Zero­Hedge News

• Emmy For Slow-​Motion Career Train­wreck: Cuomo Stripped Of Emer­gency Pow­ers As Sex­ual Assault Charges Mount
  Emmy For Slow-​Motion Career Train­wreck: Cuomo Stripped Of Emer­gency Pow­ers As Sex­ual Assault Charges Mount

  In Novem­ber, the TV Acad­emy pre­sented Cuomo with the Inter­na­tional Emmy Founders Award “in recog­ni­tion of his lead­er­ship dur­ing the COVID-​19 pan­demic and his mas­ter­ful use of TV to inform and calm peo­ple around the world.” It sure wishes it could take that day back.

  Late on Fri­day, three days after NY leg­is­la­tors reached a deal to strip dis­gracedNY gov­er­nor Andrew Cuomo — who now finds him­self in a vor­tex of poten­tially crim­i­nal scan­dals involv­ing both nurs­ing home deaths and alleged sex­ual assaults- of his emer­gency pow­ers, and two days after an “embar­rassed” Cuomotold a dis­gusted TV audi­ence (well every­one except for the virtue-​signaling syco­phants at CNN and MSNBC) that he was “very sorry” but was “not resign­ing” in the after­math of his own sex­ual assault scan­dal, late on Fri­day, the New York leg­is­la­ture approved a bill to repeal the pandemic-​era emer­gency pow­ers afforded to the scandal-​plagued Gov­er­nor Cuomo.

  The mea­sure, which received final pas­sage from the Assem­bly on Fri­day evening, revoked tem­po­rary pow­ers given to Cuomo in March that effec­tively gave him dic(k)tator pow­ers, allow­ing him to super­sede the leg­is­la­ture, as well as local laws, to issue hun­dreds of sweep­ing emer­gency direc­tives on every­thing from clos­ing busi­nesses and schools to man­dat­ing the use of masks.In ret­ro­spect, this was the worst — and dead­liest — deci­sion the leg­is­la­ture had made who may be just as cul­pa­ble of crimes as Cuomo .

  Under the new mea­sure, the gov­er­nor can­not issue any new orders. How­ever, direc­tives already in place can stand or be altered with approval by the leg­is­la­ture. The leg­is­la­tion, spon­sored by Heastie and Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Andrea Stewart-​Cousins, would require Cuomo to issue a notice five days before extend­ing or mod­i­fy­ing any direc­tives. The Leg­is­la­ture, or local munic­i­pal­ity if applic­a­ble, would review the order. The Leg­is­la­ture can ter­mi­nate the direc­tives at any time and no direc­tive could be acted on unless the gov­er­nor has responded to all com­ments from rel­e­vant leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee chairs, or munic­i­pal enti­ties, accord­ing to the bill.

  The gov­er­nor is expected to sign the mea­sure after say­ing he helped nego­ti­ate it.

  As Bloomberg reports, the rebuke from law­mak­ers, where Democ­rats hold a super­ma­jor­ity in both cham­bers, fol­lows pub­lic out­cry over sexual-​harassment claims by what are now three women against Cuomo and alle­ga­tions that his admin­is­tra­tion delib­er­ately cov­ered up Covid-​19 deaths of nursing-​home residents.

  In the lat­est twist which emerged late in the week, Cuomo’s admin­is­tra­tion said Thurs­day that offi­cials had altered a July report of data on the deaths to exclude those who had died out­side the facil­i­ties.The admin­is­tra­tion was respond­ing to a New York Times report that said these changes show that the state had a fuller account­ing of the deaths at the time, despite resist­ing requests for that data.

  Mean­while, in a remark­able sign of bipar­ti­san­ship, a grow­ing list of state law­mak­ers, includ­ing in his own Demo­c­ra­tic party, have called for Cuomo’s res­ig­na­tion as scan­dal upon scan­dal mounted. The third-​term gov­er­nor has apol­o­gized for mak­ing women feel “uncom­fort­able,” and has acknowl­edged mis­takes in report­ing of the nursing-​home data, but has refused to step down.

  Ear­lier this week, Cuomo said he had bro­kered the emergency-​power deal with law­mak­ers to focus just on curb­ing new direc­tives. Assem­bly Speaker Carl Heastie, a fel­low Demo­c­rat, dis­puted Cuomo, say­ing law­mak­ers didn’t work with the gov­er­nor to cut a deal.

  Sen­ate Deputy Major­ity Leader Michael Gia­naris said on the floor that the gov­er­nor lied to the pub­lic and was not involved in nego­ti­a­tions. Asked if he was both­ered by the lie, Gia­naris said: “There is so much that this gov­er­nor has done that I’m both­ered by.” Asked if he trusts the gov­er­nor, Gia­naris said: “I haven’t trusted this gov­er­nor in a long time.”

  Gia­naris is a demo­c­rat. Imag­ine if he was repub­li­can. Cur­rently, only the gov­er­nor may declare and end a state of emer­gency. “For the first time ever, we are adding a power for the Leg­is­la­ture to nul­lify a state of emer­gency,” Gia­naris said.

  The just passed bill also would require Cuomo to pub­licly post all infor­ma­tion jus­ti­fy­ing emer­gency direc­tives online in a search­able format.

  But Repub­li­can law­mak­ers argued that the bill doesn’t fully revoke Cuomo’s pow­ers, and it allows pre­vi­ous direc­tives to con­tinue. They also said the mea­sure should have an expi­ra­tion date. “Let’s be clear about what this bill actu­ally does and stop putting lip­stick on a pig,” Repub­li­can Assem­bly­man Michael Lawler said on the floor. Sen­a­tor Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Repub­li­can, said his no vote was “not about Andrew Cuomo the person.”

  “This is about the Sen­ate and the Assem­bly hav­ing a say with respect to what hap­pens with their con­stituents back home,” he said. “One-​party rule is one thing. One-​man rule is entirely another.”

  As Bloomberg notes, Cuomo’s emer­gency pow­ers were set to expire on April 30, but as the pan­demic wore on, law­mak­ers bris­tled at Cuomo’s grow­ing author­ity. Repub­li­cans intro­duced a num­ber of mea­sures to strip Cuomo’s emer­gency pow­ers, but they had failed to take hold with enough of the Democrat-​controlled Leg­is­la­ture. Law­mak­ers wor­ried that revok­ing his author­ity would affect the state’s abil­ity to quickly respond to the health cri­sis.Democ­rats’ united push to revoke Cuomo’s pow­ers high­lights grow­ing ten­sion against the gov­er­nor among mem­bers of his own party. The move comes just four weeks until the state bud­get dead­line, threat­en­ing to impede Cuomo’s agenda.

  Calls to pull back Cuomo’s pow­ers increased after a Jan. 28 report from Attor­ney Gen­eral Leti­tia James said that more nursing-​home res­i­dents died from the virus than the state Health Depart­ment had reported. A top Cuomo aide later admit­ted that the state with­held the data from state law­mak­ers while it was being inves­ti­gated by the fed­eral government.

  “While early ver­sions of the report included out-​of-​facility deaths, the Covid task force was not sat­is­fied that the data had been ver­i­fied against hos­pi­tal data and so the final report used only data for in– facil­ity deaths, which was dis­closed in the report,” state Health Depart­ment spokesper­son Gary Holmes, said in a state­ment. “DOH was com­fort­able with the final report.”

  Sen­a­tor James Skoufis, in a state­ment on Fri­day, said the lat­est rev­e­la­tion in the Times report “demands answers and account­abil­ity.”He called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into state Health Com­mis­sioner Howard Zucker’s han­dling of nursing-​home deaths.

  White House spokes­woman Jen Psaki called the reports “trou­bling.” She said the Biden admin­is­tra­tion “cer­tainly would sup­port any out­side inves­ti­ga­tion but this wouldn’t be a deter­mi­na­tion made by us.”

  Mean­while, things are just get­ting worse for Cuomo: on Thurs­day, one of the governor’s accusers, for­mer aide Char­lotte Ben­nett said in an inter­view with CBS News that the gov­er­nor propo­si­tioned her and asked if a past sex­ual trauma con­tin­ued to affect her inti­mate rela­tion­ships, an exchange that left her “terrified.”

  In response to the mount­ing alle­ga­tions that their boss is a sex­ual freak with a Napoleon com­plex, at least four Cuomo aides have left their jobs since the alle­ga­tions sur­faced, includ­ing first deputy press sec­re­tary Will Burns and Gareth Rhodes, a senior adviser who often appeared at Cuomo’s tele­vised virus brief­ings and helped lead the state’s vac­ci­na­tion effort.Rhodes’ wife on Mon­day tweeted her sup­port for Anna Ruch, one of the governor’s accusers.

  Then, on Fri­day, Cuomo’s office con­firmed the lat­est depar­tures of two women from his staff: interim pol­icy adviser Erin Ham­mond and press sec­re­tary Caitlin Girouard. Girouard, who departed on Fri­day, had issued the state­ment last month deny­ing sexual-​harassment alle­ga­tions of Cuomo’s first accuser, for­mer eco­nomic aide Lind­say Boy­lan. She said Boylan’s claims were “quite sim­ply false” in a state­ment issued on Feb. 24. In a Decem­ber state­ment, she had also said “there is sim­ply no truth to these claims.”

  Girouard said she accepted a job offer in the pri­vate sec­tor on Jan. 26 and that it was the “honor of a life­time serv­ing Gov­er­nor Cuomo.” Ham­mond didn’t imme­di­ately respond to a request for com­ment but an admin­is­tra­tion spokesman said her depar­ture had been planned for sev­eral months.

  The uproar over the var­i­ous alle­ga­tions has taken a toll. Cuomo’s approval rat­ing dropped to 45% in a Quin­nip­iac Uni­ver­sity poll released Thurs­day, from 72% in May 2020. While 59% say he should not seek a fourth term as gov­er­nor, 55% of New York vot­ers say Cuomo should not resign, as numer­ous Democ­rats in the Leg­is­la­ture have called on him to do.

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 03/​05/​2021 — 21:21
• Iran’s IRGC Says It Thwarted Rare Air­line Hijack­ing Attempt Mid­flight
  Iran’s IRGC Says It Thwarted Rare Air­line Hijack­ing Attempt Mid­flight

  A bizarre story cir­cu­lat­ing widely in Iran­ian state media sources says the country’s elite Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) thwarted a rare attempt to hijack a pas­sen­ger plane soon after it took off from an air­port in the south­west city of Ahvaz.

  An IRGC state­ment said a ter­ror­ist tar­geted an Iran Air Fokker 100 regional com­mer­cial jet that was bound for the north­west­ern city of Mash­had, and tried to force it to fly south across the Per­sian Gulf. The inci­dent report­edly hap­pened Thurs­day and resulted in the plane mak­ing an emer­gency land­ing at Isfa­han Air­port in the cen­tral part of the coun­try.

  There were no casu­al­ties or injuries reported, and few details given, but only that IRGC oper­a­tives neu­tral­ized and arrested the would-​be hijacker dur­ing the flight, which the gov­ern­ment state­ment described has hav­ing sought to divert to the “south­ern shores of the Per­sian Gulf.”

  As The Times of Israel observed in report­ing it, that descrip­tion “would include the coun­tries of Bahrain, Saudi Ara­bia and the United Arab Emi­rates, three nations long sus­pi­cious of Iran’s inten­tions in the wider region.”

  Such hijack­ing attempts are very rare in the Islamic Repub­lic, par­tic­u­larly also because Iran typ­i­cally sta­tions under­cover armed mar­shals aboard domes­tic flights. The last hijack­ing inci­dent hap­pened in 2000.

  The IRGC state­ment issued Fri­day praised the swift response of IRGC air mar­shals:

  “The noble and heroic nation of the Islamic Iran is informed that with the grace of God, the con­spir­acy to hijack a Fokker 100 air­craft belong­ing to Iran Air… which had taken off from Ahvaz air­port to the holy city of Mash­had at 22:10 hours Thurs­day night was neu­tral­ized with the vig­i­lance of the IRGC’s flight secu­rity team.”

  The mil­i­tary says it con­tin­ues to inves­ti­gate “dimen­sions and angles of the conspiracy”.

  Some of #Iran’s media out­lets – includ­ing IRIB & Mostaghel – are using this photo in report­ing about the hijack­ing of the flight from Ahvaz to Mash­had yes­ter­day that appears to be years old per a reverse image search. 🤔 pic​.twit​ter​.com/​x​S​H​v​Q​B​T​t​o​4

  — Jason Brod­sky (@JasonMBrodsky) March 5, 2021

  In the past when there are unex­pected ter­ror­ist dis­rup­tions in the coun­try, Tehran has quickly laid blame on for­eign plots and attack­ers, includ­ing rou­tinely point­ing the fin­ger at Israel and Saudi-​sponsored operatives.

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 03/​05/​2021 — 21:20
• “The Saudi-​Led Coali­tion Is Strug­gling” — Ansar Allah’s “Con­cern­ing” Suc­cess In Ops Against Riyadh
  “The Saudi-​Led Coali­tion Is Strug­gling” — Ansar Allah’s “Con­cern­ing” Suc­cess In Ops Against Riyadh

  Sub­mit­ted by South Front,

  Yemen’s Ansar Allah are on the offen­sive on Marib city, once again. The Saudi-​led coali­tion is struggling.

  The Houthis, as Ansar Allah, are col­lo­qui­ally known, report­edly cap­tured 10 out of 14 dis­tricts of the city in their lat­est push on March 4^th.

  The Houthi gov­ern­ment deputy for­eign min­is­ter, Hus­sein al-​Ezzi said that apart from the sig­nif­i­cant cen­tral dis­trict of Marib city, every other sig­nif­i­cant loca­tion was under their con­trol. A key strate­gic loca­tion, home to one of the largest oil infra­struc­tures in Yemen, Marib has seen inten­si­fied fight­ing and a renewed mil­i­tary offen­sive. It is also the last Saudi strong­hold in the rel­a­tively calm area of Cen­tral Yemen. If entirely lost by the Saudi-​led coali­tion, the city would allow the Houthis to carry out even more attacks on tar­gets within the Kingdom’s borders.

  Saudi-​led coali­tion airstrikes have con­tin­ued bom­bard­ing Houthi posi­tions, accord­ing to Houthi media. These man­age to impede the swift move­ment of forces, but haven’t deterred the offen­sive. As it usu­ally hap­pens when the Houthis get the upper hand any­where in Yemen, the so-​called West­ern world begins yelling “foul”.

  UN Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Anto­nio Guter­res imme­di­ately said that wide­spread fight­ing could lead to the dis­place­ment of thou­sands. He called on Ansar Allah to halt their offen­sive on every front, and pri­mar­ily on Marib. No calls for the Saudi-​led coali­tion to stop their airstrikes or con­tin­u­ous cease­fire vio­la­tions in al-​Hudaydah were made.

  In addi­tion to Marib City, the Houthis struck behind enemy lines. This included two attacks.

  The first one tar­geted the King Khalid Air Base in the south­ern Saudi province with a Qasef-​2K sui­cide drone. It was report­edly suc­cess­ful. Ansar Allah claimed to have had fired a cross-​border mis­sile and struck a Saudi Aramco facil­ity in the Read Sea city of Jeddah.

  Accord­ing to the Houthi mil­i­tary spokesman, Yahya Sarea, the attack took place at dawn on March 4^th, and was car­ried out with a Quds-​2 winged mis­sile. It report­edly struck its target.

  Riyadh has not admit­ted either of the attacks, and there are no other details. The UN also said it has received uncon­firmed reports.

  The Axis of Resis­tance appears to be really push­ing its ene­mies back, with 4 US con­voys being tar­geted in the same day in Iraq, and Israel hav­ing a lull in its activ­ity in recent days.

  Tel Aviv accused Iran of car­ry­ing out an “eco-​terrorism” attack by spilling oil in the Mediter­ranean Sea. There are con­cerns that a large-​scale, heavy retal­i­a­tion is com­ing. Time will only show if a response will really come and in what form it will be.

  Cur­rently, the Houthis are push­ing suc­cess­fully and the US is suf­fer­ing for its attack on the Iraqi-​Syriain bor­der, and Israel is plot­ting its next move.

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 03/​05/​2021 — 21:00