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Bernie Sanders defends Fidel Castro’s socialist Cuba: ‘Unfair to simply say everything is bad’

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner for the Democrats’ presidential nomination, doubled down on his support for some of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s policies, saying in an interview that aired Sunday, “it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad.”

Speaking to CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, pointed to social welfare programs introduced under Castro’s regime that he described as redeeming, despite the communist dictator’s often repressive human-rights violations against Cubans.

“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?” Sanders told Anderson Cooper.

Fidel Castro relinquished power to his brother, Raúl, in 2011; Fidel died in 2016.

BERNIE SANDERS SEEN IN UNEARTHED 1986 VIDEO RECALLING EXCITEMENT OVER CASTRO’S REVOLUTION IN CUBA

In a resurfaced speech given at the University of Vermont in 1986, Sanders praised the socialist policies implemented in Cuba by the Castro regime and criticized bipartisan efforts in the U.S. to tamp down on Castro’s spread of communism.

While Sanders said in the new interview he “condemns” any human rights violations Castro committed, he also took aim at President Trump for his unlikely friendships with some dictators or strongman leaders, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“I do not think that Kim Jong Un is a good friend,” Sanders said. “I don’t trade love letters with a murdering dictator. Vladimir Putin, not a great friend of mine.”

Despite victories in all three of the earliest state contests, the Vermont senator has faced criticism from other party contenders, including billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who lambasted his socialist policies declaring they would never fare in a November matchup with Trump.

Sanders went on to define his brand of democratic socialism, which has tapped into a more progressive ideology that has been gaining traction with young voters across the country.

“When Donald Trump was a private businessman in New York, he got $800 million in tax breaks and subsidies to build luxury housing. That’s called corporate socialism. What democratic socialism is about is saying, ‘Let’s use the federal government to protect the interests of working families,'” he explained.

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Trump has used Sanders’ policy initiatives, including “Medicare-for-all” and free college tuition and elimination of student loan debt, to take aim at the senator, even going so far as to label him a communist.

“You know what? We will fight back,” Sanders said of these attacks. “This is what we will bring up… that the president of the United States is a pathological liar, and it is increasingly clear that many people just don’t believe anything that he says. He is a fraud. I look forward to taking him on.”

Judge Amy Berman Jackson fires back at Roger Stone, denying request for her recusal

Judge Army Berman Jackson, who presided over the case of former Trump adviser Roger Stone, denied Stone’s request that she be removed from deciding whether he can have a new trial, writing Sunday that his motion seemed to be “nothing more than an attempt to use the court’s docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words ‘judge’ and ‘biased’ in it.”

Stone was sentenced to over three years in prison last Thursday following his conviction in November on charges of lying to Congress and intimidating a witness in connection with the Trump-Russia probe.

Stone’s defense team filed a motion Friday arguing that Jackson’s statement that the jury in the case had “served with integrity” should disqualify her from presiding as Stone pursued his bid for a new trial.

They argued her description of the jury was a display of bias on behalf of the judge in a case that has not yet concluded, despite sentencing, because of the bid for a new trial.

WHO IS JUDGE AMY BERMAN JACKSON?

Stone’s lawyers claimed that an unnamed juror “misled the court regarding her ability to be unbiased and fair and the juror attempted to cover up evidence that would directly contradict her false claims of impartiality.” It was an apparent reference to Tomeka Hart, whose anti-Trump social-media posts included quoting someone who referred to Trump as the “#KlanPresident.” Some of the posts later vanished from her Twitter feed.

But, Jackson shot down those arguments in her filling issued Sunday.

“There is no rule and no case law that would justify the recusal of a judge for bias simply because he or she says something about an issue on the docket, on the record, at some point before a reply has been filed, or before a hearing – which may or may not be required in the court’s discretion – has concluded,” Jackson wrote.

She added: “If parties could move to disqualify every judge who furrows his brow at one side or the other before the ruling, the entire court system would come to a standstill.”

SOL WISENBERG: ROGER STONE CASE REVEALED AG BARR AND HIS PEOPLE VIEWED AS ‘OCCUPYING FORCE’ BY SOME INSIDE DOJ

Stone’s sentencing on Thursday followed a week-long drama over the Justice Department’s about-face on a sentencing recommendation and a very public dispute between Trump and Attorney General William Barr.

At sentencing Thursday, Jackson grilled federal prosecutor John Crabb on the department’s decision to replace a tough sentencing recommendation for Stone with a more lenient one – which had prompted the original prosecution team to quit the case.

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Trump had called the original recommendation of seven to nine years a “miscarriage of justice.”

Fox News’ Seth Bookey, Ashley Cozzolino and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Chinese hacking: 5 major cases of Beijing-linked cyber intrusion

Amid the growing political and economic influence of China, attention has turned to Beijing’s concerted efforts to collect data on Americans and steal scientific research.

In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised then-President Barack Obama that his country would stop such practices. But, China has continued its intrusion into U.S. cybersecurity unabated.

Here are five major cyberattacks linked to China:

Equifax

Earlier this month, the Justice Department charged four members of the Chinese military with breaking into the computer networks of the credit-reporting agency Equifax and stealing the personal information of millions of Americans.

The four defendants, all members of the People’s Liberation Army, also stood accused of stealing Equifax’s trade secrets.

Experts monitoring the dark web said they saw no evidence of data stolen in the Equifax hack being sold to common criminals for ID theft and credit card fraud, suggesting Beijing’s motive was more about espionage than stealing trade secrets.

U.S. Office of Personnel Management

In June 2015, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management announced that it had been targeted in a cyberattack that compromised the personal data of over 21 million current, former and prospective federal employees.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management announced it was the victim of a massive cyberattack in 2015.
(Facebook/@USOPM)

Although the first hacker was detected in March 2014, a second intruder went undetected until April 2015, by which time data on security clearances, background checks, and fingerprint records had been extracted, investigators said. A House inquiry found the hack likely was the work of “Deep Panda,” a group linked to the Chinese military.

Marriott International

Marriott International announced in November 2018 that it had suffered a security breach on a massive scale, with the personal details of approximately 500 million guests having been exposed.

As early as 2014, hackers began extracting data, including credit and passport numbers, birth dates, phone numbers, and hotel arrival and departure dates on Marriott’s guests. The breach went undetected for four years and affected hotels in the Starwood chain that Marriott acquired in 2016, officials said.

Analysts noted that information from hotels – common venues for extramarital affairs and corporate espionage – could be used for blackmail and counterespionage. Attorney General William Barr has blamed the hack on Chinese agents.

Anthem

Between 2014 and 2015, hackers stole personal data on nearly 80 million current and former customers and employees of Anthem, an Indiana-based health insurer. Stolen data included Social Security numbers, birth dates, employment details, incomes and street addresses.

Officials with Symantec, a cybersecurity firm, said the hack was believed to be the work of a well-resourced Chinese group called Black Vine that had been conducting cyber espionage against aerospace, energy and health care industries.

OREGON WIDEROWER, 80, SCAMMED OUT OF $200G IN ONLINE DATING SCAM, OFFICIALS WARN: ‘DON’T GET CATFISHED’

U.S. Universities

In March 2019, iDefense, a cybersecurity intelligence unit of Accenture Security, reported that several American universities had been targeted by Chinese hackers looking to steal maritime military technology and secrets.

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The cybersecurity unit had identified the targeted universities by observing that their networks were pinging servers located in China that were suspected to be controlled by a Chinese hacking group known interchangeably as TEMP.Persicope, Leviathan, or Mudcarp, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Andrew Yang says one of the remaining Dems needs to ‘pull an Andrew Yang,’ quit the race

2020 Democrat’s fundraising efforts

Sanders has raised more money than any other 2020 Democrat, Bloomberg plans to spend $1 billion to defeat Trump; GOP financier Dan Palmer weighs in on the 2020 Democrat’s fundraising efforts.

Businessman and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Saturday said at least one more Democrat still seeking the White House needs to “pull an Andrew Yang” by dropping out of the race.

Yang’s comment, during an appearance on CNN, came after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., won the Nevada caucuses, tallying 46 percent of the vote with 50 percent of the results in – a win that has stoked fears among the Democrats’ establishment wing that there may be no path to stop Sanders head of the party’s convention in July.

Yang, who dropped out the race after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary, said the remaining field ought to “consolidate” but acknowledged that “each candidate wants to be the last person standing to absorb the non-Bernie energy.”

NO EVIDENCE OF RUSSIAN ‘PLAY’ TO HELP TRUMP; BRIEFER MAY HAVE ‘OVERSTATED’ INTELLIGENCE, OFFICIAL SAYS

He added that Sanders was unlikely to get a majority going into the convention, setting the stage for superdelegates to emerge and risk a contested election.

“Someone needs to pull Andrew Yang and be like, ‘I’ve done the math. I’m not going to win,’” Yang said.

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Sanders’ win propelled him to front-runner status as the race turned its attention to Saturday’s South Carolina primary, and as moderate Democrats scrambled to blunt his momentum.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

Former Obama adviser: ‘No way I could vote for Bernie Sanders as a socialist’

Former Obama National Finance Committee Member Don Peebles said he will not support Sen. Bernie Sanders if he secures the presidential nomination.

Appearing on “Fox & Friends” Sunday, Peebles told host Lisa Boothe he was “not” prepared to embrace a socialist candidate to represent his party, and called on other candidates to restrategize their campaigns in an effort to take down the 78-year-old frontrunner.

“There’s no way I could vote for Bernie Sanders as a socialist,” Peebles said Sunday.

DON PEEBLES: ‘I JUST DON’T RECOGNIZE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’

“Look,” he continued, “I believe things need to be shaken up, and voters on the Republican side as well thought they did, and that’s how Trump got the nomination, and that’s why he’s president. I think these centrist Democrats need to articulate a much more aggressive vision to moving the nation forward and bringing everybody else into the prosperity that we’re seeing right now.

“But,” he added, “to attack Trump and attack each other, that is a losing combination, and they will end up with Sanders as the nominee.”

SANDERS’ WIN IN NEVADA REINFORCES HIS FRONT-RUNNER STATUS, DRAWS MORE ATTACKS FROM RIVALS

Peebles was responding to Sanders’ Saturday victory in Nevada, following strong showings in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary contest.

“Bernie Sanders may have an insurmountable lead… and I blame this a lot on the Democratic Party elites,” ahead of Super Tuesday, he explained. “They sat on the sidelines. President Obama sat on the sidelines, Hillary Clinton… [former Secretary of State] John Kerry… [former Vice President] Al Gore… on the sidelines. If they want to stop Bernie Sanders, they should have learned what happened in 2016 with Donald Trump and the Republican Party,” he said.

BLOOMBERG USING BILLIONS TO BUILD SOCIAL MEDIA ARMY AHEAD OF SUPER TUESDAY

Peebles called on former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to “offer an alternative” to the issues motivating Sanders voters, and urged the candidates to stop “killing each other off.”

“I don’t believe that Biden is positioned to win the nomination, but I think he should be able to give it a better fight than he’s given so far,” Peebles said.

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“I don’t think Mike Bloomberg is in a position to win it either,” he continued. “I believe that they are killing each other off and have left Bernie Sanders kind of all to himself., and if they don’t go at Bernie Sanders right now and start calling him out on many of these issues that are motivating voters and offering an alternative, this nomination’s going to get away from them, and the Democratic Party’s going to have Sanders,” Peebles predicted.

Super Tuesday is scheduled for March 3, just over a week away.

Israel hit with Palestinian rocket barrage after Gaza border confrontation with militants

Palestinian militants fired approximately 30 rockets into Israel on Sunday evening, Israeli military officials said, near the end of a tense weekend that also saw Palestinian militants apparently trying to plant a bomb at the Gaza border, along with Israeli strikes hitting targets in Gaza and Syria.

A Palestinian Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the rocket attack on Israel.

Earlier, two Palestinian militants approached the fence on the northern side of the Gaza border, appearing to plant a bomb. Israeli defense forces opened fire, killing one of the militants — who was said to have belonged to the Islamic Jihad group.

PALESTINIANS PROTEST TRUMP MIDDLE EAST PLAN IN PEACEFUL MOSQUE DEMONSTRATION

Israeli military officials then sent a tank and front loader into the Gaza strip and scooped up the body using a shovel attached to the vehicle, an image that quickly circulated on social media and caused Hamas to cry foul and accuse Israel of abusing the body.

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett rejected the criticism, noting that Hamas has been holding the bodies of two Israeli soldiers since they were killed in the 2014 Gaza war.

“I back the military, which killed the terrorists and collected the body,” he said. “That’s what should be done and that is what was done.”

In this frame grab from video, an Israeli military vehicle removed the body of a Palestinian militant along the Gaza-Israel border on Sunday. (AP Photo)

The rocket launch seemed to be retaliatory in nature.

Israeli defense forces said at least 10 of the rockets had been intercepted using their Iron Dome defense system while the others fell without causing major damage.

The Israeli military struck back on Islamic Jihad operatives with aircrafts, firing at an empty Palestinian training camp in the Gaza strip, and on two Palestinian rocket teams resulting in injuries among the Palestinians.

The Gaza health ministry reported that four Palestinians were treated at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City for wounds resulting from the strikes.

Meanwhile, some Palestinians said Hamas rulers failed to respond forcefully enough to Israel. Hamas has been working with Egyptian mediators to arrange a cease-fire along the Gaza strip and have been holding back on attacking Israel. Despite this, Islamic Jihad has continued to try carrying out attacks in the region.

Israel and the Islamic Jihad group engaged in a heavy round of fighting last November after the Israeli military killed a top Islamic Jihad commander, but the region has remained relatively quiet in recent months leading up to Sunday’s attack.

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In a rare acknowledgment of operations in neighboring Syria, Israeli officials also said their warplanes attacked targets of the Islamic Jihad group south of Damascus in addition to Gaza. They said the sites had been used for “research and development of armaments” manufactured in Syria and the Gaza Strip, and also produced dozens of kilograms of rocket fuel each month.

Fox News’ Mike Tobin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Jessica Mulroney denies registering charity website for Meghan Markle, Prince Harry

Meghan Markle‘s friend Jessica Mulroney is setting the record straight.

After reports circulated that Mulroney, 40, had registered the website sussexglobalcharities.com on behalf of Markle, 38, and Prince Harry, 35, she took to Twitter to explain that she, in fact, did not register any website.

MEGHAN MARKLE, PRINCE HARRY REVEALS DETAILS OF ROYAL TRANSITION

People Magazine reported that their sources confirmed Mulroney had registered the site through the charity Shoebox Project Foundation.

Daily Mail also reported Saturday that Mulroney had registered the website through the same charity — Shoebox Project Foundation. However, she said she was not affiliated with that group.

MEGHAN MARKLE AND PRINCE HARRY SAYS THE QUEEN DOESN’T OWN THE WORD ‘ROYAL’

“If certain investigative journalists were to do their jobs, perhaps they would see that Shoebox Project Foundation is owned by a Mr Roy in North Carolina and has no affiliations or ties to our charity The Shoebox Project,” Mulroney tweeted. “Happy Sunday.”

Fashion stylist Jessica Mulroney and Meghan Markle (Photo: Instagram)

According to the charity’s website, The Shoebox Project “collects and distributes gift-filled Shoeboxes to women who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness in communities across the US and Canada.”

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The Shoebox Project did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment. Shoebox Project Foundation could not be reached for comment.

Brandon Judd rips new Greyhound ‘sanctuary buses’ policy: ‘They’re putting profit above the safety of American people’

Greyhound‘s new policy which prohibits U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from boarding its buses to conduct immigration checks without warrants would directly endanger the lives of American citizens, Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said on Sunday.

Discussing the company’s announcement Friday, Judd told “Fox & Friends Weekend” he was “fired up” learning that agents would be unable to conduct the standard immigration checks without an issued warrant.

“I look at the reason that Greyhound gave… ‘the safety of its employees and its passengers.’ I question — what about the safety of the American public at large?” Judd asked.

Greyhound’s announcement came as bus companies have continued to face pressure from civil rights advocates over the practice. Border agents regularly have climbed onto buses within 100 miles of the border to ask passengers about their immigration statuses. Some have been captured on video, prompting outrage from immigration advocacy groups.

COMEDIAN SAYS BORDER PATROL FORCED HIM OFF GREYHOUND BUS AND ACCUSED HIM OF BEING ILLEGAL DESPITE HIS LEGAL DOCUMENTS

Judd stressed the importance of being granted access to passengers, saying the policy until this point allowed officers to find violent offenders and arrest those involved in human trafficking.

“I’ve personally gone onto a Greyhound bus and arrested an individual that was convicted for sexually molesting a young child. What about that young child… those people that are prayed upon?” he asked. “How about sex trafficking? We know that sex traffickers will exploit every opportunity that they’re given and if federal agents can’t go on the bus and start searching people…” Judd trailed off.

Greyhound executives said the company would train drivers and bus station employees about the new policy and make stickers to be placed on buses saying it would not consent to searches.

A worker, right, speaking with a Customs and Border Protection agent seeking to board a Greyhound bus headed for Portland, Ore., earlier this month in Spokane, Wash. (AP Photo/Nicholas K. Geranios, File)

“The law allows us to go on buses and have consensual conversations with individuals,” Judd said. “These individuals have never been forced, but if they’re going to voluntarily speak with us, that’s a consensual encounter, and why Greyhound has stopped this process is beyond me.”

Co-host Pete Hegseth said the policy essentially would create “sanctuary busses,” inspired by the liberal-run sanctuary cities serving as safe havens for illegal immigrants.

“You hit the nail on the head,” Judd responded. “That’s how it’s going to go.”

He added, “smugglers are going to exploit this policy that Greyhound has put into place.”

On Saturday, acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli called for a boycott of the company, saying on Fox News that he hoped the hashtag #BoycottGreyhound would pick up.

“We’ve always been able to go on these busses and conduct these consensual encounters very reasonably… so Greyhounds reasoning just doesn’t add up,” Judd responded.

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He added, “they’re putting profit above the safety of the American people.”

Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

Rep. Collins on push for FISA reform: ‘We need to restore the American people’s trust in it’

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins, R-Ga., spoke about the push to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on “Sunday Morning Futures” saying, “We need to restore the American people’s trust in it.”

Collins told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., “is the chairman of one of the best committees in Congress, most prestigious committees, and yet he’s ruining it because we don’t actually delve into ideas.”

The panel is set to consider reforms during a so-called “markup” this week. “We put this off in December because [Democrats] were in the middle of the sham impeachment and they couldn’t deal with the FISA stuff that needed to be authorized,” Collins said, referencing “things that we need in our intelligence committee,” including roving wiretaps.

“But, they didn’t want to deal with it, so we just put it off,” Collins added.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz released a report last year detailing significant inaccuracies and omissions on the part of the FBI in its FISA warrant applications, misleading the court in the process. A major aspect of the report exposed the degree to which the FBI had relied on the unverified dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele as part of opposition research for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Collins went on to say, “instead of actually having hearings, and taking the Horowitz testimony, actually having Mr. Horowitz come in, talk about the problems he found in those FISA warrants, talk about how the court approved these warrants that actually spied on an American citizen… we’ve have no hearings, we’ve had no discussions and now we’re going to put forward a bill that really, I don’t think is going to address the issues.”

Collins noted that there will be “some say about what we’re going to be putting forward.”

GRAHAM REVEALS BIG QUESTIONS HE HAS AHEAD OF SENATE FISA PROBE

Also speaking with Bartiromo on Sunday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., revealed key questions he had ahead of his panel’s investigation this week into the start of the Russia probe that began in secret during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, as well as the FBI’s use of FISA to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Collins went on to say that if America could not trust FISA, “then people will not have confidence that our intelligence communities are doing what they need to be doing and being able to use this court properly.”

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Collins also said, “Hopefully we’ll be able to make some changes to it” so that it could restore the “trust factor.”

Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer, Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Kirk Douglas’ $61M fortune given mostly to charity, none went to son Michael Douglas

Kirk Douglas chose to leave his $61 million fortune to charity, rather than giving any to his son Michael.

Douglas, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 103, wanted $50 million given away via the Douglas Foundation, the Mirror reported.

The beneficiaries included St Lawrence University, Westwood’s Sinai Temple, Culver City’s Kirk Douglas Theatre and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, according to the outlet.

A LOOK BACK AT KIRK DOUGLAS’ BIGGEST ROLES

It added that Michael, 75, was not a beneficiary.

Michael announced the death of his father on Feb. 5 in an Instagram post, which included several photos of his iconic father and various family members

“It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103. To the world he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.”

MICHAEL DOUGLAS SAYS DAD KIRK BACKED MIKE BLOOMBERG FOR PRESIDENT BEFORE DEATH

He continued: “But to me and my brothers Joel and Peter he was simply Dad, to Catherine, a wonderful father-in-law, to his grandchildren and great grandchild their loving grandfather, and to his wife Anne, a wonderful husband.

Kirk Douglas (L) and Michael Douglas in 2011.
(Michael Buckner/Getty Images, File)

Douglas was a three-time Oscar nominee, known for his roles in “Spartacus” and “Ace in the Hole.”

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Michael finished his Instagram message by writing, “Kirk’s life was well lived, and he leaves a legacy in film that will endure for generations to come, and a history as a renowned philanthropist who worked to aid the public and bring peace to the planet. Let me end with the words I told him on his last birthday and which will always remain true. Dad- I love you so much and I am so proud to be your son.”

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