The AFC Champion New England Patriots, led by QB Tom Brady, will meet the NFC Champion Atlanta Falcons, led by QB Matt Ryan, in Super Bowl LI, or 51, at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, February 5, 2017.
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Wednesday, February 1, 2017
What time does Super Bowl 2017 start? Super Bowl 51 kickoff time
The AFC Champion New England Patriots, led by QB Tom Brady, will meet the NFC Champion Atlanta Falcons, led by QB Matt Ryan, in Super Bowl LI, or 51, at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, February 5, 2017.
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Super Bowl schedule: What time is 2017 Super Bowl 51? Date, time, kickoff, TV, channel, livestream
The AFC Champion New England Patriots, led by QB Tom Brady, will meet the NFC Champion Atlanta Falcons, led by QB Matt Ryan, in Super Bowl LI, or 51, at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, February 5, 2017.
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Chinese Billionaire Abducted From Hong Kong Hotel, Taken to Mainland China
A Chinese billionaire with Canadian citizenship has been seized from his apartment at the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong and taken to mainland China, a source familiar with the situation told CNN Wednesday.
Hong Kong police said they were investigating the disappearance of Xiao Jianhua, who was reported missing Friday. Police added that they had received a request Saturday from a family member to drop the case.
“We are still investigating and have reached out to the mainland authorities concerned,” the statement sent to CNN Tuesday said.
Xiao is one of China’s richest men and controls the Tomorrow Group, a massive holding company with stakes in banks, insurers and property developers. According to Hurun, which analyzes Chinese wealth, Xiao is 46 and has a net worth of $6 billion.
Similar pattern?
Xiao’s disappearance adds to fears that freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” policy agreed to as part of Britain’s 1997 handover of Hong Kong are being eroded as Beijing asserts more control over the city.
His case has drawn comparisons with Lee Bo, a bookseller and British passport holder that disappeared from Hong Kong in late 2015 and later turned up in Chinese custody.
Lee’s removal, which came after the disappearance of four of his colleagues, sparked outrage in Hong Kong and internationally over fears he was taken against his will by Chinese law enforcement agents, who aren’t permitted to act in the self-governing city.
One of the booksellers, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, remains in detention 15 months after he was taken.
Front-page denial
The person familiar with the situation told CNN that there was a small scuffle between two dozen security officials and Xiao’s own security detail, which usually numbers about eight bodyguards per shift.
The source, who wanted to remain anonymous because of the politically sensitive nature of the case, said Xiao had close connections to some of China’s most powerful families.
In a front-page ad published in Hong Kong’s Mingpao newpaper Wednesday, Xiao appeared to deny he had been kidnapped.
The statement in Chinese, which had Xiao’s name printed at the bottom, said that he was “recuperating overseas” and hoped to meet with media once he had recovered.
“I’m a patriotic overseas Chinese and I’ve always loved the party and the country,” it said. The statement added that he was a Canadian citizen entitled to consular assistance and a permanent Hong Kong resident.
Mingpao said they couldn’t disclose who bought the unusual ad, which according to the newspaper’s advertising rate card would have cost $36,500.
Other high-profile businesspeople detained in China have been pressed to release messages insisting that everything is fine.
The newspaper statement was similar to a post on the Tomorrow Group’s WeChat account — a social network and messaging app that’s massively popular in China. The post has since been deleted.
The Four Seasons, which occupies a 45-story skyscraper that commands spectacular views of Hong Kong’s harbor, said it was cooperating with the police investigation but declined to comment further.
The Canadian Consulate said it was aware of the reports and officials were “in contact with the authorities to gather additional information and provide assistance.”
“In order to protect the privacy of the individual concerned, further details on this case cannot be released.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Public Security Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Who is he?
Born in China, Xiao also held a diplomatic passport from Antigua and Barbuda, where he was an ambassador at large, according to a statement on the Antigua government website.
According to the Financial Times, Xiao was a financier with links to the family of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
He was one of a number of Chinese tycoons who had moved to Hong Kong and taken up residence in private apartments at the 5-star Four Seasons hotel during Xi’s crackdown on corporate excess, the paper said.
A 2014 profile in the New York Times said Xiao was often surrounded by aides and retained a number of female body guards “who even wipe the sweat from his brow.”
Born in a poor mountain village, Xiao passed the highly competitive college entrance exam at 14 and attended Peking University, China’s most prestigious, it added.
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Army Corps of Engineers Ordered to Approve Final Step to Finish Dakota Access Pipeline
The US Army Corps of Engineers has been directed to allow the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said on Tuesday.
Although the official easement from the Army Corps has yet to be released, Hoeven and Rep. Kevin Cramer praised the move, which will pave the way for the final phase of the controversial $3.7 billion project.
Hoeven said in a statement that he had spoken with Acting Secretary of the Army Robert Speer on Tuesday. The Republican senator said he was told that Speer had “directed the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with the easement needed to complete the Dakota Access Pipeline.”
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which opposes the project, responded that Hoeven’s announcement is premature and maintains that further environmental review is needed for the pipeline.
Cramer, R-North Dakota, said he received word that the US Army Corps will grant final approval and that Congressional notification of the decision was “imminent.” In his statement, Cramer praised Donald Trump as a “man of action,” after the President signed executive actions to advance approval of the Dakota Access oil pipeline last week.
The construction had been blocked by President Barack Obama’s administration amid vociferous opposition to the project.
The Dakota Access Pipeline, stretching 1,172 miles through four states, is completed except for a contested portion under North Dakota’s Lake Oahe, half a mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s reservation. The tribe has been concerned that digging the pipeline under a section of the Missouri River would affect the area’s drinking water as well as the supply for 17 million Americans living downstream.
A final easement is required for Dakota Access to cross beneath Lake Oahe.
Standing Rock: It’s not over
Standing Rock and its allies have protested in North Dakota for months, standing in the path of the pipeline during peaceful demonstrations and clashes that turned violent.
In December, protesters celebrated a temporary victory when the Army said it would not — for the time being — allow the pipeline to cross under the lake, calling for an official environmental impact statement, a months-long process that would allow the public to weigh in.
The tribe vowed to “vigorously pursue legal action” if the Trump administration cuts off the environmental review and grants the easement.
“To abandon the [environmental impact statement] would amount to a wholly unexplained and arbitrary change based on the President’s personal views and, potentially, personal investments,” the tribe said in a statement Tuesday.
The Indigenous Environmental Network, a leading tribal organization dedicated to blocking further construction of the project, said on Tuesday: “Make no mistake: we are prepared to mobilize and resist this brazen power grab.”
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Nearly 1,000 Diplomats, State Department Officials Criticize Trump Travel Ban in ‘Dissent Memo’
An outgoing top State Department official told his colleagues on Tuesday to stay in their posts to defend the US Constitution and protect America from “all enemies foreign and domestic,” in a thinly veiled critique of the Trump administration.
“A policy without professionals is by definition an amateur policy. You have to help make the choices that bring this country forward,” Tom Countryman, the outgoing Undersecretary for Arms Control, said in a farewell address at the State Department.
Countryman’s remarks came as roughly 900 career diplomats and State Department civil servants from around the world criticized the Trump administration’s travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees in a formal “dissent memo” to the State Department.
He did not mention President Donald Trump or speak directly to the executive order, but State Department officials present understood his meaning when he said the Statue of Liberty “is not only a magnet for immigrants, it is a projector. It shines the promise of democracy around the world.”
“If we wall ourselves off from the world, we will extinguish that projection of liberty just as surely as the Gospel says, ‘If you put your lamp under a bushel basket,'” he said.
Countryman, one of several senior career State Department officials pushed out of their jobs last week, was informed his services were no longer needed last week while on overseas travel. He was asked to cut his State Department business trip short and return to the US after 35 years in the foreign service.
Hundreds of foreign and civil services officers, including Acting Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, gathered Tuesday to bid farewell to Countryman and outgoing Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, a 40-year career diplomat.
Countryman spoke to a somber crowd, many of whom had signed the dissent memo. Nerves were still raw after White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday slammed those who supported and told them to “either get with the program or they can go.”
Although several top officials have retired from the State Department in recent days, there were no signs of mass defections Tuesday. Many State Department officials said they hoped Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, who is expected to win Senate approval this week, will quickly address sinking morale among the career diplomats. Several were curious to know if Tillerson would meet with some of the officials who signed the memo.
The “dissent channel” is a mechanism for State Department officials to offer alternative views on foreign policy without fear of retaliation. It was established in the 1960s during the Vietnam War to ensure that senior leadership in the department would have access to alternative policy views on the war.
The memo, which had been circulating among the foreign service for days and was sent through the State Department’s well-established “dissent channel” on Tuesday, was obtained by CNN
While recognizing the President’s “can and should study all options” for securing the borders and protecting Americans from terror attacks, the diplomats argued the new immigration policy would have the opposite effect.
The ban “will not achieve its stated aim of to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States,” the draft memo notes, adding “given the near absence of terror attacks committed in recent years by Syrian, Iraqi, Irani, Libyan, Somalia, Sudanese, and Yemeni citizens who are in the US after entering on a visa, this ban will have little practical effect in improving public safety.”
Despite the current tensions with the White House, Countryman urged his colleagues in his parting remarks to remain “tireless” in upholding their oath to the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
“We still owe something to America,” he said.
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Nancy Pelosi Calls Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch ‘Very Hostile Appointment’ During Town Hall
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House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi blasted President Donald Trump’s newly named Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch as “a very hostile appointment” and “a very bad decision, well outside the mainstream of American legal thought.”
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks to CNN’s Jake Tapper at a town hall on Jan.31, 2017. (Credit: CNN)
“Elections have ramifications, and here is a living, breathing example of it,” Pelosi said Tuesday night during a CNN town hall moderated by Jake Tapper.
Pelosi cited Gorsuch’s rulings on health care, gun safety and environmental issues to explain her concerns. She said Senate Democrats — who only have 48 seats and have not yet determined whether to attempt to block Gorsuch’s nomination — should apply the “strongest scrutiny.”
But Pelosi did not say whether Democrats should filibuster Gorsuch, a move some in the party would rather use for a future nominee who could change the court’s balance of power.
Pelosi was speaker from 2007 until the GOP took the House majority in the 2010 wave. She is still the most powerful House Democrat, having staved off a challenge for her leadership post by Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan.
As progressive anger with Trump spills over, Pelosi and other top lawmakers are attempting to channel the resistance into legislative victories. Out of power and without the same procedural tools that Senate Democrats have to block Trump’s actions, House Democrats’ strength comes mostly from uniting in opposition to the GOP.
‘Sorry’ for Trump
Pelosi said she feels “sorry” for Trump because he believes — as he told her and other congressional leaders in a recent meeting — that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election. There’s no evidence to back up that claim.
“When I said, ‘that’s not true, there’s no evidence to support that,” Pelosi said, “he said, ‘and I’m not even counting California.'”
“You know what it is? It’s a predicate for the President to go out and say, there’s voter fraud rampant around the country,” she said. “And it’s not true.”
Pelosi criticized Republican lawmakers for moves to restrict access to abortions — and told a questioner that lawmakers should increase access to family planning, birth control and contraception and not “defund Planned Parenthood.”
Abortion, immigration
When an anti-abortion college student who said her mother chose to give her up for adoption challenged Pelosi, she responded: “You said, my mother chose — my mother chose. And we want … people to have that opportunity to choose, as well.”
Pelosi lashed out at Trump over his executive order banning travel to the United States from seven majority Muslim countries — calling it a “decoy, decoy, decoy, decoy.”
“Our president is reckless — reckless and his administration is incompetent,” she said. “How and why they did this is because they are grand illusionists. Anytime they have a problem with something, they create another problem.”
A Texas veterinarian who described struggles with violence among smugglers at the border asked Pelosi if she would support Trump’s calls for a border wall and to eliminate sanctuary cities.
“A lot of the thinking is, we need more technology, more manpower, some fencing, perhaps,” Pelosi said.
She added: “With more technology and more manpower I think we have a better result than thinking that Mexico is going to pay $10 to $20 billion to build a wall.”
Pelosi defended so-called sanctuary cities — which do not deport undocumented immigrants — arguing that they make the United States safer by bringing those immigrants into full society.
Laura Wilkerson, who said her son was tied up and slain by an undocumented immigrant, pressed Pelosi on her support for sanctuary cities with an emotional question.
Pelosi said she “prayed” for the woman and said her son’s killer “should be deported” or “sent to jail.”
But Pelosi also defended law-abiding undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities.
“The point is that you do not turn law enforcement officers into immigration officers. That is really what the point is in sanctuary cities,” she said.
‘Run for office’
Pelosi also confronted Democrats’ failings in the 2016 campaign.
She admitted to a steel manufacturer that Democrats have fretted internally about how they managed to lose blue-collar workers in the Midwest.
“In our caucus, we’ve had this discussion: ‘How did they not know we’re there for him?'” she said.
“It’s not about who we are, because who we are is to be there for America’s workers, and we fight that fight every day,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi told a female college student who had participated in the Women’s march in Washington — but was frustrated it didn’t catch Trump’s attention — to get directly involved in the political process.
“You’ve marched for progress — now run for office,” she said. “Run for office. We need many more women to run for office.”
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