| Russia’s Top Diplomat: We’re Ready to Publish Our Correspondence With U.S. on Election Meddling Allegations Posted: 10 Dec 2019 05:14 PM PST  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed concerns about Russian interference in U.S. elections and waged a bizarre personal attack on an American prisoner being held in Moscow after meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump on Tuesday. The disagreements between Russia's top diplomat and his American counterpart were on full display as soon as Pompeo said at a joint press conference that he'd put his foot down with Moscow and made clear the Trump administration would not put up with election meddling. "I was clear — it's unacceptable," he said. Lavrov replied that Russia had not seen any proof of election meddling, and when a reporter suggested he could simply "read the Mueller report," he said there was "no proof of any collusion" in the report. According to a transcript published by Russia's Foreign Ministry, he also cryptically said the Kremlin was "ready to publicize the correspondence between us and the American administration regarding allegations of interference.""We will be ready, as soon as Washington confirms its consent, to publicize these documents that are important to the public," he was quoted as saying. Reuters separately quoted him as saying: "We suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all suspicions that are baseless: Let us publish this close channel of correspondence starting from October 2016 until November 2017 so it would all become very clear to many people." It was not immediately clear what correspondence he was referring to. Lavrov's high-level meetings at the White House with both Pompeo and President Trump on Tuesday sparked some criticism from those who questioned why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited instead, given that the U.S. is an ally to Ukraine in its long-running conflict with Russia. The meetings also transpired shortly after House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against Trump over his pressure-campaign on Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rivals.Trump, meanwhile, made no mention of Ukraine in a tweet summing up his "very good meeting" with Lavrov, a meeting that came just a day after peace talks in Paris between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with the leaders of France and Germany. Trump said he had also discussed "election meddling" with Lavrov, but gave no further details. Pompeo said he'd also brought up with his Russian counterpart the issue of Paul Whelan, an American and former U.S. Marine being held in Moscow on espionage charges ever since his arrest in late 2018, just a few months after accused Russian agent Maria Butina was arrested in the U.S. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow has repeatedly raised concerns over what it described as a lack of evidence in the case, and Whelan has said through his lawyer that he was set up by a member of Russia's intelligence service. Lavrov, after noting that the investigation into Whelan was already completed and the indictment filed, launched a personal attack on the 49-year-old American, claiming his lawyers should "advise him how to behave." Accusing Whelan of "acting defiantly" behind bars, Lavrov claimed he is aggressive toward prison guards and "threatens to bore into their heads with a drill," according to a transcript of his comments released by Russia's Foreign Ministry. Shortly after Lavrov's allegation, which a lawyer for Whelan reportedly denied, Russia's Foreign Ministry doubled down and released a photo on Facebook it said was of a drill similar to the kind Whelan has supposedly threatened to use on prison guards, one apparently used by investigators to bind stacks of documents together.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| British PM seeks Brexit breakthrough as polls tighten Posted: 10 Dec 2019 04:38 PM PST  Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed Tuesday to demolish three years of stalemate over Brexit, as Britain's political leaders geared up for a frantic final day of general election campaigning. Johnson ploughed a British flag-themed digger, marked "Get Brexit done", through a styrofoam wall with "gridlock" written on it, in a bid to ram home his core message in time for Thursday's snap vote. Johnson's centre-right Conservatives have been consistently ahead in the opinion polls but YouGov's final survey of the campaign predicted they were set only for a narrow majority -- with the race tightening.
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| White House Says Trump Warned Russian Against Election Meddling Posted: 10 Dec 2019 04:17 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday against interference in U.S. elections, the White House said in a statement after an Oval Office meeting between the two men.But Lavrov suggested in a news conference at the Russian Embassy in Washington that Trump delivered no such warning. Lavrov said he brought up elections during the meeting but only to protest a warning from Secretary of State Michael Pompeo earlier in the day.The meeting came hours after House Democrats unveiled articles of impeachment alleging the president sought to coerce a foreign leader to help his bid for re-election, and it was the first encounter between Trump and Lavrov May 2017, when the U.S. president boasted to the Russian about firing then-FBI Director James Comey and reportedly shared classified information."Just had a very good meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and representatives of Russia. Discussed many items including Trade, Iran, North Korea, INF Treaty, Nuclear Arms Control, and Election Meddling," Trump tweeted after the meeting as he traveled to a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania.The last time Trump met with a Russian -- President Vladimir Putin, at the Group of 20 summit in Japan in June -- he appeared to mock the idea of warning his counterpart against election interference."Don't meddle in the election, president," Trump then told Putin, pointing his finger at his Russian counterpart. "Don't meddle in the election," he repeated. Putin laughed after Trump's admonition was translated, and Trump smiled.Tuesday's White House gathering, in which Pompeo also participated, was even more loaded with tension. Earlier in the day, House Democrats announced articles of impeachment that include a finding Trump damaged U.S. national security by withholding military aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russia-backed separatists, in hopes of forcing its government to undertake an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.Immediately before the White House meeting, Pompeo and Lavrov sparred in front of reporters over U.S. findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.In a summary of their discussion, the White House said Trump also urged Russia to resolve its conflict with Ukraine. Trump expressed support for an arms control agreement that would include both Russia and China, and asked for Russian support in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and ensuring that North Korea reduces its own stockpile.Biden and other Democrats routinely criticize the U.S. president for showing deference to Vladimir Putin. They frequently reference a news conference in Helsinki in which Trump said he believed the Russian leader's claims more than the findings of his own intelligence services.Separately, the Justice Department inspector general released a report on Monday finding no political bias in the FBI investigation into allegations of Russian collusion, a conclusion that counters Trump's contention that he and his campaign had been unfairly targeted. The report, however, cited significant missteps by the bureau as it sought a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.And just last week, Trump attended a NATO summit in London, where other leaders expressed concern about Russia -- not just its annexation of Crimea but also its tightening grip on Syria after Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops.Revealing Intel SourceThe 2017 meeting came just a day after Trump fired Comey over frustration with the probe into his campaign's ties to Russia. It darkened the cloud of controversy related to Russia that still looms over Trump's presidency, even after federal investigators found no evidence he was involved in Moscow's efforts to influence the U.S. elections.Lavrov arrived at the White House at about 2:20 p.m. in Washington and left about an hour later. The meeting was closed to reporters and none of the participants made any public remarks.After their first meeting, the Russian state news agency Tass released pictures of Trump and Lavrov laughing in the Oval Office. White House officials then rushed members of the American media into the room, but the Russian delegation had already departed.Only official U.S. government photographers were allowed into Tuesday's meeting, according to a White House official who asked not to be identified because it was private.The White House said after the 2017 meeting that it had been misled by Russian officials and believed the Tass photographer was there on behalf of the Kremlin.In the following days, the Washington Post reported that Trump revealed highly classified information during the meeting and may have jeopardized a source considered crucial to the battle against Islamic State. Subsequent reports identified the source of that intelligence as Israel. Trump denied ever explicitly revealing the source to Russia, but concerns remained that he had given the Russian officials enough information to determine it for themselves."Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name Israel," Trump said during a 2017 trip to Jerusalem. "Never mentioned it during that conversation. They're all saying I did, so you have another story wrong. Never mentioned the word Israel."Putin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Paris on Monday. That summit led to an agreement to exchange prisoners and the withdrawal of some troops, but no permanent resolution to the ongoing conflict in the disputed Donbas region. More than 13,000 people have died in the conflict over the 500-kilometer (310-mile) contact line over the past four years.North Korea, VenezuelaTrump is also eager to enlist Russia to help pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program amid worrying signs that his efforts may be failing.Kim Yong Chol, Chairman of the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, called Trump a "heedless and erratic old man" in a statement to the state-run Korean Central News Agency earlier this week. On Sunday, Trump warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un risked voiding "his special relationship with the President of the United States" amid reports that North Korea had conducted a key test at a missile site."Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way," Trump tweeted.Trump has also said he wants to broker a replacement deal for the New START treaty, which limits the production of nuclear weapons and expires in February 2021. Trump said last week he's eager to expand the deal to include other nations like China, and want to see "a cessation on nuclear and nuclear creation.""It's -- in my opinion -- the biggest problem the world has today," Trump said.The White House didn't say whether Trump raised concerns over Russia's backing of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Vice President Mike Pence led a meeting last week with other White House officials to re-examine the administration's push to empower Juan Guaido, the National Assembly leader and Maduro opponent who declared himself interim president of Venezuela with American backing earlier this year.But Guaido has failed to push out Maduro, and Trump is losing confidence that the opposition leader will ever topple the regime. The administration officials have instead discussed a possible partnership with Russia to ease the leader out of power.\--With assistance from Jordan Fabian and Nick Wadhams.To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua GalluFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Key Poll Predicts Majority of 28 for Boris Johnson in U.K. Election Posted: 10 Dec 2019 03:39 PM PST ![Key Poll Predicts Majority of 28 for Boris Johnson in U.K. Election]( "Key Poll Predicts Majority of 28 for Boris Johnson in U.K. Election") (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson's lead in Britain's general election was slashed by more than half in a hotly anticipated opinion poll released two days before the country votes. The pound fell as much 0.2% on the news.The Tories will win 339 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, Labour 231, the Scottish National Party 41, and the Liberal Democrats 15, according to a YouGov forecast on Tuesday.If the research is accurate, it suggests the race for Number 10 is tightening significantly ahead of Thursday's election. Johnson gambled on an early vote in an attempt to win a majority so he can force his Brexit deal into law and take the U.K. out of the European Union by the end of January.If Labour continues to close in on the Conservatives, he could fall short of a majority, throwing British politics and the country's future relations with the EU into fresh turmoil."The margins are extremely tight and small swings in a small number of seats, perhaps from tactical voting and a continuation of Labour's recent upward trend, means we can't currently rule out a hung Parliament," Chris Curtis, YouGov's Political Research Manager, said in a statement. "As things currently stand, there are 85 seats with a margin of error of 5% or less."'Need Every Vote'The YouGov research used a technique that more closely predicted the result of the U.K.'s previous election in 2017 than other standard surveys. When smaller parties are included, the result would give the Conservatives a majority of 28 seats. That's smaller than in the previous iteration of the poll two weeks ago, which projected a majority of 68 for Johnson's side.The YouGov modeling shows Jeremy Corbyn of the main opposition Labour Party a long way short of winning a majority. But if Johnson failed to win a majority, other parties could unite to force him out of office, potentially replacing him with Corbyn, with a mandate to hold another Brexit referendum.Earlier on Tuesday, Johnson warned activists against complacency. "This is a very, very close-fought election, and we need every vote," Johnson said at a campaign event in Uttoxeter, central England, saying his party is "absolutely not" home and dry.Through a process called Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification, or MRP for short, YouGov aims to identify different types of voters, and predict their behavior. Then the company works out how many of each of these voter types there are in each electoral district to produce a forecast.In the 2017 election, YouGov's MRP poll correctly predicted that Theresa May would lose her majority, at a time other polls were suggesting her Conservatives would secure a big win.Pull Back, In PlayJohnson's Tories, as his party is also known, have led in the polls throughout the election campaign and most surveys still give the prime minister an advantage of about 10 points over Labour. The YouGov projection gave him a share of 43%, compared to 34% for Labour.According to YouGov, Labour has managed to pull back support in some seats where it had previously looked to be in danger. Although the Conservatives are forecast to take totemic seats in Northern England such as Sedgefield, once the district of Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, fewer such places were in play for the party, according to the survey of more than 100,000 voters, conducted over seven days to Dec. 10.Meanwhile in the south of England, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab's South West London seat of Esher is in danger from an anti-Brexit revolt, with the Liberal Democrats close to taking it, YouGov said. The Liberal Democrats and Labour are both forecast to pick up a handful of seats in the south.Late Labour MoveOminously for Johnson, YouGov found Labour had been gaining support late in the campaign. It said the overall Tory lead in its model had shrunk from 11% to 9% since the weekend. Monday was Johnson's worst day of campaigning, as he struggled to respond to evidence that the National Health Service was struggling to cope with demand, and refused to look at a photograph of a four-year-old boy with pneumonia being treated on the floor of a hospital.The tightness of the race, according to YouGov, meant that a Conservative tally of anything from 367 -- a comfortable win -- to 311 -- another hung Parliament -- was within the margin of error.The poll itself could change behavior, leading parties to reallocate resources, and also encouraging Tory opponents to switch to the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservatives.Johnson will spend the final day of campaigning before Thursday's vote pressing his message that the U.K. can only "get Brexit done" if he wins a majority. He's visited districts in northern England and the midlands that have previously been Labour strongholds as he's sought to win over voters who backed leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum.For his part, Corbyn has majored on the National Health Service in the final days of the campaign, seeking to take advantage of Johnson's discomfort."Our message is quite simply this: Our NHS is under threat, our NHS is at risk," Corbyn, who will travel across England on the final day of campaigning, said Tuesday. The free-to-use service's problems are caused by "a government that's underfunded our NHS," he said, laying the blame at Johnson's door.To contact the reporters on this story: Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.net;Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Edward EvansFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Trump to sign order targeting anti-Semitism at colleges Posted: 10 Dec 2019 03:24 PM PST  President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday targeting antisemitism on college campuses, the White House said. The order, which is likely to draw criticism from free speech advocates, will broaden the federal government's definition of antisemitism and instruct it to be used in enforcing laws against discrimination on college campuses, according to three U.S. officials. Trump has been accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, including comments about Jews and money.
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| Your Evening Briefing Posted: 10 Dec 2019 03:11 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Here are the biggest stories from Bloomberg News today House Democrats on Tuesday delivered two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. One urged his removal from the White House for abusing the power of his office; the other for keeping Congress from exercising its duty as a check on the executive branch. The Judiciary Committee will now take up the charges for debate. Here are today's top storiesNoah Feldman writes in Bloomberg Opinion that there is a strategy behind the narrow legal grounds cited in the two articles of impeachment. And for those who need a refresher, this is how the most serious of Constitutional mechanisms might play out.From the strange juxtaposition department, House Democrats embraced Trump's U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement after securing key revisions and announced plans to vote on the deal next week. Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, however, that his chamber won't hold a vote until after any impeachment trial.The climate crisis is accelerating: The Kariba dam, the world's biggest, has plunged to its lowest level since 1996, raising further risks to the hydropower plants that Zimbabwe and Zambia depend on for almost half of their power. Meanwhile, in Greenland, the ice sheet is melting seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, threatening hundreds of millions of people.U.S. stocks fell for a second day as investors pulled back ahead of the Fed rate decision, this week's U.K. election and the Dec. 15 China tariff deadline. The billionaire behind a six-month-old Vietnamese automobile startup plans a feat even Toyota and Hyundai couldn't pull off in their early days: sell a car in the U.S.Apple started selling its new Mac Pro desktop computer, complete with options that can push the cost north of $50,000.What's Joe Weisenthal thinking about? The Bloomberg news director says the U.K. economy is growing at its slowest pace since 2012. With uncertainty and disruptions caused by Brexit likely to persist, it looks like a country in need of fiscal stimulus. And it will probably get it in some form or another after the Dec. 12 election. On this point, Bloomberg talked to Lord Robert Skidelsky, the famous Keynes biographer.What you'll need to know tomorrow'Fangirls' defend China from Hong Kong democracy protesters. China sees Trump delaying his scheduled trade war tariffs. A Babylonian policy is now part of the 2020 election campaign. Multiple people were killed in a gun battle in Jersey City, New Jersey. Three men were charged in a $722 million cryptocurrency fraud. Businessweek: Mistrust and the hunt for Chinese-American spies. The diamond crisis is getting even worse for De Beers.What you'll want to read in Bloomberg PursuitsSteve McQueen's Bullitt Mustang Is for SaleSean Kiernan is the owner of the 1968 Ford Bullitt Mustang, which could become the most expensive pony car ever sold when it hits the auction block in January. Famed for its starring role in the greatest car chase in film history, the unrestored Mustang fastback in Highland Green will go on sale on Jan. 10 in Kissimmee, Fla. To contact the author of this story: David Rovella in New York at drovella@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Peter Navarro: USMCA is Trump's vision (not Pelosi's) -- and a shining example of promises made, promises kept Posted: 10 Dec 2019 03:01 PM PST ![Peter Navarro: USMCA is Trump's vision (not Pelosi's) -- and a shining example of promises made, promises kept]( "Peter Navarro: USMCA is Trump's vision (not Pelosi's) -- and a shining example of promises made, promises kept") Presidential candidate Trump promised in June 2016 during his historic jobs plan speech to "immediately renegotiate" NAFTA "to get a better deal for our workers." President Trump kept that promise on November 30, 2018 when he signed the USMCA with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the G-20 Summit in Argentina.
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| UN experts: Libya is new focus of Islamic State extremists Posted: 10 Dec 2019 02:55 PM PST  U.N. experts say the interference of Chadian and Sudanese fighters in Libya is "a direct threat" to the security and stability of the war-torn country, which a leader of the Islamic State extremist group has declared "one of the main axes" of its future operations. The panel of experts said in a 376-page report to the U.N. Security Council released Tuesday that the presence of the Chadians and Sudanese "has become more marked" in 2019 as a result of the intensification of the conflict in Libya. Libya has been in turmoil since a civil war in 2011 toppled Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed.
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| Trump mocks impeachment effort, talks up trade deal at rally Posted: 10 Dec 2019 02:40 PM PST  President Donald Trump mocked Democrats for the articles of impeachment they unveiled against him Tuesday as he sought to rally supporters in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, calling the effort "impeachment lite" and promising that it would lead to his reelection in 2020. Trump's visit to Pennsylvania followed a momentous day at the U.S. Capitol, where Democrats unveiled articles of impeachment and shortly thereafter signaled their support for the president's long-sought reworked the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are trying to show they can pass legislation and pursue an impeachment inquiry at the same time, but Trump said they're just trying to minimize impeachment.
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| AP Analysis: Trump faces narrow but consequential charges Posted: 10 Dec 2019 02:39 PM PST  The articles of impeachment offered up Tuesday against President Donald Trump are narrow, but consequential. The impending vote will thrust Trump into a club no president wants to join: only the third American leader to be impeached by the House of Representatives. House Democrats say Trump abused the American presidency for personal political gain by asking Ukraine for help investigating political rivals, including Joe Biden, the former vice president and current Democratic White House contender.
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| UPDATE 2-UK's Johnson now less certain of election victory - YouGov Posted: 10 Dec 2019 02:15 PM PST ![UPDATE 2-UK's Johnson now less certain of election victory - YouGov]( "UPDATE 2-UK's Johnson now less certain of election victory - YouGov") Britain's election race has tightened markedly over the past two weeks and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is now likely to win only a modest majority in Thursday's vote, according to a closely watched forecast released on Tuesday. The 28-seat Conservative margin of victory predicted by pollsters YouGov, down from 68 two weeks ago, is narrow enough that the firm said Johnson could fail to win an outright majority, given the uncertainties inherent to forecasting - an outcome that would prolong Brexit uncertainty.
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| Huawei's CFO wins Canada court fight to see more documents related to her arrest Posted: 10 Dec 2019 01:49 PM PST  Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes in the Supreme Court of British Columbia agreed with Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's legal team that there is an "air of reality" to their assertion. Meng, 47, was arrested at the Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 1, 2018, at the request of the United States, where she is charged with bank fraud and accused of misleading the bank HSBC about Huawei Technologies' business in Iran.
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| Takeaways: Democrats make case in articles of impeachment Posted: 10 Dec 2019 01:30 PM PST  House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, setting up a historic vote in the days before Christmas. After internal debate in their caucus, Democrats opted to focus narrowly on Trump's dealings with Ukraine, leaving out any direct mention of special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
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| Congress Flexes Foreign-Policy Muscle With Rebukes of Trump Posted: 10 Dec 2019 01:10 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump will face a more assertive Congress on foreign policy as he fights off impeachment and seeks re-election, with lawmakers pushing legislation at odds with his priorities and personal style on the global stage.This will be on full display Wednesday when the Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee considers sanctions on Turkey and Russia, both countries that Trump has tried to court despite Congress's wariness. The panel has also been the driving force behind two recent laws to support Hong Kong protesters, which Trump reluctantly signed despite Chinese threats of retaliation.In recent months, the Senate's GOP majority has been more likely to agree with House Democrats on foreign policy than with the Trump administration. Even the president's closest allies in Congress criticized him for withdrawing American troops from Syria, inviting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House and selling arms to Saudi Arabia.Lawmakers last week called for the suspension of a training program for foreign fighters after a Saudi air force officer shot and killed three U.S. service-members at Naval base in Pensacola, Florida. Trump, on the other hand, tweeted that he had received "sincere condolences" from Saudi Arabia's king."It's time that Congress reestablish its Article I prerogatives by not just asking probing questions but also by resuming legislative activity on a once very visible and consequential committee," said Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana, describing the Foreign Relations panel and the article of the Constitution that lays out Congress's powers. "Any administration should have to show their work."Foreign policy decisions are also the foundation of the impeachment investigation that is hurtling through the House of Representatives. Democrats are building the case that Trump subverted official U.S. diplomacy in Ukraine for his personal political benefit.The main impeachment allegation is that the president withheld nearly $400 million in security aid for Ukraine and a White House meeting in exchange for newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announcing politically motivated investigations.Weeks before this touched off the impeachment inquiry, Republicans lobbied the White House to find out why the congressionally approved security assistance had been delayed. GOP Senators including Wisconsin's Ron Johnson and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly and privately pressed administration officials to release the aid they said was critical to fend off Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.Not Always in LockstepEven as most Republicans oppose impeachment, many of them are willing to part ways with Trump on other issues of foreign policy."We're not always in lockstep with everything that comes out of the White House and when we're not, we have a responsibility to voice that," said Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.There is also a broader effort to check Trump's power. Young, a former Marine, has sponsored several proposals to wrest control of foreign policy away from the executive branch. His bill with New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, would require the administration to consult Congress on troop levels in Afghanistan and any final agreement with the Taliban."It's incredibly important that Congress and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in particular maintains a high level of oversight over the longest war in American history," Young said of Afghanistan, where Trump recently said he was pursuing a new peace deal.This push for oversight took on greater urgency after Trump in October abruptly announced the withdrawal from northern Syria shortly after a telephone conversation with Erdogan. Republicans were outraged when Turkey invaded territory controlled by the Kurds, a U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic State.McConnell, one of Trump's most imperturbable allies, warned that pulling out U.S. troops from the region would leave the Kurds vulnerable to attack and risk giving a foothold to jihadist fighters."We hope the damage in Syria can be undone," McConnell said at the time. "But perhaps even more importantly, we absolutely must take steps so the same mistakes are not repeated in Iraq or Afghanistan."Another Republican who usually supports Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been furiously campaigning for sanctions to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline he says will increase Russian President Vladimir Putin's influence in Europe to the detriment of the U.S.If the gas pipeline, from Russia to Germany, is completed, "it will be the fault of the members of this administration who sat on their rear ends," Cruz said last week. "You have an overwhelming bipartisan mandate from Congress to stop this pipeline."Cruz fought to include the sanctions in the final version of the defense spending bill expected to pass before the end of the year.Another provision in the National Defense Authorization Act would require the Secretary of Defense to certify that a reduction of U.S. forces in South Korea is in the national security interest. The White House said in a statement Tuesday that Trump supports the NDAA.Republicans have also expressed frustration with their colleagues who blocked a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, which Turkey opposes. Cruz said he has heard "no good reason for the administration to object" to the measure.Turkey SanctionsThe Turkey sanctions bill before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week would sanction the country's leaders, financial institutions and military that aided the invasion of northern Syria. In a remarkable display of bipartisan support, the House passed its version 430-16 in October.Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he expects robust support for the Turkey sanctions bill when it goes to the Senate floor. Both chambers will need to pass the same version before sending it to Trump to sign into law."The House bill came over definitely veto-proof and we'll likely do something that the House will also agree with," Kaine said. "That's a bipartisan understanding."Reaching a veto-proof majority represents even stronger backing for bills opposing Trump's foreign policy initiatives than legislation earlier this year to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen and ban arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Those easily passed both chambers, but lacked the votes to override Trump's vetoes.Four of Trump's six vetoes have been on foreign policy measures. But now stronger vote margins -- near unanimous for two bills supporting the Hong Kong protesters -- make it harder for Trump to go against the will of Congress."The president, at first, he was a little reluctant to sign it but then he did sign the Hong Kong bill and it was a big victory," McCaul said.This will be an important consideration for Trump as the House moves forward on impeachment and the process goes to the Senate to decide whether he should be removed from office. Democrats in the House plan to unveil two articles of impeachment on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter.It's extremely unlikely that enough Republicans in the Senate would turn on Trump to reach the two-thirds majority necessary to remove him from office.Yet that won't stop them from working with Democrats to rein in his impulsive -- and in some cases they would say inadvisable -- actions involving international relations."The margins have been going up because we've been working together," said Representative Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. When it comes to foreign policy, he said, "we almost have a supermajority."(Updates to add White House statement on NDAA in the 19th paragraph. An earlier version corrected the month of House vote on Turkey sanctions in the 21st paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Flatley in Washington at dflatley1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| The Fake News Election: U.K. Faces Overhaul of Campaign Rules Posted: 10 Dec 2019 01:08 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- After a bitter general election battle in which rival parties have traded accusations of lying and distortion, the U.K. is facing up to the need to overhaul the rules on political campaigns.Politicians playing fast and loose with the truth is nothing new in elections, but the 2019 edition has seen a proliferation of deceptive tactics that have provoked public dismay.According to senior British officials, a review of the way social media is used during an election period is now highly likely once Thursday's contest is over.Spreading controversial messages to draw attention to an issue was a hallmark of the Vote Leave strategy led by Dominic Cummings that delivered the Brexit vote in 2016. Examples included repeating the disputed claim of sending 350 million pounds ($460 million) to the EU every week, meaning the idea was regularly rebutted and amplified. The approach appears to have been adopted by Boris Johnson in 10 Downing Street, where Cummings has been his chief adviser.The Conservatives have been accused of using misleading tactics on multiple occasions in this campaign, including:Doctoring an interview of a senior Labour lawmaker to make it seem that he couldn't answer a question on Brexit.Changing the name of its party press office Twitter account to resemble an independent fact-checking service during a TV debate.Creating a spoof website purporting to be the Labour Party's manifesto, which was in fact a Tory attack on the document -- and paying Google to route web searches to it.Repeatedly making policy claims, including on hospitals and Brexit, which independent fact-checkers disputeRunning election ads, which were subsequently banned on YouTube, that appeared to suggest BBC presenters agreed with the Tory party's views on Brexit.Trying to deflect attention from a negative health story by briefing that a Conservative aide had been punched -- when he had not. A party spokesman declined to comment on the allegations.The public appears to be noticing. When asked in a televised debate on Nov. 19 whether the truth matters in this election, Johnson replied, "I think it does." The audience laughed. Johnson was also cornered over the Google incident at a question-and-answer session on Monday, repeatedly being asked about the claims. Johnson said he knew nothing about it."In my political memory, it's never been like this," said Steven Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of Westminster in London. "It's quite a clever strategy, but it serves to undermine faith in the whole political system. There's a greater sense of skepticism and cynicism about any of the promises that are made."The main opposition Labour Party and pro-EU Liberal Democrats have also been accused of spreading misleading messages in the campaign, including:Labour saying a leaked dossier, distributed on Reddit by accounts linked to Russia, showed the National Health Service was "up for sale" in trade talks with the U.S. -- even though the documents didn't give incontrovertible proof for such a claim. The party insisted they do show the NHS is "on the table."Labour promising that only earners over 80,000 pounds would face higher tax bills -- when in fact people earning less could also be hit by increases. The party said there would be no income tax or national insurance rises for people earning less than 80,000 pounds.The Liberal Democrats producing election leaflets made to look like objective local newspapers. A party spokesman said this has been common practice by all parties for decades and they always identify the party as the publisher.The Liberal Democrats sharing misleading bar charts, seeking to attract tactical voters by claiming to be doing better in a seat than they actually are. The party defended the use of such charts, saying they highlighted differences on key issues and always state the source of the data.One of the government departments responsible for policing elections and social media is the Cabinet office, where Johnson's fellow Vote Leave campaign veteran, Michael Gove is a senior minister.Two senior officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive, said the authorities would need to review the role disinformation has had in this election campaign, once it is over. That could involve considerations of whether tougher rules are needed, according to one of the officials.Alongside adopting new tactics on social media, the Tories have also been more confrontational with traditional outlets than in previous elections, echoing the style of U.S. President Donald Trump. Johnson has refused an interview with the BBC's chief interrogator Andrew Neil, unlike the other major party leaders, instead favoring the use of videos direct to voters through social media.Johnson also refused to participate in a climate change debate on Channel 4, before he threatened to review the channel's broadcasting license when it replaced him with a melting ice sculpture. Johnson's colleague Gove tried to get into the debate and then shared a video on social media showing how he was refused entry. The effect was to create a controversy that shifted the focus away from Johnson's refusal to show up.\--With assistance from Tim Ross and Alex Morales.To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Mayes in London at jmayes9@bloomberg.net;Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Thomas PennyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Pentagon orders review of international student vetting Posted: 10 Dec 2019 12:43 PM PST  The Pentagon on Tuesday ordered a broad review of vetting procedures for international students who participate in training on U.S. military installations and demanded the process be strengthened, in direct reaction to last week's deadly shooting at a Pensacola Navy base by a Saudi aviation student. The memo signed by Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist also suspends flight and other operational training for all Saudi Arabian students in U.S. military programs. It follows a decision by the U.S. Navy to halt flight training for more than 300 Saudi Arabian students at the Pensacola Naval Air Station and two other bases in Florida.
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| Lovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later. He Had One Question. Posted: 10 Dec 2019 12:13 PM PST  The first time he spoke to her, in 1943, by the Auschwitz crematory, David Wisnia realized that Helen Spitzer was no regular inmate. Zippi, as she was known, was clean, always neat. She wore a jacket and smelled good. They were introduced by a fellow inmate, at her request.Her presence was unusual in itself: a woman outside the women's quarters, speaking with a male prisoner. Before Wisnia knew it, they were alone, all the prisoners around them gone. This wasn't a coincidence, he later realized. They made a plan to meet again in a week.On their set date, Wisnia went as planned to meet at the barracks between crematories 4 and 5. He climbed on top of a makeshift ladder made up of packages of prisoners' clothing. Spitzer had arranged it, a space amid hundreds of piles, just large enough to fit the two of them. Wisnia was 17 years old; she was 25."I had no knowledge of what, when, where," Wisnia recently reminisced at age 93. "She taught me everything."They were both Jewish inmates in Auschwitz, both privileged prisoners. Wisnia, initially forced to collect the bodies of prisoners who committed suicide, had been chosen to entertain his Nazi captors when they discovered he was a talented singer.Spitzer held the more high-powered position: She was the camp's graphic designer. They became lovers, meeting in their nook at a prescribed time about once a month. After the initial fears of knowing they were putting their lives in danger, they began to look forward to their dates. Wisnia felt special. "She chose me," he recalled.They didn't talk much. When they did, they told each other brief snippets of their past. Wisnia had an opera-loving father, who'd inspired his singing, and who'd perished with the rest of his family at the Warsaw ghetto. Spitzer, who also loved music -- she played the piano and the mandolin -- taught Wisnia a Hungarian song. Below the boxes of clothing, fellow prisoners stood guard, prepared to warn them if an SS officer was approaching.For a few months, they managed to be each other's escape, but they knew these visits wouldn't last. Around them, death was everywhere. Still, the lovers planned a life together, a future outside of Auschwitz. They knew they would be separated, but they had a plan, after the fighting was done, to reunite.It took them 72 years.On a recent afternoon this fall, Wisnia sat in his house of 67 years in his adopted hometown in Levittown, Pennsylvania, looking through old photographs. Still a passionate singer, Wisnia spent decades as a cantor at the local congregation. Now, about once a month, he gives speeches where he tells war stories, usually to students and sometimes at libraries or congregations."There are few people left who know the details," he said.In January, Wisnia plans to fly with his family to Auschwitz, where he was invited to sing at the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation. He expects to recognize only one fellow survivor there. The last big anniversary five years ago, which he attended, included about 300 Holocaust survivors. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany estimates that only 2,000 survivors of Auschwitz are alive today.As the Holocaust fades from public memory and anti-Semitism is once again on the rise, Wisnia finds himself speaking about his past with more urgency. This is quite a turn for a man who spent most of his adult life trying not to look back. Wisnia's oldest son only learned as a teenager that his father wasn't born in America. (His father worked hard to lose his European accent.)Wisnia's children and grandchildren coaxed him to talk about his past. Gradually, he opened up. Once he started sharing his story, others convinced him to speak publicly. In 2015, he published a memoir, "One Voice, Two Lives: From Auschwitz Prisoner to 101st Airborne Trooper." He referred to his Auschwitz girlfriend under a pseudonym, Rose. Their reunion, as it turns out, hadn't gone quite as planned. By the time he and Spitzer met again, he was already married."How do you share such a story with your family?" Wisnia wondered.Spitzer was among the first Jewish women to arrive in Auschwitz in March of 1942. She came from Slovakia, where she attended a technical college and said she was the first woman in the region to finish an apprenticeship as a graphic artist. In Auschwitz, she arrived with 2,000 unmarried women.At first, she was assigned grueling demolition work at the sub-camp, Birkenau. She was malnourished and perpetually ill with typhus, malaria and diarrhea. She persisted as a laborer until a chimney collapsed on her, injuring her back. Through her connections, her ability to speak German, her graphic design skills and sheer luck, Spitzer secured an office job.Her initial assignments included mixing red powder paint with varnish to draw a vertical stripe on female prisoners' uniforms. Eventually, she started registering all female arrivals in camp, she said in 1946 testimony documented by psychologist David Boder, who recorded the first interviews with survivors after the war.By the time Spitzer met Wisnia, she was working from a shared office. Together with another Jewish woman, she was responsible for organizing Nazi paperwork. She made monthly charts of the camp's labor force.As Spitzer's responsibilities grew, she was free to move around within parts of the camp and sometimes was allowed excursions outside. She showered regularly and didn't have to wear an armband. She used her extensive knowledge of the grounds to build a 3D model of the camp. Spitzer's privileges were such that she managed to correspond with her only surviving brother in Slovakia through coded postcards.Yet Spitzer was never a Nazi collaborator or a kapo, a Jew assigned to oversee other prisoners. Instead, she used her position to help inmates and allies. She used her design skills to manipulate paperwork and reassign prisoners to different job assignments and barracks. She had access to official camp reports, which she shared with various resistance groups, according to Konrad Kwiet, a professor at the University of Sydney.Kwiet interviewed Spitzer for an essay published in the book "Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor." In the book, edited by Jurgen Matthaus, director of applied research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Spitzer was interviewed by five different historians, each chronicling her life from a different perspective."It's certainly not surprising to me that people in Zippi's position would have lovers and they would try to use their influence to save people," said Atina Grossmann, a professor at the Cooper Union in New York who interviewed Spitzer for the book."For everybody you saved, you were condemning someone else," Grossmann said. "You had to be very precise, and that's how you kept the Germans at bay."Wisnia was assigned to the "corpse unit" when he arrived. His job was to collect bodies of prisoners who'd flung themselves against the electric fence surrounding the camp. He dragged those corpses to a barrack, where they were hauled off by trucks.Within months word got around that Wisnia was a gifted singer. He started singing regularly to Nazi guards and was assigned a new job at a building the SS called the Sauna. He disinfected the clothing of new arrivals with the same Zyklon B pellets used to murder prisoners in the gas chamber.Spitzer, who had noticed Wisnia at the Sauna, began making special visits. Once they had established contact, she paid off inmates with food to keep watch for 30 minutes to an hour each time they met.Their relationship lasted several months. One afternoon in 1944 they realized it would probably be their final climb up to their nook. The Nazis were transporting the last of the camp prisoners on death marches and destroying evidence of their crimes.As crematories were demolished, there were whispers within the camp that the Soviets were advancing. The war might end soon. Wisnia and Spitzer had survived Auschwitz for more than two years while most prisoners never made it past a few months. In Auschwitz alone, 1.1 million people were murdered.During their last rendezvous they made a plan. They would meet in Warsaw when the war was over, at a community center. It was a promise.Wisnia left before Spitzer on one of the last transports out of Auschwitz. He was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp in December 1944. Soon after, during a death march from Dachau, he happened upon a hand shovel. He struck an SS guard and ran. The next day, while hiding in a barn, he heard what he thought were Soviet troops approaching. He ran to the tanks and hoped for the best. It turned out to be Americans.He couldn't believe his good fortune. Since he was 10 years old, Wisnia had dreamed of singing opera in New York. Before the war, he'd written a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt requesting a visa so he could study music in America. His mother's two sisters had emigrated to the Bronx in the 1930s, and he'd memorized their address. Throughout his ordeal in Auschwitz, that address had become a sort of prayer for him, a guidepost.Now, faced with soldiers from the 101st Airborne, he was beyond relieved. The troops adopted him after hearing his tale, told in snippets of the little English he spoke, some German, Yiddish and Polish. They fed him Spam, he said, gave him a uniform, handed him a machine gun and taught him to use it. Europe would be his past, he decided. "I didn't want anything to do with anything European," he said. "I became 110% American."In his capacity with the American Army, Wisnia became "Little Davey," an interpreter and civilian aide. Now he got to interrogate the Germans and confiscate their weapons. Now he took prisoners of war."Our boys were not so nice to the SS," Wisnia said.His unit trekked south to Austria, liberating towns along the way. The troops protected Wisnia, and he in turn transformed himself into an American. By the end of the war, they made it to Hitler's mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. Here, they helped themselves to Hitler's wine and myriad treasures. Wisnia took a Walther gun, a Balda camera and a semi-automatic pistol.Even though, as a Pole, he never could become a full-fledged GI, Wisnia performed numerous jobs after the war with the American Army. He worked at the Army Post Exchange, which provided basic supplies to soldiers. He also sometimes drove to the displaced persons camp in the city of Feldafing to deliver supplies. Once he'd joined the Americans, his plan to meet Zippi in Warsaw was no longer even a consideration. America was his future.Spitzer was among the last to leave the camp alive. She was sent to the women's camp at Ravensbruck and a sub-camp in Malchow before being evacuated in a death march. She and a friend escaped the march by removing the red stripe she had painted on their uniforms, allowing them to blend with the local population that was fleeing.As the Red Army advanced and the Nazis surrendered, Spitzer made her way to her childhood home in Bratislava, Slovakia. Her parents and siblings were gone, save for one brother, who'd just gotten married. She decided to leave him unburdened to start his new life.According to Grossmann, the historian, Spitzer's account of her journey immediately after the war was deliberately vague. She alluded to smuggling Jews across borders through the Bricha, an underground movement that helped refugees move illegally across Eastern Europe and into Palestine.Millions of survivors were displaced, and Europe was teeming with displaced persons camps. Some 500 such camps materialized in Germany. Amid the chaos, Spitzer made it to the first all-Jewish displaced persons camp in the American zone of occupied Germany, which in the spring of 1945 housed at least 4,000 survivors. It was called Feldafing, the same camp that Wisnia would deliver supplies to.The odds they would be in the same place were remarkable. "I would drive over there to Feldafing, but I had no idea she was there," Wisnia said.Soon after she arrived in Feldafing in September of 1945, Spitzer married Erwin Tichauer, the camp's acting police chief and a United Nations security officer, roles that allowed him to work closely with the American military. Once again, Spitzer, now known as Tichauer, was in a privileged position. Although they, too, were displaced persons, the Tichauers lived outside the camp.Tichauer, then 27, was among the oldest of the survivors in Feldafing. Because of her husband's position, she described herself to Grossmann as "top management" at the camp. As such, she distributed food among the refugees, particularly the booming population of pregnant women. In the fall of 1945, she accompanied her husband when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen. George S. Patton came for a tour of the camp.Tichauer and her husband devoted years of their lives to humanitarian causes. They went on missions through the United Nations to Peru and Bolivia and Indonesia. In between, Tichauer taught bioengineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.Throughout their travels, Tichauer continued to learn new languages and use her design skills to help populations in need, particularly pregnant women and new mothers. Her existence was not defined by her experience as a Holocaust survivor, Matthaus said. "She had a much richer life," he said. "There was a lot that she achieved with her husband."Eventually, the Tichauers moved to America, first to Austin, Texas, and in 1967 they settled in New York, where Tichauer became a bioengineering professor at New York University. In their apartment, surrounded by books about the Holocaust, Tichauer spoke regularly with historians. She never gave speeches and said she despised the concept of the Holocaust as a business. The historians she entrusted with her story became part of her family. Kwiet, who called her from Australia every Friday, saw Tichauer as a mother figure."Her duty was not to be a professional survivor," said Grossmann. "Her job was to be the historian's historian. She was committed to this very sober, almost technical rendition of what happened."Yet throughout the many hours she devoted to detailing the horrors of Auschwitz to a number of historians, Tichauer never once mentioned Wisnia.Sometime after the war ended, Wisnia heard from a former Auschwitz inmate that Tichauer was alive. By then he was deeply enmeshed with the American army, based in Versailles, where he waited until he could finally emigrate to the United States.When his aunt and uncle picked him up at the port in Hoboken on February 1946, they couldn't believe the 19-year-old in a GI uniform was the little David they last saw in Warsaw.In a rush to make up for lost time, Wisnia plunged into New York City life, going to dances and parties. He rode the subway from his aunt's house in the Bronx to anywhere around Manhattan. He answered an ad in a local paper and got a job selling encyclopedias.In 1947, at a wedding, he met his future wife, Hope. Five years later, the couple moved to Philadelphia. He became a vice president of sales for Wonderland of Knowledge Corp., the encyclopedia company, until his career as a cantor took off.Years after he'd settled down with his wife in Levittown, a friend of the lovers told Wisnia that Zippi was in New York City. Wisnia, who had told his wife about his former girlfriend, thought this would be an opportunity to reconnect, and he could finally ask how he had managed to survive Auschwitz.Their friend arranged a meeting. Wisnia drove the two hours from Levittown to Manhattan and waited at a hotel lobby across from Central Park."She never showed up," Wisnia said. "I found out after that she decided it wouldn't be smart. She was married; she had a husband."Over the years, Wisnia kept tabs on Tichauer through their mutual friend. Meanwhile, his family grew -- he had four children and six grandchildren. In 2016 Wisnia decided to try again to reach out to Zippi. He'd shared the story with his family. His son, who was now a rabbi at Reform synagogue in Princeton, New Jersey, initiated contact for him. Finally, she agreed to a visit.In August 2016, Wisnia took two of his grandchildren with him to the reunion with Tichauer. He was silent during most of the car ride from Levittown to Manhattan. He didn't know what to expect. It had been 72 years since he'd last seen his former girlfriend. He'd heard she was in poor health but knew very little about her life. He suspected she'd helped to keep him alive and wanted to know if this was true.When Wisnia and his grandchildren arrived at her apartment in the East 30s, they saw Tichauer lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by shelves filled with books. She had been alone since her husband died in 1996, and they never had any children. Over the years, bed-bound, she'd gone increasingly blind and deaf. She had an aide looking after her, and the telephone had become her lifeline to the world.At first, she didn't recognize him. Then Wisnia leaned in close."Her eyes went wide, almost like life came back to her," said Wisnia's grandson Avi Wisnia, 37. "It took us all aback."Suddenly there was a flow of words between Wisnia and Tichauer, all in their adopted English tongue."She said to me in front of my grandchildren, she said, 'Did you tell your wife what we did?'" Wisnia remembered, chuckling, shaking his head. "I said, 'Zippi!'"Wisnia talked about his children, his time in the American Army. Tichauer spoke about her humanitarian work after the war and her husband. She marveled at Wisnia's perfect English. "My God," she said. "I never thought that we would see each other again -- and in New York."The reunion lasted about two hours. He finally had to ask: Did she have something to do with the fact that he'd managed to survive in Auschwitz all that time?She held up her hand to display five fingers. Her voice was loud, her Slovakian accent deep. "I saved you five times from bad shipment," she said."I knew she would do that," Wisnia said to his grandchildren. "It's absolutely amazing. Amazing."There was more. "I was waiting for you," Tichauer said. Wisnia was taken aback. After she escaped the death march, she had waited for him in Warsaw. She'd followed the plan. But he never came.She had loved him, she told him quietly. He had loved her, too, he said.Wisnia and Tichauer never saw each other again. She died last year at age 100. On their last afternoon together, before Wisnia left her apartment, she asked him to sing to her. He took her hand and sang her the Hungarian song she taught him in Auschwitz. He wanted to show her that he remembered the words.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| What Did the U.S. Get for $2 Trillion in Afghanistan? Posted: 10 Dec 2019 12:12 PM PST  All told, the cost of nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan will amount to more than $2 trillion. Was the money well spent?There is little to show for it. The Taliban control much of the country. Afghanistan remains one of the world's largest sources of refugees and migrants. More than 2,400 U.S. soldiers and more than 38,000 Afghan civilians have died.Still, life has improved, particularly in the country's cities, where opportunities for education have grown. Many more girls are now in school. And democratic institutions have been built -- although they are shaky at best.Drawing on estimates from Brown University's Costs of War Project, we assessed how much the U.S. spent on different aspects of the war and whether that spending achieved its aims.-- $1.5 trillion waging warThe Taliban control or contest much of the country.When President George W. Bush announced the first military action in Afghanistan in the wake of terrorist attacks by al-Qaida in 2001, he said the goal was to disrupt terrorist operations and attack the Taliban.Eighteen years later, the Taliban are steadily getting stronger. They kill Afghan security force members -- sometimes hundreds in a week -- and defeat government forces in almost every major engagement, except when significant American air support is used against them.Al-Qaida's senior leadership moved to Pakistan, but the group has maintained a presence in Afghanistan and expanded to branches in Yemen, northern Africa, Somalia and Syria.The $1.5 trillion in war spending remains opaque, but the Defense Department declassified breakdowns of some of the three most recent years of spending.Most of the money detailed in those breakdowns -- about 60% each year -- went to things like training, fuel, armored vehicles and facilities. Transportation, such as air and sea lifts, took up about 8%, or $3 billion to $4 billion a year.-- $10 billion on counternarcoticsAfghanistan supplies 80% of the world's heroin.In a report last year, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction described counternarcotics efforts as a "failure." Despite billions of dollars to fight opium poppy cultivation, Afghanistan is the source of 80% of global illicit opium production.Before the war, Afghanistan had almost completely eradicated opium, according to United Nations data from 1996 to 2001, when the Taliban were in power.Today, opium cultivation is a major source of income and jobs, as well as revenue for the Taliban. Other than war expenditures, it is Afghanistan's biggest economic activity.-- $87 billion to train Afghan military and police forcesAfghan forces can't support themselves.One of the major goals of the U.S. effort has been to train thousands of Afghan troops. Most of U.S. spending on reconstruction has gone to a fund that supports the Afghan Army and police forces through equipment, training and funding.But nobody in Afghanistan -- not the U.S. military, and not President Ashraf Ghani's top advisers -- thinks Afghan military forces could support themselves.The Afghan Army in particular suffers from increasing casualty rates and desertion, which means they have to train new recruits totaling at least a third of their entire force every year.President Barack Obama had planned to hand over total responsibility for security to the Afghans by the end of 2014 and to draw down all U.S. forces by 2016. That plan faltered when the Taliban took quick advantage and gained ground.The U.S. military had to persuade first Obama, and then President Donald Trump, to ramp up forces. Some 14,000 U.S. troops remained in the country as of this month.-- $24 billion on economic developmentMost Afghans still live in poverty.War-related spending has roughly doubled the size of Afghanistan's economy since 2007. But it has not translated into a healthy economy.A quarter or more of Afghans are unemployed and the economic gains have trailed off since 2015, when the international military presence began to draw down.Overseas investors still balk at Afghanistan's corruption -- among the worst in the world, according to Transparency International, an anticorruption group -- and even Afghan companies look for cheaper labor from India and Pakistan.Hopes of self-sufficiency in the mineral sector, which the Pentagon boasted could be worth $1 trillion, have been dashed. A few companies from China and elsewhere began investing in mining, but poor security and infrastructure have prevented any significant payout.-- $30 billion on other reconstruction programsMuch of that money was lost to corruption and failed projects.U.S. taxpayers have supported reconstruction efforts that include peacekeeping, refugee assistance and aid for chronic flooding, avalanches and earthquakes.Much of that money, the inspector general found, was wasted on programs that were poorly conceived or riddled with corruption.American dollars went to build hospitals that treated no patients, to schools that taught no students (and sometimes never existed at all) and to military bases the Afghans found useless and later shuttered.The inspector general documented $15.5 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in reconstruction efforts from 2008 through 2017.Thanks to U.S. spending, Afghanistan has seen improvements in health and education -- but they are scant compared with international norms.Afghan maternal mortality remains among the highest in the world, while life expectancy is among the lowest. Most girls still receive little or no schooling, and education for boys is generally poor.-- $500 billion on interestThe war has been funded with borrowed money.To finance war spending, the U.S. borrowed heavily and will pay more than $600 billion in interest on those loans through 2023. The rest of the debt will take years to repay.-- $1.4 trillion on veterans that have fought in post-9/11 wars by 2059 Medical and disability costs will continue for decades.More than $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Experts say that more than half of that spending belongs to the Afghanistan effort.The final total is unknown, but experts project another trillion dollars in costs over the next 40 years as wounded and disabled veterans age and need more services.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Pompeo and Lavrov Joust Over Meddling in U.S. Elections Posted: 10 Dec 2019 12:04 PM PST ![Pompeo and Lavrov Joust Over Meddling in U.S. Elections]( "Pompeo and Lavrov Joust Over Meddling in U.S. Elections") (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo jousted with his Russian counterpart over allegations that President Vladimir Putin's government meddled in the 2016 presidential election, saying there was "no mistake" about what happened and the U.S. would protect the integrity of the vote."I made our expectations of Russia clear," Pompeo said Tuesday at a news conference in Washington alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after the two met behind closed doors. "The Trump administration will always work to protect the integrity of our elections. Period."Lavrov shot back that the allegations of Russian interference in the election were "baseless" and reminiscent of "McCarthyism.""No one has given us these facts because they simply do not exist," Lavrov said before the two diplomats went to the White House for a closed-door meeting with President Donald Trump.The back-and-forth, one of several testy exchanges between the two diplomats in front of reporters, only highlighted just how sour the relationship has become between the U.S. and Russia, and how little progress has been made to make it better since Trump won the presidency in 2016 on promises to work with Putin.Lavrov and Pompeo butted heads over everything from the number of diplomats in each other's countries to their differing attitudes toward Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.The only area where they seemed to find common cause was on North Korea and the shared belief that it must give up its nuclear weapons, though Lavrov also said dialog can only achieve success if the two sides take "reciprocal steps."But it was election interference that remained the source of the most tension. A 2017 intelligence report by the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency assessed that Russia's government meddled in the U.S. election and sought to help Trump win."We have asked many times our American partners about the opportunity to deal with the suspicions expressed in October 2016 all the way up to Trump's inauguration -- there was no response," Lavrov said.The veteran diplomat said he knew nothing about a theory embraced by Trump and some of his supporters that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in 2016 and its goal was to help Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump faces impeachment in the Democratic-controlled House over his efforts to press Ukraine's new president to pursue that theory as well as seeking political dirt on Democrat Joe Biden.In the past, Pompeo has stuck close to Trump's insistence that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference was a "witch hunt." But on Tuesday, he was more pointed in his assessment, saying "we don't think there is any mistake about what transpired."Trump's White House meeting with Lavrov was the first since a May 2017 visit in which the U.S. president boasted to the Russian about firing then-FBI Director James Comey and reportedly shared classified information.To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert, Joshua GalluFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Pompeo: Foreign interference in US elections 'unacceptable' Posted: 10 Dec 2019 11:32 AM PST  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that any foreign interference in American elections is "unacceptable" and warned Russia and others that the Trump administration will protect the integrity of the vote. In wide-ranging talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that also included disputes over arms control agreements, Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela, Pompeo said at a joint news conference at the State Department that the administration would counter interference in elections past and future.
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| Prosecutors: Man threatened Trump, Putin, vowed to kill kids Posted: 10 Dec 2019 11:09 AM PST ![Prosecutors: Man threatened Trump, Putin, vowed to kill kids]( "Prosecutors: Man threatened Trump, Putin, vowed to kill kids") An Alabama man with a history of mental illness is accused of threatening to "destroy" President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and kill the children of U.S. officials. Deryke Matthew Pfeifer also used Facebook to video himself in a hotel room with two handguns as he berated a federal judge and threatened to kill anyone who tried to arrest him, prosecutors said. Pfeifer was indicted this month on a federal charge of being a felon in possession of ammunition and ordered to undergo a mental health exam.
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| Gun in deadly Navy station attack bought legally in July Posted: 10 Dec 2019 10:58 AM PST ![Gun in deadly Navy station attack bought legally in July]( "Gun in deadly Navy station attack bought legally in July") The handgun used by a Saudi aviation student to kill three American sailors and injure eight other people at a Pensacola naval base was legally purchased in July from a Florida dealer, federal authorities confirmed Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the FBI said the 9mm Glock pistol was legally purchased by the shooter, Mohammed Alshamrani. The 21-year-old Saudi aviation student was killed after opening fire at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.
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| 6 killed in New Jersey gunbattle, including police officer Posted: 10 Dec 2019 10:47 AM PST  Six people, including a police officer and three bystanders, were killed in a furious gun battle Tuesday that filled the streets of Jersey City with the sound of heavy fire for hours, authorities said. The dead included the two gunmen, Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly said. The slain officer, Detective Joseph Seals, 40, was credited by his superiors with having led the department in the number of illegal guns removed from the streets in recent years, and might have been trying to stop an incident involving such weapons when he was cut down by gunfire that erupted near a cemetery, authorities said.
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| UPDATE 2-U.S. must fix relations with China to combat climate change - Michael Bloomberg Posted: 10 Dec 2019 10:15 AM PST ![UPDATE 2-U.S. must fix relations with China to combat climate change - Michael Bloomberg]( "UPDATE 2-U.S. must fix relations with China to combat climate change - Michael Bloomberg") A future U.S. government will have to rebuild relations with China to revive international efforts to combat climate change, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is running for president, said on Tuesday. Bloomberg was speaking at a U.N. climate conference in Madrid, where environment ministers are grappling with outstanding issues in the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to avert catastrophic global warming.
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| The Real Steele: The Ex-MI6 Spy Looms Large in the New DOJ Report—and a Big Best Seller Posted: 10 Dec 2019 10:08 AM PST  In a much anticipated report made public Monday, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz exonerated the FBI from allegations of abuse of power and political bias against the Trump campaign during its initial investigation of the Trump-Russia connection, while at the same time criticizing some FBI agents and lawyers for unprofessionalism and sloppiness.The villain of the report, if there is one, is Christopher Steele, the former British MI6 (foreign intelligence) officer whose dossier, a collection of raw research memos paid for by the Democratic Party, was part of the evidence used to obtain a secret wiretap warrant to monitor Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The dossier's allegations also propelled the FBI to intensify its Russia probe, which was already under way. Bill Barr Exposed as DOJ Report Dismisses Trump's Conspiracies and Clears Trump's EnemiesYes, we're talking about that dossier. It was never intended to go public in its raw form, which Steele long ago conceded might only be 70 percent accurate. And when it did hit the media, published by BuzzFeed in January 2017 days before Trump's inauguration, many headlines focused on an allegation by Steele's sources that Trump had hired prostitutes to urinate on a bed the Obamas had slept in at a Moscow hotel. The incident supposedly had been recorded on video, but it has never been corroborated independently, and apparently was not part of the FBI investigation.Steele, who was grilled in London for two days last June by the Horowitz team, is the bête noire of Trump supporters. The president has called the Steele dossier a "pile of garbage," and through repetition he and his Republican defenders have worked to make any reference to it toxic, as we'll discuss below.Given that the thrust of the Horowitz report exculpates the FBI from the "deep state" conspiracy theory being pushed ad absurdum (and some would say ad nauseam) by the GOP faithful, and the evident hostility Attorney General William Barr has shown to his own inspector general's report, the vilification of Steele may be a sop to the conspiracy theorists.Remember that very recently, in an effort to take the blame off Russia for 2016 election interference, some Trump allies even went so far as to claim that the dossier was cooked up by the Ukrainians as part of a Democratic plot to undermine Trump's presidential candidacy at a time when virtually no one though he was likely to win. According to former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani has been touting this theory. And Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, posed this question to Amb. Gordon Sondland in his closed-door testimony during the impeachment inquiry hearings: "You've heard that the origins of the Steele dossier were from Ukraine, many of the origins in the original Steele dossier were from Ukraine?" Sondland did not reply. Now adding to the debate, but not always elucidating it, we have a new book by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump. Published two weeks ago, it is already the number one New York Times nonfiction print and e-book best seller. The authors founded the investigative and consulting firm Fusion GPS, which hired Steele to investigate Kremlin connections with the Trump campaign, and the book is full of tantalizing details. The authors claim, for instance, that Nunes, who has been on an obsessive crusade to discredit the dossier, made a secret trip to London in August 2018 in order to undermine Steele by getting derogatory information about him from British intelligence officials. "This Nunes is a proper clown," Steele told Fritsch, and the congressman's alleged efforts proved unsuccessful.The depictions of Steele in the Horowitz report and in Crime in Progress would seem at first glance to be completely contradictory. Simpson, who declined a request to be interviewed by the Horowitz team, and Fritsch laud Steele's credentials, while the Horowitz report casts doubt on his judgment. But the political and factual details are rather more nuanced.* * *THE RABBIT HOLE* * *Russia expert and former Trump National Security Council aide Fiona Hill referred to the Steele dossier as a "rabbit hole" in her closed deposition during the impeachment hearings, and later was prodded by Nunes during her public testimony to repeat the comment. Never mind that Hill also said in her opening statement on November 21 that the theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered significantly in our 2016 elections was "a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services."For authors Simpson and Fritsch, Hill's remarks about Steele and the dossier were less than welcome. Appearing on Meet the Press, the authors, expressed puzzlement at her comments and suggested that Hill was not a specialist on "disinformation." They may have a point. In her closed deposition, Hill expressed concern that Steele, who worked for MI6 in Moscow under diplomatic cover in the 1990s, might "have been played" by the Russians and fed "some kind of misinformation." (One wonders whether Hill had advance knowledge of the Horowitz report, which notes that "the FBI assessed the possibility that Russia was funneling disinformation to Steele.")But Hill, with a reputation for outstanding scholarly writing on Russia, has expertise that is very different from that of Steele, who spent 22 years in MI6. From 2006 to 2009 Steele headed MI6's Russia desk, where he led the agency's investigation of the 2006 poisoning in London of Alexander Litvinenko. And according to Steven Hall, former chief of the C.I.A.'s Central Eurasia Division quoted in The New Yorker, MI6 is "second only perhaps to the U.S. in its ability to collect intelligence from Russia." Some would say that when it comes to gather human intelligence, "Humint," the Brits are better.In a 2016 article, when she was still at Brookings, Fiona Hill wrote: "Putin's Russia is a one-man show. … [His] circle is extremely narrow and difficult to penetrate, even for supposed Russian political insiders." According to her analysis, this Russian president's power is unchallenged: "There is no oligarchy or separate set of economic, business, or political interests that compete with Putin." Hill's views of how smoothly Putin's inner circle works may have led her to underestimate Steele's ability as an experienced Humint collector to ferret out reliable Kremlin sources, who, having an axe to grind with Putin, were willing to reveal secrets. Steele seems to have done just that. * * *'SUB-SOURCES' AND METHODS* * *According to Simpson and Fritsch, one of Steele's sources was "among the finest he had ever worked with, an individual known to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement." And they note that, as of September 2019, U.S. officials confirmed that the CIA had "a human source inside the Russian government during the campaign, who provided information that dovetailed with Steele's reporting about Russia's objective of electing Trump and Putin's direct involvement in the operation." So who was that source? In the dossier, Steele cites a senior member of Putin's Presidential Administration, who confirmed many of the details about the Kremlin's intervention in the U.S. presidential campaign, including advice to Putin provided by his top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov. It is reasonable to speculate that same source was the CIA informant the agency reportedly exfiltrated from Russia with his family in July 2017 and who now lives in the U.S. Although this asset's name was not revealed by U.S. authorities, the Russians have identified and denigrated a suspect who, we know, served as second secretary in Russia's Washington Embassy when Ushakov was the ambassador and was working directly under Ushakov in Russia's Presidential Administration in 2016. He was living under his own name in Virginia, but he has since kept a much lower profile.Will the CIA's Former Top Spy Fall Prey to Putin's Murderous Mole Hunt?The Horowitz report says a Russian-based "primary sub-source" for Steele's dossier, interviewed by the FBI in January, March and May 2017 made statements that "were inconsistent with multiple sections of the Steele reports." But a closer look at the details provided by the report shows that most of Steele's claims about what went on between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign were not refuted. For example, the "primary sub-source" told the FBI that another source mentioned by Steele as confirming the story about Trump's alleged sexual activities at Moscow's Ritz Carlton Hotel did not provide this confirmation, but noted that "other sub-sources were responsible for the Ritz Carlton reporting." And indeed Steele cites several others for his reporting. The Horowitz report also cites discrepancies in Steele's accounts about Trump campaign aide Carter Page. These are important with respect to the FISA warrants obtained to tap into Page's communications. But Page had been of interest to the FBI for a long time.Back in 2013, a bug the Feds had placed in the New York office of the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service, picked up two operatives talking about a man subsequently identified as Page. FBI agents questioned him several times after that, but prior to Page's work with the Trump campaign. The SVR operatives recorded by the FBI had seen Page as potentially useful, but one of them concluded: "I think he is an idiot." At issue in the Horowitz report are Page's alleged secret meeting in Moscow with Rosneft chief Igor Sechin in July 2016. Steele's "primary sub-source" told the FBI that he/she did not provide confirmation of the meeting to Steele until after Steele had issued an earlier memo with descriptions of the meeting, which Steele got from other sources. And the primary sub-source also contradicted Steele's statement that Sechin offered Page a brokerage interest in Rosneft. But the meeting itself is not disputed by the primary sub-source.Horowitz and his team are harshly critical of Steele's professionalism. They base their judgments partly on concerns by the Russian primary sub-source about Steele's lack of insight into possible hearsay from sources. But of course, a "primary source" or even a "primary sub-source" has every interest in portraying himself as the exclusive purveyor of accurate information.In fact, the overwhelming majority of assessments by Steele's former colleagues in the intelligence and counterintelligence field were very positive, and the FBI officials who did the interviews with them concluded that "many of them…almost without exception said, look, he is truthful. He has never been accused of, nor did anybody think, he is an embellisher, let alone a fabricator." But Horowitz chose to highlight the few remarks about Steele's "poor judgment." Horowitz notes critically that the FBI could not corroborate much of the material in the dossier. But, given that most of the information came from confidential Russian sources, this is not surprising. Horowitz includes this statement from Steele, but just as a footnote:"Following his attorney's review of a draft of this report, Steele advised us through his attorney that it was important to note that his election reporting consisted of information transmitted by word of mouth by a number of individual sources. According to Steele, this is a necessary practice to obtain information in a closed society like Russia and the election reports are descriptions of what certain individual sources, deemed to be reliable by Steele's consulting firm (Orbis), stated. Further, in Steele's view, his election reports should not have been treated as facts or allegations but as the starting point for further investigation, which he said was the intended use of the reports furnished to Fusion GPS. Steele advised us through his attorney that 'it is with that lens that the accuracy and value of Steele's reporting should be assessed.'"Horowitz also provides a tantalizing bit about Steele's previous relationship with a member of the Trump family, which presumably shows that Steele was not out to get Trump when he embarked on his investigation. That family member has been revealed to be Ivanka Trump, with whom Steele established contact several years ago when Steele discussed with Ivanka offering the services of his consulting firm, Orbis, for the Trump Organization's expansion into foreign markets. * * *MORE ABOUT THAT TAPE* * *Simpson and Fritsch say that Steele provided them with no fewer than seven sources for the now infamous allegations about the 2013 escapade with Trump and prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. Among them was a "Source D," described in the dossier as "a close associate of TRUMP who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow." The source was at the hotel at the time and reported also that intelligence provided by the Kremlin on Trump's political opponents was "very helpful" to Trump. In a later memo, the dossier mentions by name the Azeri businessman Aras Agalarov, who "had been closely involved with Trump in Russia" and "would know details" about Trump's business dealings and sexual exploits in St. Petersburg. Recall that it was Agalarov, along with his Russian popstar son, Emin, who hosted Trump's Miss Universe Pageant in 2013, when the "pee tape" incident was alleged to have taken place, and who later arranged through Emin the infamous meeting in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, between Trump's campaign and a group of Russians that included the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. In a recent interview with a Russian media outlet, Emin Agalarov, who was never questioned by the Mueller team, said that during the two days Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant, he "constantly accompanied" Trump. And, according to the Mueller Report, a Georgian businessman texted Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen in October 2016 about compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by those associated with Aras Agalarov's real estate firm, the Crocus Group. (The businessman, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, later told Mueller that the tapes were fake.) Steele was clearly on to something with the Agalarovs, just as he was on to Michael Cohen's secret communications with Kremlin-connected officials, Carter Page's meetings with the top brass of Rosneft, and Michael Flynn's outreach to members of the Putin camp, all of which were borne out later. Steele was also the first to mention Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, as a key figure in the Kremlin's secret liasons with the Trump group. * * *CONFLICTS OF INTEREST* * *For Fusion GPS, the 2016 Trump Tower meeting would have unfortunate repercussions. Simpson was at the time doing work for a law firm, Baker Hostetler, which was defending a Russian company called Prevezon on charges by the US government of using laundered money from a 2007 Russian tax fraud to buy Manhattan real estate. The case had been initiated by financier William Browder, whose former tax accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, had discovered the fraud and died in Russian police custody in 2009. Veselnitskaya was representing Prevezon's owner, Denis Katsyv, a Kremlin-connected businessman, and Simpson was part of her team. According to Simpson and Fritsch, who say they had no inkling of the meeting, when the news about it broke a year later, "Trump's defense team quickly pointed out that the Trump Tower meeting had come about soon after Fusion hired Steele. For the conspiracy minded, the ties between Fusion and Prevezon were even more evidence of a plot to frame Trump." Indeed, Nunes brought up this conspiracy theory in his opening statement before Mueller's public testimony in July: "The Democrats colluded with Russian sources to develop the Steele dossier. And Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya colluded with the dossier's key architect, Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson." The idea that Veselnitskaya would be colluding actively with Simpson on the Steele dossier implicating Russian President Vladimir Putin in efforts to undermine American democracy is implausible, to say the least. But it is conceivable that her ally Rinat Akhmetshin, who was present at the June Trump Tower meeting, had gleaned some information about the Steele project from Simpson–or vice versa. Akhmetshin, a Russian-American PR consultant in Washington, and Veselnitskaya were lobbying against the Magnitsky sanctions through an organization called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGI). Simpson, in August 2017 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, acknowledged that he had known Akhmetshin casually for years and at the direction of Baker Hostetler he had passed on some of his research on Browder to Akhmetshin, who before he emigrated to the U.S. had served in Russian military intelligence. Simpson also told the committee that, during 2015-16 he had numerous dinners with Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin relating to work on the Prevezon case. Two of those dinners were on the evenings before and after the Trump Tower meeting.Whatever the Russians might have picked up about Fusion's work with Steele, Simpson and Fritsch appear incredibly naïve about Veselnitskaya. They write that "the truth was, Fusion did not know much about Veselnitskaya. Simpson had met her only a handful of times, sometimes only exchanging pleasantries. … Veselnitskaya hadn't come across as some Kremlin power broker, and there was no reason to suspect that she had the political juice to get a meeting with the leadership of the Trump campaign."Really? Fusion had Russian speaking researchers on its staff. A google.ru search would probably have revealed that Veselnitskaya had defended the FSB counterintelligence service in land disputes and was a protégé of Prosecutor-General Iurii Chaika, Putin's long-time ally, who sponsored the Prevezon defense and also asked his friend Aras Agalarov to arrange the Trump Tower meeting, where the Magnitsky sanctions were discussed. Simpson told the judiciary committee that Fusion did not believe that his work gathering dirt against Browder–which included rounding up an audience for the showing at the Newseum of a film by Andrei Nekrasov attacking Browder and distorting the entire Magnitsky case–was being done on behalf of the Russian government. But the main reason that the Kremlin was helping out Prevezon was to make a case against the Magnitsky sanctions that Browder had instigated. Still, Simpson and Fritsch deserve a lot of credit for enlisting Steele, whose revelations, however flawed, were so important to our knowledge of what the Kremlin was up to with our 2016 election.One big question is why Mueller in his lengthy report did not do more to follow up on the Steele allegations. After all, as Fritsch observed in his and Simpson's interview on Meet The Press: "You can't actually catch rabbits without going down some rabbit holes. So you need to actually follow leads where they take you."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Airlines Hit Out at Jet-Fuel Tax Burden From Europe’s Green Deal Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:53 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Want the lowdown on European markets? In your inbox before the open, every day. Sign up here.Leading airlines attacked European Union plans to impose a region-wide kerosene tax as part of a sweeping new environmental strategy, saying investment in sustainable fuels and electric planes would be more effective in reducing carbon emissions.Chiefs of four of the region's five biggest carriers raised their concerns with EU Transport Commissioner Adina-Ioana Valean in Brussels Tuesday, with Ryanair Holdings Plc's Michael O'Leary leading criticism of measures set to be unveiled in the so-called Green Deal package this week.Higher duties will do nothing for the environment while reaping "untold economic damage," O'Leary said, describing the policy as a government tax grab "dreamt up here in Brussels or designed by cyclists in Holland." He spoke after meeting with Valean as chairman of the Airlines for Europe lobby group alongside the heads of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, IAG SA and EasyJet Plc.Airlines are pushing back against the kerosene levy as the EU moves to overhaul energy-taxation laws unchanged since 2003 as part of a commitment to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero by mid-century. Aviation finds itself in the firing line as the auto industry and other sectors make strides toward slashing CO2 output, and with many fuels long subject to taxes.A4E said in a statement that an incentive-based system coupled with increased investment in sustainable fuels would be a more positive way forward, together with an acceleration of the Single European Sky project, which it estimates would by itself cuts carbon emissions by 10%.O'Leary said that plan -- which would reform complex air traffic control systems -- must be implemented if Europe is at all serious about tackling the issue. A purely tax-based approach would be damaging not just for airlines but tourism-based economies in the region, he said.Flying BoomWhile aviation currently accounts for only about 2% of all man-made carbon discharges, emissions have more than doubled since 1990 as a burgeoning global middle class stokes a boom in flights."We have to deliver growth in Europe in a sustainable manner," O'Leary said. "Taxation will defeat that purpose. It takes the money away we need to invest in new aircraft." A4E members alone are spending 170 billion euros ($188 billion) on planes that typically burn 18% less fuel and carry 4% more passengers, he said.O'Leary said the industry must speak as one on CO2, while telling Bloomberg TV that passengers switching to Ryanair from "naughtier competitors" can cut their carbon footprint by 50%. The company has previously clashed with Lufthansa over the issue, with the German airline criticizing discounters for encouraging unnecessary journeys and the Irishman saying an aging fleet makes its rival one of the worst polluters in Europe.International Air Transport Association CEO Alexandre de Juniac said earlier in Madrid that carriers want to be part of the Green Deal but that "taxes are a politician's way out" and less effective than a long-term approach requiring more time and effort. Governments and oil companies also need to play a greater role in making sustainable aviation fuels a commercial reality, he said.The United Nations says airlines are set to overtake power generation as the single biggest CO2 producer within three decades, assuming other sectors build on moves to transition to alternative technologies such as electric cars.Aviation's scope for change is limited by the inability of today's batteries to match jet fuel, which has 50 times the power density, meaning even small hybrid and electric airliners probably won't be viable for more than a decade. Airbus SE says it could potentially build an emission-free 100-seater by the 2030s, while Boeing Co. aims to halve CO2 output by 2050 from 2005 levels.In the meantime, airlines are taking a two-pronged approach to cleaning up their acts, extending the use of CO2 offsets like tree planting while also embracing more sustainable propellants, such as kerosene blended with fuel from biomass and synthetic alternatives derived from carbon dioxide and monoxide together with hydrogen extracted from water.While such fuels aren't yet financially competitive with kerosene, industry estimates suggest they should become viable once production reaches around 2% of all jet fuel use, something that maybe be attainable by 2025.(Updates with O'Leary comments starting in third paragraph.)\--With assistance from Siddharth Philip.To contact the reporters on this story: Lyubov Pronina in Brussels at lpronina@bloomberg.net;Vonnie Quinn in New York at vquinn@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net, Christopher Jasper, Tara PatelFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Israeli lawmakers submit bill to dissolve parliament Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:51 AM PST  Israeli legislators submitted a bill Tuesday that would dissolve parliament and trigger unprecedented third national elections in less than a year. Israel has been mired in political deadlock for months. With the two largest parties, Likud and Blue and White, unable to form a power-sharing agreement ahead of a Wednesday deadline, lawmakers from the rival sides together tabled the bill.
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| Afghanistan's Karzai tells AP that US cash fed corruption Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:50 AM PST  Afghanistan's former president argued Tuesday that Washington helped fuel corruption in his nation by spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two decades without accountability. In an interview with The Associated Press, Hamid Karzai responded to findings from a trove of newly published documents that successive U.S. administrations misled the public about the war in Afghanistan. Karzai said the documents, obtained by The Washington Post, confirm his long-running complaints about U.S. spending.
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| 'The idea is that art can help': how Art Basel Miami tackled the climate crisis Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:49 AM PST  Away from the $120,000 banana, artists have been using their work to comment on and bring awareness to the climate emergencyOver the last few days, this year's Art Basel Miami has been making headlines for a banana. The artwork, worth $120,000 and consisting of one taped to a wall, became an irresistible viral hit, even more so when it was eaten.But beyond the silliness, sustainability was a dominating theme this year at the 17th edition of the week-long art event, which always draws art lovers to over 300 exhibitions, a dozen art fairs and hundreds of VIP parties. Which is ironic, considering Miami art week is probably the most excessive contemporary art event in America; champagne bottles are strewn across South Beach with locals picking up the litter after partygoers, celebrities and art aficionados are long gone.The climate emergency is making a statement at the art fair circuit, pointing fingers at yachts, the luxury lifestyle, automobile pollution and water bottles. But is it sellable? One curator says that protest art isn't commercial but artists have invested their time regardless. As the Norwegian artist Thale Fastvold recently said: "Science has a communication problem that art can solve." Here are some artworks doing that precisely. The Zero-Waste PartyPotentially the first ever zero-waste art party in Miami featured locally sourced food, biodegradable plastic forks and wooden plates. The table flowers were donated to the local botanical garden, with the leftover food donated to local missions. Set inside the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, it was hosted by Brooklyn artist Shinique Smith, who creates sculptures from secondhand clothing. The aim was to celebrate the United Nations' sustainability goals; responsible consumption and production, and was co-presented by UBS and the TogetherBand campaign, which helps the world move towards sustainability goals. Traffic JamThe art world can be an insular place so there's something to be said for art that goes beyond the white cube which makes this public art installation by the Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich even more of an eye-grabber. Set on South Beach at Lincoln Road, 66 life-sized cars made of sand were created to form a traffic jam. The artwork, entitled Order of Importance, is a project centered around the climate emergency. According to the artist, the climate crisis requires immediate action, and Erlich wanted to raise awareness of our responsibility to protect the planet. A commission of the city of Miami Beach, and curated by Ximena Caminos and Brandi Reddick, the sand cars will stand until they deteriorate, though the exhibition closes on 15 December. The Museum of PlasticThis pop-up exhibit, set inside of a conference room of a five-star hotel, is hosted by the ocean conservancy not-for-profit, Lonely Whale. With LED screens, pedestals and sculptures, it aims to highlight the effects of plastic pollution. One of the artworks is a gigantic receipt detailing how the $200bn that makes up the water bottle industry could better be spent, be it helping kids graduate from high school or stopping deforestation. The main critique here is on water bottles."We use 500 billion single-use plastic bottles every year, it's an insane number," said Dune Ives, executive director of Lonely Whale. "We know the plastic packaging market is continuing to grow over next 15 years and will come from oil and gas extraction. For us, this exhibition is an important way to bring together the climate emergency, ocean health and plastic conversation in a tangible way. It's where people can make a decision and have a direct impact." Coral Reef by Everglades Art LabAnother project that taps into ocean pollution is Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab, an eco-art project spearheaded by the Brooklyn artist Vanessa Albury. Along with a group of artists, she used her booth at the UNTITLED Miami Beach art fair to promote an upcoming underwater project, where they're making a coral reef out of ceramic, glass and reusable aluminum, which will launch at the Oracabessa Bay Fish Sanctuary in Jamaica next year. "What I have learned is that we all want the planet to be OK, and we all want to be part of a positive impact," said Albury. "The idea is that art can help, brings relief."Presented by Benrubi Gallery, it features artworks by Albury, Rachel Frank, Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen with the Reverend Houston Cypress of Love the Everglade. The group are inspired by the ocean advocate and marine biologist Sylvia Earle. "The planet is resilient, so is nature and those who have witnessed the worst still have hope," adds Albury. James ClarArt fair booths either go one of two ways: they're typically painted all white or are loud bursts of color. The New York artist James Clar decided to go halfway. His new series of climate-centered work at the Jane Lombard Gallery booth at the UNTITLED Miami Beach art fair is set in a booth painted with the bottom half blue, citing rising sea levels, with the top half white. The artworks in Dynamic Entities range from LED lights cast in resin to videos of tropical storms and burning flames. One of the minimalist, abstract sculptures is named after the Kardashev scale, a 1964 model created by the Russian astrophysicist Nikola Kardashev, which was created to measure a society's technological advancement in relation to their energy consumption. One artwork is a screen cast in resin, depicting a water bubble floating to the surface, while another is titled 100% Humidity. Paper Pulp FurnitureAt the Design Miami art fair, the Berlin-based Functional Art Gallery shook things up. Typically, galleries at any art fair are either design (furniture or lighting) or art (paintings and sculptures). Rarely do they ever cover both. The (Functional) Art of This Century blurs the line, with a series of chairs that point to reusable materials as the future of art and design-making. As the gallery's founder Benoît Wolfrom explains: "The art world is asking, 'How do we reduce our carbon footprint?' But the younger generation are using what they have access to, and is asking themselves, 'How do we move on as a civilization?'"All of the works here are made by recycled materials. Among them, a sturdy chair made of cardboard pulp is created by OrtaMiklos, while Donna Huano and Theophile Blandet made a plastic chair from parts an industrial factory. Artist Leo Orta created a lion dog chair from 1990s landline phones and foam. "Young artists and designers don't even think about making environmental art, they're already there," said Wolfrom. Climate MeltdownOne of the most compelling artworks during Miami artwork is at a hotel, oddly enough. The Brazilian artist Rubem Robierb has created a melting ice sculpture inspired by the climate emergency speech Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, recently gave at the United Nations. The words "How Dare You," carved out of two tons of ice, and stretching 36ft, floated across the pool at the Shore Club South Beach, before melting. The goal, says the artist, is to confront the old systems of living, which are being met with frustration by a younger generation. This artwork only lasted eight hours, though. The point? "I was impressed by Greta Thunberg's powerful and courageous speech at the UN – when I saw it, I knew I had to do something about our planet, said Robierb. "My mission as an artist is to open difficult conversations. Climate change is the biggest issue of all time because it affects every living being on our planet."
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| Handke takes Nobel Literature Prize amid protest Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:25 AM PST  Author Peter Handke received his Nobel Literature Prize on Tuesday amid criticism of him in Sweden and abroad as an apologist for Serb war crimes in the 1990s. Handke accepted the 9 million-kronor ($948,000) award from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm with the winners of other Nobels except for the peace prize, which was presented in Oslo. Handke has been a staunch supporter of the Serbs and has disputed that the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica was genocide.
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| REFILE-Brazil's Bolsonaro calls activist Thunberg a 'brat' Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:13 AM PST ![REFILE-Brazil's Bolsonaro calls activist Thunberg a 'brat']( "REFILE-Brazil's Bolsonaro calls activist Thunberg a 'brat'") Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro called Swedish climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg a "brat" on Tuesday after she criticized mounting violence against indigenous people in which two Amazon tribesmen were shot dead three days ago. Thunberg turned a spotlight on the struggles of the world's indigenous peoples to protect the environment on Monday at the United Nations climate change summit in Madrid.
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| Biden's attack ad showing leaders laughing at Trump will air on television Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:11 AM PST  Joe Biden's 2020 campaign ad calling Donald Trump "the president the world is laughing at" is to be broadcast on television after racking up millions of views online.The clip shows world leaders laughing at Mr Trump – at the London Nato summit this month and during his speech to the United Nations general assembly last year – in an effort to pitch Mr Biden as a more-respected potential head of state than the current "dangerously incompetent" president.
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| Brazil's Bolsonaro calls activist Greta Thunberg a "brat" Posted: 10 Dec 2019 08:59 AM PST  Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday called young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg a "brat" after she expressed concern about the slayings of indigenous Brazilians in the Amazon. Bolsonaro questioned the coverage news media have given Thunberg, 16, who on Sunday tweeted a link to a story about the murder of two indigenous people in Brazil's Maranhao state.
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| Trump sharply criticizes FBI head after Russia probe report Posted: 10 Dec 2019 08:40 AM PST  President Donald Trump lashed out Tuesday at FBI Director Christopher Wray, expressing dissatisfaction that Wray didn't cast a watchdog report on the origins of the Russia investigation as devastating for the bureau. In an interview with The Associated Press Monday, Wray acknowledged the report had identified significant problems with how agents conducted the investigation into ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign and pledged to make changes.
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| Johnson Grapples Backlash Over NHS With Two Days to Go: U.K. Votes Posted: 10 Dec 2019 08:34 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson said Brexit won't happen unless his Tories win and used a secret recording of Labour health spokesman Jon Ashworth criticizing leader Jeremy Corbyn to attack his opponents.The leaked recording, which Ashworth described as him "joking around" with an old friend in the Conservative Party, has helped Johnson's Tories to shift focus away from a row about funding for the National Health Service that had the prime minister on the back foot on Monday.Key Developments:Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigned in Carlisle, northern EnglandJohnson spoke in Staffordshire before holding a rally in northwest England at about 8 p.m.YouGov releases update of their MRP poll for The Times at 10 p.m.ICM poll conducted for Reuters shows: Conservatives 42%; Labour 36%; Liberal Democrats 12%The Conservatives retain an 80% chance of an overall majority, according to BetfairCorbyn Attacks Johnson on NHS Record (4:15 p.m.)Jeremy Corbyn attacked Boris Johnson for the way the prime minister addressed the case of a sick boy left on a hospital floor (see earlier), as he focused on his Labour Party's strongest electoral suit: the National Health Service.Corbyn blamed "a government that's underfunded our NHS" for the boy's plight, and dismissed Johnson as "a prime minister who hides the truth when it's put in front of him in a picture, takes the mobile phone off somebody and sticks it in his pocket.""The NHS was created through political action to bring about justice for the people of this country," Corbyn said at an election rally in Carlisle, northwest England. "Our message is quite simply this: Our NHS is under threat, our NHS is at risk." He criticized Johnson over trade talks with the U.S. and said the free-to-use healthcare system could be crippled by higher pharmaceutical prices as a result of the deal Johnson reaches with Washington.Johnson Sees "Real, Real Risk" of Hung Parliament (4 p.m.)Boris Johnson warned against complacency and said his Conservative Party is fighting for every vote. They are "absolutely not" home and dry ahead of the Dec. 12 election, he said at a campaign event."This is a very, very close fought election and we need every vote," Johnson said. "The only mathematical alternative to a working majority Conservative government is the real, real risk of another hung Parliament. That's another five years of confusion, chaos, dither, delay and division. We cannot go down that route."The premier also reminded voters the polls were wrong at the 2017 election. Asked what his plan B is for Brexit if he's returned in a minority government, he said "you're asking me to contemplate something pretty appalling. I don't see any alternative but a working majority to deliver it."Johnson Attacks Corbyn Record (3:45 p.m.)Prime Minister Boris Johnson launched a personal attack on his Labour opponent Jeremy Corbyn, saying it would be an economic disaster for Britain if he wins the election and, backed by the Scottish National Party, pursued another "toxic, divisive, pointless" referendum on EU membership."It would also be a political disaster because it would mean this country would be led by a Hamas-backing, IRA-supporting, antisemitism-condoning appeaser of the Kremlin, which is what he is," Johnson said at an event at J C Bamford Excavators Ltd in Uttoxeter. "Look at the record."He then sought to make political capital of secretly-recorded comments by Labour health spokesman Jon Ashworth (see 11:30 a.m.). "If you doubt me, listen to what his health spokesman said today, Jon Ashworth," Johnson said. "He revealed that he thinks his own leader is a security risk."In 2019, JCB, which hosted the event, donated 52,000 pounds to Johnson, according to figures released by political spending watchdog, the Electoral Commission. Separately, as an individual its Chairman Anthony Bamford gave 80,000 pounds to the prime minister.Terror Victim's Dad Hits Out at Johnson (2:45 p.m.)The father of Jack Merritt, who was killed in the London Bridge terror attack last month, accused Boris Johnson of exploiting the tragedy to score political points.Dave Merritt told Sky News the prime minister was 'crass and insensitive" when he blamed Labour policies for the early release of attacker Usman Khan. The prime minister hasn't contacted the family and they turned down the offer of a meeting with Home Secretary Priti Patel, Merritt said in an interview.Jack, 25, was a course leader of the Cambridge University prison rehabilitation program which was hosting the conference in Fishmonger's Hall where Khan, a guest at the event, launched his attack."Where most of us were watching this and seeing a tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes, instead of seeing a tragedy Boris Johnson saw an opportunity and he went on the offensive," Merritt said. "The fact that it was used in such a political way, and I could see the good work that Jack did and that his colleagues did starting to perhaps unravel, it was important that somebody said something."Party Member Urged Swinson to Wear Low-Cut Top (1 p.m.)Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson said a member of her party had urged her to wear a top with a lower neckline to attract votes."In that particular case it was" a party member, Swinson said in an interview on ITV's "This Morning" program on Tuesday. "But I get Facebook messages all the time -- speak differently, wear different shoes. A party member sent a message, so not someone from the team."As a new leader, the party branded its campaign bus as "Jo Swinson's Liberal Democrats" to boost her name recognition. But polls show voters have failed to warm to the 39-year-old and that the party has failed to galvanize the almost half of U.K. voters who want to stay in the European Union."There's a lot of abuse and focus on women in public life," Swinson told ITV. "I want to change that, and one of the ways we can change that is actually by getting more women into leader positions... we're going to change this over time and the way to do it is to step up to be leader."Johnson: Corbyn Will Waste Voters' 'Hard Graft' (12:40 p.m.)Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a Labour government would take the U.K. economy "back to square one" after a decade of "hard graft" by the British people to repair the economy after the financial crisis.A coalition led by Corbyn would inflict "profound" damage on economic confidence, Johnson writes in Tuesday's Evening Standard, according to the newspaper. "All the hard graft of the last decade, necessary to recover from the last time Labour left the economy in a mess, would be reversed overnight."Johnson's editorial comes after the U.K. economy unexpectedly stagnated in October, making it three straight months without growth for the first time since 2009 (see 11 a.m.). The Evening Standard's editor George Osborne, who was chancellor of the exchequer when the Tory party rolled out its program of austerity, told readers on Monday he will be voting Conservative on Dec. 12.Investors Turn to Politicians for Edge (12 p.m.)With politics continuing to drive the markets above all else, hedge funds are turning to politicians, experts and government officials for wisdom.Hedge fund manager Luke Newman, who manages about $7 billion in long-short equity strategies at Janus Henderson Investors, positioned his fund for a Conservative victory in the election after seeking advice from government officials and political experts. Aberdeen Standard Investments has been ramping up its use of political connoisseurs, and Nomura International Plc has an election night model it developed after commissioning private polling.Read more: Hedge Funds Are All Over U.K. Politics Seeking Edge on ElectionLabour's Ashworth Taped Criticizing Corbyn (11:30 a.m.)Labour's health spokesman Jon Ashworth has been recorded saying the party's electoral chances are hopeless and that voters hate leader Jeremy Corbyn. Asked on the recording about whether Corbyn would be a security risk as prime minister, Ashworth said: "The machine will pretty quickly move to safeguard security," but added that a Labour government is "not going to happen!"Asked by the BBC about the recording, which was first published on the Guido Fawkes website, Ashworth said he had been "joking around" with an old friend, Greig Baker, who he described as a Tory activist. Baker, who runs a political consultancy, didn't immediately respond to an email requesting comment. He has deleted his Twitter account.The Tories wasted no time in jumping on the recording. "This is an honest and truly devastating assessment of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership by one of his most trusted election lieutenants," party chairman James Cleverly said in an emailed statement.Economy Stagnates Ahead of Election (11 a.m.)The U.K. economy unexpectedly stagnated in October, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday, marking three straight months without growth for the first time since 2009.Read more: U.K. Economy Fails to Grow Ahead of Brexit-Dominated ElectionGross domestic product was unchanged following two consecutive months of decline, according to the ONS. Economists had forecast a 0.1% expansion. GDP rose just 0.7% from a year earlier, the smallest increase since June 2012.The figures, which provide the last economic snapshot before voters go to the polls on Thursday, highlight the toll being taken by years of Brexit uncertainty and a worsening global backdrop.Row Over Child on Hospital Floor Rumbles On (10 a.m.)The row over 4-year-old Jack Williment-Barr, who was photographed receiving treatment on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary, dominated the political broadcast round on Tuesday."It's an example of what's happening in our NHS," Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told the BBC, when asked about the boy's situation becoming politicized. "It is a serious issue. It is a political issue, how we fund the NHS."Johnson triggered a backlash on Monday when he refused to look at the photo in a broadcast interview. Later, he appeared to divert attention by musing publicly about changing how the BBC is funded, before Tory officials wrongly briefed reporters that a party aide had been hit by a Labour supporter.Questioned about Johnson's tactics, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said the Tory leader had been dealing "with a very fluid situation." The election should be "fought on the high ground and the big issues," Buckland told BBC Radio. Johnson "did express sorrow and regret for what he saw."Farage Slams Johnson's Brexit Deal (Earlier)Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said Boris Johnson's divorce deal with the European Union would give the U.K. "indigestion for years.""If we pass the current EU treaty, this doesn't get Brexit done, it takes us into years of negotiation," Farage told BBC Radio on Tuesday. "Unless we get a Brexit Party voice in the House of Commons, we are not going to get a realistic Brexit because he'll push through this new EU treaty as it is."Farage said his party "might get some" seats in Parliament, adding that gaining a "handful" would make a "massive" difference. The party's support has slumped in the polls since Farage withdrew candidates from Tory-held seats. "We are going to get Brexit," Farage said. "The questions is: Is it recognizable to the 17.4 million voters?"How Newspapers Covered Political Spat Over NHS (Earlier)Right-leaning newspapers including the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express all left the story of Boris Johnson refusing to look at the picture of a 4-year-old boy sleeping on a hospital floor off their front pages, in favor of the prime minister's threat on Monday to scrap the license system that funds the BBC.In contrast, the left-leaning Guardian's top story focused on how the Conservatives dispatched Health Secretary Matt Hancock to the hospital in Leeds, northern England, but then made matters worse by briefing journalists that a Labour supporter had assaulted Hancock's aide, before video of the incident showed this to be untrue.And the Daily Mirror ran on its front page a story about a different child waiting for treatment under the headline: "Here's another picture you won't want to see, Mr Johnson."Earlier:Johnson Has a Bad Day as Health Moves to Center of U.K. ElectionBoris Johnson Is Hiding the Price of Brexit: Therese RaphaelU.K. Vote Is One Pit Stop in Long Brexit Road for Pound, Gilts(Previous versions had the wrong name for fund manager in 12 p.m. entry.)\--With assistance from Andrew Atkinson, Brian Swint, Charlotte Ryan, Jessica Shankleman, Kitty Donaldson and Robert Hutton.To contact the reporters on this story: Greg Ritchie in Uttoxeter at gritchie10@bloomberg.net;Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Mark WilliamsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Armed men attack presidential residence in Somalia's capital Posted: 10 Dec 2019 08:30 AM PST ![Armed men attack presidential residence in Somalia's capital]( "Armed men attack presidential residence in Somalia's capital") A Somali police officer says at least five heavily armed men attacked security forces stationed outside the presidential palace in what appears to be an attempt to storm the heavily fortified residential and office complex. Security forces repelled the assault and killed at least three of the attackers while gunfire could be heard in the area nearby, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein.
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| Brexit Bulletin: ‘Abysmal’ Posted: 10 Dec 2019 08:27 AM PST  Days to General Election: 2(Bloomberg) -- Sign up here to get the Brexit Bulletin in your inbox every weekday.What's Happening? The final stretch of the U.K. election campaign is being dominated by disinformation and leaks.In one clear-eyed sentence Jonathan Ashworth may just have summed up how voters are thinking in the last days of the U.K. election campaign: "They don't like Johnson, but they can't stand Corbyn and they think Labour's blocked Brexit."No surprises there, you might say. But Ashworth is a senior member of the opposition Labour Party and its spokesman on health. He was referring to the situation on the ground in traditionally Labour-supporting areas where Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to make electoral gains on Thursday. Party loyalists aren't supposed to use words like "abysmal."In a withering analysis of his own side's prospects, recorded and passed to the pro-Tory website Guido Fawkes, Ashworth was blunt: "It's dire for the Labour party up there, in these traditional areas."Ashworthtried to dismiss the recordings as "banter" with a Conservative friend. But after Boris Johnson's tough Monday, which saw him upbraided over an image of a four-year-old boy being treated on the floor of a crowded hospital, the Ashworth recordings put the focus back on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The tapes are just the latest leak to define the campaign. For all the pages of policy plans published in party manifestos, the final days of the race are being characterized by fake punches, internet hoaxes, leaked documents and deceptive social media advertisements. This afternoon, YouGov's polling director warned of a fake poll being shared online. The internet lit up overnight with accusations that the photograph of Jack Williment-Barr on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary was faked in order to smear Johnson and his Conservatives. That theory was seen and spread by thousands of social media users before it was effectively debunked. With little more than 24 hours before campaigning stops and voting begins, few with a stake in the fight are ready to back down quite yet.Today's Must-ReadsHedge funds are turning to political experts rather than corporate executives ahead of the election — a marked change from traditional investment strategies, Bloomberg's Ksenia Galouchko and Charlotte Ryan report. Win or lose on Thursday, the hard left has successfully secured its place in the Labour party, Matthew d'Ancona writes for Tortoise. The choice between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn is simply turning into an unpopularity contest, Rachel Sylvester writes in the Times.Brexit in BriefWhat We're Watching | Pollster YouGov will publish its updated "MRP model" at 10 p.m. this evening. The survey of 100,000 voters is expected to give an indication of how the election campaign has developed on a seat-by-seat basis. The last MRP poll, published two weeks ago, projected a Conservative majority of 68. Nothing to See | The U.K. economy unexpectedly stagnated in October, marking three straight months without growth for the first time since 2009.Votes for Equality | Mandu Reid, leader of the Women's Equality Party, spoke to Bloomberg QuickTake about why and how her party is fighting for a fairer deal for women in the general election.Shy Lib Dems? | The Liberal Democrats might not be having a storming campaign, but is their impact being underestimated? The party's Brexit spokesman Tom Brake joined Caroline Hepker and Sebastian Salek on Bloomberg Westminster earlier today, and insisted that national polls aren't picking up on grassroots support for the party. Stunts Matter | It's been a busy 24 hours in quirky campaign videos, too. After Corbyn read "mean tweets" about himself while sat next to a roaring fire (1.8 million views on Twitter), Boris Johnson re-enacted a famous scene from the Richard Curtis movie "Love, Actually" (2.1 million views). This afternoon, Johnson has driven a "Get Brexit Done" bulldozer through a wall branded "Gridlock." Don't say this election is subtle.Want to keep up with Brexit?You can follow us @Brexit on Twitter, and listen to Bloomberg Westminster every weekday. It's live at midday on Bloomberg Radio and is available as a podcast too. Share the Brexit Bulletin: Colleagues, friends and family can sign up here. For full EU coverage, try the Brussels Edition.For even more: Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access for our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.To contact the author of this story: Adam Blenford in London at ablenford@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Israel says defense officials caught in major bribery case Posted: 10 Dec 2019 08:22 AM PST ![Israel says defense officials caught in major bribery case]( "Israel says defense officials caught in major bribery case") Israel's Justice Ministry said Tuesday it plans to prosecute suspects involved in a "serious corruption affair" in one of the country's defense bodies. Most details of the case, including the names of the suspects, were unavailable because of a gag order. The suspects are to be charged with bribery, fraud, breach of trust and money laundering, among others offenses, pending a hearing.
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| Ready for prisoner swaps, Iran says US holding 20 Iranians Posted: 10 Dec 2019 07:53 AM PST  Iran said American authorities are holding about 20 Iranian nationals in jail, its official news agency reported Tuesday, a day after Tehran said it was ready for more prisoner swaps with the U.S. A prisoner exchange over the weekend saw Iran free a Chinese-American scholar from Princeton who had been held for three years on widely criticized espionage charges. It was seen as a rare diplomatic breakthrough between Tehran and Washington after months of tensions.
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| Despite Talks, Putin Takes Hard Line Over Ukraine Border Control Posted: 10 Dec 2019 07:39 AM PST ![Despite Talks, Putin Takes Hard Line Over Ukraine Border Control]( "Despite Talks, Putin Takes Hard Line Over Ukraine Border Control") (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said returning control of Ukraine's eastern border to Ukrainian forces could lead to a genocide similar to the massacre in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war."The Ukrainian side is always raising the issue: 'Give us the opportunity to close the border with troops.' Well I can imagine what will happen then. It will be another Srebrenica," Putin told a meeting of his Kremlin human rights council on Tuesday.Putin questioned whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has control over nationalist forces in the country, saying "It's not clear who of them is stronger and what will happen and who will control these nationalists when they enter these territories without ensuring guarantees for people."His remarks show little sign that Putin is softening his position a day after he had his first face-to-face meeting with Zelenskiy to try to resolve the conflict that's killed more than 13,000 people in eastern Ukraine since 2014. Zelenskiy made clear at the talks in Paris that Ukraine must regain control of its eastern border before elections can take place in the disputed region as part of a peace accord. Putin said the elections must come first.Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 men and boys in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, which had been declared a United Nations safe area. The UN called the slaughter the largest such crime on European soil since the end of World War II. Russia, an ally of the Serbs during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, vetoed a 2015 resolution at the UN Security Council that condemned the Srebrenica killings as genocide.To contact the reporter on this story: Irina Reznik in Moscow at ireznik@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony HalpinFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Trump, Obama advisers say Russia, Iran remain threats to US Posted: 10 Dec 2019 07:23 AM PST  Russia's challenge to NATO and democratic nations, as well as Iran's influence on the wider Middle East, remain two of the top threats to world peace, two former White House advisers to presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump said Tuesday. The comments by the two former Marine generals, ex-Trump chief of staff John Kelly and Obama national security adviser Jim Jones, mirrored those a day earlier by former Vice President Dick Cheney in Dubai.
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| Erdogan names Trump, Putin among leaders whom he admires Posted: 10 Dec 2019 07:17 AM PST ![Erdogan names Trump, Putin among leaders whom he admires]( "Erdogan names Trump, Putin among leaders whom he admires") Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday named U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Qatar's Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani as the leaders whom he most admires. In a Q&A with university students, Erdogan said he struggles to name a current inspirational leader from Europe. "When we look at Europe, there is a serious leadership crisis, a leadership vacuum," Erdogan said.
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| The Trump Administration Denies that It's Fighting Iran in Yemen Posted: 10 Dec 2019 07:09 AM PST  Donald Trump said that he needed to help Saudi Arabia fight Iran in Yemen. Now his administration is downplaying Iran's connections to the Houthi rebels.
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| Peace groups protest Saudi ship in Spanish port Posted: 10 Dec 2019 06:49 AM PST ![Peace groups protest Saudi ship in Spanish port]( "Peace groups protest Saudi ship in Spanish port") Spanish arms control groups staged a protest Tuesday against the presence of a Saudi cargo ship they suspect is carrying weapons for use in Yemen. The Control Arms Coalition of human rights and aid groups staged a small protest at the port and called on the Spanish government to prohibit the transit and loading in Spain of any weapons likely to be used to commit war crimes. Amnesty International, a member of the group, says the ship has carried weapons, mostly military aircraft components, on eight voyages from the United States to Saudi Arabia.
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| Erdogan says Turkey could send troops to Libya if requested Posted: 10 Dec 2019 06:15 AM PST  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey could deploy troops in Libya, if the U.N.-supported government in Tripoli were to request such support. Erdogan's comment came weeks after Turkey signed security and military cooperation agreements, as well as a controversial maritime border agreement, with Libya's Tripoli-based government.
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| Europe Readies World’s Cleanest Revamp of Economy in Green Deal Posted: 10 Dec 2019 06:10 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Europe is set to stake its economic future on an environmental clean-up that will overhaul the way the world's biggest single market polices businesses and manages trade relations.The new order to be outlined by the European Union on Wednesday in Brussels will center on a goal to eliminate by mid-century the bloc's net discharges of greenhouse gases. Such pollutants cause the more frequent heatwaves, storms and floods tied to climate change.Under the "Green Deal" being presented by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen less than two weeks after she took office, the EU transition to climate neutrality would start next year and involve: stricter emission limits for industries from cars to chemicals; revamped energy taxes; new rules on subsidies for companies; greener farming; and a possible environmental import tax. Everything from finance to the design of cities would need to become more sustainable."The message is: Europe is prepared to put its money where its mouth is," said Peter Vis, a former top EU climate official who is now a senior adviser at Rud Pedersen Public Affairs in Brussels. "The commission is putting the green transition upfront as Europe's new growth strategy. That is new. That is significant."As it seeks to create an environmental profit motive for businesses across the board, the EU also aims to spur action worldwide and uphold the landmark Paris Agreement to fight global warming. The U.S. has turned its back on the accord and other major emitters, including China, India and Japan, have so far failed to translate their Paris pledges into the necessary domestic actions.While von der Leyen's package will pave the way for months of lobbying and political fighting over a slew of underlying draft laws still in the works, the EU policymaking establishment is confident it has support on the street. Climate protection has risen on the EU agenda as people's concerns about the risks of failing to act have grown, with 93% of Europeans regarding global warming as a serious problem.For von der Leyen, the first woman to the lead the Brussels-based commission, the 28-nation EU's executive arm, the Green Deal helped ensure she was approved for the job earlier this year by a fragmented European Parliament. The assembly's political groups, which differ on everything from data protection to migration, largely united behind her environmental program.Following a debt crisis that almost shattered the euro, a Middle East migration wave that rattled governments and a populist uprising that helped propel Brexit, the grand plan to green the economy may be seen as a way to "give new purpose and unity to the EU," Jonathan Gaventa at environmental think tank E3G wrote in a research note.The first actual step on the road to net-zero emissions will be a proposal due in February to enshrine the 2050 climate-neutrality goal in European law and make it irreversible, according to an EU document seen by Bloomberg.The climate neutrality target may get the political green light from EU government heads when they meet this Thursday and Friday in the Belgian capital. In a bid to avert a veto by a group of eastern European countries led by Poland, which relies on high-polluting coal for energy, the commission intends to propose a 100 billion-euro ($111 billion) tool to help finance the economic transition in the most affected regions. Warsaw has estimated the shift would cost Poland more than 500 billion euros until 2050.Legislative FrenzyThe EU government heads have a political incentive on the global front to weigh in this week, when talks are wrapping up at a high-level United Nations climate conference in Madrid."An EU agreement on climate neutrality would encourage competition for ambition worldwide," said Isabella Alloisio, a researcher at the Florence School of Regulation, part of the European University Institute.In the ensuing months, the Green Deal legislative frenzy will include a plan to tighten the EU emissions-reduction target for 2030 from the current 40% to 50% or even 55%, compared with 1990 levels.Much more will follow in 2021, when draft laws are due to upgrade Europe's goals for deriving energy from renewable sources and improving energy efficiency. That's the timetable too for proposals to revise European energy taxation, widen the EU cap-and-trade market for pollution permits (covering power plants, factories and airlines) to include shipping, and reduce the number of free carbon-dioxide-emission allowances that carriers receive.The year after next is also when the commission aims to propose an environmental import tax -- one of the most controversial ideas. The so-called carbon border adjustment mechanism would seek to ensure that European manufacturers have a level playing field with competitors based in countries without emission curbs.With global supply chains crossing multiple countries, designing a European carbon tariff in line with World Trade Organization rules will be tricky. And given the reservations in numerous EU capitals about the idea, the ultimate result may well be other, less controversial, moves to protect domestic businesses from lower-cost producers abroad."A key challenge for Europe will be to manage and develop its trade relationships to secure and incentivize the transition to a zero-carbon economy, while not creating unnecessary confrontations with other economies," the European Corporate Leaders Group said.While the commission will draft all the rules to bring the Green Deal to life, they will require the support of EU governments and the bloc's assembly. Expect every word and coma to be analyzed by national governments, parliamentarians, companies, industry lobbies and environmental activists. In that context, Europe's challenge has only just begun.To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net;Ewa Krukowska in Brussels at ekrukowska@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, ;Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Nikos ChrysolorasFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| US, Saudi rank bottom of climate class: report Posted: 10 Dec 2019 06:06 AM PST  The United States and Saudi Arabia are among major polluters showing "hardly any signs" of reducing their greenhouse gas production, a global assessment of countries' emissions trajectories said Tuesday at United Nations climate talks. The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) measures the emissions, renewable energy share and climate policies of 57 countries and the European Union. It found the US ranks last, followed by Saudi Arabia and Australia, although several countries did report falls in emissions last year, largely due to an industry-wide fade out of coal.
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| Taliban abduct 45 people from gov't employee's funeral Posted: 10 Dec 2019 05:49 AM PST ![Taliban abduct 45 people from gov't employee's funeral]( "Taliban abduct 45 people from gov't employee's funeral") The Taliban abducted as many as 45 elderly family members of a late Afghan government employee who were attending his funeral, officials said Tuesday. The Taliban singled out the old men from a funeral procession carrying the deceased employee's coffin to a graveyard, according to interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi. The Taliban have consistently warned people not to attend the funerals of anyone working with the Kabul government, according to Payghambarpul Khuram, the head of intelligence in Jawzjan province, where the kidnappings took place.
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| Nobel winner Abiy says 'hell' of war fueled desire for peace Posted: 10 Dec 2019 05:30 AM PST  The winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize says his horrifying experiences as a young Ethiopian soldier fueled his determination to seek an end to the long conflict with a neighboring country. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed spoke at Oslo City Hall during the ceremony in Norway's capital where he received his Nobel on Tuesday. Abiy won the prize, in part, for making peace with Eritrea after one of Africa's longest-running conflicts.
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| 2019's most notable quotes included Trump's Ukraine call, a Biden gaffe, and more Posted: 10 Dec 2019 05:05 AM PST ![2019's most notable quotes included Trump's Ukraine call, a Biden gaffe, and more]( "2019's most notable quotes included Trump's Ukraine call, a Biden gaffe, and more") President Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Avengers: Endgame produced some of 2019's most notable quotes, according to the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. Yale Law School's Fred Shapiro each year compiles a list of most notable quotes as an update to his book first published in 2006. Topping Shapiro's list for 2019, per The Associated Press, is "I would like you to do us a favor, though," said by Trump on his phone call with Ukraine's president that led to the impeachment inquiry.A quote delivered by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate change activist who spoke at the United Nations in September, came in at number two, reading in part, "How dare you!" Number three was the closing statement of the late Rep. Elijah Cummings during the congressional testimony of Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen."When we're dancing with the angels, the question will be asked: 'In 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?'" Cummings said. "'Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing?'"At number four is British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's declaration that he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than ask for another Brexit delay (which he ultimately did), while number five is Britain's Supreme Court's finding that Johnson's suspension of Parliament was "unlawful."Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's statement that he "would have said so" if he was confident Trump "clearly did not commit a crime" was number six, while "I have a plan for that" from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was number seven. Another 2020 Democrat's quote occupies number eight: Biden's gaffe, "Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids."Finally, the list's last two quotes are Emma Watson's description of herself as "self-partnered," and the memorable line from Avengers: Endgame first said by Tony Stark's daughter: "I love you 3000." Read the full quotes at The Associated Press.More stories from theweek.com Trump's pathological obsession with being laughed at The most important day of the impeachment inquiry Jerry Falwell Jr.'s false gospel of memes
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