Morning Martini

Democrats and Republicans on a bipartisan commission to address border security and border wall funding reached an “agreement in principle” late Monday. Republican Sen. Richard Shelby told Fox News he thinks and hopes the negotiators struck a deal that President Trump would approve—“I think so, I hope so,” Shelby said. Any potential deal would have to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by Friday, which is the deadline to avoid another government shutdown.

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1. Michael Sanchez, the brother of Jeff Bezos’ mistress, is reportedly the source of the leaked the texts between the lovers, The Daily Beast reports.
2. Measles are making a comeback. The Center for Disease Control say the number of confirmed cases across the country is 101. In all of 2016 there were 86 cases, and 120 in 2017. 2014 was a record year, with 667 confirmed cases. But we’re only 42 days into 2019.
3. Michelle Carter is going to jail. In 2014 she encouraged her boyfriend to commit suicide via text. She was 17 at the time; he was 18.
4. Amazon is furthering its stake in smart home technology. It’s acquiring Eero, which manufacturers easy-to-use Internet routers. The technology will. likely complement the Alexa product line.
5. Russia is testing a plan to disable the Internet across the country, and maintain all web communications to servers within the country. The plan is to have a backup in case cyberwarfare completely shuts the country out of the world wide web.
6. The Georgia state legislature is considering a cyber tax on streaming services and downloads. A 4 percent tax on digital content would go toward building out the state’s internet infrastructure into rural parts that have limited or no access to the technology.
7. “Rage Yoga” is all the, well, rage, in Houston. It’s a yoga class with the typical stretches and poses, but participants are encouraged to shout and yell expletives to release stress during the session. They also take beer breaks throughout to aid in blowing off steam.
8. While Denver teachers strike over their pay, students threw a dance party in the hallways. The chaos ensued after special schedules were issued to reflect the decreased number of educators, but there weren’t enough copies to get to all students. Eventually the mass was dispersed — some kids opted to just leave for the day.
9. The French town of Fequieres has banned barking. Citizens who own dogs that bark for a “prolonged or repeated” period could get slapped with a 68-Euro fine.
10. Towson University is on the hunt for a woman “in her 50s wearing a multicolored scarf.” Campus police say she has repeatedly approached students, showed them a picture of her son, and asked if they’d want to go on a date with him. It’s not illegal, just gross, and the University wants it to stop.

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Robert Griffin III – NFL quarterback – 29

Mike Posner – singer/songwriter – 31

Christina Ricci – actress – 39

Tara Strong – voice of Timmy on The Fairly Oddparents – 46

Josh Brolin – actor – 51

Chynna Phillips – from Wilson Phillips – 51

Arsenio Hall – talkshow host – 63

Michael Mcdonald – singer – 67

Judy Blume – children’s book author – 81

BORN ON THIS DATE

Omar Bradley – general – 1893

Charles Darwin – scientist – 1809

Abraham Lincoln – POTUS 16 – 1809

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1898
The first automobile fatality is recorded.

Henry Lindfield lost control of his car in Surrey, England. The car tumbled down a hill and crashed through a wire fence and into a large iron post.

The accident caused a huge gash in his leg. Had it happened today, he likely would’ve survived; instead, doctors had to amputate the whole leg.

The driver died of shock the day following his surgery.

His son was a passenger during the accident — but before seat belts and roofs, he was tossed completely out of the vehicle, and was unharmed.

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1973
The first metric road signs in America are put up along Interstate 71 in Ohio.

It was part of the National Metric Conference’s efforts to convert America to use a decimal system.

Congress would pass the National Metric Conversion Act in 1975, which encouraged the voluntary switch to the metric system. This failed.

Today the military often uses metric units, in order to communicate with other nations’ militaries.

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1999
Bill Clinton is acquitted by the Senate of perjury and obstruction of justice.

The vote sharply followed party lines.

In a civil settlement, Clinton would pay Paula Jones $850,000 to settle the harassment suit brought upon him by her.

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2002
Deposed Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic begins his trial at The Hague, charged with genocide and other war crimes.

Milosevic served as his own lawyer during the trial.

A verdict was never reached; he died of a heart attack four years into the proceedings.

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2008
General Motors offers a mass buyout of all 74,000 United Auto Workers employees.

The move came after the company hemorrhaged nearly $40 billion during 2007, largely in part to huge union demands. The average base wage for a GM-employed UAW worker was $28.12 an hour — but after luxurious benefits, workers earned nearly $78 an hour.

Meanwhile, gas prices were also rising, and GM wasn’t offering sustainable cars.

The company filed for bankruptcy the following year, and restructured.

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2013
North Korea announces its third successful nuclear test, a follow-up to a test in 2006.

The underground detonation triggered earthquake-magnitude tremors, but after a study by Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean investigators, no radiation was detected.

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Richard Gere, along with his wife Alejandra Silva, have welcomed a baby boy! A rep for the 69-year-old confirmed the news to E! that the baby was born a few days ago in New York. This is the first child for the couple and the second for Richard who has an 18-year-old son, Homer. Alejandra also has son Albert, from a previous marriage.

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The building that housed Debbie Reynolds’ Legacy Studios was torn down over the weekend. The studio, opened by Debbie in 1979, was frequented by many A-listers, such as, Michael Jackson, Cher, Bette Midler, Mariah Carey, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

Following the death of the actress, her son had planned on turning the building into a museum, but the vision never happened and the site was sold at auction in October. It is unclear what is set to be built in its place.

Debbie passed away in 2016 after suffering a stroke. She was 84-years-old.

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Kim Kardashian-West is feeling totally Zen ahead of the birth of baby #4. The KKW Beauty boss shared why she isn’t stressing out about the addition, with Jimmy Fallon, when she appeared on “The Tonight Show.”

She told the host that she has heard “parents of four are the most enlightened and calm of all parents.” She added that going from 1 to 2 kids seemed like she went from 1 to 20 and was much harder of a transition than going from 2 to 3.

Kim feels the family will be “really even” once they are a family of 6; as in she will have 2 kids to keep track of and husband Kanye West will have 2 kids to keep an eye on.

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Katy Perry’s shoes are being pulled from shelves at Dillard’s and Walmart for resembling blackface. The shoe in question— “Rue Face Slip On Loafers”—come with two eyes, a nose and red lips in two different colors: beige and black. The black one is the problem as it appears to resemble blackface make-up.

Katy has received lots of backlash over the design, while sources close to the singer say the shoes were never intended to be offensive. Another source told TMZ that “in order to be respectful and sensitive the team is in the process of pulling the shoes.”

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Fans are convinced Ariana Grande’s Grammy gown was a tribute to rapper Mac Miller. While Ariana decided to boycott the award show after beefing with producers, she didn’t want the gown she had planned to wear going to waste. So, in the most Ariana way, she posted photos of herself in the Cinderella like gown during Sunday night’s show.

Here’s where the connection was made by fans: Mac wrote a song about the high-pony tailed singer when they were dating. That song, was titled “Cinderella.” It really is not that big of a stretch to connect the dots.

MEANWHILE—Mac, who passed away last year, was honored during the show’s “In Memoriam” segment. He was up for Best Rap Album, but lost to Cardi B.

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Jennifer Lopez has responded to all the critics who didn’t think she was the appropriate choice for the Motown tribute during the Grammys. While talking to Entertainment Tonight, J-Lo said that music is for everyone and you can’t tell her what to do. She added that “any type of music can inspire any type of artist. You gotta do what’s in your heart.”

Smokey Robinson, who sang with Jen during the performance, came to her defense saying, “anyone who is upset is stupid.” So, there you have it.

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Fans are less than pleased with Will Smith’s portrayal of the Genie in the live action remake of “Aladdin.” The trailer, which dropped during the Grammy’s, left fans feeling unimpressed and slightly terrified.

One fan tweeted, “It turns out that the Genie will haunt my nightmares. That Genie is what appears in my room when I have sleep paralysis.”

Disney just can’t win, back in December fans were mad that the Genie wasn’t going to be blue, now fans are mad because he is TOO blue. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

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Sen. Amy Klobuchar threw her hat into the 2020 race for president over the weekend. The Minnesota Democrat who has been in the U.S. Senate since 2007 joins a crowded field that already features four of her Senate colleagues, three of them women. The announcement at a snowy Minneapolis rally was tarnished after a week of former staffers coming forward to dish that Klobuchar was an emotionally abusive boss.

MEANWHILE, Sen. Cory Booker barnstormed in Iowa over the weekend. Comparing the Underground Railroad to a great infrastructure program, Booker tried to to portray himself as the rightful heir of the Obama throne.

AND, Sen. Elizabeth Warren used her first full day as a presidential candidate to insinuate that President Trump might be in the slammer before the 2020 election. “By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be president. In fact, he may not even be a free person,” Warren told a crowd in Iowa.

LASTLY, Buzzfeed reports on exactly how horrible a boss Amy Klobuchar was to work for: 

That anger regularly left employees in tears, four former staffers said. She yelled, threw papers, and sometimes even hurled objects; one aide was accidentally hit with a flying binder, according to someone who saw it happen, though the staffer said the senator did not intend to hit anyone with the binder when she threw it. 

“I cried. I cried, like, all the time,” said one former staffer. 

In the emails seen by BuzzFeed, often sent between 1 and 4 in the morning, Klobuchar regularly berated employees, often in all capital letters, over minor mistakes, misunderstandings, and misplaced commas. Klobuchar, in the emails, which were mostly sent over the past few years, referred to her staff’s work as “the worst in … years,” and “the worst in my life.”

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More of President Trump’s presidential schedules have been leaked to the press. Last week D.C. news outlet Axios obtained three months of the president’s schedules, generating headlines about how much “executive time” Trump has been taking. The White House launched an investigation to find the leaker, but Axios has obtained four of the president’s private schedules from last week, the news site reports, schedules that are not generally shared with even senior staff.

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U.S. border officials said on Friday that after a holiday lull, illegal border crossings have returned to record levels. While the number dropped at the end of the year, possibly indicating a holiday break, the number illegal crossings are back to as high as 1,400 per day and human smuggling rings are back to full steam. Overall, the bureau of Customs and Border Protection carried out more than 58,000 arrests in January—and the number of “family unit” members taken into custody in recent months is up 290 percent over the previous year.

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Lindsey Graham’s Committee just passed a massive number of President Trump’s judicial appointees, and liberals are in a panic. Thursday afternoon the Senate Judiciary Committee, now chaired by the South Carolina Senator, approved what’s been nicknamed a “monster markup,” a slate of 44 nominees for judge, 80 percent of them members of the conservative Federalist Society, which had left-wing websites sending out smoke signals in panic. The “monster markup” of judges goes to the full Senate for final approval.

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The brother of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ mistress likely leaked nude photos of the billionaire to the National Enquirer, the Daily Beast reported Sunday. A lawyer for the tabloid’s parent company on Sunday strongly hinted that Michael Sanchez, brother of news reporter and Bezos lover Lauren Sanchez, is the person who supplied Enquirer with the lurid text messages that have been at the center of Bezos’ allegations that he’s being blackmailed by the publication. Bezos claims National Enquirer honchos told him if he stated publicly their reporting on him isn’t politically motivated, they wouldn’t put the naked pics out for the public to see.

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1. In for 2020: Elizabeth Warren (who says she’ll prosecute companies that edge out their competition) and Amy Klobuchar (who says she’ll win the Midwest).
2. Amazon may not be building a new campus in New York City after political fallout over tax incentives for the company and public backlash.
3. A Kentucky mother is being held after her 4 year old daughter tested positive for cocaine. The young girl passed out at school and was taken to the hospital, where tests revealed the drug in her system. The mother — Anniquita Wright — said she let a friend deal out of her home and even let her kids sit with the dealer at the kitchen table. She’s being held on two counts of child abuse.
4. Hungary is offering tax breaks to families with children in the hope of boosting domestic birth rates. The package of new legislation would provide government backed home loans, subsidized car purchases, and no income tax for women raising at least four children.
5. Insects are becoming instinct at a rate of 2.5% a year, much quicker than any other kind of animal life on the planet. Specialists fear this could collapse ecosystems and cause widespread famine.
6. Everyday home goods have been slowly increasing in price as manufacturers respond to higher cost of raw materials. Everything from baking soda and toilet paper to diapers. Church & Dwight Co — parent company to Arm & Hammer — is just one of the companies boosting costs to consumers, reports Wall Street Journal.
7. Chimps at the Belfast Zoo craftily used a tree branch as a ladder to escape their enclosure. It’s the second breakout in as many weeks, when a Red Panda recently liberated itself from its enclosure and was found wandering in a garden a mile away.
8. Coca Cola is coming out with a new flavor: Orange Vanilla. One marketing exec there says she hopes the flavor reminds drinker of “carefree” summer days. Or just find one of those Do-It-Yourself drink machines at fast food joints.
9. NASA is still receiving and analyzing photos of Ultima Thule, the asteroid photographed by New Horizons as it zipped into deep space. One thought to be “snowman-shaped,” the space rock is actually more like two flat attached discs, not spheres. It will take 20 months to receive all the pics, which the probe snapped from a distance of 2200 miles at 32,200 miles per hour.
10. As incidents of measles have skyrocketed in Clark County, Washington, so have shots. Vaccinations are up 500% there, the epicenter of what some fear could launch an outbreak of the very preventable disease.

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Taylor Lautner – actor, “Twilight” – 27

Kelly Rowland – actress – 39

Isaiah Mustafa – guy on a horse in the Old Spice commercials (“take a look at your man now back at me now back at your man now back at me”) – 45

Jennifer Aniston – actress – 50

Sarah Palin – actress – 55

Sheryl Crow – singer – 57

Tina Louise – actress, “Gilligan’s Island” – 85

BORN ON THIS DATE

Burt Reynolds – actor – 1936

Leslie Nielsen – actor – 1926

Eva Gabor – actress, “Green Acres” – 1919

Thomas Edison – inventor – 1847

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1945
The Yalta Conference ends, concluding war strategy discussion between the US, Britain, and Soviet Union.
The heads of state for each country were on hand for the week of meetings, though nothing definitive for ending the war came out of the Conference.
But they did lay the foundation for the creation of the United Nations — another think tank would convene in San Francisco in April to continue that discussion.
When Roosevelt returned stateside to address Congress, he called Yalta a turning point in war efforts, at least in terms of the future of German and war-torn Europe.
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1970
Japan becomes the fourth country to send a manmade object into space.
The Ohsumi satellite was successfully launched into orbit. It weighed only 52 pounds and remained in orbit until 2003. It offered no additional scientific value other than making it into orbit.
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1979
The Ayatollah Khomeini solidifies his power in Iran.
Beginning February 1st of that year, the Ayatollah returned to Iran after the departure of the Shah following the revolution.
Over 10 days, the Iranian military defected to follow the new government under the Ayatollah. On this date in 1979, the Supreme Military Council officially threw in with the revolution, cementing Ayatollah Khomeini as the new leader of Iran.
Since then, every year, the federal government of Iran sponsors positive demonstrations around the country to commemorate the revolution.
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2013
Pope Benedict XVI announces his retirement from the papacy, effective at the end of the month.
Usually, the head of the church stays in power until his death. Benedict acknowledged that he did not have the emotional or physical capacity to execute his duties.
The College of Cardinals would elect Pope Francis the following month.
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According to creator and executive producer David E. Kelley, the hit HBO show “Big Little Lies” will end with Season 2. While answering questions for Entertainment Tonight, David said there is “no such plan now…It’s one and two and we like our closure with season two, so that will probably be it.”
MEANWHILE—Nicole Kidman who is an executive producer and stars on the show, is holding out hope for more seasons. She told ET, “There’s no plan for it to end, specifically.”

Season 2 is set to air this June.

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