NPR
President Biden is in a tight race to keep former President Donald Trump from reclaiming the White House, recent polls show. But that's not how 154 historians and presidential experts see it: They rate Biden in the top third of U.S. presidents, while Trump ranks dead last.
The 2024 edition of the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey has Biden in 14th place, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan. Trump comes in 45th, behind fellow impeachee Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan, the perennial cellar-dweller in such ratings due to his pre-Civil War leadership.
"While partisanship and ideology don't tend to make a major difference overall, there are a few distinctions worth noting," said political scientists Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University, who first published their greatness survey in 2015.
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C/NET
Franklin Armstrong moved into Charlie Brown's neighborhood back in 1968, and it was a big deal. Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip featured only white characters at the time, and when he brought in Franklin as a Black friend for Charlie Brown and crew, the Civil Rights Movement was raging, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated just months before.
Despite some pushback, Schulz, as
noted by The Washington Post, stood his ground, and Franklin became a regular character, if not an especially major one. Now, however, he's starring in his own origin story and TV special, "Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin," which began airing Feb. 16 on Apple TV Plus, midway through Black History Month.
BBC
Back To The Future star Michael J Fox, who is living with Parkinson's disease, made a surprise appearance at the Baftas to present the best film award.
The 62-year-old actor came onstage in a wheelchair but insisted on standing up at the podium to hand out the prize to Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
Fox received a standing ovation, with many social media users posting that they were in tears seeing him on stage.
He was diagnosed in the 1990s and rarely makes public appearances.
Davis Guggenheim's film, Still: A Michael J Fox Movie, was nominated for best documentary but lost out to 20 Days In Mariupol.
BBC
Alexei Navalny's wife Yulia has always kept a low profile, insisting that her main role was as a wife and mother not a politician.
But with her husband's death on Friday and her impassioned appeal for justice at the Munich Security Conference, she has emerged as a major figure in Russia's beleaguered opposition perhaps by default.
Despite her background role in the past, Ms Navalnaya has always been a crucial supporter of her husband, and was instrumental in getting him out of Russia for urgent treatment when he was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent in 2020.
She has been described as the "First Lady" of the Russian opposition.
Deutsche Welle
In the northern German city of Kiel, five Catholic churches have recently closed their doors. The majority of the 240,000 inhabitants of the state capital of Schleswig-Holstein are Protestants. It is largely due to financial hardships that Catholic churches are in decline. The entire city of Kiel is now one large parish with just a few churches. Some buildings have already disappeared to make way for housing. Although the Church of the Holy Cross in the district of Kiel-Elmschenhagen is still standing, it has been shuttered.
On November 19, 2022, the Church of the Holy Cross, the only Catholic church in the district, was formally deconsecrated and subsequently closed — despite opposition from Rüdiger Kirkskothen and other parishioners.
"All our protests failed," the 79-year-old Kirkskothen told DW. "We even wrote to the Vatican. That didn't help either."
Al Jazeera
The International Court of Justice will begin hearings on Monday in a case against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, barely a month after it issued a series of directions to Tel Aviv in a separate case where it is accused of genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip.
In a first-of-its-kind case, at least 52 countries will present arguments on controversial Israeli policies in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and occupied East Jerusalem. It’s the largest number of parties to participate in any single ICJ case since the court was established in 1945.
The Guardian, Australia
The Australian Taxation Office is preparing to expand a controversial scheme that resurrects decades-old debts in its pursuit of more than $15bn, despite rising numbers of complaints, transparency concerns and at least one systems error resulting in miscalculations.
Internal ATO documents released to Guardian Australia show the program is designed to ramp up this year to eventually capture up to 1.8m entities, largely consisting of individuals.
The documents, released under freedom of information laws, show the ATO had decided against seeking a reprieve for older Australians and those on lower incomes as part of the plan to recoup historical debts. However, it said in a statement it was “currently assessing next steps” for the scheme.
The Guardian
At least one person was killed and five others were wounded in a shooting at a Waffle House restaurant in Indianapolis early Monday morning, capping a weekend of US gun violence days after a deadly mass shooting at a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs’ win in Super Bowl LVIII.
Indianapolis police said they went to the southside Waffle House about 12.30am after a total of six people were shot there. The violence began as an altercation between two groups, but it was not immediately clear if any victims fired shots, authorities said.
Police said a woman taken to hospital in critical condition had died while three men and one woman were recovering from bullet wounds at area hospitals.
The Guardian
The Wisconsin governor, Tony Evers, has signed into law a pair of new statelegislative maps, undoing a Republican gerrymander that has shaped Wisconsin politics for more than a decade and giving Democrats a chance at winning control of the state in future elections.
“It’s a new day for Wisconsin,” said Evers at a press conference on Monday to cheers from a room of anti-gerrymandering activists.
His signature likely
marks the end of a protracted
fight over Wisconsin’s legislative lines and greatly reduces the Republican bias baked into the current maps. Republicans have enjoyed unchallenged control over the state assembly and senate for more than a decade because of legislative maps they drew to ensure that they would have large majorities in both chambers even in years Democrats won the majority of votes statewide.
NPR
President Biden is in a tight race to keep former President Donald Trump from reclaiming the White House, recent polls show. But that's not how 154 historians and presidential experts see it: They rate Biden in the top third of U.S. presidents, while Trump ranks dead last.
The 2024 edition of the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey has Biden in 14th place, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan. Trump comes in 45th, behind fellow impeachee Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan, the perennial cellar-dweller in such ratings due to his pre-Civil War leadership.
"While partisanship and ideology don't tend to make a major difference overall, there are a few distinctions worth noting," said political scientists Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University, who first published their greatness survey in 2015.
USA Today
Heavy rainfall battered Los Angeles on Monday as four counties in Southern California were placed under a flood watch just two weeks after a fierce winter storm devastated the region with severe flooding and mudslides.
The National Weather Service placed wide swaths of Los Angeles County's inland coast under a flood watch through Wednesday. On Monday, the western side of the city Los Angeles and the Santa Monica Mountains were under a flash flood warning until 6 p.m.
Flood warnings were also issued for the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys and the Eastern Santa Monica mountains.
"The main flood threat is going to be today and tomorrow," AccuWeather Meteorologist Joseph Bauer told USA TODAY on Monday.
Reuters
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 19 (Reuters) - The United States has proposed an alternative draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and opposing a major Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza, according to the text seen by Reuters on Monday.
Washington has been averse to the word ceasefire in any U.N. action on the Israel-Hamas war, but the U.S. draft text echoes language that President Joe Biden said he used last week in conversations with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The U.S. draft text "determines that under current circumstances a major ground offensive into Rafah would result in further harm to civilians and their further displacement including potentially into neighboring countries."
Israel plans to storm Rafah, where more than 1 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have sought shelter, prompting international concern that such a move would sharply worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
NPR
A group of five cyclists were riding on a trail in Fall City, Wash., when they were attacked by at least one cougar this past weekend.
The incident occurred on Saturday around 12:30 p.m., according to the King County Sheriff's Office, in a wilderness area along Tokul Creek approximately five miles north of the city of Snoqualmie.
A 60-year-old female was hospitalized for non-life threatening injuries, but is in stable condition, according to a statement from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).
"We are thankful that the victim is stable after the incident this weekend," said Lieutenant Erik Olson. "The people on scene took immediate action to render aid, and one of our officers was able to arrive within minutes to continue medical aid and coordinate transport. We may have had a very different outcome without their heroic efforts."
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