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Northern Star

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The Student News Site of Northern Illinois University

Northern Star

The Student News Site of Northern Illinois University

Northern Star

New threats emerge in outbreak while China voices optimism

By KEN MORITSUGU | February 20, 2020

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese health officials expressed new optimism Thursday over the deadly virus outbreak while authorities in South Korea’s fourth-largest city urged residents to hunker down as fears nagged communities far from the illness’ epicenter.The...

Germany’s immigrant community in Hanau reeling after attack

By DAVID McHUGH | February 20, 2020

HANAU, Germany (AP) — In the German town of Hanau, a longtime immigrant destination with decades of coexistence between people of different origins, residents were left with the fear Thursday that their community was targeted after a gunman shot and...

Fired Chicago Police superintendent getting $190K pension

February 20, 2020

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago's former police chief has been receiving a pension of more than $15,800 a month since the mayor fired him for allegedly lying about a night he was found asleep in his city-issued SUV, according to a newspaper report.Eddie Johnson...

Justices return for season of big decisions, amid campaign

By MARK SHERMAN | February 20, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — For a Supreme Court that says it has an allergy to politics, the next few months might require a lot of tissues.The court is poised to issue campaign-season decisions in the full bloom of spring in cases dealing with President Donald...

S. Korea reports 1st virus death; 2.5M urged to stay home

By KIM TONG-HYUNG and HYUNG-JIN KIM | February 20, 2020

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea reported its first death from the new virus on Thursday while the mayor of a southeastern city urged its 2.5 million people to stay inside as infections linked to a church congregation spiked.The death was the ninth...

Egypt’s once-reviled street dogs get chance at a better life

By ISABEL DEBRE | February 20, 2020

CAIRO (AP) — Karim Hegazi spends his days in a Cairo clinic taking care of animals long considered a menace in Egypt.Stray dogs roam in almost every Cairo neighborhood — lurking in construction sites, scavenging through trash and howling nightly atop...

Debate night brawl: Bloomberg, Sanders attacked by rivals

By STEVE PEOPLES, ALEXANDRA JAFFE, and MICHELLE L. PRICE | February 20, 2020

LAS VEGAS (AP) — From the opening bell, Democrats savaged New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised pointed questions about Bernie Sanders' take-no-prisoners politics during a contentious debate Wednesday night that threatened to further muddy the party's urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump.

Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who was once a Republican, was forced to defend his record and past comments related to race, gender and his personal wealth in an occasionally rocky debate stage debut. Sanders, meanwhile, tried to beat back pointed questions about his embrace of democratic socialism and his health following a heart attack last year.

The ninth debate of this cycle featured the most aggressive sustained period of infighting in the Democrats’ yearlong search for a presidential nominee. The tension reflected growing anxiety among candidates and party leaders that the nomination fight could yield a candidate who will struggle to build a winning coalition in November to beat Trump.

The campaign is about to quickly intensify. Nevada votes on Saturday and South Carolina follows on February 29. More than a dozen states host Super Tuesday contests in less than two weeks with about one-third of the delegates needed to win the nomination at stake.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was in a fight for survival and stood out with repeated attacks on Bloomberg. She sought to undermine him with core Democratic voters who are uncomfortable with his vast wealth, his offensive remarks about policing of minorities and demeaning comments about women, including those who worked at his company.

Warren labeled Bloomberg "a billionaire who calls people fat broads and horse-faced lesbians."

She wasn’t alone.

Sanders lashed out at Bloomberg's policing policies as New York City mayor that he said targeted “African-American and Latinos in an outrageous way."

And former Vice President Joe Biden charged that Bloomberg’s “stop-and-frisk” policy ended up “throwing 5 million black men up against the wall.”

Watching from afar, Trump joined the Bloomberg pile on.

“I hear he's getting pounded tonight, you know he's in a debate,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix.

After the debate, Warren told reporters: "I have no doubt that Michael Bloomberg is reaching in his pocket right now, and spending another hundred million dollars to try to erase every American's memory about what happened on the debate stage."

On a night that threatened to tarnish the shine of his carefully constructed TV-ad image, Bloomberg faltered when attacked on issues related to race and gender. But he was firm and unapologetic about his wealth and how he has used it to effect change important to Democrats. He took particular aim at Sanders and his self-description as a democratic socialist.

“I don’t think there's any chance of the senator beating Donald Trump," Bloomberg declared before noting Sanders' rising wealth. "The best known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses!"

Sanders defended owning multiple houses, noting he has one in Washington, where he works, and two in Vermont, the state he represents in the Senate.

While Bloomberg was the shiny new object Wednesday, the debate also marked a major test for Sanders, who is emerging as the front-runner in the Democrats’ nomination fight, whether his party’s establishment likes it or not. A growing group of donors, elected officials and political operatives fear that Sanders’ uncompromising progressive politics could be a disaster in the general election against Trump, yet they’ve struggled to coalesce behind a single moderate alternative.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, went after both Bloomberg and Sanders, warning that one threatened to “burn down” the Democratic Party and the other was trying to buy it.

He called them “the two most polarizing figures on this stage," with little chance of defeating Trump or helping congressional Democrats in contests with Republicans.

Bloomberg and Sanders were prime targets, but the stakes were no less dire for the other four candidates on stage.

Longtime establishment favorite Biden, a two-term vice president, desperately needed to breathe new life into his flailing campaign, which entered the night at the bottom of a moderate muddle behind Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. And after a bad finish last week in New Hampshire, Warren was fighting to resurrect her stalled White House bid.

A Warren campaign aide said on Twitter that her fiery first hour of debate was her best hour of fundraising "to date."

The other leading progressive in the race, Sanders came under attack from Biden and Bloomberg for his embrace of democratic socialism.

Sanders, as he has repeatedly over the last year, defended the cost of his signature “Medicare for All” healthcare plan, which would eliminate the private insurance industry in favor of a government-backed healthcare system that would cover all Americans.

"When you asked Bernie how much it cost last time he said...'We'll find out,’” Biden quipped. “It costs over $35 trillion, let's get real."

And ongoing animosity flared between Buttigieg and Klobuchar when the former Indiana mayor slammed the three-term Minnesota senator for failing to answer questions in a recent interview about Mexican policy and forgetting the name of the Mexican president.

Buttigieg noted that she's on a committee that oversees trade issues in Mexico and she “was not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country.”

She shot back: "Are you trying to say I'm dumb? Are you mocking me here?"

Later in the night she lashed out at Buttigieg again: “I wish everyone else was as perfect as you, Pete.”

The debate closed with a question about the possibility that Democrats remain divided deep into the primary season with a final resolution coming during a contested national convention in July.

Asked if the candidate with the most delegates should be the nominee -- even if he or she is short of a delegate majority, almost every candidate suggested that the convention process should "work its way out," as Biden put it.

Sanders, who helped force changes to the nomination process this year and hopes to take a significant delegate lead in the coming weeks, was the only exception.

“The person who has the most votes should become the nominee,” he said.

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Peoples and Jaffe reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.

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Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”

The Latest: Sanders: Democrat with most delegates should win

February 19, 2020

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The latest on the 2020 presidential campaign and Democratic debat e (all times local):8 p.m.Bernie Sanders is the only Democratic candidate on the debate stage who thinks the candidate with the most delegates should win the party’s...

California governor makes homelessness top issue in 2020

By ADAM BEAM and DON THOMPSON | February 19, 2020

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Tossing aside tradition, California's governor on Wednesday devoted his biggest platform to a single issue: solving a homelessness crisis that has overwhelmed the nation's most populous state in an era of unprecedented prosperity.Governorstypically...

Police: Girl, 6, was killed by neighbor who then killed self

By JEFFREY COLLINS | February 18, 2020

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A 6-year-old girl who disappeared from her front yard after school was killed by a neighbor who then killed himself, authorities said Tuesday.Faye Marie Swetlik died of asphyxiation just hours after she was abducted, Lexington...

Trump vows to ‘clean up’ LA at Olympic meeting briefing

By ZEKE MILLER | February 18, 2020

LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday veered into politics during a briefing on preparations for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, criticizing the city's political leadership for failing to curtail its homelessness epidemic.Trump...

Bloomberg to go face to face against rivals after ad blitz

By ALEXANDRA JAFFE and KATHLEEN RONAYNE | February 18, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — For Mike Bloomberg, the one-way conversation with Democratic voters is about to end.By spending more than $400 million of his own money and largely bypassing his opponents by skipping the early primary states, Bloomberg has rocketed...