Netflix drew fire from human rights activists Wednesday after agreeing to block an episode of a satirical comedy show from its service in Saudi Arabia over comments critical of the kingdom and its crown prince.
In the episode of "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj," the American-born Muslim lashed out at the kingdom over the October killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Minhaj specifically criticized Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been blamed for the killing, and was also critical of the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.
The move by Netflix to block the show was widely denounced by rights groups including Amnesty International, which warned it risks further eroding freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia.
Minhaj himself weighed in on Twitter with a jab at Netflix -- and an appeal for humanitarian relief in Yemen, where Saudi bombings have taken a toll in the ongoing civil war.
"Clearly, the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online, and then leave it up on YouTube," the comedian said.
"Let's not forget that the world's largest humanitarian crisis is happening in Yemen right now. Please donate."
The streaming giant said it was required to take down the episode after Saudi authorities said it violated the country's cybercrime statute. The episode can still be seen in other parts of the world -- and in Saudi Arabia on YouTube.
- No free expression -
Netflix said the Saudi request was made under Article 6 of the law, which states that "production, preparation, transmission, or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy, through the information network or computers" is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine up to $800,000.
AFP/File / Fayez Nureldine A satirical Netflix show was taken down in Saudi Arabia after authorities in the kingdown said the comments critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman violated its cybercrime law
"We strongly support artistic freedom worldwide and removed this episode only in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request -- and to comply with local law," a Netflix spokeswoman said in a statement Tuesday.
But Samah Hadid, Amnesty's Middle East campaigns director, was scathing.
"Saudi Arabia's censorship of Netflix... is further proof of a relentless crackdown on freedom of expression in the kingdom," Hadid said.
"By bowing to the Saudi Arabian authorities' demands, Netflix is in danger of facilitating the kingdom's zero-tolerance policy on freedom of expression and assisting the authorities in denying people's right to freely access information."
Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch likewise warned that "Netflix's claim to support artistic freedom means nothing if it bows to demands of government officials who believe in no freedom for their citizens –- not artistic, not political, not comedic."
- 'Quite outrageous' -
In December, the US Senate approved two symbolic resolutions blaming Prince Mohammed for the killing of Khashoggi, after intelligence reports pointed in that direction, and urging an end to US participation in the Yemen war.
AFP/File / OZAN KOSE Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed at his country's consulate in Istanbul in October 2018
In October, the press freedom watchdog group Reporters Without Borders ranked Saudi Arabia as 169th out of 180 countries for press freedom, adding that "it will very probably fall even lower in the 2019 index because of the gravity of the violence and abuses of all kinds against journalists."
After releasing its annual study of global internet freedom, another watchdog, Freedom House, said in November that Saudi Arabia was among those employing "troll armies" to manipulate social media and, in many cases, drown out the voices of dissidents.
Minhaj, 33, has seen his profile rise steadily in recent years. His routines combine personal history and pointed political commentary wrapped in edgy topical humor.
In 2014, he became senior correspondent on Comedy Central's popular "The Daily Show," and in 2017 was the featured speaker at the White House Correspondents' dinner.
MSNBC host Richard Lui cut off Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Sunday after the Florida Republican repeatedly insisted that Democrats have claimed that border walls are "racist."
During an interview on MSNBC, Gaetz attempted to gaslight viewers after he was asked about ending President Donald Trump's government shutdown over funding for a border wall.
"What I can tell you, Richard, is that there are multiple offers that have gone back and forth really from the White House to try to get that type of a solution," Gaetz said. "So, yeah, if you have a $25 billion border security package, I think that you could possibly get there. If you had the Bridge Act, I think you could have more of that 25 billion spent on a wall or steel slats or strategic fencing."
"When you look at San Diego, when you look at places in Arizona that have built walls on borders, those have been the most effective ways to stop the most harmful forms of illegal immigration -- the child smuggling, the human trafficking, the drugs and the cartel activity," the congressman continued. "That gets very dangerous people in this country who kill folks."
When asked if he supported $2.5 billion package for a wall, Gaetz changed the subject.
"Remember, Democrats are saying that walls are racist!" Gaetz opined. "They are saying that fences are immoral."
"Well, they're not saying that," Lui interrupted. "They are not saying they're racist."
"That's absolutely false!" Gaetz exclaimed.
"They are not saying that," the MSNBC host noted.
"They have said that walls are racist!" the Florida congressman repeated.
"No," Lui remarked.
"This is where the energy is on the left right now," Gaetz rambled. "They want to abolish ICE, they want to live in border-free communities and they have made statements, Democrat [sic] members of Congress, the people like [Rep Al Green (D-TX)], like [Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)]."
"The leadership," Lui again interrupted, "as you know, are saying they are for border security. They are not for open borders as you state."
Gaetz made another attempt to repeat his talking points, but Lui shut him down.
"I don't want to litigate that right now," Lui said, moving on to another question.
Political pundits insist on making predictions every year, only to be proven wrong with the passage of time -- and Fox News conservatives made some of 2018's worst.
Four failed Fox News predictions cracked Politico Magazine's Top 20 list for this year, more than any other outlet -- including two busts among the three worst forecasts.
Sean Hannity was forced to walk back a Jan. 25 prediction within minutes, after the broadcaster claimed the New York Times would be proven wrong for reporting President Trump had tried to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. “How many times [have] the New York Times and others gotten it wrong?” Hannity told viewers. However, Fox News independently confirmed the newspaper's report, and Hannity was forced to eat crow coming out of a commercial break. Politico ranked the insta-blunder at No. 12.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted Republicans would keep -- and expand -- their congressional majorities in an infamous Dec. 28, 2017, column posted on the Fox News website. “The great political surprise of 2018 will be the size of the Republican victory," Gingrich wrote. However, 11 months later the GOP lost 40 seats and their House majority, while gaining just two Senate seats. Politico rated the prediction the year's seventh-worst.
The social media personalities Diamond & Silk predicted on Dec. 31, 2017, that Trump's approval ratings among black Americans would rise in the coming year that's just now wrapping up. However, there's no evidence they're hopping on the Trump train, which is stalling out with a 10 percent approval rating last month among black Americans, according to Gallup. Civiqs found his black approval was just 6 percent earlier this month. Politico ranked their prediction the third-worst of the year.
Laura Ingraham assured viewers on Jan. 2 that the Republican tax cuts would boost the economy in the then-new year. “It’s only two days in, and it truly already feels like a happy New Year,” she said. “Our economic news is only going to get brighter in 2018.” However, a December stock market crash washed away all of the year's economic gains, and Trump's trade wars have lowered expectations for growth next year. That failed prediction landed Ingraham at No. 2.
For the record, Politico ranked a prediction about Amazon's second headquarters by Aiera, Wells Fargo’s artificial intelligence platform, at No. 1 for the year.
A Georgia state senator who advertised his campaign for governor with a so-called "deportation bus" reported to jail on Wednesday.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Republican state Sen. Michael Williams turned himself into Hall County jail just days after being indicted on insurance fraud and other charges.
Williams was indicted after he told authorities that $300,000 worth of computer servers had been stolen from his campaign office. He said that the server had been used in a cryptocurrency mining operation.
The paper noted:
Williams is accused of lying to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent when he said he was at home in Forsyth County, not in the Gainesville area at the time of the purported burglary. The indictment, which doesn’t say what allegedly actually happened to the servers, accuses Williams of making a false insurance claim related to the servers.
A.J. Richman, an attorney for Williams, insisted that an indictment “is not evidence of anything.”
Former campaign manager Seth Weathers also called the indictment a "political witch hunt."
Williams came in last place out of five Republicans in the 2018 gubernatorial primary. He is expected to remain in his Senate seat until early next year.
Richman has vowed that his client would be out of jail "soon."
Watch a video about Williams' "deportation bus" below.
The morning after the third government shutdown of 2018 began, former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) slammed President Donald Trump and far-right media personalities during an appearance on MSNBC's "AM Joy" with host Joy Reid.
"For three years, starting with the presidential campaign and rally after rally ever since, Donald Trump has been telling his supporters that he would build them a great big wall across the southern border to keep the people out that they want to keep out and that Mexico would pay for it," Reid reported. "And based on their eager chanting along -- all of which is on tape, as you just heard -- it's clear his supporters definitely understood and affirmed their leader, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, promised them that Mexico would pay for his wall."
"Of course, the majority of Americans knew all along, that was not going to happen -- past and present leaders made it clear Mexico was never going to do no such thing," she continued. "As of midnight plus one second, he and his political party have triggered a government shutdown to try to force you, the American taxpayer, to pay for the Trump wall."
Trump had reportedly agreed to the deal, but reneged after pushback by a handful of conservative media pundits.
The host played clips arguing against the deal by Fox News personality Laura Ingraham, conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and right-wing commentator Ann Coulter.
For context, Reid brought on former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL).
"Why don't they just pass the Senate bill that was already agreed to before, ignore the talk radio people, they're the ones supposed to be in charge, not talk radio people," Reid wondered. "Why don't they do that?"
Jolly said, "the ignorance of each one of those radio hosts you just played is profound -- so is the ignorance of the president of the United States."
"So first, let's notionally be worried that the president is so influenced by three or four talk show hosts -- that in itself should give us reason to worry," he warned. "But this whole narrative is one that the president has bumbled from the beginning."
"He has been a terrible politician on this issue. As simple as the message was at his campaign rallies, the reality is in executing, he could have declared victory already but he screwed the entire thing up," he concluded.
Seven years ago, a nephew of Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked the U.S. Supreme Court justice to help him with a screenplay that would chronicle one of her early cases seeking equal rights for men and women.
That story, written with extensive input from the justice, debuts in theaters on Christmas in the movie, “On the Basis of Sex,” starring Felicity Jones. The Oscar-nominated actress plays a young Ginsburg as she juggles being a new mother and trying to establish a law career in the 1960s and 1970s.
“For some people, she is a divisive person,” said the nephew and screenwriter, Daniel Stiepleman. “For other people, she’s a superhero. For me, she’s Aunt Ruth. That’s the person I wrote on screen with human foibles and problems and opportunities and a home life.”
As Stiepleman was writing, Ginsburg became a cultural icon nicknamed Notorious R.B.G., inspired by late rapper Notorious B.I.G.. A hero to U.S. liberals, her image is seen on coffee mugs and T-shirts and she even has her own action figure. A documentary, “RBG,” showed the octogenarian in the gym lifting weights, enhancing her status among fans.
“On the Basis of Sex” tells the story of a landmark discrimination case that Ginsburg argued with her tax attorney husband, Martin, in 1972. It involved Charles Moritz, a single man who was denied a $296 tax deduction because he was a male caregiver. Ginsburg and her husband, who died in 2010, successfully argued the denial represented gender-based discrimination.
“This film is part-fact, part-imaginative,” Ginsburg told National Public Radio correspondent Nina Totenberg recently, “but what’s wonderful about it is that the imaginative parts fit in with the story so well.”
Stiepleman said he focused on the Moritz case because it was the only instance when the Ginsburgs argued in court together, and it coincided with a time when they were navigating their marriage. Martin Ginsburg, played by Armie Hammer, is shown as a devoted husband who helps with cleaning and cooking, an unusual partnership for the era.
The writer spent several days digging through his aunt’s files at the Library of Congress. In the evenings, he asked her for insight about her marriage.
Ginsburg told Totenberg that she reviewed the script’s first three drafts.
When her nephew called about the initial version, she told him: “I’m in the middle of reading the Affordable Care Act. Can you call me back in 30 minutes?” according to Stiepleman.
He called back and she said: “‘OK, page one.’ And we went through it like it was a contract, line by line.”
“She wanted the law to be right, she wanted the way the law is practiced to be right, and she wanted Uncle Martin to be right,” Stiepleman said.
The film is being distributed by Comcast Corp’s Focus Features.
Asked if the 85-year-old Ginsburg, who joined the country’s highest court in 1993, would ever retire, Stiepleman said he “dare not speculate.”
But he added: “You cannot underestimate the degree to which she reveres the court. I can’t imagine why she would ever want to stop being a part of that.”
Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Peter Cooney
This story was produced in collaboration with PolitiFact.
For years, conservatives have assailed the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a dysfunctional bureaucracy. They said private enterprise would mean better, easier-to-access health care for veterans. President Donald Trump embraced that position, enthusiastically moving to expand the private sector’s role.
Here’s what has actually happened in the four years since the government began sending more veterans to private care: longer waits for appointments and, a new analysis of VA claims data by ProPublica and PolitiFact shows, higher costs for taxpayers.
Since 2014, 1.9 million former service members have received private medical care through a program called Veterans Choice. It was supposed to give veterans a way around long wait times in the VA. But their average waits using the Choice Program were still longer than allowed by law, according to examinations by the VA inspector general and the Government Accountability Office. The watchdogs also found widespread blunders, such as booking a veteran in Idaho with a doctor in New York and telling a Florida veteran to see a specialist in California. Once, the VA referred a veteran to the Choice Program to see a urologist, but instead he got an appointment with a neurologist.
The winners have been two private companies hired to run the program, which began under the Obama administration and is poised to grow significantly under Trump. ProPublica and PolitiFact obtained VA data showing how much the agency has paid in medical claims and administrative fees for the Choice program. Since 2014, the two companies have been paid nearly $2 billion for overhead, including profit. That’s about 24 percent of the companies’ total program expenses — a rate that would exceed the federal cap that governs how much most insurance plans can spend on administration in the private sector.
For years, conservatives have assailed the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a dysfunctional bureaucracy. They said private enterprise would mean better, easier-to-access health care for veterans. President Donald Trump embraced that position, enthusiastically moving to expand the private sector’s role.
Here’s what has actually happened in the four years since the government began sending more veterans to private care: longer waits for appointments and, a new analysis of VA claims data by ProPublica and PolitiFact shows, higher costs for taxpayers.
Since 2014, 1.9 million former service members have received private medical care through a program called Veterans Choice. It was supposed to give veterans a way around long wait times in the VA. But their average waits using the Choice Program were still longer than allowed by law, according to examinations by the VA inspector general and the Government Accountability Office. The watchdogs also found widespread blunders, such as booking a veteran in Idaho with a doctor in New York and telling a Florida veteran to see a specialist in California. Once, the VA referred a veteran to the Choice Program to see a urologist, but instead he got an appointment with a neurologist.
The winners have been two private companies hired to run the program, which began under the Obama administration and is poised to grow significantly under Trump. ProPublica and PolitiFact obtained VA data showing how much the agency has paid in medical claims and administrative fees for the Choice program. Since 2014, the two companies have been paid nearly $2 billion for overhead, including profit. That’s about 24 percent of the companies’ total program expenses — a rate that would exceed the federal cap that governs how much most insurance plans can spend on administration in the private sector.
Since 2014, the VA’s Veterans Choice Program has spent $10.3 billion. Most of that money went to private contractors.
Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
Contractors spent $1.9 billion — or 24 percent — of that money on overhead.
Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
That’s about double the private-industry standard rate and three times as much as the military’s health insurance program.
Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
According to the agency’s inspector general, the VA was paying the contractors at least $295 every time it authorized private care for a veteran. The fee was so high because the VA hurriedly launched the Choice Program as a short-term response to a crisis. Four years later, the fee never subsided — it went up to as much as $318 per referral.
“This is what happens when people try and privatize the VA,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate veterans committee, said in a statement responding to these findings. “The VA has an obligation to taxpayers to spend its limited resources on caring for veterans, not paying excessive fees to a government contractor. When VA does need the help of a middleman, it needs to do a better job of holding contractors accountable for missing the mark.”
(Read more about how ProPublica and PolitiFact did the analysis.)
The Affordable Care Act prohibits large group insurance plans from spending more than 15 percent of their revenue on administration, including marketing and profit. The private sector standard is 10 percent to 12 percent, according to Andrew Naugle, who advises health insurers on administrative operations as a consultant at Milliman, one of the world’s largest actuarial firms. Overhead is even lower in the Defense Department’s Tricare health benefits program: only 8 percent last year.
Even excluding the costs of setting up the new program, the Choice contractors’ overhead still amounts to 21 percent of revenue.
“That’s just unacceptable,” Rick Weidman, the policy director of Vietnam Veterans of America, said in response to the figures. “There are people constantly banging on the VA, but this was the private sector that made a total muck of it.”
A spokesman for the VA, Curt Cashour, declined to provide an interview with key officials and declined to answer a detailed list of written questions.
One of the contractors, Health Net, stopped working on the program in September. Health Net didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The other contractor, TriWest Healthcare Alliance, said it has worked closely with the VA to improve the program and has made major investments of its own. “We believe supporting VA in ensuring the delivery of quality care to our nation’s veterans is a moral responsibility, even while others have avoided making these investments or have withdrawn from the market,” the company said in a statement.
TriWest did not dispute ProPublica and PolitiFact’s estimated overhead rate, which used total costs, but suggested an alternate calculation, using an average cost, that yielded a rate of 13 percent to 15 percent. The company defended the $295-plus fee by saying it covers “highly manual” services such as scheduling appointments and coordinating medical files. Such functions are not typically part of the contracts for other programs, such as the military’s Tricare. But Tricare’s contractors perform other duties, such as adjudicating claims and monitoring quality, that Health Net and TriWest do not. In a recent studycomparing the programs, researchers from the Rand Corporation concluded that the role of the Choice Program’s contractors is “much narrower than in the private sector or in Tricare.”
Before the Choice Program, TriWest and Health Net performed essentially the same functions for about a sixth of the price, according to the VA inspector general. TriWest declined to break down how much of the fee goes to each service it provides.
Because of what the GAO called the contractors’ “inadequate” performance, the VA increasingly took over doing the Choice Program’s referrals and claims itself.
In many cases, the contractors’ $295-plus processing fee for every referral was bigger than the doctor’s bill for services rendered, the analysis of agency data showed. In the three months ending Jan. 31, 2018, the Choice Program made 49,144 referrals for primary care totaling $9.9 million in medical costs, for an average cost per referral of $201.16. A few other types of care also cost less on average than the handling fee: chiropractic care ($286.32 per referral) and optometry ($189.25). There were certainly other instances where the medical services cost much more than the handling fee: TriWest said its average cost per referral was about $2,100 in the past six months.
Beyond what the contractors were entitled to, audits by the VA inspector general found that they overcharged the government by $140 million from November 2014 to March 2017. Both companies are now under federal investigation arising from these overpayments. Health Net’s parent company, Centene, disclosed a Justice Department civil investigation into “excessive, duplicative or otherwise improper claims.” A federal grand jury in Arizona is investigating TriWest for “wire fraud and misused government funds,” according to a court decision on a subpoena connected to the case. Both companies said they are cooperating with the inquiries.
Despite the criminal investigation into TriWest’s management of the Choice Program, the Trump administration recently expanded the company’s contract without competitive bidding. Now, TriWest stands to collect even more fees as the administration prepares to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to send more veterans to private doctors.
Senate veterans committee chairman Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said he expects VA Secretary Robert Wilkie to discuss the agency’s plans for the future of private care when he testifies at a hearing on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the outgoing chairman of the House veterans committee, Phil Roe, R-Tenn., didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“The last thing we need is to have funding for VA’s core mission get wasted,” Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat who will become the House panel’s chairman in January, said in a statement. “I will make sure Congress conducts comprehensive oversight to ensure that our veterans receive the care they deserve while being good stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
Many of the Choice Program’s defects trace back to its hasty launch.
In 2014, the Republican chairman of the House veterans committee alleged that 40 veterans died waiting for care at the VA hospital in Phoenix. The inspector general eventually concluded that no deaths were attributable to the delays. But it was true that officials at the Phoenix VA were covering up long wait times, and critics seized on this scandal to demand that veterans get access to private medical care.
One of the loudest voices demanding changes was John McCain’s. “Make no mistake: This is an emergency,” the Arizona senator, who died in August, said at the time. McCain struck a compromise with Democrats to open up private care for veterans who lived at least 40 miles from a VA facility or would have to wait at least 30 days to get an appointment.
In the heat of the scandal, Congress gave the VA only 90 days to launch Choice. The VA reached out to 57 companies about administering the new program, but the companies said they couldn’t get the program off the ground in just three months, according to contracting records. So the VA tacked the Choice Program onto existing contracts with Health Net and TriWest to run a much smaller program for buying private care. “There is simply insufficient time to solicit, evaluate, negotiate and award competitive contracts and then allow for some form of ramp-up time for a new contractor,” the VA said in a formal justification for bypassing competitive bidding.
But that was a shaky foundation on which to build a much larger program, since those earlier contracts were themselves flawed. In a 2016 report, the VA inspector general saidofficials hadn’t followed the rules “to ensure services acquired are based on need and at fair and reasonable prices.” The report criticized the VA for awarding higher rates than one of the vendors proposed.
The new contract with the VA was a lifeline for TriWest. Its president and CEO, David J. McIntyre Jr., was a senior aide to McCain in the mid-1990s before starting the company, based in Phoenix, to handle health benefits for the military’s Tricare program. In 2013, TriWest lost its Tricare contract and was on the verge of shutting down. Thanks to the VA contract, TriWest went from laying off more than a thousand employees to hiring hundreds.
McIntyre’s annual compensation, according to federal contracting disclosures, is $2.36 million. He declined to be interviewed. In a statement, TriWest noted that the original contract, for the much smaller private care program, had been competitively awarded.
The VA paid TriWest and Health Net $300 million upfront to set up the new Choice program, according to the inspector general’s audit. But that was dwarfed by the fees that the contractors would collect. Previously, the VA paid the companies between $45 and $123 for every referral, according to the inspector general. But for the Choice Program, TriWest and Health Net raised their fee to between $295 and $300 to do essentially the same work on a larger scale, the inspector general said.
The price hike was a direct result of the time pressure, according to Greg Giddens, a former VA contracting executive who dealt with the Choice Program. “If we had two years to stand up the program, we would have been at a different price structure,” he said.
Even though the whole point of the Choice Program was to avoid 30-day waits in the VA, a convoluted process made it hard for veterans to see private doctors any faster. Getting care through the Choice Program took longer than 30 days 41 percent of the time, according to the inspector general’s estimate. The GAO found that in 2016 using the Choice Program could take as long as 70 days, with an average of 50 days.
Sometimes the contractors failed to make appointments at all. Over a three-month period in 2018, Health Net sent back between 9 percent and 13 percent of its referrals, according to agency data. TriWest failed to make appointments on 5 percent to 8 percent of referrals, the data shows.
Many veterans had frustrating experiences with the contractors.
Richard Camacho in Los Angeles said he got a call from TriWest to make an appointment for a sleep test, but he then received a letter from TriWest with different dates. He had to call the doctor to confirm when he was supposed to show up. When he got there, the doctor had received no information about what the appointment was for, Camacho said.
John Moen, a Vietnam veteran in Plano, Texas, tried to use the Choice Program for physical therapy this year rather than travel to Dallas, where the VA had a six-week wait. But it took 10 weeks for him to get an appointment with a private provider.
“The Choice Program for me has completely failed to meet my needs,” Moen said.
Curtis Thompson, of Kirkland, Washington, said he’s been told the Choice Program had a 30-day wait just to process referrals, never mind to book an appointment. “Bottom line: Wait for the nearly 60 days to see the rheumatologist at the VA rather than opt for an unknown delay through Veterans Choice,” he said.
Curtis Thompson got billed for private medical services he received through the VA’s Choice Program. “There was never supposed to be any charges,” he said. (Andrew Burton, special to ProPublica)
After Thompson used the Choice Program in 2018 for a sinus surgery that the VA couldn’t perform within 30 days, the private provider came after him to collect payment, according to documentation he provided.
Thousands of veterans have had to contend with bill collectors and credit bureaus because the contractors failed to pay providers on time, according to the inspector general. Doctors have been frustrated with the Choice Program, too. The inspector general foundthat 15 providers in North Carolina stopped accepting patients from the VA because Health Net wasn’t paying them on time.
The VA shares the blame, since it fell behind in paying the contractors, the inspector general said. TriWest claimed the VA at one point owed the company $200 million. According to the inspector general, the VA’s pile of unpaid claims peaked at almost 180,000 in 2016 and was virtually eliminated by the end of the year.
The VA tried to tackle the backlog of unpaid doctors, but it had a problem: The agency didn’t know who was performing the services arranged by the contractors. That’s because Health Net and TriWest controlled the provider networks, and the medical claims they submit to the VA do not include any provider information.
The contractors’ role as middlemen created the opportunity for payment errors, according to the inspector general’s audit. The inspector general found 77,700 cases where the contractors billed the VA for more than they paid providers and pocketed the difference, totaling about $2 million. The inspector general also identified $69.9 million in duplicate payments and $68.5 million in other errors.
John Moen, a Vietnam veteran, waited longer to see a private physical therapist through the Choice Program than it would have taken him to get an appointment at the VA. “Total fail for me,” Moen said. “I should have taken the six-week wait offered by the Dallas VA.” (Dylan Hollingsworth for ProPublica)
TriWest said it has worked with the VA to correct the payment errors and set aside money to pay back. The company said it’s waiting for the VA to provide a way to refund the confirmed overpayments. “We remain ready to complete the necessary reconciliations as soon as that process is formally approved,” TriWest said.
The grand jury proceedings involving TriWest are secret, but the investigation became public because prosecutors sought to obtain the identities of anonymous commenters on the jobs website Glassdoor.com who accused TriWest of “mak[ing] money unethically off of veterans/VA.” Glassdoor fought the subpoena but lost, in November 2017. The court’s opinion doesn’t name TriWest, but it describes the subject of the investigation as “a government contractor that administers veterans’ healthcare programs” and quotes the Glassdoor reviews about TriWest. The federal prosecutor’s office in Arizona declined to comment.
“TriWest has cooperated with many government inquiries regarding VA’s community care programs and will continue to do so,” the company said in its statement. “TriWest must respect the government’s right to keep those inquiries confidential until such time as the government decides to conclude the inquiry or take any actions or adjust VA programs as deemed appropriate.”
The VA tried to make the Choice Program run more smoothly and efficiently. Because the contractors were failing to find participating doctors to treat veterans, the VA in mid-2015 launched a full-court press to sign up private providers directly, according to the inspector general. In some states, the VA also took over scheduling from the contractors.
“We were making adjustments on the fly trying to get it to work,” said David Shulkin, who led the VA’s health division starting in 2015. “There needed to be a more holistic solution.”
Officials decided in 2016 to design new contracts that would change the fee structure and reabsorb some of the services that the VA had outsourced to Health Net and TriWest. The department secretary at the time, Bob McDonald, concluded the VA needed to handle its own customer service, since the agency’s reputation was suffering from TriWest’s and Health Net’s mistakes. Reclaiming those functions would have the side effect of reducing overhead.
“Tell me a great customer service company in the world that outsources its customer service,” McDonald, who previously ran Procter & Gamble, said in an interview. “I wanted to have the administrative functions within our medical centers so we took control of the care of the veterans. That would have brought that fee down or eliminated it entirely.”
The new contracts, called the Community Care Network, also aimed to reduce overhead by paying the contractors based on the number of veterans they served per month, rather than a flat fee for every referral. To prevent payment errors like the ones the inspector general found, the new contracts sought to increase information-sharing between the VA and the contractors. The VA opened bidding for the new Community Care Network contracts in December 2016.
But until those new contracts were in place, the VA was still stuck paying Health Net and TriWest at least $295 for every referral. So VA officials came up with a workaround: they could cut out the middleman and refer veterans to private providers directly. Claims going through the contractors declined by 47 percent from May to December in 2017.
TriWest’s CEO, McIntyre, objected to this workaround and blamed the VA for hurting his bottom line.
In a Feb. 26, 2018, email with the subject line “Heads Up… Likely Massive and Regrettable Train Wreck Coming!” McIntyre warned Shulkin, then the department secretary, that “long unresolved matters with VA and current behavior patterns will result in a projected $65 million loss next year. This is on top of the losses that we have amassed over the last couple years.”
Officials were puzzled that, despite all the VA was paying TriWest, McIntyre was claiming he couldn’t make ends meet, according to agency emails provided to ProPublica and PolitiFact. McIntyre explained that he wanted the VA to waive penalties for claims that lacked adequate documentation and to pay TriWest an administrative fee on canceled referrals and no-show appointments, even though the VA read the contract to require a fee only on completed claims. In a March letter to key lawmakers, McIntyre said the VA’s practice of bypassing the contractors and referring patients directly to providers “has resulted in a significant drop in the volume of work and is causing the company irreparable financial harm.”
McIntyre claimed the VA owed TriWest $95 million and warned of a “negative impact on VA and veterans that will follow” if the agency didn’t pay. Any disruptions at TriWest, he said, would rebound onto the VA, “given how much we are relied on by VA at the moment and the very public nature of this work.”
But when the VA asked to see TriWest’s financial records to substantiate McIntyre’s claims, the numbers didn’t add up, according to agency emails.
McIntyre’s distress escalated in March, as the Choice Program was running out of money and lawmakers were locked in tense negotiations over its future. McIntyre began sending daily emails to the VA officials in charge of the Choice Program seeking updates and warning of impending disaster. “I don’t think the storm could get more difficult or challenging,” he wrote in one of the messages. “However, I know that I am not alone nor that the impact will be confined to us.”
McIntyre lobbied for a bill to permanently replace Choice with a new program consolidating all of the VA’s methods of buying private care. TriWest even offered to pay veterans organizations to run ads supporting the legislation, according to emails discussing the proposal. Congress overwhelmingly passed the law (named after McCain) in May.
“In the campaign, I also promised that we would fight for Veterans Choice,” Trump said at the signing ceremony in June. “And before I knew that much about it, it just seemed to be common sense. It seemed like if they’re waiting on line for nine days and they can’t see a doctor, why aren’t they going outside to see a doctor and take care of themselves, and we pay the bill? It’s less expensive for us, it works out much better, and it’s immediate care.”
The new permanent program for buying private care will take effect in June 2019. The VA’s new and improved Community Care Network contracts were supposed to be in place by then. But the agency repeatedly missed deadlines for these new contracts and has yet to award them.The VA has said it’s aiming to pick the contractors for the new program in January and February. Yet even if the VA meets this latest deadline, the contracts include a one-year ramp-up period, so they won’t be ready to start in June.
That means TriWest will by default become the sole contractor for the new program. The VA declined to renew Health Net’s contract when it expired in September. The VA was planning to deal directly with private providers in the regions that Health Net had covered. But the VA changed course and announcedthat TriWest would take over Health Net’s half of the country. The agency said TriWest would be the sole contractor for the entire Choice Program until it awards the Community Care Network contracts.
“There’s still not a clear timeline moving forward,” said Giddens, the former VA contracting executive. “They need to move forward with the next program. The longer they stay with the current one, and now that it’s down to TriWest, that’s not the best model.”
Meanwhile, TriWest will continue receiving a fee for every referral. And the number of referrals is poised to grow as the administration plans to shift more veterans to the private sector.
Addressing a Washington Post report stating that Russian propaganda bots helped manipulate the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump's favor, CNN host Alisyn Camerota claimed they were taking their cues from Fox & Friends -- the Fox News show she used to host before moving to her current network.
According to CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the Russians have clearly been in Trump's camp for years, and the recent report bears that out.
"It just shows that the Russian social media effort, this Russian covert effort, has been aligned with Donald Trump's interests for more than a year," Toobin explained. "Pro-Trump, anti-Clinton, suppressing the African-American vote -- which is largely democratic -- helping [Green Party presidential candidate] Jill Stein, who was a spoiler for Hillary Clinton."
"And now they're attacking Robert Mueller," he emphasized. "All of these separate efforts are completely aligned with Donald Trump's interests, often word for word, and it's what Russia has been doing covertly -- it is extraordinary."
Host Camerota jumped in to add that this is not something new and the Russians have been watching rightwing social media for the "sweet spots" that get conservative's juices flowing.
She then admitted the Russians have been taking tips from Fox News morning show Fox & Friends which she once co-hosted.
"I see the clues planted in conservative social media, where the Russian trolls got their ideas, for exactly the sweet-spot, exactly how they knew what would appeal to people on Twitter," Camerota exclaimed. "I mean, there are things that I heard years earlier about Robert Mueller on Fox News that they seize on, that now we know."
"Here's one example: this is where they claim that Robert Mueller is the Russian special counsel, he worked with radical Islamic groups," she explained. "I remember that being a talking point on Fox and Friends in probably 2010 -- connect the dots."
"This is where Russian trolls figured out, 'oh, this is going to make an impact,' -- and they're still doing it today," she concluded.
The insurance company Pacific Life issued a statement on Friday expressing extreme dissatisfaction with comments made by Carlson about immigration on the previous night's program. In a public statement, Pacific Life explained that "as a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson's statements. Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in. We will not be advertising on Mr. Carlson's show in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our relationship with his program."
During a Thursday night episode of his program, Carlson expressed disgust with American immigration policy and argued that liberal talking points were encouraging undocumented immigrants to flood into the country.
"Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement," Carlson said on his program, according to a transcript by Media Matters. "Previous leaders of our country committed sins -- we must pay for those sins by welcoming an endless chain of migrant caravans. That's the argument they make."
He later added, "What is more predictable is how leaders of the caravan are starting to talk. Suddenly, they sound like community college professors from Long Beach. Entitled, cut off from reality, and highly aggressive. Yesterday a group of leaders of the caravan marched into the U.S. consulate in Mexico, and demanded $50,000 to return to their own countries."
As Carlson facetiously put it, "Huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Nope, cynical shakedown artists who have been watching too much CNN. No surprise there. When rich liberals tell you that America owes you a comfortable life, nobody should be shocked when you believe them."
In a statement, network spokeswoman Carly Shanahan said that "it is a shame that left wing advocacy groups, under the guise of being supposed ‘media watchdogs’ weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech. We continue to stand by and work with our advertisers through these unfortunate and unnecessary distractions."
This isn't the first time that Fox News has dealt with an advertiser problem due to a controversy involving one of its hosts. Laura Ingraham got into trouble earlier this year when she ridiculed Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg, prompting the student to refer to her as a "bully" and issue a call for advertisers to abandon her show.
The Pineda family trudged northward for more than a month with a caravan of Central American migrants who are now stuck at the U.S. border. But they were on the run in Honduras much longer than that due to fears of political persecution.
According to the family’s account, masked men in military uniforms came in November 2017 to their door in the town of Peña Blanca, brandishing handguns and giving them two options: leave or be killed. They chose to leave, taking refuge with friends and family for nearly a year, they said, before joining thousands of others in a 2,800-mile (4,500-km) journey to the United States in October.
The confrontation occurred on Nov. 26, 2017, the night of Honduras’ presidential election. Active in the leftist opposition Libre Party, the Pinedas believe their tormentors were loyal to conservative President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
His security forces killed at least 16 people in major street protests that followed his disputed re-election and nobody has been criminally charged, according to a U.N. report.
“They told me that for getting people involved in political parties they were going to fill me with lead,” said Secundina Pineda, 25, one of four sisters living with their 65-year-old father and a toddler inside a tent at a migrant camp in Tijuana, Mexico.
Their story points to the largely overlooked political violence in Honduras that, along with grinding poverty, has helped create a humanitarian crisis at the U.S. doorstep.
Reuters could not verify the Pinedas’ story, which was largely narrated by Secundina. She is the most educated of her family, having studied business administration. A Honduran armed forces spokesman vehemently denied the account or any other political persecution.
But human rights observers in Honduras and immigration lawyers representing migrants from the caravan said they have heard similar stories of security forces entering homes and intimidating opposition political activists.
Military police have conducted arbitrary searches and seizures and broken up opposition demonstrations, the rights observers said, a contention denied by the military.
In a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, death squads have conducted 38 massacres of five or more people in 2018, said Berta Oliva, director of the human rights group Committee of the Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH). She contended that political cases are written off as common crime.
“The Honduran armed forces absolutely do not persecute anybody,” said Captain Jose Domingo Mesa, a military spokesman.
“A lot of people who are trying to get asylum (in the United States) are looking for political justification, a lot of times blaming the armed forces,” Mesa said. “We invite this family that says it has been persecuted to return to the country.”
The president’s office did not answer a Reuters request for comment.
U.S. immigration lawyer Maritza Agundez estimated 20 to 25 percent of her coalition’s clients are Hondurans with credible political asylum cases. She is one of 16 staff attorneys for Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) who are handling dozens of cases from the migrant caravan. The Hondurans who report harassment from official security forces vow never to return home, she said.
“They are 100 percent sure that if they return back home that they will be killed,” Agundez said.
CARAVAN STALLED IN TIJUANA
Thousands of Central American asylum seekers have been corralled into overcrowded camps for the past month in the northern Mexican city of Tijuana after walking highways and hitching rides since October. They face long wait times to have asylum claims heard, and some frustrated migrants are considering trying to cross the U.S. border illegally, staying in Mexico or agreeing to be sent home voluntarily.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has made it harder for migrants to get asylum, eliminating protection for people fleeing gangs or domestic violence and attempting to deny asylum to people who cross the border illegally.
Even before that, less than 14 percent of Hondurans were winning their asylum cases in fiscal year 2018.
The United States is also deporting about 22,000 Hondurans per year back into one of the poorest counties in the Americas.
Soledad Pazo, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras, said her mission is monitoring all manner of accusations including kidnapping and disappearances, but Honduran judicial institutions are largely incapable of a proper investigation, Pazo said.
“There is a high level of impunity here,” Pazo said. “Many say, ‘I don’t have confidence in the police when those who I am reporting come from the state.’”
Honduras has long suffered political instability, and the situation has deteriorated since a 2009 coup when the army deposed President Manuel Zelaya, now of the Libre Party that was formed in 2011, for taking measures that could have led to running for re-election.
Polarization grew more acute in 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of presidential re-election despite it still being banned by the constitution, allowing Hernandez to seek the re-election that had been denied Zelaya.
The election in 2017 was marked by irregularities, and when an early lead for Libre candidate Salvador Nasralla disappeared during the days-long vote count, street protests erupted.
A U.N. human rights report found 23 people were killed in post-election violence, at least 16 of them shot to death by security forces.
Oliva of COFADEH said human rights have continued to deteriorate with the military police and armed forces involved in the majority of the violations.
“From 2017 until now, Honduras has experienced a breakdown like never before on issues of human rights issues, democracy, on freedom of expression, on issues of truth. This is fundamentally what has made most people decide to migrate like a flock of birds,” Oliva said.
The Pinedas heard on television about the caravan, which the Hernandez government alleges was instigated by a Libre politician. After a family debate, the Pinedas decided to leave, joining the 300,000 people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who abandon their countries each year, according to a U.N. estimate.
Secundina Pineda said she wants to study marketing and learn English, perhaps in Miami where she has a friend. Older sister Leida, 33, said she would take any kind of job, even scrubbing toilets. Jose Melvin Pineda, the patriarch, wants to keep working in construction, even though he is 65 years old.
All of them are terrified of returning to Honduras.”If we’re deported,” Secundina said, “we’ll be eaten alive.”
Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Tijuana; Additional reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Cynthia Osterman
Following a clip of Donald Trump's exclusive Thursday interview with Fox News host Harris Faulkner, CNN's own conservative commentator S.E. Cupp dismissed the whole affair as one big "infomercial" to support the embattled president.
Appearing with host Brianna Keilar, Cupp was asked about Harris's bowing to the president on every point and allowing him to wave around print-outs that he claimed proved his innocence against charges of campaign finance violations.
With the president answering a question about Cohen being sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday for facilitating a payment to a former Trump mistress to keep her quiet and protesting, "Michael Cohen pled guilty to something that is not even a crime," Cupp rolled her eyes.
"S.E. I know you are having a laugh at some of that," Keilar smiled. "What's your reaction?"
"First, can we say for the record, that was not an interview -- that was an infomercial allowing the president to provide his evidence," Cupp remarked.
"'See, look what this paper said and look what this person said,'" Cupp said, mocking Trump's paper-waving defense. "Then to ask the president how he feels about his good approval members?"
"I watched the whole interview. It wasn't journalism, that was an infomercial," she repeated before disgustedly adding, "I'm not sure we learned much about the investigation or China or tariffs or anything else going on. All we heard was what Trump wanted to say and what Fox wanted us to hear."
"I don't put a lot of stock in what the questions asked and what his answers were," Cupp said dismissively. "But he was trying to rewrite and spin the story which is very unbecoming and he knows whatever he is saying is in front of a friendly audience. He is not getting real push-back on whether or not he made a payment to this tabloid, aka, one of his best friends."
The road, hemmed in on one side by empty warehouses and the other by a concrete seawall, ends abruptly in a desolate parking lot. Men step out of their cars and into the darkness, then slip behind the sliding doors of a warehouse. Inside, they huddle under floodlights and wait. A clock on the wall ticks to ten past three in the morning.
“Ready? Ready? Ready?” shouts a man whose arm is covered to the elbow by a black nylon bag. One by one, the men step forward and their hands disappear into the bag.
And so begins a surreal auction in this port city in southwestern Japan. The buyers grip the dealer’s hand, and after a few seconds of secret gesturing felt only by the auctioneer, he yells out the winning bid.
“13,000!” Thirteen thousand yen, or $114, a kilo.
The furtive bidding, a relic of a time when fish traders wore kimonos whose sleeves obscured their hands as they signaled their bids, is part of the insular world of Japanese pufferfish, or fugu, a fish best known for its ability to kill a person in as little as a few hours.
Although deaths are extremely rare, the whiff of danger associated with the fish’s poison is a significant element of the delicacy’s enduring allure in Japanese culture. A kilogram fetches as much as 30,000 yen at the market here, and in the December holiday season, when fugu is particularly popular, a luxury fishmonger in Tokyo can sell up to $88,000 worth of the fish on any given day.
News of poisonings elicits fevered national coverage. When a supermarket in western Japan accidentally sold five packets of the fish without its poisonous liver removed in January, the town used its missile alert system to warn residents.
And now, climate change is adding a new element of risk: Fishermen are discovering an unprecedented number of hybrid species in their catch as seas surrounding the archipelago – particularly off the northeastern coast – see some of the fastest rates of warming in the world.
With pufferfish heading north to seek cooler waters, sibling species of the fish have begun to inter-breed, triggering a sudden increase in the number of hybrid fish. Hybrids are no more dangerous than your average lethal pufferfish. The problem is that they can be hard to distinguish from established species. To avoid accidental poisonings, Japan prohibits their sale and distribution. With the rise of these unclassifiable hybrids, fishermen and fish traders are having to discard a sizable share of their catch.
Kaniya, a seafood-processing company here in Shimonoseki, is one of many in the industry frustrated by the government’s rule to discard such hybrids, considering that most subspecies of pufferfish frequently found in Japan’s northeastern waters have poison in the same organs and can be safely eaten if handled correctly.
“But we have to follow the rules, because if there’s any problems it leads to hysteria,” says Naoto Itou, the gruff patriarch of the company.
Out of 50 or so species of pufferfish found around Japan, 22 of them are approved as edible by the government. Chefs and fish butchers handling pufferfish are specially trained and licensed to remove its liver and reproductive organs, which contain tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin. Confusingly, the location of the deadly neurotoxin differs in certain types of pufferfish; it can sometimes be found in its skin or muscle, as well as its reproductive organs.
Every morning at 8 a.m., Kaniya receives boxes of pufferfish from fishermen in northern Japan. By 9, an experienced fish handler is at his post in an apron and hairnet, sorting as many as seven or eight different groupings of pufferfish at a metal counter.
His bare hands moving quickly, the man picks up one slippery fish after another, holding it up for several seconds, examining its fins and checking for prickles. He pauses on one, turns it to the side, traces its back with his finger, then throws it into the discard pile.
The entire process has a hazmat feel: Workers in latex gloves, white masks and plastic aprons gut the fish and take away the toxic parts and dump them into a lock box. The waste is then collected and incinerated.
Asked why he would continue handling such inherently dangerous fish despite all the headaches surrounding hybrids, Itou points to two of his salesmen hovering nearby, fielding calls from buyers.
“Isn’t it a blessing to be able to handle something customers love and want so much? There aren’t many other fish out there like this.”
SWEEPING IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The rise in hybrid species is yet another example of the sweeping impact of climate change on marine creatures, which have undergone a mass migration as water temperatures increase.
Hiroshi Takahashi, an associate professor at the National Fisheries University, first noticed the increase in hybrid pufferfish six years ago. He started receiving calls from a scientific facility on the northeastern coast of Japan’s main island that had buckets of pufferfish it couldn’t identify. In the fall of 2012, nearly 40 percent pufferfish caught in the area were unidentifiable, compared to less than 1 percent studied previously.
“It wasn’t one out of a thousand as it had been in the past; this was on a completely different scale,” he says. To an untrained eye, hybrids are barely discernible. Even veterans in the industry say it’s nearly impossible to tell apart “quarters,” or second-generation offspring of hybrid fish. At the end of June, more than 20 percent of pufferfish caught in a single day off the Pacific coast of Miyagi prefecture, 460 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, were hybrids.
Genetic tests found that the unidentifiable pufferfish were a hybrid of Takifugu stictonotus and Takifugu snyderi. Although they’re close relatives, the T. stictonotus usually swim around the Sea of Japan and the T. snyderi in the Pacific Ocean. Takahashi believes that the T. stictonotus escaped their gradually warming habitat by riding the Tsushima current north and crossing the strait just below Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido to emerge in the Pacific Ocean. There, they bred with their sibling species and multiplied. The resulting hybrid, which has fine spots and yellow-white fins, could pass for either one of its parent species.
A division of Japan’s health ministry in charge of food safety said it began collecting information about the reported increase in hybrid pufferfish in September. Each prefecture has its own tests for issuing licenses to chefs and others, and an industry group has pushed the government to standardize those tests.
Before dawn on a recent weekday, dozens of hobby fishermen throng a deserted dock in the Ohara port, a two-hour drive from Tokyo, to get a chance to catch the creature. They return on the Shikishima-maru around noon, sunburnt and tipsy, carrying white buckets filled with pufferfish.
While the anglers smoke cigarettes and hunch over noodles, Yoko Yamamoto grabs a knife and sits down on a low plastic stool. She works quickly, first striking the fish’s spinal cord, then peeling back its skin to remove its poisonous outer layer. Her son, who captained the boat, then takes over and slashes the fish to its gills to remove its liver and intestines as a moored fishing boat with pastel pink bench seats blasts “Bohemian Rhapsody” from its speakers.
We have to go a bit further now to find them,” says Yukio Yamamoto, 49, crouching next to his mother. “You see all kinds of hybrids now; it’s been this way for the past few years.”
Toshiharu Enomoto, a 71-year-old hobby fisherman, walks over after his lunch and ties a knot in a plastic bag filled with ice and a few pufferfish. Laughing, he talks about the little thrill of the poison. “Some people like it when they feel a bit of tingling on their lips,” he says.
The Japanese have eaten the fish for thousands of years. After it was outlawed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a samurai general who unified Japan in the 16th century, peasants continued to eat it in secret and died in droves. The ban on fugu was finally lifted after World War II following years of petitioning by avid fans.
Despite its deadly nature, the fish has an almost comical face and, with its puffed cheeks and open mouth, looks as though it’s perpetually surprised to be so sought after for special occasions.
In Tokyo, high-end restaurants serving pufferfish rely on Otsubo Suisan, a luxury wholesaler at the Toyosu fish market. At the company’s wide stall, Koichi Kushida taps his smartwatch and answers calls on his silver Sony Bluetooth. In the span of an hour, the 34-year-old sells thousands of dollars worth of pufferfish.
“It’s tasty, isn’t it? It’s a luxury and has class; that definitely attracts people,” he says, deftly packing an airtight bag of gutted pufferfish into a golden box. With more hybrids appearing on the market, Kushida personally checks all the fish himself.
“When we hand it to our customers, we have to be sure it’s absolutely safe,” he says. “We can’t have any problems.”
The entire panel on MSNBC's AM Joy all got in their shots at the slavish coverage Fox News has bestowed upon President Donald Trump but saved their most biting comments for Judge Jeanine Pirro who is safely tucked away by the conservative network on Saturday nights where she can't do much damage.
After running a series of clips of Pirro's flamboyantly over-the-top pro-Trump rants -- including one attacking the latest Mueller bombshells -- fill-in host Jonathan Capehart got the ball rolling.
"Earth to Fox News, when a damaging court filing finds you 'Individual-1,' that's a bad thing -- it's a really bad thing," he began. "President Donald Trump's favorite news outlet has actually gone out of its way to actually not cover the bombshell Mueller filings."
Sharing more clips of Fox News giving blanket coverage this week to Hillary Clinton's e-mails, Capehart turned to journalist Gabriel Sherman and asked, "Soooo-- was that really Jeanine Pirro on Fox News or a 'Saturday Night Live' skit?"
"You know, sometimes it is so hard to see the line between reality and satire on Fox, yet they make it so easy," Sherman replied. "For me, the highlight of this alternate reality was a segment that Fox & Friends did on a nine-year-old girl who fought to overturn a law banning snowballs."
"Just listening to Jeanine Pirro, I couldn't help thinking she sounds like something [Washington Post columnist] Dana Milbank would write in columns satirically to prove a point about how off-the-deep-end Republicans have gone, but she is doing this for real!" Capehart suggested.
"No, yeah, I give up on satire, I'm going to write about that snowball law," Milbank quipped. "Fox is at a point now where they are, you know, trying to maintain things in this suspended animation."
"Even the Fox News viewers will be seeing with their own eyes it is not all fake news that actually we are in a whole world of hurt right here," he continued. "I think you're already beginning to see cracks in it. I think the whole notion of having this parallel reality is breaking down."
What followed was a dissection of Fox News coverage of Trump, with Sherman stating it will destroy the network one day.
AFP/File / Fayez Nureldine 
AFP/File / OZAN KOSE 
