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Plainclothes security forces grab, beat and drag a man off the street to an uncertain fate. As Iran restores the internet after a weeklong government-imposed shutdown, new videos purport to show the demonstrations over gasoline prices rising and the s…
November 24, 2019Read More
* Ex-adviser at heart of Ukraine affair has secured book deal * Schiff: I would act same way against Democratic president * Reich: Impeachment shows US officials at their bestJohn Bolton seen in Minsk in August, when he was still Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/AFP via Getty ImagesHouse intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff blasted former national security adviser John Bolton on Sunday, for failing to appear for testimony in the impeachment inquiry while teasing a forthcoming memoir.Bolton “wanted to wait for a book instead of telling the American people what he knew”, Schiff told CNN’s State of the Union, drawing a contrast between Bolton and his former deputy, Fiona Hill, who appeared before the committee on Thursday.“The obligation right now to show the courage Dr Hill did,” Schiff said. “She made the decision that this is the right thing to do. John Bolton should make the same decision.”Bolton, who has said he had conversations with Trump and others relevant to the investigation, has resisted testifying, warning through a lawyer that he will file suit if subpoenaed for testimony.While he said he would prefer for witnesses such as Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo to answer the committee’s questions, Schiff warned that moving the impeachment process forward was “urgent”, in order to prevent Trump tampering in the 2020 election.“There is a sense of urgency when you have a president who is threatening the integrity of our elections that we need to act now,” he said. “If there is not deterrent … we can darn well be sure this president will commit even more egregious acts in the months ahead.”> If there is not deterrent … we can darn well be sure this president will commit even more egregious actsSchiff said the impeachment investigation was ongoing and “we have continued to learn more information every day”, but added that “the evidence is already overwhelming” and said he hoped Republicans would rise to what he called a “constitutional duty” to consider impeachment.The intelligence committee is working on a report it is expected to submit to the judiciary committee in early December, although the report could have “addenda”, Schiff said. “We don’t foreclose the possibility of more depositions or hearings,” he said. “We are in the process of getting more records.”The judiciary committee will decide if impeachment proceeds, and on what grounds. A vote in the House could likely pass largely on party lines but conviction in the Senate seems unlikely.The White House is preparing for a Senate trial, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said on CBS’s Face the Nation, but Trump’s team also has not ruled out that an impeachment vote would not be taken in the House.“We’re preparing for both eventualities,” she said. No Republicans in the House or Senate have said they favour impeachment.Schiff said he “would hope there would be Republicans who would be willing to step forward. It shouldn’t matter that this is a Republican president. If this had been a Democratic president, I would be among those leading the way and saying we have to” pursue impeachment.On NBC’s Meet the Press, Schiff said: “I mean they seem to be saying, ‘Unless Donald Trump writes out ‘I bribed Ukraine’, the evidence will be insufficient.“Are we prepared to say that soliciting foreign interference, conditioning official acts … to get political favors is somehow now compatible with the office?” he asked.> They seem to be saying, ‘Unless Donald Trump writes out ‘I bribed Ukraine’, the evidence will be insufficientOn Sunday afternoon, the Washington Post cited three anonymous sources in reporting that an internal White House review had uncovered “extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification” for the decision to withhold aid, efforts involving acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney which “could at a minimum embarrass the president”, causing political and even legal problems.Mulvaney is among Trump officials who have refused to co-operate with the impeachment inquiry. Schiff continued: “Are we also prepared to say that Congress will tolerate the complete stonewalling of an impeachment hearing or process? Because if we do it will mean that the impeachment clause is a complete nullity.”Schiff said a party-line vote on impeachment was a possibility: “I think it will mean a failure by the GOP to put the country above their party and it will have very long-term consequences if that’s where we end up.”Hill testified that US officials were engaged on a “domestic political errand” in Ukraine, at odds with national security policy.“It became very clear the White House meeting itself was being predicated on other issues,” she said, “namely investigations and the questions about the election interference in 2016.”Schiff was asked about a CNN report which said his top Republican colleague on the intelligence committee, Devin Nunes, traveled last year to Austria and met with Ukrainians on a political errand targeting Joe Biden. The Democrat said the matter was for the ethics committee.If Nunes “was traveling on taxpayer funds to dig up dirt on Biden, that will be an ethics matter, that’s not before our committee”, Schiff said.Nunes has denied wrongdoing and threatened to sue CNN and the Daily Beast, which also reported the story.Adam Schiff speaks at a House intelligence committee hearing. Photograph: Yara Nardi/ReutersOver the weekend, Republicans continued to ignore a warning issued by Hill not to advance the “fictional narrative” of Ukrainian election hacking, which “has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”Trump has taken lead in advancing the narrative, out of an apparent desire to rewrite the history of Russian tampering meant to boost his 2016 campaign.Louisiana senator John Kennedy told Fox News Sunday it was impossible to know who was behind the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.“I don’t know,” Kennedy said. “Nor do you. Nor do any of us.”The US intelligence community has unanimously concluded that Russia was behind the election tampering, which has been forensically traced to an operations center inside Russia, whose Russian funding and ultimate direction by President Vladimir Putin has been documented.
November 24, 2019Read More
A human rights researcher who is being deported from Israel over his alleged boycott advocacy said Sunday he will remain in his position and continue doing the “important, urgent work” of documenting violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories…
November 24, 2019Read More
Syrian government forces captured Sunday a northwestern village from insurgents after clashes that left more than a dozen killed on both sides, state media and an opposition war monitor said. State news agency SANA said Syrian troops captured Msheirfe…
November 24, 2019Read More
Mr. Bloomberg brings a huge personal fortune and moderate views to an increasingly fluid race, but issues like criminal justice and his late start loom as vulnerabilities.
November 24, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — London and Hong Kong, two premier financial hubs, have been stifled by ongoing political tension. But for real estate, the cities face different futures, according to the property arm of the world’s largest auction house.Prices in London…
November 24, 2019Read More
An Afghan official says a blast in that capital Kabul targeting a United Nations vehicle has left at least 1 dead. Nasrat Rahimi, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, says five others were wounded in the attack. An Afghan official says Taliban insurg…
November 24, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his capital spending plans won’t exceed government revenue for the next few years, despite promising to cut taxes.The C…
November 24, 2019Read More
1.Hong Kong on Sunday was wrapping up what has turned into the city’s largest ever district council elections. Since the early hours of the morning, millions of people flocked to polling stations. The number of voters had reportedly shot past the final total of voters from the 2015 elections by lunchtime. It’s an important election for the city, which has been mired in turmoil for months. The result should serve as a barometer for support for the pro-democracy, anti-government protests, as well as for the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, whose leadership has been called into question by the demonstrators. The protest groups had called upon voters to refrain from disrupting the elections and so far there has reportedly been no sign of trouble. [BBC, The South China Morning Post] 2.Vice President Mike Pence made an unannounced trip to Iraq on Saturday. Pence and his wife, Karen, served Thanksgiving lunch to U.S. troops stationed at Al Asad Air Base in the Al Anbar province, where the vice president reportedly called upon Congress to quicken the pace of military funding, blaming “partisan politics and endless investigations” for the hold up. Pence also traveled to Erbil to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechivran Barzani. Pence said an “enduring bond exists between the Kurdish people and the people of the United States,” despite the Trump administration’s decision to re-position troops in northeastern Syria, leaving Kurdish forces vulnerable to Turkish military attacks. Barzani reportedly thanked Pence for his visit and said he hopes the Kurds’ relationship with Washington “will continue to develop further.” [Politico, USA Today] 3.Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer said Saturday he has no intentions of resigning and that if President Trump orders the Navy to halt its process of deciding whether four Navy SEALs are fit to continue serving in the force, the Navy will comply. “I work at the pleasure of the president,” Spencer said. “I do not interpret what the president does. I do what he says.” Spencer did, however, add that he does not consider a tweet to be an order, so the process will only stop in light of an official directive. Earlier reports indicated Spencer and Rear Adm. Collin Green were ready to resign if Trump intervened in the process, but Spencer has denied the rumor and said he doesn’t believe Green has any intention of doing so either. [The Washington Post, The New York Times] 4.Rescue workers have recovered at least 24 bodies from the wreckage of a small plane that crashed Sunday in a densely populated area of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, though the exact number of casaulties is still unknown. Those killed are believed to be both passengers and people on the ground who were struck by the plane. No survivors are expected from the disaster. The plane was operated by a recently established local company called Busy Bee. It reportedly crashed shortly after takeoff en route to Beni, a city 220 miles north of Goma. One of the company’s maintenance workers at the site reportedly blamed a “technical problem” for the crash. [The Guardian, Al Jazeera] 5.Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said he is wary of another attack from Iran in the Gulf region. “I think the strike on Saudi Aramco in September is pretty indicative of a nation that is behaving irresponsibly,” McKenzie said. “My judgment is that it is very possible they will attack again.” The general said he fears that Iran could orchestrate a drone- and missile-heavy attack, in the same vein of the Aramco attacks, which the U.S. and its European allies blame Tehran for, despite the latter’s denial. One official told Foreign Policy that the U.S. is particularly focused on potential threats on desalination plants in the Gulf region. An attack on the plants would put the region’s primary source of drinking water at risk, which could spur a humanitarian crisis. [Foreign Policy, The New York Times] 6.Aides for Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) announced Saturday that lawmakers on the House and Senate Appropriations committees had reached a bipartisan agreement on allocations for each of the 12 spending bills. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it should mean that at least a few of the bills should get passed by the Dec. 20 deadline, many of them quickly. Congress is expected to move the bills in packages of four at a time, leaving some of the more contentious elements, like the Department of Homeland Security funding measure to be negotiated over time. Those matters will reportedly be handled at the subcommittee level. [The Associated Press, CNN] 7.House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said Saturday that Rep. Devin Nunes (D-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, will likely face an ethics probe after the attorney for businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, said Nunes traveled to Vienna in 2018 to meet with former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. The two men allegedly discussed accusations of corruption against former Vice President Joe Biden. Nunes lashed out at CNN, which first reported the Parnas news, calling the impeachment-related claims “demonstrably false” and “scandalous.” Records show Nunes did travel to Europe at the time Parnas reportedly alleges, but he was not required to disclose specifics about the trip, including if he went to Vienna. [Axios, The Daily Beast] 8.Protests against Colombian President Iván Duque continued in Bogotá and countrywide on Saturday for the third straight day. The demonstrations began Thursday with more than 200,000 taking to the streets as a result of multiple grievances against Duque’s right wing government. The marchers have accused security forces of brutality, while the government claims an outbreak of looting and vandalism alongside the protests is an orchestrated terror campaign. Some small factions of demonstrators have clashed with security forces, though the majority of protests have been peaceful. Still, tear gas was reportedly still used on those crowds. One 18-year-old protester was reportedly hit in the head with a tear gas cannister and severely wounded. The protests were inspired by similar movements in Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia. [The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera] 9.The Supreme Court announced Saturday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized after experiencing chills and a fever. Ginsburg was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was reportedly treated with intravenous antibiotics and fluids before the symptoms abated. She was expected to be released from the hospital as early as Sunday morning. While it was a quick stay, the 86-year-old Ginsburg has dealt with various health issues in the past year, including undergoing surgery for lung cancer and receiving radiation treatment for pancreatic cancer. Ginsburg has remained committed to serving on the court as long as she is physically healthy and mentally sharp. [The Associated Press, The New York Times] 10.Demonstrators rushed the field during halftime of the Harvard-Yale football game Saturday in New Haven, Connecticut, to demand the presidents of both universities divest in fossil fuels and call attention to climate change. The protest began with a few dozen people staging a sit-on on the field, but it eventually swelled to about 500 people, most of whom left after about an hour when they were escorted off the field by police. About two dozen people remained and were subsequently placed under arrest. The Ivy League called the protest “regrettable,” while Yale said it had issues with the tactics, but stood “firmly for the right to free expression.” Yale coach Tony Reno, however, didn’t seem too bothered. “It’s what makes Yale Yale,” he said, adding that events like this are what makes the rivalry with Harvard “special.” Yale won “The Game” 50-43. [ESPN, The Boston Globe]More stories from theweek.com Outed CIA agent Valerie Plame is running for Congress, and her launch video looks like a spy movie trailer The story Republicans are really telling themselves about impeachment Democrats, don’t hand impeachment to Mitch McConnell
November 24, 2019Read More
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised on Sunday to get Brexit done to restore business confidence and unleash what he said would be a tidal wave of investment. “Get Brexit done,” Johnson said at the launch of his Conservative Party election ma…
November 24, 2019Read More
The threat of climate change and the efforts needed to adapt to it are hard to comprehend. One Maryland community hopes it can be a model for communicating the risk and prompting action.
November 24, 2019Read More
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