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The Navy needs not only enough people but the right people, and appealing to them is influencing the design of its future ships.

If you saw the reports that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was briefed by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia was trying to aid his Democratic presidential campaign, you might have wondered, why exactly, Moscow was targeting him. After all, President Trump is still apparently the candidate the Kremlin hopes wins, and Sanders and Trump certainly have different ideological stances.GQ's Julia Ioffe set out to answer that question, and while she reports that some people think Sanders' non-interventionist foreign policy platform is appealing to Moscow, or that he will be easier for Trump to defeat than other more moderate candidates, she also found that it may be more about optics. "The ideal scenario is to maintain schism and uncertainty in the States till the end," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a Russian political scientist who used to advise Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Our candidate is chaos."Essentially, as described by Ioffe's sources, Moscow is licking its chops over what could be the most extreme U.S. presidential election in quite some time, if not ever, and they want to see the country turn on itself. "All of this infighting, this cannibalism, they create and deepen the crisis of the American system," said Andranik Migranyan, a close friend of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who used to run a Russian government-funded think tank.Migranyan went on to question — perhaps facetiously — whether the U.S. will still exist after 2025. "Your country is hurtling toward the abyss," he said.Of course, it's unclear if that's precisely why the Kremlin seems okay with a Sanders victory — and Migranyan denies Russia is actually meddling — but it's not difficult to imagine Moscow would enjoy an even more hotly contested election than in 2016. Read more at GQ.More stories from theweek.com The real third way in 2020 Democratic rivals try to dent Sanders' frontrunner status Trump's host on his India visit is a fervent vegetarian. The White House is apparently nervous about the menus.

'Business is soft, people are scared to travel,' said Frank Del Rio, CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line.

Iran's conservatives claimed victory Sunday in a general election marked by the lowest turnout since the 1979 Islamic Revolution amid public anger against the government, an economic downturn and the disqualification of half the candidates. A conservative resurgence would heap pressure on beleaguered President Hassan Rouhani and signal a shift from four years ago when reformists and moderates won a slender majority in parliament. "Victory for the anti-American candidates, a new slap for Trump," crowed the ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) may be basking in his victory after the Nevada caucuses, but he can't celebrate for too long. The South Carolina primary is right around the corner, and despite Sanders steadily encroaching into first place for weeks in state polls, it's still former Vice President Joe Biden's state to lose in the week leading up to the vote, a new CBS/YouGov poll revealed Sunday.Sanders crushed his competition in Nevada, where Biden finished a distant second. South Carolina, though, has always been the early voting state the vice president has had his eye on — and he's still got a chance — but Sanders is right behind him now as Biden's once dominant lead has shrunk to just a five-point advantage over Sanders in the new poll.> NEW FROM ⁦@CBSNewsPoll⁩ FROM SOUTH CAROLINA: @JoeBiden (28%) has only a single-digit lead with ⁦@BernieSanders⁩ (23%) right behind him. Support for the ex-VP has fallen double-digits ⁦@TomSteyer⁩ is at 18%. https://t.co/fBQEccgY2U> > — Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) February 23, 2020Some of that likely has to do with Biden's support among black voters shrinking over the last few months. He still maintains the edge, but billionaire Tom Steyer has shot up to second place among the demographic thanks to a furious final effort in the state. Steyer, in fact, is in third place in the poll, which must excite his campaign, considering he told Fox News' Chris Wallace on Sunday that he'll need a top-three finish next Saturday to get back into the race.The CBS News survey was conducted by YouGov between February 20-22, 2020. A representative sample of 2,000 registered voters in South Carolina was selected, including 1,238 self-identified Democrats, as well as independents who plan to vote in the Democratic primary this year. The margin of error is 5.5 points.More stories from theweek.com Conservative activists are reportedly sending Trump lists of 'disloyal' government officials to fire CNN analyst: Republicans 'may regret' hoping Sanders wins nomination The stunning Southern Baptist controversy over Donald Trump and Russell Moore, explained

The Connecticut Democrat says Russia supports the president’s agenda.

Robert O’Brien says he has not seen evidence Russia is boosting Trump but seizes on report Moscow is backing Bernie SandersDonald Trump’s national security adviser has said he has not “seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything” to get the president re-elected, but also seemed to accept reports that Russia is backing Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.In response, one senior Democrat slammed the “politicisation of intelligence” by the Trump administration and said Robert O’Brien should “stay out of politics”.O’Brien’s claim, in an interview with ABC’s This Week, came at the end of a week in which it was reported that US officials briefed the House intelligence committee that Russia was again trying to help get Trump elected.Reports of Trump’s furious reaction were followed by the departure of Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, and his replacement by Richard Grenell, formerly ambassador to Germany and a Trump loyalist. The president has tweeted extensively on the subject, blaming Democrats and the media for “disinformation hoax number 7”.It was also reported this week that Trump, congressional leaders and Sanders himself were briefed that Moscow was repeating another tactic from 2016 and backing the Vermont senator.Sanders told Russia to stay out of US elections, then won convincingly in Nevada.O’Brien said Russian backing for Sanders would be “no surprise. He honeymooned in Moscow.”Sanders has described a 10-day visit to the then Soviet capital in 1988 as “a very strange honeymoon”. O’Brien was repeating a line used by Trump at campaign events.Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said O’Brien had made a “political statement” and as national security adviser should “stay out of politics”.Asked if he had seen analysis showing a Russian aim in its election interference efforts was to help the president, O’Brien said: “I have not seen that, and … the national security adviser gets pretty good access to our intelligence. I haven’t seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected.”O’Brien said he was not making a distinction between seeing actual intelligence material and seeing analysis of it.“No, I haven’t seen any intelligence on that,” he said. “And I haven’t seen any analysis on that.”He also said Grenell and CIA director Gina Haspel had not seen such material and contended: “President Trump has rebuilt the American military to an extent we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan. So I don’t think it’s any surprise that Russia or China or Iran would want somebody other than President Trump.”Murphy countered that it “stands to reason” that Russia “wants Trump elected because he has been a gift to Russia. He has essentially ceded the Middle East to Russian interests, he has accomplished more in undermining Nato than Russia has in the last 20 years and he continues to effectively deny that they have an ongoing political operation here in the United States that by and large is an attempt to support Donald Trump.”US intelligence concluded that Russia ran interference efforts through the 2016 election, aiming to boost Trump against Hillary Clinton and stoke divisions in US society.Trump has rejected such conclusions, including standing with the Russian leader in Helsinki in July 2018 and saying: “I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”O’Brien, Trump’s fourth national security adviser, is a lawyer and former hostage negotiator who according to a New York Times report runs National Security Council meetings that include printouts of presidential tweets. Like the president, he said reports about the House briefing were based on leaks. Speaking to reporters on Sunday as he left Washington for a visit to India, Trump accused House intelligence chair Adam Schiff of leaking the information about Russia and Sanders. He also said he had not been briefed about the Sanders link.O’Brien said he had “seen the reports from that briefing at the intel committee [and] also heard that from the briefers that that’s not what they intended the story to be. So, look … I haven’t seen any evidence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected. And our message to the Russians is stay out of the US elections. We’ve been very tough on Russia and we’ve been great on election security.”Senate Republicans this month blocked three bills meant to strengthen election security, shortly after being told by intelligence agencies the US was not doing enough to guard against a repeat of 2016. O’Brien said the White House was “working very hard with the states”.“We’re going to paper ballots in many cases to harden our election infrastructure,” he said, “to make sure that not only is there not election influence through trolls and Twitter and that sort of thing, but to make sure that countries can’t hack into our secretaries of state in our 50 states and change election results or cause mischief on election day.”Reports of Trump’s fury at Maguire were incorrect, O’Brien added, saying the acting director’s time in the role had simply expired.“We needed a Senate-confirmed official to come in and replace him,” O’Brien said. “And so we went with a highly qualified person, Ambassador Grenell.”Most observers think Grenell is not qualified and would not be confirmed by the Senate. Filling the role in an acting capacity – as many Trump aides do – lets him avoid that hurdle.O’Brien said Trump would “move quickly” to make a permanent appointment but Murphy said Grenell’s move made him “worried about the politicisation of intelligence by this administration”.“The new acting head of intelligence has no background in intel,” he said. “He is a Trump loyalist. And I think we all worry about this administration controlling massive amounts of intelligence, massive amounts of classified information, and leaking it out to the press when it advantages them.”

The former mayor's campaign is fighting for second place and isn't challenging Bernie Sanders' runaway win in the state.

Medicare for All would radically change the structure of American healthcare. Here's what it would mean for patients, hospitals, and employers.

No other Democrats can beat him at this point. Sill, the liberal establishment is still struggling to come to terms with Sanders’ inevitable nomination It was a landslide. Bernie Sanders had been expected to win the Nevada caucuses, but not like this. With just 4% of the vote in, news organizations called the race for Sanders, since his margin of victory was so large. Sanders has now won the popular vote in all of the first three states, and is currently leading in the polls almost everywhere else in the country. He was already the favorite to take the nomination before the Nevada contest, with Democratic party insiders worrying he was “unstoppable.” His campaign will only grow more powerful now.Importantly, Sanders’ Nevada victory definitively disproved one of the most enduring myths about his campaign: that it could attract left-leaning young white people, but was incapable of drawing in a diverse coalition. In fact, voters of color were a primary source of Sanders’ strength in Nevada; he received the majority of Latino votes. Entrance polls showed Sanders winning “men and women, whites and Latinos, voters 17-29, 30-44 and 45-65, those with college degrees and those without, liberal Democrats (by a lot) and moderate/conservatives (narrowly), union and non-union households.” The poisonous concept of the white “Bernie Bro” as the “typical” Sanders supporter should be dead.Some members of the media establishment had no idea what to make of Sanders’ Nevada victory. On MSNBC, James Carville said that “Putin” had won Nevada, and Chris Matthews declared the primary “over” (ill-advisedly comparing Sanders’ victory to the Nazi invasion of France). Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post admitted that Sanders had been stronger with nonwhite voters than she expected, and it might now be “too late” to do anything about him.The other candidates and their supporters did their best to spin a humiliating defeat. Amy Klobuchar said her sixth-place finish “exceeded expectations”—if sixth place is better than you expected, you’re probably not a viable candidate. Biden vowed, implausibly (and for the third time) that he would bounce back. Pete Buttigieg took to the stage to denounce Sanders, who he said “believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.” A Warren supporter rather charmingly said that while Sanders had won, Warren had the “momentum,” and the Warren campaign itself said the Nevada “debate” mattered more than the Nevada “result.”Let’s be clear: the other candidates were crushed, and Nevada was yet more evidence that there is no longer much serious opposition to Sanders. Michael Bloomberg fizzled completely in his big debut, and Democrats would be out of their minds to enrage every Sanders supporter by nominating a Republican billionaire. Joe Biden has lost badly in all of the first three contests, and it’s very clear that he can’t run an effective campaign. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has nearly gone broke and in desperation she has resorted to relying on the Super PACs that she previously shunned. Pete Buttigieg can’t win voters of color or young people (and has accurately been described as sounding like “a neural network trained on West Wing episodes”). As Matthews says: it’s over. Bernie is dominating the fundraising, dominating the polls, and winning every primary. I am not sure Jacobin is right that “it’s Bernie’s party now”—for one thing, virtually the entire Congressional Democratic party is still opposed to Bernie. But it’s certainly Bernie’s nomination. There is simply no other credible candidate.Democrats shouldn’t worry, though: Bernie has a strong organization and a lot of money, and can mobilize millions of people to support him in November. He’s exactly the kind of candidate you should want your party to have. And for all the fear of his “radicalism,” he’s really a moderate: his signature policies are a national health insurance program, a living wage, free public higher education, and a serious green energy investment plan. It’s shocking that there is such opposition to such sensible plans. On what planet are these things so politically toxic that Democrats are afraid to run on them? Voters like these ideas, and so long as Democrats unify behind Bernie rather than continuing to try to tear him down, they will have a very good shot at defeating a radical and unhinged president like Donald Trump. The polling looks good for Bernie in November, so now we just need to get this primary over with and focus on the real fight. The other candidates had their shot: they lost. They need to accept it.One other takeaway from Nevada is that no future election should occur without significant reform to the caucus process. Nevada wasn’t an outright catastrophe like Iowa was—at least we got results on election night. But it was still plagued with “voting rules confusion, calculation glitches and delays in reporting tallies.” And the caucus process can be downright bizarre: tied results in the Las Vegas caucuses are resolved with a card game, and at one point Sanders lost a delegate to Pete Buttigieg because the Sanders team pulled an Ace and Buttigieg pulled a 3. (Aces were low.) From the electoral college to the Iowa caucus, American elections desperately need to reworked from the bottom up according to the simple principle “the person with the most votes ought to win.”And yet caucuses also produce some truly inspiring on-the-ground stories, from the cab driver who spoke up for Bernie and kept billionaire Tom Steyer from being viable to the guy who switched from Trump to Bernie because he was convinced socialists were good people. Ordinary people gave incredible speeches as part of the caucus process—one reason why it should be fixed rather than ditched entirely. Members of the Culinary Union, whose leadership had prominently opposed Sanders over Medicare For All, ended up defying their leaders and pushing Sanders to victory at a number of caucus sites.All in all, Nevada was an inspiring moment for American democracy, proof that ordinary working people of all races and incomes and genders can come together around a robust progressive agenda. Democrats need not worry: this is a good thing. It’s a night to be celebrated. The primary is not completely over, but hopefully it is now clear to every sensible observer that Bernie is cruising toward the nomination and needs to be supported rather than torn down. * Nathan Robinson is a Guardian US columnist and the editor of Current Affairs

The city of Ahmedabad in India was jostling with activity on Sunday as workers cleaned roads, planted flowers and hoisted billboards featuring President Trump, a day ahead of his maiden two-day visit to India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised him a lively public reception.

Iran's confirmed death toll from the new coronavirus rose to eight on Sunday, the highest outside China, sending neighbouring countries scrambling to contain the outbreak. Turkey said it would "temporarily" shut its border with Iran, while Pakistan also said it was closing its frontier with the Islamic republic and Afghanistan banned all ground and air travel between the two nations. Lebanon on Friday confirmed its first case -- a 45-year-old Lebanese woman who had travelled from Qom in Iran -- and Israel on Sunday quarantined at home nearly 200 school pupils who came into contact with South Korean tourists who contracted the virus.

Two separate polls showed strong support among Democratic voters for Sanders' plan to insure every American under Medicare for All.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is under fire after comparing Bernie Sanders’ victory in the Nevada caucuses to the Nazi invasion of France in 1940.The ‘Hardball’ host is now under pressure to resign after invoking the historical comparison during an on-air conversation with Brian Williams.

Pope Francis on Sunday warned against "inequitable solutions" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying they would only spark new crises, in an apparent reference to President Trump's Middle East peace proposal.

Malaysia's would-be leader Anwar Ibrahim on Sunday accused 94-year-old Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's party and "traitors" in his own camp of plotting a wholesale change in the ruling coalition that could ultimately deny him the premiership. After being promised that he would one day become prime minister, Anwar allied with former rival Mahathir to win a surprise victory in the 2018 general election and end the six-decade grip of a party accused of widespread corruption. "We know there are attempts to bring down PH and form a new government," Anwar said, referring to the Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) coalition that he helped form under Mahathir, who leads the Bersatu party.

U.S. President Donald Trump departed on Sunday on quick trip to India, where he is to see crowds so large that they will make the much ballyhooed turnout for his campaign rallies pale in comparison. With a travel time of 17 hours, Trump and his wife, Melania, were headed first to Germany for a refueling stop at Ramstein military base before heading on to Ahmedabad, India, which is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's hometown. There, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to gather to greet Trump on Monday for a road show leading to a rally in a cricket stadium with a capacity of over 100,000.

Turkey's health minister said the border with Iran would be closed from Sunday due to the number of coronavirus cases in its eastern neighbor. Fahrettin Koca said flights from Iran would also cease from 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT). Iran’s health ministry on Sunday has raised the death toll from the new coronavirus to eight, with 43 confirmed cases.

* Calls for firing of Chris Matthews after widespread anger * Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist is JewishMSNBC host Chris Matthews compared Bernie Sanders’ victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday to the Nazi invasion of France, spurring calls for his firing.“I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940 and the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over,’” Matthews said on air on Saturday night.“And Churchill says, ‘How can that be? You’ve got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over.’”“So I had that suppressed feeling,” Matthews also said.Sanders, a senator from Vermont and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, is Jewish.He won the Nevada caucuses easily, helping solidify his status as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in a primary split between moderates and progressives. Sanders’ win came in the wake of a strong showing in Iowa and victory in New Hampshire.> MSNBC’s Chris Matthews likens Sanders victory in Nevada to Nazi Germany overrunning France in 1940: “It’s too late to stop him … it’s over” pic.twitter.com/6GJetLoDkq> > — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 22, 2020Matthews’ words prompted widespread anger.“Bernie is Jewish and his family was killed by the Nazis,” tweeted David Sirota, a Sanders speechwriter and former Guardian contributor. “None of this is OK.”“This is absolutely disgusting on [Matthews’] part,” tweeted Parker Molloy, editor-at-large at Media Matters for America. “Retire, get fired, whatever. Bottom line is that Matthews needs to be out of a job.”On air, Matthews said Republicans would disclose opposition research on Sanders that would “kill him” in the general election against Donald Trump.“It looks like Bernie Sanders is hard to beat,” Matthews said of the primary, adding: “I think it’s a little late to stop him, and I think that’s the problem.”MSNBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.