE WANT TO MAKE SURE WE KEEP THAT FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN MOVING. >> WE SPOKE TO A TYSON SPOKES PERSON WHO TELLS US THEY FOLLOW STATE AND FEDERAL GUIDELINES TO ENSURE ITS EMPLOYEES ARE IN THE UNITED STATES LEGALLY. >> BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS IF OYU WORK AT TYSONS FOODS, WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THE VACCINE IS AVAILABLE. >> DEREK BURLESON SAYS WHEN THE VACCINE AVAILABILITY WILL VARY BY STATE SO NOTHING IS SET IN STONE JUST YET BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE SITTING AROUND AND >> RIGHT NOW WE ARE WORKING WITH HEALTH OFFICIALS IN IOWA AND THE
The Iowa Department of Public Health on Saturday reported 1,368 new positive COVID-19 cases and additional deaths. As of 10 a.m., the health department reported 311,964 total positive cases, 273,189 total recoveries and 4,487 total deaths since the start of the pandemic. A day earlier, the health department reported 310,596 total cases and 4,478 total deaths.The statewide 14-day positivity rate is 11%, while the 7-day positivity rate is 8.4%. Iowa reports 1,444,457 individuals tested for the virus, with 3,489,247 tests administered.There are now nine Iowa counties with a 14-day positivity rate greater than 15%. Two counties report a positivity rate greater than 20%. Wayne County reports the lowest rate in the state at 4%.IDPH reports 419 Iowans hospitalized with COVID-19, down from 450 the previous day. The number of patients admitted in the last 24 hours declined from 66 to 64. There are 76 patients in ICU and 38 patients on ventilators.There are 71 long-term care facilities reporting virus outbreaks in Iowa. The health department reports 1,901 positive cases and 1,038 recoveries among residents and staff within those facilities. There have been 1,856 deaths reported in Iowa’s care facilities.The Iowa Department of Public Health provides COVID-19 data in real time on this website. KCCI publishes a summary each day at 10 a.m.
DES MOINES, Iowa —
The Iowa Department of Public Health on Saturday reported 1,368 new positive COVID-19 cases and additional deaths.
As of 10 a.m., the health department reported 311,964 total positive cases, 273,189 total recoveries and 4,487 total deaths since the start of the pandemic. A day earlier, the health department reported 310,596 total cases and 4,478 total deaths.
The statewide 14-day positivity rate is 11%, while the 7-day positivity rate is 8.4%. Iowa reports 1,444,457 individuals tested for the virus, with 3,489,247 tests administered.
There are now nine Iowa counties with a 14-day positivity rate greater than 15%. Two counties report a positivity rate greater than 20%. Wayne County reports the lowest rate in the state at 4%.
IDPH reports 419 Iowans hospitalized with COVID-19, down from 450 the previous day. The number of patients admitted in the last 24 hours declined from 66 to 64. There are 76 patients in ICU and 38 patients on ventilators.
There are 71 long-term care facilities reporting virus outbreaks in Iowa. The health department reports 1,901 positive cases and 1,038 recoveries among residents and staff within those facilities. There have been 1,856 deaths reported in Iowa’s care facilities.
The Iowa Department of Public Health provides COVID-19 data in real time on this website. KCCI publishes a summary each day at 10 a.m.
Raleigh, N.C. — The first case of the highly-contagious COVID-19 variant has been confirmed in North Carolina.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services identified the first case of the variant in an adult in Mecklenburg County.
The COVID variant, called B.1.1.7., was first detected in the UK in December.
According to officials, 195 cases of the COVID variant have been reported in 21 states as of Jan. 22.
“Early data suggest that this variant may be more contagious than other variants,” said NCDHHS in a statement.
Current COVID-19 vaccines are expected to be effective against the new variant, according to officials.
“While expected, identification of this COVID-19 variant in North Carolina is concerning, especially at the same time as we are already seeing very high numbers of cases,” said Mandy Cohen, NCDHHS Secretary.
“It is more important than ever to practice the 3Ws,” she said.
Wash hands. Wear a mask. Wait 6 feet apart.
State health officials advise people to stay home except for essential activities and avoid gathering, especially indoors, with people who do not live with you.
If you absolutely must travel or be with people you do not live with, get tested in advance, keep it small and outdoors and always wear a mask.
And, of course, get an appointment for a vaccine when one becomes available to you.
Donald Trump was at his Florida resort on Saturday, beginning post-presidency life while Joe Biden settled into the White House. But in Washington and beyond, the chaos of the 45th president’s final days in office continued to throw out damaging aftershocks.
In yet another earth-shaking report, the New York Times said Trump plotted with an official at the Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state.
Former acting US defense secretary Christopher Miller, meanwhile, made an extraordinary admission, telling Vanity Fair that when he took the job in November, he had three goals: “No military coup, no major war and no troops in the street.”
The former special forces officer added: “The ‘no troops in the street’ thing changed dramatically about 14.30 [on 6 January]. So that one’s off [the list].”
That was the day a mob incited by Trump smashed its way into the US Capitol, in some cases allegedly looking for lawmakers to kidnap or kill. More than 100 arrests have been made over the riot, which also saw Trump impeached a second time.
A deal between Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate, announced on Friday night, means Trump’s second trial will begin in the week of 8 February. If convicted, a prospect unlikely given his grip on his party but not impossible given statements by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Trump will most likely be barred from running for office again.
The president’s persistent and possibly illegal efforts to overturn his loss to Biden in Georgia had been widely reported. Had he been successful, he would not have gained enough electoral votes to overturn his overall defeat.
On the day Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol, leaving five people dead, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate lodged objections to electoral college results. That attempt to overturn the election also failed.
The law enforcement and Pentagon response to the Capitol riot has been questioned, regarding the ease with which security was breached and the time it took to get the national guard to the scene. One Capitol police officer died after confronting the rioters. Another gained national fame after leading attackers away from where lawmakers hid.
“We had meetings upon meetings,” Miller told Vanity Fair. “We were monitoring it. And we’re just like, ‘Please, God, please, God.’ Then the damn TV pops up and everybody converges on my office: [Joint Chiefs of Staff] chairman [Gen Mark Milley], Secretary of the Army [Ryan] McCarthy, the crew just converges.
“We had already decided we’re going to need to activate the national guard, and that’s where the fog and friction comes in.”
Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist installed as Miller’s chief of staff – and accused of obstructing the Biden transition – said: “The DC mayor finally said, ‘OK, I need more.’ Then the Capitol police … a federal agency and the Secret Service made the request … and we did it. And then we just went to work.”
Miller called accusations the Pentagon was slow to respond “complete horseshit” and said: “I gotta tell you, I cannot wait to go to the Hill and have those conversations with senators and representatives … I know when something doesn’t smell right, and I know when we’re covering our asses. Been there. I know for an absolute fact that historians are going to look … at the actions that we did on that day and go, ‘Those people had their game together.’”
By the time of the inauguration, two weeks later, 25,000 guard members were in the capital, an unprecedented display which put central Washington on lockdown. Troops also guarded state capitols against pro-Trump protests and plots that did not transpire.
As the Capitol riot failed to overturn the election, so, according to the Times, Trump’s alleged plot against acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen did not work out either.
The report detailed “stunned silence” among DoJ leaders as they were told of moves by Trump and “unassuming lawyer” Jeffrey Clark to “cast doubt on the election results and bolster … legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians”.
Rosen took over as acting attorney general after the resignation of William Barr, who was widely seen as a Trump crony but who crossed the president by saying there was no evidence of the election fraud he baselessly alleged, claims which were repeatedly thrown out of court.
Melania Trump leaves Donald Trump alone in front of the cameras – video
Georgia Republicans including Governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger – the recipient of a wheedling and bullying call from Trump – also refused to accede to the president’s demands.
According to the Times, DoJ leaders decided that if Rosen was fired and replaced by Clark, they would resign en masse.
“For some,” the paper reported, “the plan brought to mind the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon era, where Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than carry out the president’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating him.”
Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over the Watergate scandal. After the Capitol attack, Trump refused to resign. Vice-President Mike Pence refused to invoke the 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president deemed unfit for office.
Out of office, Trump is vulnerable to investigations at federal and state levels. On Friday, a Washington Examiner reporter found him “at his regular table in the grill room of the Trump international golf club” in West Palm Beach.
“We’ll do something, but not just yet,” the president reportedly said, his first comment since leaving the White House, before an aide “swooped in and swiftly, but politely, ended the interaction”.
Ezra Cohen, another Trump appointee at the Pentagon, told Vanity Fair: “The president threw us under the bus. And when I say ‘us,’ I don’t mean only us political appointees or only us Republicans. He threw America under the bus. He caused a lot of damage to the fabric of this country.”
Bad weather forced SpaceX to call off plans for launching a record 143 small satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday.
The team was told to recycle for another attempt Sunday at 10 a.m. EST when forecasters predicted a 70% chance of acceptable conditions.
Bad weather across Cape Canaveral forced SpaceX to order a 24-hour delay for the launch of a record 143 small satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The team will try again Sunday.
SpaceX webcast
The scores of satellites atop the Falcon 9 are the most ever scheduled for launch by a single rocket, eclipsing the previous 104-satellite mark set by India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in February 2017.
The mission, known as Transporter 1, is SpaceX’s first dedicated rideshare flight in a program intended to provide low-cost access to space for small satellites operators that otherwise might have problems hitching rides aboard rockets carrying larger, higher-priority satellites.
“Excited about offering low-cost access to orbit for small companies!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted Friday.
Launching many small satellites for a wide range of customers tomorrow. Excited about offering low-cost access to orbit for small companies! https://t.co/NrXmBML747
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2021
SpaceX charges a relatively low $1 million to launch a 440-pound satellite and $5,000 for every 2.2 pounds above that base level. The company says Transporter missions will be carried out every four months or so as required.
The Transporter 1 flight highlights an on-going debate in the aerospace community about the need for revamped regulations governing space traffic management as more and more small satellite populate low-Earth orbit. Among the concerns: the threat of collisions that could generate clouds of debris and pose threats to other spacecraft.
“Given the recent increase in non-traditional commercial space operations, including satellite servicing, space tourism and the deployment of large numbers of satellites to provide worldwide internet access, updates to the existing roles and responsibilities may be appropriate,” NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel wrote in a recent report.
“As things stand today, there are no clear lines of authority for directing coherence among the many entities that operate in space.”
The NFL’s official statistic for quantifying passing efficiency is passer rating, which considers completion percentage, yards per pass, touchdowns and interceptions. Passer rating is far from a perfect stat, but at a glance it provides a good look at how efficient a quarterback is.
And Patrick Mahomes is the NFL’s all-time leader, both in the regular season and in the postseason.
To qualify for the regular season record, a quarterback must have thrown 1,500 career passes. Mahomes topped that mark in the 2020 season and now has thrown 1,687 passes in his career. He has a career passer rating of 108.7, topping Deshaun Watson‘s 104.5, Aaron Rodgers‘ 103.9, Russell Wilson‘s 101.7 and Drew Brees‘s 98.7.
It’s noteworthy that everyone in the Top 5 was active during the 2020 NFL season. Quarterbacks are much more efficient now than they used to be, and that’s one of the flaws with passer rating: It doesn’t adjust for era, so it’s always going to favor the modern passers.
But that’s what makes Mahomes breaking the postseason record so noteworthy. Mahomes has a career postseason passer rating of 106.6, and when Mahomes reached the minimum of 150 postseason passes to qualify, he broke a record that Bart Starr had held since the 1960s.
It’s a testament to how great Starr was in big games that he had a postseason passer rating of 104.8, still second only to Mahomes in NFL history. NFL passing offenses were so different during Starr’s era that most of the passing numbers from those days look laughably bad. (In 1969 Starr led the league with an 89.9 passer rating, while in 2020 the league average passer rating was 93.6.) In the playoffs, Starr put up numbers in the 1960s that look excellent even in 2020.
Mahomes is now putting up numbers that the NFL has never seen before.
Gregory Sierra, a longtime character actor who appeared in television shows and movies, most notably on “Barney Miller” and “Sanford and Son,” died Jan. 4 in Laguna Woods, Calif., from cancer. He was 83.
A New York native, Sierra’s breakthrough came when he was cast as Julio Fuentes, the Puerto Rican neighbor to Redd Foxx’s Fred Sanford on “Sanford and Son.”
After he left that series, Sierra played one of the original detectives working out of the diverse 12th Precinct in Greenwich Village on ABC’s “Barney Miller.” He was written out of the series after the second season to star in “A.E.S. Hudson Street,” a sitcom about a frantic emergency room, but it lasted just six episodes.
Sierra also appeared as a radical Jewish vigilante in “Archie Is Branded,” a 1973 episode of CBS’ “All in the Family,” wherein someone paints a swastika on Archie’s door. The episode, which ends in silence, was among the most memorable from the long-running series.
Gregory SierraWalt Disney Television via Getty Images
Born on Jan. 25, 1937 in Spanish Harlem, Sierra attended the Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception, in Brooklyn. After school, he worked with the National Shakespeare Company and in the New York Shakespeare Festival before moving to Los Angeles, where he started getting bit parts in television and supporting roles in movies like “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” “Getting Straight,” “Papillon” and “The Towering Inferno.”
He had recurring roles in multiple television shows, including “Hill Street Blues,” “Miami Vice,” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and made appearances in a slew of other series.
“Miami Vice” star Edward James Olmos tweeted that he read news of Sierra’s death and wept. “Gregory Sierra will forever be with us,” Olmos wrote. “Those that knew him. His laughter. His wit. His kindness. His extraordinary artistic ability. He was a friend, a Mentor, a force of nature that I was so grateful to have known & worked with. RIP.”
[UPDATE: Today’s attempt was scrubbed due to weather conditions. Another launch window is available tomorrow at 10 AM ET]
SpaceX is set to launch the very first of its dedicated rideshare missions – an offering it introduced in 2019 that allows small satellite operators to book a portion of a payload on a Falcon 9 launch. SpaceX’s rocket has a relatively high payload capacity compared to the size of many of the small satellites produced today, so a rideshare mission like this offers smaller companies and startups a chance to get their spacecraft in orbit without breaking the bank.
The cargo capsule atop the Falcon 9 flying today holds a total of 133 satellites according to SpaceX, which is a new record for the highest number of satellites being launched on a single rocket – beating out a payload of 104 spacecraft delivered by Indian Space Research Organization’s PSLV-C37 launch back in February 2017. It’ll be a key demonstration not only of SpaceX’s rideshare capabilities, but also of the complex coordination involved in a launch that includes deployment of multiple payloads into different target orbits in relatively quick succession.
This launch will be closely watched in particular for its handling of orbital traffic management, since it definitely heralds what the future of private space launches could look like in terms of volume of activity. Some of the satellites flying on this mission are not much larger than an iPad, so industry experts will be paying close attention to how they’re deployed and tracked to avoid any potential conflicts.
Some of the payloads being launched today include significant volumes of startup spacecraft, including 36 of Swarm’s tiny IoT network satellites, and eight of Kepler’s GEN-1 communications satellites. There are also 10 of SpaceX’s own Starlink satellites on board, and 48 of Planet Labs’ Earth-imaging spacecraft.
The launch stream above should begin around 15 minutes prior to the mission start, which is set for 9:40 AM EST (6:40 AM PST) today.
