TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — More than 300 American cruise ship passengers, including 14 who tested positive for coronavirus, were being quarantined at military bases in California and Texas on Monday after arriving from Japan on charter flights overnight.

One plane carrying cruise passengers touched down at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California just before midnight Sunday, while another arrived at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas early Monday. The passengers will remain at the bases for two weeks.

Japan’s Defense Minister Taro Kono tweeted earlier that Japanese troops helped transport 340 U.S. passengers on 14 buses from Yokohama port to Tokyo’s Haneda airport. About 380 Americans were on the cruise ship.

The U.S. said it arranged for the evacuation because people on the Diamond Princess were at a high risk of exposure to the new virus that’s been spreading in Asia. For the departing Americans, the evacuation cuts short a 14-day quarantine that began aboard the cruise ship Feb. 5.

The State Department announced later that 14 of the evacuees received confirmation they had the virus but were allowed to board the flight because they had no symptoms. They were being kept isolated from other passengers on the flight, the U.S. State and Health and Human Services said in a joint statement.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said Sunday that an infected person who shows minimal symptoms could still pass the virus to someone else.

It’s unclear which base the 14 who tested positive for the virus went to.

Officials said the evacuees who arrived at Travis Air Force Base will be housed at a different location from the more than 200 other Americans who were already being quarantined on the base, in a hotel. Those people have been at the base since early February, when they arrived on flights from China.

No Travis airmen will have contact with the passengers, officials said.

Now that they’re in the U.S., the cruise ship passengers must go through another 14 days of quarantine at the military facilities — meaning they will have been under quarantine for a total of nearly four weeks.

Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Italy were planning similar flights of passengers. Other governments, including Canada and Hong Kong, also will require the passengers to undergo a second 14-day quarantine.

Japan on Monday announced another 99 infections on the Diamond Princess, raising the ship’s total number of cases to 454. Overall, Japan has 419 confirmed cases of the virus, including one death. The United States has confirmed 15 cases within the country. Separately, one U.S. citizen died in China.

Americans Cheryl and Paul Molesky, a couple from Syracuse, New York, opted to trade one coronavirus quarantine for another, leaving the cruise ship to fly back to the U.S. Cheryl Molesky said the rising number of patients on the ship factored into the decision.

“We are glad to be going home,” Cheryl Molesky earlier told NHK TV in Japan. “It’s just a little bit disappointing that we’ll have to go through quarantine again, and we will probably not be as comfortable as the Diamond Princess, possibly.”

She sent The Associated Press a video of her and her husband boarding the plane with other Americans.

“Well, we’re exhausted, but we’re on the plane and that’s a good feeling. Pretty miserable wearing these masks though, and everybody had to go to the bathroom on the bus,” she said.

Some American passengers said they would pass up the opportunity to fly to the United States because of the additional quarantine. There also was worry about being on a long flight with other passengers who may be infected or in an incubation period.

One of the Americans, Matthew Smith, said in a tweet Sunday that he saw a passenger with no face mask talking at close quarters with another passenger. He said he and his wife scurried away.

“If there are secondary infections on board, this is why,” he said. “And you wanted me to get on a bus with her?”

He said the American health officials who visited their room was apparently surprised that the couple had decided to stay, and wished them luck.

“Thanks, but we’re fine,” Smith said he told them.

https://whdh.com/news/american-cruise-passengers-quarantined-at-us-military-bases/

Several bald eagles poisoned by toxic carcass on Vancouver Island

VICTORIA – Eight bald eagles are fighting for their lives on Vancouver Island after feasting on an animal carcass that was loaded with sedative drugs.

The first poisoned bird was brought to the Island Animal Hospital by members of the Raptor Rescue Society in Duncan, B.C. on Sunday.

"They actually thought it had died because it was so non-responsive," says Ken Langelier, a veterinarian at the Nanaimo hospital who is renowned for his work with eagles.

"Someone said, 'Don't bother with this one, it's already dead.' But I checked it closely and there still was a heartbeat. Immediately I could tell that it was heavily sedated by the way its third eyelid would move and its slow breathing and heart rate, and low body temperature."

Langelier noticed the bird had a very full stomach and a full crop – a muscular pouch in the throat that's used to store food.

The discovery indicated likely barbiturate poisoning, Langelier says.

"We managed to empty the crop contents out, start intravenous fluids and give activated charcoal [to empty the stomach] and warm the bird up," he says. "It started to respond and do quite a bit better when I got a call that there were another seven eagles coming in."

The eight ill eagles showed clear signs of having gorged themselves on a dead pig, Langelier says.

"What we're suspecting is somebody had the animal euthanized and rather than bury it deeply or contact the landfill ahead of time, they just disposed of it and of course the eagles are looking for any opportunity to feed on any meat, and started ingesting it and falling from the sky."

The longtime vet and his team spent all day Sunday treating the poisoned birds, while members of the Raptor Rescue Society scoured the area for more birds that may have eaten the poisoned meat and flown away.

"The only ones they found, fortunately, were at the landfill so I think they just ate so much they just dropped on the spot."

Langelier says the remains of the pig carcass have not been found. Volunteers with the rescue society were headed back to the landfill Monday to search for more avian victims and Langelier was headed back to the animal hospital to check on the eagles' progress.

"It's exhausting treating them," he says. "They're just doing what they want to do, which is scavenge."

The veterinarian says barbiturate poisoning is not uncommon among Vancouver Island's eagle population.

He estimates he's treated 50 such birds over the span of his career, including a dozen eagles that fell ill after eating a euthanized farm animal last January, and nearly 30 eagles that gorged themselves on a dead cow in 1988.

"It's important that people realize when a veterinarian euthanizes an animal, it has to be considered as toxic waste," Langelier says.

"The landfill will still take them, but they're buried very deeply so that a bird can't get at them and they do it right away. Unfortunately, they weren’t aware of anything here and so it's not the landfill's fault at all – it's whoever did the dumping."

Charges were eventually laid in the case of the 12 eagles poisoned last year. Seven of those birds died.

https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/several-bald-eagles-poisoned-by-toxic-carcass-on-vancouver-island-1.4815452

>>8164970

Notable

Lots of info here.

Several federal prosecutors have been tapped to investigate high-profile Russia, Ukraine and Clinton-related matters under the Trump administration.

Here is a list of the internal Justice Department probes underway:

The case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn

Attorney General Bill Barr appointed the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri Jeff Jensen to review the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Justice Department officials told Fox News that Jensen will work hand-in-hand with Brandon Van Grack — the lead prosecutor on the Flynn case — during his review.

Flynn’s case has gone through years of twists and turns, with sentencing postponed repeatedly over the last two years. Flynn’s supporters have insisted he is innocent but was forced to plead guilty when his son was threatened with prosecution and he exhausted his financial resources.

As part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his communications with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Barr’s move to tap Jensen comes after Flynn and his attorney last month moved to withdraw his guilty plea, citing “the government’s bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement.”

Ukraine information

Barr last week confirmed that the Justice Department is reviewing information about Ukraine coming from President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and others. Barr has tapped U.S. Attorney from the Western District of Pennsylvania Scott Brady to handle that Ukraine information.

That review comes after the president was acquitted on charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — stemming from the Ukraine controversy.

Giuliani, for months, has focused on the circumstances surrounding Hunter Biden’s past board position with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings and the role of his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, in ousting a prosecutor who had been looking into the firm’s founder.

The impeachment of Trump focused largely on his efforts to press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate that issue. The president’s request came after millions in U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been frozen, which Democrats argued showed a “quid pro quo” arrangement. Trump denied it.

CBS News first reported last week that the review, which has been going on for several weeks, will go beyond the Biden-Ukraine connection.

Durham probe into origins of Russia investigation

Last year, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney from Connecticut John Durham to review the events leading up to the 2016 presidential election and through Trump’s January 20, 2017 inauguration. But, as Fox News first reported, Durham has since expanded his investigation to cover a post-election timeline spanning the spring of 2017 — when Mueller was appointed as special counsel.

Durham investigated CIA officials and other officials throughout the intelligence community. Former CIA Director John Brennan has said that Durham plans to interview him and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Those interviews have yet to take place, a source familiar with the investigation told Fox News last week.

Clinton Foundation, Uranium One

In November 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber and other senior prosecutors to evaluate “certain issues” involving the sale of Uranium One and alleged unlawful dealings related to the Clinton Foundation.

The status of the Huber probe, and whether he is still investigating, is unclear.

FISA warrant, Clinton server document release

In April 2018, the Justice Department appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to oversee the gathering of documents in response to a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee in an effort to obtain materials related to the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses.

The move came after the president blasted the Justice Department and the FBI for “slow walking” turning over requested documents to Congress.

more: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-investigates-the-investigators-5-internal-probes-underway-on-russia-ukraine-and-more

>>8165104

>>8165114

Marvel is promoting its first man-on-man gay kiss, which will be featured in The Eternals, which hits theaters on November 20.

“On Thursday, actor Haaz Sleiman teased his upcoming on-screen kiss with costar Brian Tyree Henry, ” reports MSN. “It’s a beautiful, very moving kiss,” Sleiman said. “Everyone cried on set.”

“For me, it’s very important to show how loving and beautiful a queer family can be,” he added. “We forget that because we’re always depicted as sexual or rebellious; we forget to connect on that human part.”

The Eternals will also feature a deaf superhero.

No word yet on the one-legged Eskimo lesbian with a harelip, a marginalized minority group that remains under-represented in movies, television, literature, stage, and song.

The Eternals stars Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kit Harrington, and Kumail Nanjiani, and is about superheroes who live underground and then emerge to save the world, or something.

Well, this should be interesting…

Over and over and over again, at about a 100 percent rate, we have seen woke blockbusters crash and burn at the box office, or at least under-perform. The anti-male Birds of Prey is just the latest victim of audiences rejecting agendas and lectures disguised as entertainment.

Incredibly, this list also includes the Star Wars saga, which most of us believed was bulletproof. I’m not arguing the latest Star Wars trilogy was a flop. But it did perform so far below expectations, especially The Rise of Skywalker, which should have out-performed pretty much every other Star Wars movie, that as a movie franchise, Star Wars is dead.

Can Marvel break the Woke Curse?

Can Marvel get away with using this guy-on-guy action as the tip of its promotional spear and not take a hit at the box office?

Well, if anyone can, it’s Marvel, a franchise with an unprecedented 100 percent hit-rate at the box office; something unheard of when you’re talking about 20-plus titles released over only a dozen or so years.

A few things, though, should concern Marvel…

Star Wars was once considered as bulletproof as Marvel.

Marvel is no longer Marvel. What I mean is that the Iron Man/Captain America era is over. Come on, who the hell are the Eternals?

Finally, who wants to see this? Who is the audience for this? Do parents want to expose their children to something that will result in a premature conversation about human sexuality?

For 99 percent of kids, watching a man and woman smooch is normal. They think nothing of it. But when kids see two hairy guys get it on, all of a sudden the topic of human sexuality is on the table, a conversation your children might not be ready for. After all, good parents seek to protect their child’s innocence for as long as possible.

I’m certainly not the audience — I can tell you that. I’m not going to spend 150 minutes and ten bucks to sit there and wait to be uncomfortable. Who wants to sit around all tensed up “waiting for it?”

Yeah, yeah, I know we’re not supposed to express those kinds of thoughts out loud today; we’re supposed to remain quiet, or worse, pretend that as a red-blooded heterosexuals we are not made uncomfortable when two hairy guys become romantically intimate. Sorry, but the fascist thought police cannot change the fact that we are indeed made uncomfortable. And…

That’s not homophobia… That’s human nature. What’s more, it is also my own – if you will — sexual preference, and why am I not allowed to express my own personal sexual preferences, which includes a desire to avoid watching two fellas neck?

And I tried. I swear I sat through all those 90’s indie movies… But this stuff has never failed to make me uncomfortable, and now I’m done trying because life is just too short.

Listen, as I have said before, it is totally appropriate for Hollywood to make movies for gay audiences. Hollywood should make movies for everyone, and if they want to make a $250 million superhero blockbuster for gay people… Fine.

I’m just not going to go see it.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/02/17/marvel-the-eternals-will-feature-first-man-on-man-gay-kiss/

>>8165298

>MAP

???