A region in Spain has introduced a ban on smoking in outdoor public places when social distancing cannot be guaranteed.

The ban came into effect Thursday in Spain's northwestern region of Galicia, with other areas mulling similar restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Under a law approved by the regional government of Galicia late on Wednesday which came into force at midnight, removing a face mask to smoke in public is not allowed if it is not possible to maintain a distance of two meters (6.7 feet) between people.

The move is supported by research from Spain's health ministry, who last month found that smoking can spread the virus because people project droplets when they exhale smoke.

In addition, the virus could be spread when a person removes their face mask to smoke a cigarette, and by touching their cigarette before bringing it to their mouth.

President Trump polled his aides on Thursday about whether he should let anti-surveillance whistleblower and leaker Edward Snowden return to the US from Russia without going to prison, saying he was open to it.

"There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that," Trump told The Post in an exclusive interview in the Oval Office, before soliciting views from his staff.

Trump commented on Snowden for the first time as president after accusing former President Barack Obama of spying on his 2016 campaign.

"When you look at [former FBI Director James] Comey and [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, and [former CIA Director John] Brennan — and, excuse me, the man that sat at this desk, President Obama, got caught spying on my campaign with Biden. Biden and Obama, and they got caught spying on the campaign," Trump said.

Trump announced that the US, Israel and the UAE have agreed to a plan that would trade an Israeli pause to annex portions of the West Bank for a normalization of relations. But is this all just one more Trump con?

The surprise announcement by President Donald Trump that Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have agreed to the "full normalization" of relations took most experts and observers by surprise. Under normal circumstances, this kind of breakthrough announcement is the byproduct of intense negotiation over time that is usually picked up on by a media programmed to look for telling clues, or primed with timely leaks, neither of which was in play here.

Trump's last big foreign policy rollout centered on the announcement of the so-called "deal of the century", a controversial peace plan between Israel and Palestine which appeared to die on the vine primarily over Israeli plans to annex portions of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian control.

There were no indications that such negotiations were either in the works, underway, or nearing completion.

The European Union paid €36.5 million to groups with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and whose agenda involves the Islamization of Europe, the right-wing I&D Faction in the European Parliament revealed. EU parliament budget committee member Joachim Kuhs (I&D) claims:

"Apparently, the EU has been funding front organizations with our tax Euros which have close ties to extremist, terror-related organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a massive scandal, and must be stopped immediately."

The figures were unearthed by I&D Vice-Chair Nicolas Bay by searching the EU Financial Transparency System for the years 2014-2019 for the major European Muslim Brotherhood fronts. In these five years, a total of €5,422,678 million went to the European Network against Racism, whose members include the "Forum of European Muslim Youth & Student Organizations" (FEMYSO). FEMYSO is a front organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, the German Bundestag Research Service wrote in 2015.

FEMYSO in turn acts as a lobbying organization in Brussels, protesting against the new EU commission 2019, calling it "not diverse" enough and therefor "far-right." So the EU is paying a Muslim Brotherhood front group via another NGO to lobby itself and accuse EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen of having "adopted steps within the rhetoric and direction of those who vilify the full diversity of Europe" which "feed into nationalist and fascist agendas."

The U.S. Supreme Court has given the Trump administration another gigantic immigration victory.

On Thursday, the nation's highest court ruled 7-2 that the federal government can deport illegal aliens, including those seeking asylum, quickly and with only limited judicial review.

The ruling could affect thousands of would-be immigrants now present in the United States.

Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sided with the Trump administration on the case. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elana Kagan, both liberals, were the two dissenters.

Justice Alito wrote in the opinion. Fox News reported.:

"In a decision in the case of Dept. of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, the court ruled that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) - which prevents judicial review of the credible fear determination - does not violate the Constitution's Suspension Clause, which protects habeas corpus privileges that allow courts to determine if a person should be released due to unlawful detention.

"In 1996, when Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) ... it crafted a system for weeding out patently meritless claims and expeditiously removing the aliens making such claims from the country. It was Congress's judgment that detaining all asylum seekers until the full-blown removal process is completed would place an unacceptable burden on our immigration system and that releasing them would present an undue risk that they would fail to appear for removal proceedings."

The Federal Reserve is conducting experiments with a hypothetical digital dollar for research purposes, though it hasn't yet committed to issuance that would require a formal policy process involving the government and other stakeholders, Governor Lael Brainard said Thursday.

In addition to the Fed's own internal work, research teams from the Boston Fed and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are engaged in a "multi-year effort to build and test a hypothetical digital currency oriented to central bank uses," she said.

"Lessons from this collaboration will be published, and any codebase that is developed through this effort will be offered as open-source software for anyone to use for experimentation," Brainard said, according to the text of her remarks prepared for delivery to a virtual technology event.

James Cunha, the senior vice president at the Boston Fed overseeing the project, said the first stage will be technologists from the reserve bank and MIT working together to build "an engine and the software that can meet the needs" of a digital currency for a country the size of the U.S. There are multiple challenges, Cunha explained, from the sheer volume of transactions to security and privacy.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman said on Thursday that Moscow has seen evidence of outside meddling in the unrest currently engulfing neighboring Belarus. But Maria Zakharova said Russia is not one of the guilty parties.

The diplomat told a briefing that "unprecedented pressure" is being exerted by individual foreign actors. She insisted that their goal is to destabilize the situation and split society in the landlocked Eastern European country.

At the same time, however, Zakharova emphasized that Moscow is concerned about the violence witnessed on the streets of Belarusian cities and towns since last Sunday's controversial presidential elections. She added that Russia is seeking the resolution of issues surrounding 33 Russian private security contractors who were arrested in Minsk last month.

"We expect that professional cooperation by the investigative committees, prosecutor generals' offices and other agencies of the two countries will help clear up the situation involving the detention of 33 Russian citizens as soon as possible. It is important to stress that the attempts to find a 'Russian connection' to the latest unrest in Belarus are groundless."

In 2018, Sara Netanyahu was charged with fraud and breach of ethics in a case that her lawyer branded as an attempt to bring down her husband, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She eventually admitted to the misuse of funds and paid a $15,000 fine.

Sara Netanyahu, wife of embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that the ongoing protests against her husband had traumatized her and the family. "I am a battered woman and my children are battered", she claimed, referring to demonstrations during which people have demanded that her husband resign. The 61-year-old also stated that she had experienced sexual violence, referring to penis balloons carried by some protesters, as well as placards with vulgar and aggressive statements and online posts.

"I certainly feel that I have experienced sexual violence," Sara Netanyahu told Channel 12, adding that she felt unsafe and concerned for her welfare. The former flight attendant filed a police complaint against alleged sexual harassment by protesters.

Joe Biden was one of the U.S. Senate's leading segregationists; and he was condemned by the NAACP for it in 1977 hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but he has claimed instead to have participated in anti-segregation sit-ins, which were led by black ministers all of whom were conveniently deceased at the time when he made those assertions, and so they could not be asked whether he had participated.

He was making those assertions while running against Bernie Sanders, whom the Chicago Tribune showed in their photo during the 1960s being arrested as a college student for his peacefully demonstrating against Chicago's segregationist policy at the time. Sanders in his Presidential campaign didn't brag about it; only Biden bragged about his anti-segregationist activity, though it was fictitious. So Biden swamped Sanders in the South Carolina primary on February 29th — the turning-point in the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries — where most of the voters were Blacks, who had been deceived by Biden's claims and who didn't know that Biden had actually been a leading northern segregationist.(Biden had even backed an anti-integration bill by North Carolina Republican segregationist Senator Jesse Helms to prohibit the federal government from requiring school districts to be or become desegregated in order to qualify to receive federal funds and to allow instead 'separate-but-equal' education of Black and White children.)

It's Kamala

With protests against police brutality raging and activists pushing for criminal justice reform, Joe Biden picked a former tough-on-crime prosecutor as his running mate. The selection of Senator Kamala Harris isn't exactly surprising, but it's a reminder of how disconnected the Democratic establishment is from this current moment.

What does Senator Harris's record on Israel look like? Perhaps JTA's Ron Kampeas summed it best when he wrote that "she's more AIPAC Than J Street."

Upon arriving in the Senate she criticized former President Obama for failing to veto a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements, then cosponsored a bill that challenged the right of the United Nations to condemn settlement expansion. In 2017, she attended AIPAC's annual policy conference and told the audience, "Our defense relationship is critical to both nations, which is why I support the United States' commitment to provide Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade. And that's why I am fully committing to maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge."