Day: January 9, 2020

There will be no athletes taking a knee on the field at this year’s Olympics in Tokyo. In fact, there won’t be any visible athlete protests if the International Olympic Committee gets its wish.

The IOC on Thursday became the latest athletic organization to crack down on political protests by its athletes, publishing new rules governing when and how competitors can express political opinions.

According to the new rules, athletes are barred from conducting protests or demonstrations on the field of play, in the Olympic Village, during medal ceremonies, or during the opening or closing ceremonies of the games. …

The Trump administration finalized an agreement Thursday that would allow the US to deport migrants seeking protection at the US-Mexico border back to Honduras.

Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf arrived in Honduras Thursday to go over the implementation of the agreement with President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is facing prosecution in the US for allegedly accepting campaign contributions from drug traffickers.

Wolf announced in an address in Tegucigalpa that the agreement, originally signed in September, would go into effect in a matter of weeks.

“We plan to implement in phases, to gradually roll out the program while …

It looks like Kansas will become the 37th state to expand Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act, the latest breakthrough in more conservative territory for the health care law.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, a moderate elected in 2018 in the anti-Trump wave driven largely by health care, and Sen. Jim Denning, the Republican leader of the state Senate announced Thursday that they had reached a deal on Medicaid expansion.

Under Obamacare, states can expand coverage to anybody with an income 138 percent of the federal poverty level or less (about $17,000 for an individual or $29,000 for a …

One step forward, one step back for meatless meat.

On Wednesday, McDonald’s announced that it would expand its Canadian trial of plant-based Beyond Burgers, offering them at 52 more restaurants in Ontario for the next three months starting January 14. This is an expansion of their P.L.T. (Plant, Lettuce, Tomato) Canadian trial run this fall, though it’s a very conservative expansion, encompassing only a few dozen more restaurants.

That announcement came after Reuters reported that competitor Impossible Foods has stopped vying to sell its burgers at the world’s biggest fast-food chain — because they can’t yet produce enough burgers …

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The rules of impeachment

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans are ready to vote on rules for the impeachment trial of President Trump — without Democratic support. Under his plan, “phase one” of the trial would proceed along the same lines as the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. [NPR / Kelsey Snell]
• The Senate can’t vote until the

…

Artificial intelligence is here, and it’s impacting our lives in real ways — whether it’s the Alexa smart speaker on our nightstand, online customer service chatbots, or the smart replies Google drafts for our emails.

But so far, the tech’s development has outpaced regulation. Now, government agencies are increasingly encountering AI-based tools, and they must figure out how to evaluate them. Take the Food and Drug Administration, which greenlights new medical products: It needs to review and approve new health care products that boast AI-capabilities — like this one that promises to detect eye problems related to diabetes — before …