| Iowa teens delighted as Greta Thunberg leads unexpected climate strike Posted: 04 Oct 2019 04:17 PM PDT  More than 3,000 people gathered in the shadow of the University of Iowa on Friday afternoon to hear Thunberg speakClimate change teen activist Greta Thunberg joins a climate strike march in Iowa City. Photograph: Daniel Acker/ReutersThree days prior to Greta Thunberg's surprise visit to Iowa City on Friday, the organizer and local climate activist, Massimo Biggers, a 14-year-old Iowa City high school student, was preparing to strike – as he has done every Friday, sometimes on his own, since the Global Climate Strike day Thunberg inspired on 15 March.Out of the blue, a message arrived from the Swedish teen activist, with whom he had been in touch, asking him if he was planning to strike again this Friday. "Of course!" he replied, and for the last 48 hours, according to his father, Jeff, neither had slept. "This was truly a miracle to have the town pull this together," he said.More than 3,000 people gathered at short notice in the shadow of the University of Iowa on Friday afternoon to hear Thunberg speak.Attendees participate in a climate strike rally with climate change environmental teen activist Greta Thunberg, in Iowa City, Iowa. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Reuters"Wow" said Thunberg, squinting in the sun, as the crowd chanted her name. "It's just so many people I don't think any of us expected this many people. This is real hope, so many people gathering on a weekday at such short notice. This is real hope to me," she said.Biggers has spent the last six months mobilizing fellow students to pressure the city council into adopting more stringent measures to address climate change."At the time our specific goal was to get the school board to pass a climate resolution," he said in an interview with the Guardian. "But then it was pretty easy to get the school board to get a climate resolution so we went to the city council and now we're trying to get the coal fired [power] plant shut down," he added.The University of Iowa burns coal at its power plant, providing a clear target for the young activists who lead the crowd in regular chants of "End Coal Now!""To be part of a global movement and especially at this stage, it's just an amazing, amazing opportunity to see a global leader," said Abbey Jordahl, a freshman at UI from Ankeny, Iowa. "Honestly I couldn't believe it when I read that Greta was coming here, I was like … Iowa City?! What?! I've been following her for a while, honestly I can't believe I'm here!"Activist Greta Thunberg joins a climate strike march in Iowa City. Photograph: Daniel Acker/ReutersThunberg rallied an enthusiastic, young crowd, flush with high school and university students, many of whom had made their own signs to greet her. "Right now the world leaders keep acting like children and somebody needs to be the adult in the room," she said, referencing her speech at the United Nations in New York the previous week.Thunberg said afterwards that she doesn't like being the centre of attention. "It's very hard to get used to," she admitted, "but it's something I have to do and I can't really complain. I just kind of shut off the brain," she said.Explaining why she believes she is now on the receiving end of criticism from world leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, she suggested: "They do it because they see something that is threatening and they want to silence that and if they don't have anything else to say, if they can't criticize the science, which is all we are saying, then they start attacking us personally and sending threats and hate and so on so maybe they can't cope with it."It could definitely be they feel threatened by a new generation," she added "There is a lot of young people especially young girls in this movement who are leading and maybe they don't like that, I don't know!"Claire Carlson, a senior studying geoscience, environmental science and business at UI from Ottumwa had joined friends from the Environmental Science Club at the rally. "Its nice to finally see a large group of people come together and address the problem," she said. "I think Greta's done a really good job of bringing a voice to that especially at a really young age. I think it means that more people are starting to understand the need for impactful legislation with regards to climate change."More than 3,000 people gathered in the shadow of the University of Iowa on Friday afternoon to hear Thunberg speak. Photograph: Daniel Acker/ReutersCarlson, like her friend Emma Hartke, will be able to caucus next February for a Democratic candidate. "I think Elizabeth Warren has a really good plan for climate change," said Hartke. Carlson favours the young mayor from South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, but Warren is the name on most people's lips when asked which way they're currently leaning."There are still some centrists who like to play both sides on climate … such as Joe Biden," said Derek Torres who has moved to Iowa City from Atlanta. "They always speak in terms of jobs … but if there's no air or water there's no jobs," he reasoned.Thunberg has become adept at using Twitter to spread her message, but does she enjoy using it? "Yes and no," she said. "A lot of it is just meaningless. And people wanting to brag about themselves or whatever, lots of hate, trolls, anonymous people who have separate accounts." But she admitted she does enjoy updating her tagline. "You need to have fun as well," she joked.
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| Thousands rally against Haitian president, clash with police Posted: 04 Oct 2019 04:13 PM PDT  PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Thousands of protesters marched through the Haitian capital to the U.N. headquarters Friday in one of the largest demonstrations in a weekslong push to oust embattled President Jovenel Moïse. Carlos Dorestant, a 22-year-old motorcycle driver, said he saw the man next to him shot, apparently by police, as protesters dismantled a barrier near the U.N. office. "Trump give Haiti one chance" read one, while another quoted a tweet by presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
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| UN investigator: Myanmar is not safe for Rohingyas to return Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:25 PM PDT ![UN investigator: Myanmar is not safe for Rohingyas to return]( "UN investigator: Myanmar is not safe for Rohingyas to return") The U.N.'s independent investigator on Myanmar says it's not safe for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to return because Myanmar has failed to dismantle its "system of persecution" of Rohingyas. "While this situation persists, it is not safe or sustainable for refugees to return," said the U.N. special rapporteur appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
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| Microsoft Says Iran Tried Hack of U.S. Presidential Campaign Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:15 PM PDT ![Microsoft Says Iran Tried Hack of U.S. Presidential Campaign]( "Microsoft Says Iran Tried Hack of U.S. Presidential Campaign") (Bloomberg) -- An Iranian-government linked group of computer hackers tried to infiltrate email accounts of a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former U.S. officials and journalists, among others, Microsoft Corp. said.Four accounts, though none connected to the unnamed presidential campaign or the current and former U.S. government officials, were "compromised" by the group, called Phosphorus, Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president for customer security & trust, said Friday in a blog post.The attacks took place "in a 30-day period between August and September," Burt said in the post. Phosphorous made "more than 2,700 attempts to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers and then attack 241 of those accounts," he said. "The targeted accounts are associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran."Microsoft's announcement comes as the presidential campaign heats up amid concerns the 2020 election faces the same dangers as the Russian hacking and social-media effort in 2016."While the attacks we're disclosing today were not technically sophisticated, they attempted to use a significant amount of personal information both to identify the accounts belonging to their intended targets and in a few cases to attempt attacks," Burt said in the post. "This effort suggests Phosphorous is highly motivated and willing to invest significant time and resources engaging in research and other means of information gathering."Reuters and the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump's re-election campaign was targeted in an attack by Iranian hackers, citing people familiar with the issue. "We have no indication that any of our campaign infrastructure was targeted," Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, said in a statement to Bloomberg.Cyber-attacks during the 2016 election included the targeting of personal email. It's unclear if the "consumer email accounts," highlighted by Microsoft are personal or official campaign accounts that would be considered part of a campaign's infrastructure.Spokesmen for the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders declined to comment. The campaign of Democrat Kamala Harris has "no indication" it was the organization referenced by Microsoft, Ian Sams, a campaign spokesman, said. Other major presidential campaigns couldn't immediately be reached for comment.The Democratic National Committee received an alert about the cyber-attack from Microsoft and warned the campaigns of its presidential candidates, according to an email obtained by Bloomberg News. "As always, please be sure everyone in the organization has completed the DNC Device and Account Security Checklist and that your organization is incorporating our top 10 list for running an effective security program," the committee wrote in its email.The campaigns were asked to tell the DNC if they "have seen any trace of this actor" so the committee could track investigations into the hack.The Phosphorous group has previously targeted dissidents, activists, the defense industry, journalists and government employees in the U.S. and Middle East, according to Microsoft. The company announced in March it had taken successful court action against Phosphorous and seized 99 websites from the hackers, preventing them from using the pages for cyber-operations.Cybersecurity company FireEye Inc. has seen a spike in Phosphorous activity in the U.S. and Middle East since the summer, said John Hultquist, the company's director of intelligence and analysis."While we suspect that a lot of this activity is about collecting intelligence, Iran has a history of carrying out destructive attacks," Hultquist said. Phosphorous, known by FireEye as APT 35, is "one of a handful of Iranian actors that we've seen actively carrying out large scale, noisy intrusion attempts," which have taken place in countries including the U.S., Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, he said.In July, Microsoft announced it had countered almost 10,000 hacks globally stemming from state-sponsored attacks in the previous 12 months. The effort included hundreds of attacks on democracy-focused groups, particularly non-governmental organizations and think tanks, which were mostly based in the U.S., the company said.Later that month, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported that Russia engaged in "extensive" efforts to manipulate elections systems throughout the U.S. from 2014 through "at least 2017." And a Trump administration official said in June that Russia, China, and Iran are already trying to manipulate U.S. public opinion before 2020.(Updates with comments from Trump campaign in the sixth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Dina Bass, Tyler Pager, Sahil Kapur and Emma Kinery.To contact the reporter on this story: Alyza Sebenius in Washington at asebenius@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Martin at amartin146@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack, Molly SchuetzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Microsoft says Iran hackers targeted US presidential campaign Posted: 04 Oct 2019 01:20 PM PDT  Microsoft on Friday said a hacker group linked to Iran unleashed cyber attacks on US journalists, government officials and accounts associated with a US presidential campaign. Only four accounts were compromised as a result of the "significant cyber activity of the threat group," Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president of computer security and trust, said in an online post. A group Microsoft dubbed "Phosphorous" tried to identify email accounts of targets that included US officials, journalists covering global politics, prominent Iranians living outside that country, and a presidential campaign, according to Burt.
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| US, Turkey conduct northeast Syria patrol amid new concerns Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:50 PM PDT  The U.S.-led coalition and Turkey conducted Friday their third joint patrol in northeastern Syria amid renewed concerns the plan designed to defuse tensions between Washington's two allies — Ankara and the Syrian Kurds— may not be enough. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar reiterated Ankara's stance that it won't accept delays in the creation of what it calls a "safe zone." Turkey could act alone to set it up, he said, reviving concerns about a possible Turkish military operation. A senior Syrian Kurdish official said her group is taking the renewed Turkish threats seriously and called for measures to prevent an attack and the collapse of the agreement.
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| Iran claims 'victory' after bank compensated by Britain Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:42 PM PDT  Iran claimed a "victory" on Friday after one of its banks received compensation from British authorities over "illegal" sanctions. According to the UK daily The Times, London paid Bank Mellat "1.25 billion pounds sterling ($1.54 million) with interest". The settlement was announced on Twitter by Tehran's ambassador to London Hamid Baeidinejad.
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| Arcuri Vows Not to Bring Down Boris Johnson in Tabloid Furor Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:38 PM PDT ![Arcuri Vows Not to Bring Down Boris Johnson in Tabloid Furor]( "Arcuri Vows Not to Bring Down Boris Johnson in Tabloid Furor") (Bloomberg) -- Jennifer Arcuri, the American entrepreneur swept up in a tabloid storm involving Boris Johnson, said Friday that she won't discuss her relationship with the British premier but remains loyal to the man she calls a "good friend."In a telephone interview with Bloomberg News, the first she's granted since the story broke two weeks ago, Arcuri said members of the news media have besieged her house in Huntington Beach, California, and followed her on errands to the supermarket and the ATM.They're all asking the same question: Did she have an affair with Johnson between 2012 and 2016, when he was the mayor of London and she was an impresario in the London startup scene?Arcuri, by turns defiant and anxious in a one-hour interview, declined to confirm or deny that question and said the public had made up its mind anyway. The British media has reported the then-married mayor made visits to her flat in Shoreditch, a London neighborhood of tech startups, but no proof has emerged she was involved in an intimate relationship with Johnson.Arcuri said she didn't want to "feed the story" by describing her relationship with Johnson, yet she's mortified at the damage the scandal is doing to his political fortunes as the U.K. hurtles toward Brexit on Oct. 31."I will not be the person to bring Boris Johnson down," Arcuri, 34, said. "I refuse to be a pawn."For the last few days, Arcuri said she's been inundated with five-digit offers from British television programs and tabloids eager to land a bombshell interview that would shed light on her connection with Johnson.InquiriesOn Sept. 22, the Sunday Times of London reported that Johnson may have used his influence to get two of Arcuri's companies, Innotech Network Ltd. and Hacker House Ltd., economic development grants from the city and places on trade missions overseas. Officials have begun three inquiries into the grants made to her firms, including a police investigation referred by the Greater London Authority.Johnson has denied giving Arcuri and her companies any favorable treatment and has said that he acted "with full propriety." While Arcuri said Johnson's participation in her startup conferences gave her business a huge boost she also denies any wrongdoing."I know in my heart of hearts that Boris didn't do me any favors," she said. "I am a determined businesswoman and I was within my rights to go on those trade missions and apply for grants. I'm not some Tory girl. And my relationship with Boris is nobody's business."To contact the reporter on this story: Edward Robinson in London at edrobinson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, James Ludden, Howard Chua-EoanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Email Leak Exposes Trump Tower Russian’s Dirty Lobbying Operations Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:12 PM PDT  Dmitry Serebryakov/APLONDON—The identity of the U.S. government's star witness in a high-profile trial—who subsequently fell out of a fifth-story Moscow window—was compromised in the course of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign run by Natalia Veselnitskaya, according to leaked emails.The Russian lawyer who took part in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with senior Trump campaign officials was part of a secretive campaign on American soil that—according to the emails—may also have involved contempt of court and the violation of lobbying laws. She already has been indicted by the Southern District of New York on obstruction of justice charges.A cache of emails obtained by the Dossier Center, which is a Russian opposition organization based in London, exposes the depth of foreign asset entanglement in Trump's America at the precise moment that the president's dealings with Ukrainian officials threaten to pull the Department of Justice and State Department into an unseemly impeachment fight. The leaked emails offer an unprecedented look into the cynical world of Russia's remorseless influence campaign within the U.S. Veselnitskaya was representing a company called Prevezon, which was facing an American trial over a $230 million fraud that began in Russia and implicated the Russian authorities. An American law firm that had been working for Prevezon at the direction of Veselnitskaya was barred from the case by an extremely rare writ of mandamus handed down by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals because of conflict of interest with a former client. Emails suggest BakerHostetler, a major U.S. law firm that has also worked for The Daily Beast and its parent company, IAC, continued to operate as a kind of shadow counsel in what would have been a clear breach of the court order.Other emails suggest another court order was violated when the testimony given by a Russian witness leaked, endangering his life before he was due to return to New York to give evidence at the trial.It was later reported in the Russian media that the witness—Nikolai Gorokhov—had fallen five floors from an apartment building in Moscow. He survived with a fractured skull. He said his fall was no accident, but could not remember exactly what happened.Cristy Phillips, a former U.S. government prosecutor with the Southern District of New York (SDNY) who worked on the case, said she fears that the emails shared with The Daily Beast indicate deep corruption hidden within the American legal system."The integrity of our judicial system depends on lawyers upholding their obligations as officers of the court. Most fundamentally, if a court issues an order, lawyers have to follow it and make sure that others on their side follow it. There were numerous senior lawyers on these emails and they all clearly violated a Second Circuit court order. And these were not inexperienced lawyers, several of them are former Department of Justice attorneys," she told The Daily Beast."We're talking about a case where witnesses had died and other witnesses' lives and safety had been threatened. These were not low-stakes decisions."* * *A WITNESS AT RISK* * *The cache of emails that detail Veselnitskaya's legal campaign and lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., were shared with The Daily Beast by the Dossier Center, which is funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of Putin's most prominent exiled critics.The emails cannot be independently verified by The Daily Beast via a digital signature, but elements contained within them including cellphone numbers, bank details, planning, email addresses, and hearing dates can be confirmed by cross-checking with subsequent court papers, lobbyist filings, and other reporting.Emails from the same leak led to an indictment against Veselnitskaya, who has known Kremlin links, that was filed by prosecutors from the SDNY earlier this year. U.S. government officials obtained the emails—first published by the Dossier Center and NBC News—that suggest that Veselnitskaya conspired directly with Russian officials to mislead an American court.Line Between Trump Tower Meet Lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya and Moscow Gets Even BlurrierWhen Veselnitskaya was confronted with some of the Dossier Center emails on camera by NBC News, she confirmed that she recognized some of the documents. She later told Russia's Interfax news agency that her emails had been hacked.New emails from the same cache, which includes messages from and to Veselnitskaya and her aide and translator Murat Glashev, shed light on Veselnitskaya's lobbying and legal campaign against the Magnitsky Act and appear to suggest that it may have been carried out in breach of another U.S. law and court orders.Some of the emails suggest the breaking of an order put in place by a New York court to protect the identity of Gorokhov, a Russian witness who testified in a sealed deposition. His evidence was hidden amid fears of reprisals back home.According to the Dossier Center leak, Veselnitskaya's lawyer, Mark Cymrot, wrote a series of emails concerned that his Russian client may have allowed details of Gorokhov's testimony to be passed on after she was granted access to the testimony under U.S. discovery laws—but only under tight restrictions.The emails suggest Gorokhov's secret deposition was leaked to Andrei Nekrasov, a Russian filmmaker who was making a pro-Kremlin movie against the Magnitsky Act at the time.According to an email dated April 17, 2016, Cymrot says to Veselnitskaya: "[Nekrasov] was using part of Gorokhov's deposition and separately he said we showed him non-public information… we are under court order to keep [Gorokhov's] deposition and name confidential."Nekrasov told The Daily Beast that he does not have this material in his possession. "Neither Mark nor myself have done anything illegal, or just wrong, professionally or morally," he said. "I do not recall anyone sharing any confidential material from that case with me."Cymrot did not answer detailed questions put to him by The Daily Beast.Preet Bharara, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York at the time, was so concerned about Gorokhov's safety that he submitted a letter to the judge under seal in October 2015, requesting additional measures to protect him. Bharara informed the court that "Mr. Gorokhov and his family are temporarily staying in the United States due to well-founded concerns that they could be endangered by individuals in Russia seeking to prevent Mr. Gorokhov from testifying.""It's totally unacceptable that that information got out," Phillips said. "It is on the record that the government took extraordinary measures to protect him. But at the end of the day, we could only protect him insofar as the defense respected the court order that said the information was highly confidential and should be shared with no one." It is not suggested that any leaked information from the case led to Gorokhov's fall. The civil forfeiture case in question concerned allegations of money laundering by a company called Prevezon, which was accused by American prosecutors of disposing of some of the proceeds of a $230 million fraud in Russia. The defendant, Prevezon, eventually settled the case, agreeing to pay $5.9 million, which it has yet to disburse.The alleged fraud took on major geopolitical significance after the lawyer who uncovered it, Sergei Magnitsky, died in Russian custody amid allegations that the Russian state and its criminal accomplices had tried to cover it up. The Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned the individuals involved, was named in his honor after former client and fraud victim Bill Browder, a U.S.-born hedge-fund CEO, launched a global campaign for justice.* * *"THE ADOPTION ISSUE"* * *The emails also reveal new details about Veselnitskaya's efforts to have America's Magnitsky sanctions overturned on behalf of Moscow. The sanctions in question were targeted against corrupt Russian officials by the Magnitsky Act, which had infuriated President Vladimir Putin.In retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2012, Putin banned American adoptions of Russian babies. It was supposedly to discuss the "adoption issue" that Veselnitskaya met in Trump Tower with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort, who was chairman of Trump's presidential campaign at the time.Overturning the Magnitsky Act was one of Putin's top foreign-policy goals at the time, and spawned an extensive lobbying and public-relations effort.Leaked emails between Veselnitskaya and her American lawyers raise a number of potential legal issues in their campaign.BakerHostetler, a major firm that represents Major League Baseball and was briefly hired by House Republicans to sue President Barack Obama, never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to cover the work for Veselnitskaya and Prevezon. FARA registration is required to operate on behalf of foreign principals and a leading lobbying expert said the emails appeared to show that Baker did provide strategic and communications advice to Veselnitskaya and her employer, Denis Katsyv, who owns Prevezon.Russian Official Linked to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Trump Tower Lawyer, Is DeadOn May 30, 2016, an email suggests Cymrot wrote to Veselnitskaya to prepare for an upcoming congressional hearing at which she would give evidence. "Do you want us to prepare your written statement or at least the first draft? We also should prepare you for the questions."After the hearing, which took place in June 2016 during the trip to the United States when Veselnitskaya went to Trump Tower, Cymrot reached out again, according to a leaked email, to say that one of his colleagues had written a draft of Veselnitskaya's supplementary evidence to the committee. According to a leaked email dated July 27, he followed up to say that he had made some edits personally, and could deliver the document to Congress on her behalf."Here you have multiple pieces of evidence that would seem to trigger registration under FARA," said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reforms at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that scrutinizes campaign finance and ethics. "These emails and documents certainly raise serious questions about whether Cymrot and BakerHostetler violated FARA by failing to register."BakerHostetler declined to comment.Another part of the lobbying effort included an attempt to recruit Sen. Jeff Sessions, according to the leaked emails. Sessions had become the first senior Republican to formally endorse Donald Trump in the presidential race in February 2016. He would go on to be named U.S. attorney general once Trump was elected.Rinat Ahkmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer and Washington lobbyist, boasted that he had recruited the Alabama senator to launch an investigation into U.S. sanctions against Russia, according to a leaked email from Cymrot.Akhmetshin reportedly was hired by Prevezon before he started to get paid by an ostensible human-rights NGO, which BakerHostetler and Akhmetshin helped to set up.* * *THE JEFF SESSIONS CLAIM* * *The leaked emails suggest Cymrot wrote to Veselnitskaya on April 17, 2016, to outline their progress: "Rinat has told us that Senator Jeff Sessions is willing to start an investigation into how the Magnitsky Law came about."After denying any 2016 contact with Russian officials during his attorney general confirmation hearing, Sessions admitted that he had failed to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador. His story about whether he discussed the election with Sergei Kislyak changed over the following months but even by October 2017—when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and confirmed his meetings with Kislyak—he was still adamant that he had not discussed the sanctions with anyone. "I don't believe I've ever had any discussion at any time about the Magnitsky Act," he said, under oath.Sessions, who was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, never did publicly call for an investigation into the Magnitsky Act.Sessions' lawyer, Charles Cooper, told The Daily Beast that Sessions "has no recollection of the matters discussed in the emails that you referenced. Nor do any of the people who were the relevant members of his Senate staff in 2016. Neither he nor his Senate staff recall meeting any of the people referenced in the email you sent. And he certainly did not pursue any kind of hearings or other inquiry into the Magnitsky Act, which he cosponsored in 2011."Another arm of the pro-Kremlin lobbying effort was orchestrated by an ostensible NGO called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGIF).At the end of April 2016, emails suggest a BakerHostetler invoice addressed to HRAGIF described professional services at a cost of $111,387.45, including issues relating to the Magnitsky list, which named the sanctioned individuals, for "review and markup materials regarding issues with Magnitsky Act" and "materials for Congressional committee." It also included numerous line items on time spent discussing "lobbying registration requirements" and "review of… FARA requirements," as well as drafting the "certificate of incorporation" to set up HRAGIF in the first place.According to a leaked email dated July 14, 2016, Cymrot wrote to Veselnitskaya to explain the invoices. "Natalia: I am attaching the HRAGIF and Prevezon matter," the email says. "It now contains 5 months of Baker time, which is largely support for the public relations effort.""It seems that the purpose in creating this nonprofit was to avoid registration under FARA, and they would not be the first law firm to try and use that tactic to avoid registration," Fischer, from the Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast. "That's what Manafort did on behalf of the Ukrainian political party and it's also what helped lead to the charges against him because the evidence showed—and he knew—that the beneficiary of his activities was actually the Ukrainian political party not this innocuously named sham nonprofit."Paul Manafort was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on a raft of charges that stemmed from the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in U.S. politics.* * *BROWDER, FOR AND AGAINST* * *Before working with Veselnitskaya for Prevezon, BakerHostetler previously had been engaged by Browder, a major target of Veselnitskaya and the Kremlin. BakerHostetler's John Moscow had signed up in September 2008 to help Browder bring a U.S. prosecution over the $230 million fraud even before Magnitsky was arrested in Russia. He met with the U.S. Department of Justice in December of that year to lay out the entire criminal enterprise.Five years later, by the time the DOJ finally acted against the Russian fraud when the Southern District of New York filed a forfeiture and money-laundering claim against Prevezon in September 2013, BakerHostetler was about to effectively switch sides.In October 2013, John Moscow appeared in court on behalf of Prevezon, having previously advised Browder's Hermitage, the alleged victim of the fraud implicating Prevezon. Crossing over to fight for the other side in a legal battle is not allowed under U.S. law. Browder's lawyers filed a complaint, which would ricochet through the courts for the next three years until the Second Circuit Court of Appeals eventually disqualified BakerHostetler from serving as counsel to Prevezon in October 2016.When handing down the disqualification, the judge explained why BakerHostetler must not be allowed to represent Prevezon after working so closely with Browder, who was now being accused of wrongdoing. "The danger here is not limited to BakerHostetler overtly using confidences in the litigation. There is a risk that BakerHostetler, while not explicitly using confidences, may use such confidences to guide its defense of Prevezon in other ways."Emails apparently sent to and from lawyers at BakerHostetler, however, suggest that the law firm continued to serve Prevezon as a kind of shadow counsel even after the disqualification.Once that ruling had been handed down, leaked emails indicate that in November 2016 Cymrot at BakerHostetler suggested an alternative lawyer who could be hired by Veselnitskaya to work for Prevezon. In an email sent five months later, Cymrot said BakerHostetler had still discussed the case "on a regular basis" and would continue to hold "team" meetings with the new counsel.Despite being disqualified from taking part in the case, the emails suggest BakerHostetler helped draft the settlement with the U.S. government in May 2017 and even acted as a go-between, passing on messages and an invoice from the new lawyer, Mike Hess. Hess did not respond to questions from The Daily Beast. BakerHostetler was asked about this and other allegations, but did not respond.A second new lawyer also joined the team. At the time, Faith Gay was working for Quinn Emanuel, the U.S. law firm that also replaced BakerHostetler in the Republican case against Obama when staff at Baker raised fears that the case was too heavily partisan.Emails indicate that she also continued to work with the disqualified BakerHostetler firm. According to a leaked email dated May 1, 2017, she wrote to Veselnitskaya and her translator colleague Glashev, reassuring them that she was still working closely with BakerHostetler. "The judge removed Baker from the case. We have been trying to talk with them informally as much as possible."Gay declined to comment.When faced with possible disclosure of emails later that year, one of Gay's associates emailed Veselnitskaya on Aug. 16, 2017, raising concerns that, "Disclosure could also result in a question being raised about Baker representing Prevezon's interests well beyond the district court's disqualification of them as Prevezon's counsel."The issue could be particularly sensitive because Prevezon's defense effectively accused Browder of committing the fraud.Former prosecutor Phillips said: "They violated the very essence of the order."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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| Ex-U.N. ambassador Samantha Power not ruling out run for Warren's Senate seat Posted: 04 Oct 2019 11:09 AM PDT ![Ex-U.N. ambassador Samantha Power not ruling out run for Warren's Senate seat]( "Ex-U.N. ambassador Samantha Power not ruling out run for Warren's Senate seat") Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power refused Friday to rule out a run for Elizabeth Warren's Senate seat should the Massachusetts Democrat capture her party's presidential nomination and ascend to the White House. "No, no. I don't think it's a good idea to rule anything out," Power said during an event to promote her new memoir, according to The Boston Globe. Power, a former war correspondent who served on President Barack Obama's National Security Council before becoming U.N. envoy, was an influential voice on matters of foreign policy within the previous administration, including the negotiation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
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| Iranian hackers targeted government officials and a 2020 presidential campaign, Microsoft says Posted: 04 Oct 2019 11:00 AM PDT ![Iranian hackers targeted government officials and a 2020 presidential campaign, Microsoft says]( "Iranian hackers targeted government officials and a 2020 presidential campaign, Microsoft says") Government officials and a 2020 presidential campaign have been targeted by hackers believed to be linked to the Iranian government, Microsoft says.In a blog post Friday, Microsoft revealed that between August and September, a group it refers to as Phosphorous, which "we believe originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government," attempted to hack more 241 email accounts. These accounts are associated with current and former government officials, journalists, prominent Iranians, and a presidential campaign. Microsoft says the attackers attempted to gain access to the accounts partially using information gathered through research, and four accounts were compromised, though these weren't associated with the presidential campaign. "While the attacks we're disclosing today were not technically sophisticated, they attempted to use a significant amount of personal information both to identify the accounts belonging to their intended targets and in a few cases to attempt attacks," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Tom Burt said. "This effort suggests Phosphorous is highly motivated and willing to invest significant time and resources engaging in research and other means of information gathering."The presidential campaign that was targeted was not named in Microsoft's announcement.
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| Hong Kong Imposes Face Mask Ban, Inflaming Protesters Posted: 04 Oct 2019 10:56 AM PDT  Anthony Kwan/GettyHONG KONG—Four months into a citywide uprising, Hong Kong residents have become extremely mindful about leaving digital trails that are sent back to mainland China. Some have zapped WeChat out of their phones. Others have abandoned e-wallets developed by Chinese conglomerates like Alibaba and Tencent. They disable location tracking on their smartphones. Protesters resist visual surveillance and facial recognition by using formations of open umbrellas aimed at cameras and helicopters. In August, some sawed down 20 "smart" lampposts in the city that they believed contained hardware for surveillance technology. Hongkongers who do need to cross the border into Shenzhen for work use burner phones, though many have simply stopped entering mainland China. As protests take place in various districts in the city every few days, anonymity has become a matter of paramount importance.Adopting some elements of black bloc tactics, the city's blackshirt protesters dress identically—black shirt, black pants, black shoes, gas mask, hard hat. Some clutch umbrellas. Many have saline solution to rinse out eyes when tear gas or pepper spray hits. A rare few have power packs and functioning display screens on their backs. Uniform dress is meant to inspire kinship, but more importantly to make it difficult to identify individuals who participate in street clashes or acts of destruction.On Friday, Hong Kong's chief executive Carrie Lam invoked a colonial-era law to give herself emergency powers. Her first edict was to ban face masks, which protesters use to obscure their faces as well as prevent inhalation of tear gas fired by police—now a weekly occurrence across the city. Obscuring one's face in public will carry a jail term of one year and a fine of HKD 25,000 ($3,190).At a press conference, Lam claimed she was not, in fact, declaring a state of emergency. She said, "We must prevent Hong Kong and prevent students from taking things into their own hands, and recover Hong Kong's future."Younger protesters hit the streets every weekend precisely because they have their eyes on the future. If things progress as they have been, with the Chinese Communist Party's influence seeping into every facet of the city gradually, over years, Hongkongers believe their freedoms—of assembly, of speech, of expression, of the press, and more—will be stripped away.Lam's ban on face masks will apply to all public gatherings. A pro-establishment lawmaker, Michael Tien, who refused to endorse Lam's move, said, "Now it's all stick and no carrot." Tien had been urging Lam's administration to offer some concessions to Hongkongers, first by launching an inquiry into the police's use of force.Another lawmaker, Tanya Chan, who leads the pan-democratic bloc, said the mask ban is an excuse for Lam to invoke other emergency powers. These include authorizing arrests, shutting down telecommunications, censoring media, seizing property, and changing or enacting laws if the city falls into an emergency state.Beyond the mask ban, pro-Beijing legislators in the city have toyed with the idea of pushing for a curfew.Presciently, in 2016, Edward Leung, a jailed activist whose slogan "liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time" has become a rallying cry for Hongkongers in the past four months, pointed out that shortly after Ukraine passed legislation banning masks in 2014, the Euromaidan Revolution broke out.Inside Beijing's Toolbox to Crush Hong KongAs word spread that Lam's law will go into effect at midnight, thousands of people left work during lunch time in the central business district—not far from the government headquarters—to clog the streets. They chanted, "Hongkongers, resist!" A few had gas masks with them, but most wore simple surgical masks—in black, to match the color adopted by the protesters who face off with riot police every weekend. Buses, trucks, and cars blocked roads. By nightfall, when subway staff attempted to shutter a station's exit, protesters—younger ones in gas masks and hard hats—pushed the roller gate back up and smashed its controls. By nightfall, students still in their school uniforms had formed human chains to pass supplies to hundreds of frontline protesters who had congregated near government buildings. Crowds continued to gather in neighborhoods across the city, with activists and frontline protesters and Hongkongers still in their attire from a day at the office jamming roads together.Branches of banks from mainland China were set on fire. Some businesses owned by pro-Beijing tycoons were ransacked, though no looting took place. The city's subway system was shut down completely—the first time since protests broke out in June. At least three stations were flooded, while some others had their exits swallowed by flames.If Lam thought a ban on masks would make people stay home, then she severely miscalculated. The day's escalation and damage were spontaneous and loaded with fury, beginning with office workers amassing in the afternoon, with people from all walks of life joining in throughout the day. A little past 11 p.m., one person boosted an excavator and drove it toward a police station, operating it based on an instruction manual that was downloaded from the internet. On live television, in several neighborhoods, some protesters read aloud a prepared statement that declares the establishment of a provisional government for Hong Kong, quoting the Declaration of Independence.As Carrie Lam promised, the law kicked in at midnight despite a frantic judicial review aimed at temporarily suspending the ban on masks. By then, most protesters had dispersed.The uprising in Hong Kong has shifted from anger directed at local officials like Lam to a broader insurrection against the Chinese Communist Party. On Oct. 1, when the People's Republic of China turned 70, a large portrait of Chinese president Xi Jinping was egged for an afternoon by Hongkongers. Captions on printouts of his face read "demon" or "devil." A black banner hung on a footbridge read that Hong Kong stands in solidarity with Tibet and Xinjiang, where an estimated 1.5 million Uyghurs are held in concentration camps. Hongkongers look at the CCP and say it is an organization of "Chinazis." Graffiti here and there read, in Cantonese, "Congratu-fucking-lations" and "We're celebrating the last National Day."It is the 118th consecutive day of protests in Hong Kong. People have adopted dark humor as they make sense of a new reality for the city. Some said Halloween starts tomorrow. Others joked that everyone now has the flu. (In Hong Kong, as well as some other locations in East Asia, it is common for those with flu-like symptoms to don surgical masks in public.)Speaking in Beijing, the spokesman for the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Yang Guang, said the "chaotic situation in Hong Kong cannot continue indefinitely." Yang also insisted that the blackshirt movement is the consequence of foreign powers intervening in Hong Kong—a consistent point of disinformation pushed by the CCP."We're already 'rioters,'" one frontline protester told me Friday, invoking a word that Carrie Lam, the police, Hong Kong's pro-Beijing officials, and the CCP use to describe those who hit the streets. "That's 10 years in prison. What's another year for wearing our gas masks?"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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| Trump promised China US silence on Hong Kong protests during trade talks Posted: 04 Oct 2019 10:32 AM PDT  * US officials banned from supporting pro-democracy protests * CNN reports Trump gave Xi pledge in personal phone callDonald Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka in June. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty ImagesUS officials have been banned from supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, after Donald Trump reportedly promised the US would stay quiet during trade negotiations.Trump gave the undertaking to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in a phone call in June, according to CNN.The report represents the latest revelation about Trump's personal phone calls with foreign leaders, records of which were moved to a highly classified system, and have only started to emerge with the start of impeachment hearings in Congress.As a result of the gag order, the US general counsel in Hong Kong, Kurt Tong, was told to cancel an appearance at a US thinktank and a planned speech on the protests that have shaken the territory for weeks.Asked at the time whether Tong had been gagged because of trade talks, the state department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, dismissed the suggestion as being "based off anonymous reports"."I don't see much truth to that," she said.Tong spoke at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies after he left his post in July and said it was incumbent on the US government to "be frank … and be truthful about how we view the situation on the ground in Hong Kong".Asked about the Hong Kong protests in August, Trump told reporters: "Somebody said that at some point they're going to want to stop that. But that's between Hong Kong and that's between China, because Hong Kong is a part of China. They'll have to deal with that themselves. They don't need advice."Trump has also refrained from commenting on China's internment of over a million Uighur Muslims, despite the fact that his administration has made religious liberty one of its hallmark issues on the international stage.At the United Nations general assembly last month, Trump organised a meeting on the subject in the UN headquarters building, clashing with a global summit on the climate emergency on the same day.In the keynote speech on religious freedom, Trump did not mention China or the Uighurs at all, leaving it to his officials.The assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, David Stilwell, organised an event at the UN on "the human rights crisis in Xinjiang".Asked whether it made it harder to convince other countries to care about the issue when the US president did not mention it, Stilwell said: "Clearly, I don't speak for the president."He noted that Mike Pence and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had mentioned it in their own remarks."I would take it as it was presented, that this Uighur issue is just – it's out there with all the rest of the issues," Stilwell said.US-Chinese trade negotiations are due to resume next week in Washington. Trump referred to the talks this week, when he suggested that Beijing start investigations into the finances of his political opponent, Joe Biden, and the former vice-president's son, Hunter.
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| Iranian hackers targeted 2020 presidential campaign, Microsoft finds Posted: 04 Oct 2019 10:26 AM PDT ![Iranian hackers targeted 2020 presidential campaign, Microsoft finds]( "Iranian hackers targeted 2020 presidential campaign, Microsoft finds") Hackers linked to the Iranian government have targeted the campaign of at least one 2020 presidential contender, Microsoft announced today in a blog post. The technology giant also witnessed "significant" digital activity by the group, which it dubbed "Phosphorous," against current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside of Iran. On Friday afternoon, Reuters reported that anonymous sources said Iranian hackers attempted to infiltrate President Donald Trump's reelection campaign.
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| Microsoft: Iranian cyberattack targeted a US presidential campaign Posted: 04 Oct 2019 10:16 AM PDT 
Iran has apparently been engaged in a large-scale cyberattack bent on compromising American politics. Microsoft reported that Phosphorous, a known group it believes is linked to the Iranian government, attacked 241 email accounts in a 30-day period between August and September, including those for a US presidential campaign as well as current and former US officials, journalists covering world politics as well as "prominent" expatriate Iranians. Four of these accounts were compromised, though this didn't include the presidential run or any officials.
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| Johnson's Brexit strategy faces legal, time constraints Posted: 04 Oct 2019 10:03 AM PDT  Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday faced fresh court action to stop him taking Britain out of the European Union without a deal as chances of an agreement faded with a warning from Brussels that he had just a week to flesh out his new Brexit plans. The British leader came to power in July promising to deliver Brexit by the twice-delayed October 31 deadline at any cost. Fears of a messy divorce prompted parliament to force Johnson to ask the other EU leaders for an extension if no new agreement comes out of their October 17-18 summit in Brussels.
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| After Another Week of Bluff and Bravado, Where Next for Brexit? Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:57 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Can Boris Johnson get a Brexit deal? Is he even trying to? Will he delay Brexit? Will he take Britain out without a deal?The U.K. is finishing the week with more questions about Brexit than answers. Here's what we know.What's London Proposing Now?Johnson wants to take the U.K. out of the European Union's customs union, but leave Northern Ireland in the bloc's single market for manufactured and agricultural products. This would require two frontiers: A regulatory one in the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland and a customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.But both countries are committed to avoiding any infrastructure on the land boundary they share. To get around that, the U.K. wants to rely on technology and trusted trader programs to police the border.The problem is that physical checks on goods traversing the two countries will still have to take place somewhere. Johnson's plan would also require the agreement of Stormont, the Northern Ireland Assembly -- which hasn't met for almost three years.Could It Get Through Parliament?Probably. In January, a majority of MPs supported what was known as the "Brady Amendment," which proposed a similar, technical solution to the Irish border problem and the Democratic Unionist Party, which props up Johnson's administration, has welcomed the plan.Significantly, several of the so-called "Spartans" -- Tory Members of Parliament who have refused to vote for any previous Brexit deal -- have also got on board. There were signs at the Conservative Party conference this week that they fear losing Brexit altogether if Johnson can't get a deal by Oct. 31. This seems to have pushed them into line.On the other wing of the party, most of the MPs that Johnson expelled last month should still vote for a deal. Among them will almost certainly be Rory Stewart, who has quit the Conservative Party and plans to leave Parliament and run for London Mayor.What's the EU Response?Unimpressed. The EU says it will stand with Ireland, whose prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has ruled out any kind of hard border.Dublin has given Johnson 10 days to move further, or it says it will shift the discussion to the question of whether to extend Britain's EU membership again.Is This Johnson's Final Offer?Yes -- if you believe what Johnson's officials said in press release on Tuesday evening. No -- if you believe what Johnson said in a letter to the EU on Wednesday, when he described his proposal as a "broad landing zone."According to two people familiar with his plans, he is open to the idea of keeping Northern Ireland and possibly the whole U.K. in the EU's customs union for a strictly time-limited period. But the Irish have rejected that idea.What Happens Now?Johnson plans to meet Varadkar next week and hold talks with other EU leaders. Meanwhile his negotiator David Frost is involved in technical talks in Brussels, trying to find a way through.What Has to Happen For A Deal?The two sides will need to reach agreement on the issues of customs checks and consent. On the first, Ireland would have to accept what it has said it won't -- a land border -- and put Varadkar at risk of being thrown out of office.Or Johnson would have to throw the DUP overboard, and accept a border in the Irish Sea. In doing so, he would risk losing the support of the Spartans, meaning he couldn't get his plan through Parliament. Though it's just possible the Spartans would turn out to be more committed to Brexit than they are to the cause of Ulster Unionism.On the Stormont lock, Dublin has made clear it won't accept a deal that gives the DUP an effective veto, while the DUP is unlikely to allow Northern Ireland to be treated differently to the rest of the U.K. without one. How talks can get past that block is unclear.What if There Isn't a Deal? Will Johnson Seek an Extension?No, if you believe what Johnson has been saying for months, and what he told the Conservative conference. Yes, if you believe what Johnson's government told a Scottish court on Friday morning. No, if you believe Johnson's tweet on Friday evening:Johnson and his ministers have repeatedly said they will both obey the Benn Act -- which requires them to seek an extension to talks if they don't have a deal -- and they won't seek an extension. One solution would be to get a deal, another would be to find a loophole in the law.So Will Brexit Happen on Oct. 31?It's looking increasingly unlikely. One official said on Friday that even if the U.K. and EU did reach a deal, a short extension would be needed just to get everything in place for Britain's departure. Then there's still the Benn Act and the threat of more litigation. Don't be surprised if Brexit doesn't draw to a conclusion at the end of the month.\--With assistance from Peter Flanagan in Dublin To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Edward Evans, Thomas PennyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Main points of Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:53 AM PDT  Britain's new proposals to break the Brexit deadlock largely focus on arrangements for the border between the Irish republic and Northern Ireland after the country leaves the EU. The issue of how to respect the EU's rules while adhering to the Good Friday Agreement has been a key sticking point in talks. The landmark agreement, also called the Belfast Agreement, was signed on April 10, 1998 between the then-prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern.
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| Brexit Is Nothing Like German Unification Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:47 AM PDT ![Brexit Is Nothing Like German Unification]( "Brexit Is Nothing Like German Unification") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- A Twitter controversy raged on Thursday and Friday about leading Brexiter Michael Gove's speech at the German embassy in London, in which he came so close to drawing a parallel between Brexit and German reunification of 1990 that some of the audience heckled him. Whatever Gove actually meant, the discussion of his speech shows the danger of frivolous historical references in the context of today's controversial political decisions.Gove, a member of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's cabinet, was at the embassy on German Unity Day, the nation's main holiday, celebrated in memory of West Germany and East Germany coming together in 1990. He started by speaking admiringly of a series of post-World War II German statesmen – Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard, Willy Brandt and finally Helmut Kohl, who oversaw the reunification as chancellor. "The example of modern Germany reminds us how important it is to come together," Gove said, "it also shows that we can come together quickly when we recognize how important it is to set aside divisions." Then, without any transition from this anodyne statement, moved on to Brexit: "Britain made its democratic decision three years ago to leave the European Union."To some people in the room, this sounded like an attempt to compare the U.K.'s vote in the 2016 referendum with Germany's reunification. Peter Neumann, a professor at Kings College, tweeted:Others present, including William Wright, founder of the New Financial think tank, and Wolfgang Blau, chief operating officer at publishing giant Conde Nast International Ltd., shared Neumann's interpretation that Gove was subtly making a link between East Germany's break from Soviet rule and the U.K.'s departure from the EU. Germans – and Neumann and Blau are German – can be sensitive to false equivalences involving their nation's thorny history. Brexiters, on the other hand, are known to be fond of such parallels. They repeatedly, and unnecessarily, have dragged World War II and Britain's part in winning it into the Brexit discussion. Last year, Jeremy Hunt, then the U.K. foreign secretary, likened the EU to the Soviet Union, drawing ire throughout Europe.Yet it wasn't just Germans but also British listeners who jeered and rolled their eyes, according to eyewitness accounts, when Gove appeared to be drawing one of those frivolous comparisons.Gove later denied that he meant to make the Soviet comparison and accused Neumann of trying to "weaponize" his speech for his "own agenda." But whether Neumann and others in the audience misunderstood him or not, their reactions show clearly what a terribly divisive event Brexit is.That's an important, defining difference between Brexit and the German reunification. While there was no perfect unanimity about it in Germany, in 1991, according to Pew Research, 79% of West Germans and 89% of East Germans approved of it. Gove praised Kohl as the leader who "in a supreme act of statesmanship managed to bring the people of Germany together in a unity that we celebrate today." But what Kohl did was desirable, or at least reasonable, to an overwhelming majority of Germans. The resistance he faced mostly came from overseas. U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was against a united Germany, and even asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to do what he could to stop it. Gove is right about Kohl's main legacy: Acting in the interests of his people even though some of his fellow world leaders were apprehensive about the consequences was a supreme act of statesmanship. But by that token, no one should speak of Brexit in the same breath. The 2016 vote was close, and it pitted the majority of voters of Scotland and Northern Ireland (stay) against those of England and Wales (leave). There was no case for trying to overcome the open dismay of the U.K.'s EU allies after such a polarizing vote. Kohl was a statesman; Brexiteers are partisans.As recorded by the official transcript, Gove's speech was milquetoast and boring. But in today's fraught situation – with the parliament pitted against the prime minister, the public furiously split, and a majority of Britons feeling that an exit by the Oct. 31 deadline is unlikely – it appears blithely hypocritical of a U.K. minister to discuss Germany's erasure of an internal border while the cabinet plots a new border in Ireland and perhaps lays the foundations for the breakup of the U.K.Perhaps Gove truly didn't hear the false note in his speech. But the U.K. urgently needs leaders able to think clearly about the meaning of Kohl's example. It's the unifiers who are remembered gratefully, not the dividers.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| UPDATE 6-Trump re-election campaign targeted by Iran-linked hackers -sources Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:29 AM PDT ![UPDATE 6-Trump re-election campaign targeted by Iran-linked hackers -sources]( "UPDATE 6-Trump re-election campaign targeted by Iran-linked hackers -sources") A hacking group that appears to be linked to the Iranian government attempted to break into U.S. President Donald Trump's re-election campaign but were unsuccessful, sources familiar with the operation told Reuters on Friday. Microsoft Corp said earlier on Friday in a blog post http://bit.ly/2ngs5bZ that it saw "significant" cyber activity by the group which also targeted current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran. Trump's official campaign website is the only one of the remaining major contenders' sites that is linked to Microsoft's cloud email service, according to an inspection of publicly available mail exchanger records.
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| Trump re-election campaign targeted by Iran-linked hackers: sources Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:28 AM PDT  Microsoft Corp said earlier on Friday in a blog post http://bit.ly/2ngs5bZ that it saw "significant" cyber activity by the group which also targeted current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran. Trump's official campaign website is the only one of the remaining major contenders' sites that is linked to Microsoft's cloud email service, according to an inspection of publicly available mail exchanger records. "We have no indication that any of our campaign infrastructure was targeted," said Trump campaign Director of Communications Tim Murtaugh.
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| Iran tried to hack at least one presidential candidate Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:28 AM PDT ![Iran tried to hack at least one presidential candidate]( "Iran tried to hack at least one presidential candidate") Iran has attempted to hack at least one 2020 presidential candidate, Microsoft warned the Democratic National Party.
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| Johnson Defiant Despite Pledge to Request Delay: Brexit Update Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:25 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Follow @Brexit and sign up to our Brexit Bulletin. Boris Johnson has promised to obey the law and send a letter requesting a delay to Brexit if he can't get a deal with the European Union by Oct. 19, according to government papers submitted to a Scottish court.The pledge contradicts the prime minister's insistence he won't seek an extension in any circumstances. He repeated his commitment to leave by Oct. 31 with or without a deal just hours after the announcement in court. Judges were told his team is looking for ways to dodge the law.As talks continue in Brussels, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said there are big problems with Johnson's latest proposals for the Irish border and gave the U.K. 10 days to improve them.Key Developments:Johnson's lead negotiator David Frost in Brussels talksJohnson Commits to Sending Brexit Extension Letter, Court ToldJohnson rival Rory Stewart quits Conservative Party - says he will run as independent candidate for mayor of LondonJohnson Pledges No Delay (4:50 p.m.)Boris Johnson doubled down on his commitment to leave the EU on Oct. 31 just hours after it was revealed in court that he has committed to requesting an extension if he can't reach a deal by Oct. 19 (see 12:30 p.m.)."New deal or no deal -- but no delay," he posted on Twitter, indicating he has no intention of being tied to the law to block a no-deal Brexit passed by Parliament last month.PM Looking for Ways to Dodge Law, Court Hears (3:45 p.m.)A Scottish Court will rule Monday over whether to order Boris Johnson's government to obey the law blocking a no-deal Brexit.In closing arguments on Friday, Aidan O'Neill, a lawyer for politicians opposed to a no-deal split from the EU, said there's plenty of evidence that Johnson plans to find a way around the legislation, which forces him to seek a delay if he can't reach an agreement.He cited a BBC report that Johnson's team are focused on interpreting the law in a way that will allow the U.K. to leave at the end of the month -- with or without a deal -- and the premier is privately telling EU leaders he has no intention of delaying the U.K.'s divorce from the bloc.O'Neill questioned whether the strategy would work. "No doubt the prime minister's capacity for self-deception exceeds his ability to deceive others," he said.Lawyer Explains Johnson's Contradiction is O.K. (3:15 p.m.)Government lawyer Andrew Webster argued that U.K. ministers are free to make statements that contradict the Benn Act because the legislation -- which blocks a no-deal Brexit without Parliament's consent -- is not government policy.As a result they are free to oppose it as a matter of politics while at the same time stating they will abide by it as a point of law. The EU has re-engaged as a result of the approach, proving that it's "effective," he said.The court heard earlier from Aidan O'Neill, a lawyer for the government's opponents, that Johnson can't be trusted and his repeated pledges to leave on Oct. 31 "come what may" suggest he is preparing to break the law."We are concerned that those threatening words are shortly going to be translated into unlawful deeds," O'Neill said.Johnson's Lawyer Confirms Extension Pledge (3 p.m.)Andrew Webster, a lawyer for the U.K. government, told the court in Edinburgh there had been a clear statement from Boris Johnson regarding the Benn Act, confirming the filing that said the prime minister had pledged to seek an extension to Brexit if he is unable to reach a deal by Oct. 19."It's been put on record so that there can be no doubt," Webster said.For much of his arguments this afternoon, Webster has argued that the lawsuit designed to force Johnson to seek the extension was filed incorrectly and should be dismissed.Brexiteers Reassured Over Court Delay Pledge (1:50 p.m.)Steve Baker, chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of MPs, said he has been reassured that Boris Johnson's government has no intention of seeking a further delay to the split from the EU."A source confirms all this means is that government will obey the law. It does not mean we will extend," Baker wrote on Twitter after papers emerged from a Scottish Court suggesting Johnson would request a Brexit delay (see 12:30 p.m.). "It does not mean we will stay in the EU beyond Oct. 31. We will leave."While Baker didn't explicitly reveal the source of his information, Johnson's team have been keen to keep the ERG on side as their votes will be crucial to getting any deal through Parliament.Deal by Mid-October Still Possible, Irish Say (1:40 p.m.)Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said a deal with the U.K. on Brexit is still possible, but Boris Johnson needs to refocus on measures to avoid a return to a border in Ireland.Varadkar was speaking in Copenhagen alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who vowed to maintain solidarity with Ireland on Brexit, even though her nation would be badly hurt by a no-deal divorce.U.K.'s Smith Questions Stormont Lock (1:30 p.m.)Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith appeared to open the way for easing the so-called Stormont veto in an effort to get a Brexit deal, saying there are "many ways" for the region to consent to a deal.The Stormont lock has become a key obstacle to a deal because under current rules the DUP or any Northern Ireland party could stop the region aligning with EU rules on food and other goods with a minority of votes in the Stormont assembly. In comments broadcast by RTE, however, Smith pointed out that the Good Friday Agreement which gave rise to the assembly is "very clear" that one party cannot dominate the others.Johnson Unlikely to Visit EU Leaders at Weekend (12:45 p.m.)Boris Johnson is now unlikely to visit fellow EU leaders this weekend to sell his deal, according to a person familiar with his plans. He's still expected to meet with Ireland's Leo Varadkar next week.Johnson Has Pledged to Send Letter, Court Told (12:30 p.m.)Boris Johnson has pledged to send a letter to European leaders, as required under the so-called Benn Act, a lawyer told a Scottish court.Johnson made the commitment to send the letter by no later than Oct. 19, Aidan O'Neill, an attorney for anti no-deal Brexit challengers, said in Edinburgh, where judges are hearing a challenge to his plan to leave without a deal.A spokesman for Johnson's office in London declined to comment on an ongoing court case.Date Set For Next Scottish Court Showdown (11:45 a.m.)There are many moving parts in the Edinburgh court action, with the most drastic -- the request to the court to send a letter to EU leaders in place of the prime minister -- confirmed for a hearing on Tuesday."Getting a court to sign a letter on behalf of someone else would be unprecedented," Judge Drummond Young said.The second action is a petition seeking to bind Johnson under threat of a fine or imprisonment. That's set to be heard later today, with a ruling expected on Monday. Regardless of the decision, that case is also likely to be appealed in a joint hearing next week.Taskforce Wants to be 'Generous' With U.K. (11:30 a.m.)After his earlier comments (see 10:15 a.m.), Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said there's "huge appetite to be generous" to the U.K.Speaking to reporters in Dublin, he said they will work "night and day" to find the way forward, adding ''hopefully" next week, there will be reason for more optimism."We're still quite far apart but hope we can close that gap," he said.EU denies Johnson Given One Week Deadline (11:15 a.m.)European Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud denied the U.K has been handed a one-week deadline to reach a compromise with the EU."Every day counts," Bertaud told reporters in Brussels. but there's no week-long deadline. Technical negotiations between EU and U.K teams are ongoing today, she added.Johnson Has Boxed Himself In, Coveney Says (10:15 a.m.)Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Johnson's proposals represent a "step forward," but repeated that they contain "significant" problems and can't be supported.Again, he focused on the possibility that the proposals would deliver a customs border in Ireland, and offer the DUP a veto over regulatory alignment.Speaking to RTE on Friday, he said the U.K. needs to present an improved offer within 10 days. He warned that Johnson has "boxed himself in" and left little room for maneuver with his promises during the Tory leadership campaign and choice of cabinet.Rory Stewart Quits Conservative Party (9 a.m.)Rory Stewart, who ran against Boris Johnson to be Tory leader and was expelled from the Parliamentary party for voting against the prime minister's Brexit strategy, announced he won't run for election again and has quit the Conservative Party."It's been a great privilege to serve Penrith and The Border for the last ten years, so it is with sadness that I am announcing that I will be standing down at the next election, and that I have also resigned from the Conservative Party," Stewart wrote on Twitter.Stewart later told London's Evening Standard newspaper that he wants to stand for election as mayor of the U.K. capital. He will run as an independent to break "the suffocating embrace of our dying party politics," he said.Court Bid to Enforce Brexit Delay (Earlier)Brexit finds itself back in court in Scotland today in a case that seeks to empower the courts to write to Brussels asking for an extension if there is no deal by Oct. 19 and Boris Johnson refuses to do so.In addition to asking the court to send the letter asking for a Brexit extension, English lawyer Jolyon Maugham is seeking to bind Johnson under threat of a fine or imprisonment if he refuses to comply with the law requiring him to do so.The law, passed by Parliament last month, obliges the prime minister to seek a delay to Brexit until Jan. 31 unless he can agree a deal with the EU or win Parliamentary consent for leaving the bloc without one.Earlier:Johnson Gets One Week to Improve His Plan for Brexit BackstopHow a No-Deal Brexit May Become a Problem for the World EconomyBrexit's Next Court Drama Could Kill Johnson's Do or Die Vow\--With assistance from Thomas Penny, Alastair Reed, Nikos Chrysoloras, Peter Flanagan, Robert Hutton and Dara Doyle.To contact the reporters on this story: Alastair Reed in Edinburgh at areed12@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Browning in London at jbrowning9@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Thomas PennyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Iran says it will release Russian journalist accused of espionage Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:22 AM PDT  Iran agreed to release a Russian journalist detained on suspicion of spying for Israel, in a rare concession that defused a potentially damaging diplomatic rift with its key ally. The announcement came just hours after Russia's foreign ministry on Friday summoned the Iranian ambassador in Moscow to account for the arrest of Yulia Yuzik, who was seized from her Tehran hotel room by members of the Revolutionary Guards Corps earlier this week. Iran has been accused by several Western governments of systematically detaining foreign dual nationals and charging them with espionage to use as leverage in diplomatic disputes. It is rare for a citizen of Russia, a close ally, to be detained. Iran denies following a policy of diplomatic hostage taking, saying that all detainees are facing legitimate criminal investigations. Ms Yuzik, a specialist on the North Caucasus who has written for dozens of Russian and Western publications, arrived in Iran on Sunday but immediately ran into trouble when her passport was confiscated at the airport. "She was there for several days without documents. Then men came to her hotel, kicked in the door and took her away," her former husband Boris Voitsekhovsky told the Telegraph. In a brief call with her mother on Thursday evening, she said she was being held in a prison cell and was due to appear in court on charges of working with Israeli intelligence on Saturday. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held in Iran since 2016. Credit: The Free Nazanin campaign Mr Voitsekhovsky said Ms Yuzik, 34, spent several months working in Iran in 2017, and had returned this week on a "private trip" to see local journalists she had met while there. He said he was unaware of any reason to believe she was under suspicion in Iran. Iran's foreign ministry told Russian news agencies late on Friday that Ms Yuzhik had been detained for questioning and would be released "shortly", but did not give further details. Jason Rezaian, a former Tehran bureau chief of the Washington post who spent a year and a half in Iranian detention after being accused of espionage in 2014, wrote on Twitter: "that's what they said about me and so many others." The rapid response to Russia's complaints contrasts with the long-running disputes over several dual nationals from Western countries. They include Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, the mother of one from Hampstead who has been held on espionage charges since 2016 and whose case has become a matter of fierce diplomatic contention between Iran and Britain. "Will be released soon".. that's what they said about me and so many others. https://t.co/tDuAZs9ASn— Jason Rezaian (@jrezaian) October 4, 2019 Richard Ratcliffe, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, said Ms Yuzik's detention appeared to fit the same pattern as that of his wife. "More and more people are being taken, including from countries with ostensibly good relations with Iran. It is a clear escalation in an increasingly overt tactic of hostage diplomacy," he said. "State hostage taking is an issue that needs to be on the table at the United Nations Security Council. It really does need to be something that the great powers are sitting down and working out. This is getting out of control." In a separate case, Iran on Friday accused France of "unacceptable interference in its domestic affairs" after diplomats sought access to Fariba Adelkhah, a French-Iranian academic who has been held since summer. Ms Adelkhah, 60, is a research director at the Centre for International Studies and Research at Sciences Po University in Paris who specializes in Shiia Islam. She was arrested by Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel in June or July. France said on Thursday that it had "repeatedly" sought consular access to Ms Adelkhah and called on Iran to show "transparency" in her case. Iran does not recognise dual citizenship and rejects requests for consular access to dual nationals. Russia is an ally of Iran and the two countries' militaries have fought side-by side to prop-up Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. But they are at odds on a number of issues including delineation of oil resources in the Caspian Sea. Vladimir Putin signed a law ratifying a 2018 convention dividing the sea between the five Caspian littoral states on Monday. Iran's parliament has so far refused to ratify it, amid public criticism that it surrenders a large chunk of territory.
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| Trump says he called off Rouhani meeting, not Iran Posted: 04 Oct 2019 08:53 AM PDT  President Donald Trump is confirming that U.S. and Iranian officials discussed a possible meeting or call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at last week's U.N. General Assembly, but he insists he was the one who called off the plans. Trump tells reporters Friday that "our sides talked" but says Iran wanted sanctions relief as a condition for the meeting. Trump was responding to reports that it was the Iranian side that balked at the presidential conversation while at the U.N.
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| The U.S. Shouldn’t Try to Save Iraq’s Prime Minister Posted: 04 Oct 2019 08:00 AM PDT ![The U.S. Shouldn't Try to Save Iraq's Prime Minister]( "The U.S. Shouldn't Try to Save Iraq's Prime Minister") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- The most charitable thing to be said for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi's response to the protests wracking Iraq is that it was ill-advised. But perhaps this was to be expected, since one of his senior advisers has declared that "there is no real answer" to the country's problems.Mahdi, a lugubrious figure in the best of times, delivered an especially dismal performance in the most important speech of his career on Friday, after his security forces had killed several dozen Iraqi protesters. He offered no answers, only mealy-mouthed platitudes about listening to the people's demands — and then cautioned that there was "no magic solution."This is unlikely to satisfy the protesters, who are asking him to do his job, not conjure up any tricks. Iraqis are fed up with the corruption and ineptitude that characterize their government, with the political impasse that defines their Parliament, with the growing influence of Iran in all aspects of the state, and with Mahdi's inability to do anything… about anything.The prime minister's response to days of increasingly angry protests has been to unleash his security forces, impose curfews and try to block the internet — the classic tells of a leader who has lost control of the situation. His government has also shut down its border with Iran, just as millions of Iranians were about to make their annual pilgrimage to the Iraqi shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.The crackdown on protesters cannot be sustained. Mahdi is a political weakling, and was only given his job because no party was able to form a governing coalition. If the violence continues, the parties that saw him as a useful compromise candidate will find him just as useful as a sacrificial lamb.This would raise alarm in Washington, where anxiety about Mahdi being replaced by a more pro-Iran figure is bipartisan. Iraq is central to the Trump administration's Middle East policy, a front-line state in the confrontation with the Islamic Republic. And Mahdi is seen as more malleable to American persuasion than most of the prominent figures in Parliament.The administration might therefore be tempted to intervene in the political morass that is Baghdad, to prop up the prime minister. That would be a grievous mistake.For one thing, Iraqis are just as opposed to American interference as to Iranian influence; in their chants, protesters condemn both in the same breath. For another, they are demonstrably more opposed than Washington to a prime minister who bows to Tehran. Many of the protests are taking place in the southern cities of Iraq, home to the country's Shiite majority — a group assumed by U.S. policymakers to be disposed to favor their coreligionists in Iran. But the southern cities were where the strongest anti-Iran protests took place in the summer of 2018, which effectively ended the re-election prospects of Mahdi's predecessor, Haider al-Abadi — another Shiite.Washington backed Abadi in the political horse-trading that followed the May 2018 election. It didn't succeed then, and is unlikely to do much better if it tries to save Mahdi.Instead, the Trump administration should recognize that Mahdi is patently the wrong man to be running Iraq. Rather than protect him, it should use its leverage with the prime minister to demand the very reforms the protesters are demanding — and make American military and financial aid conditional on progress in achieving them.And if Mahdi is forced out by Parliament, the U.S. should allow the politics in Baghdad to play out to the satisfaction of Iraqis. American interests have never been more closely aligned with theirs.To contact the author of this story: Bobby Ghosh at aghosh73@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Bobby Ghosh is a columnist and member of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. He writes on foreign affairs, with a special focus on the Middle East and the wider Islamic world.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| The U.S. Shouldn’t Try to Save Iraq’s Prime Minister Posted: 04 Oct 2019 08:00 AM PDT ![The U.S. Shouldn't Try to Save Iraq's Prime Minister]( "The U.S. Shouldn't Try to Save Iraq's Prime Minister") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- The most charitable thing to be said for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi's response to the protests wracking Iraq is that it was ill-advised. But perhaps this was to be expected, since one of his senior advisers has declared that "there is no real answer" to the country's problems.Mahdi, a lugubrious figure in the best of times, delivered an especially dismal performance in the most important speech of his career on Friday, after his security forces had killed several dozen Iraqi protesters. He offered no answers, only mealy-mouthed platitudes about listening to the people's demands — and then cautioned that there was "no magic solution."This is unlikely to satisfy the protesters, who are asking him to do his job, not conjure up any tricks. Iraqis are fed up with the corruption and ineptitude that characterize their government, with the political impasse that defines their Parliament, with the growing influence of Iran in all aspects of the state, and with Mahdi's inability to do anything… about anything.The prime minister's response to days of increasingly angry protests has been to unleash his security forces, impose curfews and try to block the internet — the classic tells of a leader who has lost control of the situation. His government has also shut down its border with Iran, just as millions of Iranians were about to make their annual pilgrimage to the Iraqi shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.The crackdown on protesters cannot be sustained. Mahdi is a political weakling, and was only given his job because no party was able to form a governing coalition. If the violence continues, the parties that saw him as a useful compromise candidate will find him just as useful as a sacrificial lamb.This would raise alarm in Washington, where anxiety about Mahdi being replaced by a more pro-Iran figure is bipartisan. Iraq is central to the Trump administration's Middle East policy, a front-line state in the confrontation with the Islamic Republic. And Mahdi is seen as more malleable to American persuasion than most of the prominent figures in Parliament.The administration might therefore be tempted to intervene in the political morass that is Baghdad, to prop up the prime minister. That would be a grievous mistake.For one thing, Iraqis are just as opposed to American interference as to Iranian influence; in their chants, protesters condemn both in the same breath. For another, they are demonstrably more opposed than Washington to a prime minister who bows to Tehran. Many of the protests are taking place in the southern cities of Iraq, home to the country's Shiite majority — a group assumed by U.S. policymakers to be disposed to favor their coreligionists in Iran. But the southern cities were where the strongest anti-Iran protests took place in the summer of 2018, which effectively ended the re-election prospects of Mahdi's predecessor, Haider al-Abadi — another Shiite.Washington backed Abadi in the political horse-trading that followed the May 2018 election. It didn't succeed then, and is unlikely to do much better if it tries to save Mahdi.Instead, the Trump administration should recognize that Mahdi is patently the wrong man to be running Iraq. Rather than protect him, it should use its leverage with the prime minister to demand the very reforms the protesters are demanding — and make American military and financial aid conditional on progress in achieving them.And if Mahdi is forced out by Parliament, the U.S. should allow the politics in Baghdad to play out to the satisfaction of Iraqis. American interests have never been more closely aligned with theirs.To contact the author of this story: Bobby Ghosh at aghosh73@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Bobby Ghosh is a columnist and member of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. He writes on foreign affairs, with a special focus on the Middle East and the wider Islamic world.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Chances of Swiss-EU treaty deal this month have vanished, sources say Posted: 04 Oct 2019 07:20 AM PDT ![Chances of Swiss-EU treaty deal this month have vanished, sources say]( "Chances of Swiss-EU treaty deal this month have vanished, sources say") Switzerland has abandoned hopes of reaching an agreement with the European Union on a new treaty this month, frustrated by its inability to forge domestic consensus on how to its approach its biggest foreign policy issue. A Swiss referendum that could come in May on ending the free movement of people from the EU -- Switzerland's "Brexit moment" -- discourages bold action. The logjam is intact before Swiss parliamentary elections on Oct. 20 and a new European Commission headed by Germany's Ursula von der Leyen takes office at the start of next month.
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| Johnson tells court he may seek Brexit delay: documents Posted: 04 Oct 2019 07:14 AM PDT British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told a court he will request a Brexit delay if he fails to strike a deal with the EU by October 19, according to documents published online Friday. Lawyer Jo Maugham, a key opponent to Brexit and claimant in the case, posted the documents on Twitter on Friday. UK media have speculated Johnson could still try to get Brexit done on time by sending a second letter alongside the request, stating he did not want the extension and was only following the law.
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| France Has a Way Out of the U.S.-Iran Impasse Posted: 04 Oct 2019 07:04 AM PDT ![France Has a Way Out of the U.S.-Iran Impasse]( "France Has a Way Out of the U.S.-Iran Impasse") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- The U.S. and Iran are both looking for a diplomatic off-ramp from their intensifying confrontation. France may have found a way out. President Emmanuel Macron has developed a four-point framework that looks like a plausible basis for a resumption of US-Iranian dialog.It is clear that, without talks, the Islamic Republic will not stop with its calibrated program of military provocations, which culminated in the strikes on Saudi oil facilities on Sept 14 that temporarily halved that country's oil production. As with previous attacks on energy shipping in the Persian Gulf, the latest strikes restate Tehran's consistent message: If we can't sell oil, we'll make sure nobody can.Generating a crisis is Iran's chosen strategy to restart diplomacy. But Tehran doesn't want a war, knowing it will surely lose. Trump has made it clear he doesn't want a conflict either. But who will blink first? For more than a year, each side was convinced it had the upper hand, overvaluing its own leverage while underestimating the endurance of the other side. Iran believed it could wait out the Trump presidency in the hope that a more conciliatory administration would follow. The American strategy, since Trump abrogated the 2015 nuclear agreement, has been to exert pressure through economic sanctions and force the Iranians to negotiate a new and better deal. The sanctions have severely damaged the Iranian economy, but the regime in Tehran has not shown any signs of bending. Recognizing the impasse, both sides have been looking for an opportunity to resume dialogue, but neither has been willing to make opening concessions. Enter Macron.At the G7 meeting in Biarritz in August, the French president came close to persuading Trump to meet Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif. At the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, he came even closer to arranging a phone call between Trump and Rouhani. Those failures belie the real progress Macron has achieved in creating a framework that Washington and Tehran might be able to accept as a basis for resumed negotiations. Iran would again agree never to build nuclear weapons, and forswear other forms of aggression in its neighborhood. The latter may imply restricting some aspects of its missile-development. In return, the U.S. would agree to lift all sanctions imposed since 2017, freeing Iran to once again sell its oil and spend money. It's not as easy as all that. Rouhani reportedly backed out of the phone call after demanding that the U.S. lift all new sanctions before any talks. Hardliners in Tehran will resist any new dialogue. Iran hawks in Washington, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, will likewise argue against any outreach until the Islamic Republic shows it is mending its behavior. Some sweeteners will be required. As an initial inducement, France proposed giving Iran a $15 billion line of credit; Trump seems open to the idea. Can the U.S. also lift some sanctions in order to resume talks, on the understanding others will be removed only after an agreement is reached? Or would a promise to ease the pressure suffice? And what steps might Iran be willing to take on nuclear or regional issues to demonstrate its own good faith?Once talks begin, it is not hard to see where the two sides may agree, and where the sticking points lie. In negotiations with the administration of former President Barack Obama, the Iranians had insisted on the ability to enrich uranium at low levels. Trump, too, may have to accept that some level of low and closely-monitored enrichment is unavoidable. Equally, it's probable that Tehran would have to accept limitations on the range of its missiles, especially in terms of range.The more difficult challenge will be getting Iran to scale back its support for terrorist groups and armed gangs in neighboring Arab countries—including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen—and to create a system of verification and enforcement of such terms. Such regional issues might only be resolvable through direct negotiations between Iran and its Arab neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia. The biggest challenge for Washington and Riyadh right now is to prevent further Iranian attacks, given the likelihood that the next provocation might require a military response. Opening a dialog might accomplish that. Macron's formula is vague and aspirational, but it meets the basic demands of Washington and Tehran. Rouhani's reluctant to deal directly with Trump could be overcome by holding new talks between Iran and all the P5+1 signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal. That would include the U.S., without giving the appearance of a climbdown by Iran. Whatever its flaws, it's hard to imagine a better off-ramp. Since the likely alternative is a devastating conflict nobody wants, the parties ought to take it.To contact the author of this story: Hussein Ibish at hussein.ibish@gmail.comTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Bobby Ghosh at aghosh73@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| North Korea: Helping Iran's Submarine Force Threaten The U.S. Navy? Posted: 04 Oct 2019 06:07 AM PDT  Iran patrols the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf.
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| Take Five: Vanity Fair Posted: 04 Oct 2019 05:24 AM PDT  Washington's latest accusation that China is dumping wooden cabinets and vanities on U.S. shores sums up the mood between the two warring sides as they head into another round of high-level discussions. The talks in Washington on Oct. 10-11 will be led from the Chinese side by President Xi Jinping's top economic adviser, Vice Premier Liu He. Investors' expectations are low, given Trump's penchant for impulsive forays in the nearly two years of on-again, off-again negotiations.
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| Ukraine, a DNC Server and a Tale of Sabotage That Seeped Into the Oval Office Posted: 04 Oct 2019 05:15 AM PDT  In an April 2017 interview with The Associated Press, President Donald Trump suddenly began talking about the hack of the Democratic National Committee a year earlier, complaining that the FBI had not physically examined the compromised server."They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based," the president said."CrowdStrike?" the surprised reporter asked, referring to the California cybersecurity company that investigated how Russian government hackers had stolen and leaked Democratic emails, disrupting Hillary Clinton's campaign."That's what I heard," Trump resumed. "I heard it's owned by a very rich Ukrainian; that's what I heard."More than two years later, Trump was still holding on to this false conspiracy theory. In his July call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine, he summed it up in a sort of shorthand -- at least according to the White House memorandum, labeled "not a verbatim transcript.""I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people …," the president said. It is unclear whether the ellipses indicate that words were omitted or that Trump's voice was trailing off.Then he added one novel detail: "The server, they say Ukraine has it."Now, Trump's call for Ukraine to look into his CrowdStrike story forms the background to the House impeachment inquiry, which is focused on the second request he made: that Zelenskiy investigate Trump's possible 2020 opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has placed a concoction of disprovable claims, of the kind usually found on the fringes of the web, squarely in the middle of American politics and diplomacy.The tale of the supposedly hidden server may have appealed to Trump because it undercut a well-established fact that he has resented and resisted for three years: The Russian government interfered in the 2016 election to help him win, an effort thoroughly documented by American intelligence agencies and amply supported by public evidence.By contrast, there is no evidence to support the president's vague suggestion that Ukraine, not Russia, might be responsible for the hacking, or that CrowdStrike somehow connived in it. But his alternate history has provided a psychological shield for the president against facts that he believes tarnish his electoral victory.Trump has long called for better relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia and brushed aside complaints about its conduct. So there is a certain symmetry to his suggestion that Ukraine, Russia's opponent and the victim of its territorial grab, may somehow have framed Russia for the 2016 election activity."Ukraine is the perfect scapegoat for him, because it's the enemy of Russia," said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington who regularly visits Ukraine and is writing a book called "How to Lose the Information War."She noted that a number of Ukraine-linked stories, some of them distorted or exaggerated, have been pulled together by Trump's supporters into a single narrative.For example, there is the idea, promoted by the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that Ukraine's government actively sabotaged Trump's 2016 campaign. A Ukrainian-American lawyer who consulted for the DNC looked into the finances of Paul Manafort and spoke with Ukrainian embassy officials. But there appears to have been no organized Ukrainian government effort to intervene -- certainly nothing comparable to the activities of Russian intelligence agencies ordered by Putin.It is true that a Ukrainian legislator helped publicize documents on Manafort's multimillion-dollar payments from a Ukrainian political party, leading to his resignation as Trump's campaign chairman. But the claim of Manafort's wrongdoing turned out to be justified. He is now serving seven and a half years in prison for financial fraud and other crimes.In May, Trump recalled the American ambassador to Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016, telling others she was scheming against his administration. She has denied it.And Trump has repeatedly charged that Biden, who handled Ukrainian affairs as vice president, tried to get a prosecutor fired for investigating a Ukrainian energy company that paid his son, Hunter, handsomely as a board member despite a lack of experience in Ukraine. In fact, multiple countries were pressing for the firing of the prosecutor, who they thought was turning a blind eye to corruption."Now it seems like all of these conspiracy theories are merging into one," Jankowicz said. She studies disinformation, she said, but Trump produced one claim she'd never come across."I do this for a living, and I'd never heard anyone say the servers were in Ukraine," she said.In the 27 months between Trump's two citations of the CrowdStrike-Ukraine conspiracy theory, it has survived despite many denials from CrowdStrike, the FBI and people directly involved in the investigations. It has survived despite the fact that the DNC put one of its hacked servers on display -- not in Ukraine but in its Washington offices beside the filing cabinet pried open in 1972 by the Watergate burglars (and a photo of the two artifacts ran on The Times's front page). It has survived despite the indictment prepared last year by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, laying out in extraordinary detail the actions of 12 named Russian military intelligence officers who hacked the DNC and other election targets.The speculation springs from what Trump has called a "big Dem scam" -- the false notion that the FBI never really investigated the DNC hack. In fact, according to people directly involved, CrowdStrike was in regular contact with the bureau in spring 2016 as it examined dozens of servers used by both the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.It is true, as Trump has often tweeted, that FBI agents never took physical possession of the Democrats' servers. But CrowdStrike supplied the FBI with digital copies of the servers so that the bureau could assess the Russian malware infecting them. The Mueller investigation later confirmed CrowdStrike's findings.Still, the president has clung to the theory linking CrowdStrike, Ukraine and the DNC servers despite the repeated efforts of his aides to dissuade him, Thomas Bossert, his former homeland security adviser, said on Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go," he said. "If he continues to focus on that white whale, it's going to bring him down."To go in search of the roots of Trump's CrowdStrike-Ukraine conspiracy theory is to travel the internet's most peculiar provinces and the darkest threads on Twitter and Facebook. On 4chan and pro-Trump spaces on Reddit, on websites like ZeroHedge.com and Washington's Blog, you can find plenty of speculation about evil manipulation by CrowdStrike and secret maneuvers by Ukrainians -- often inflamed by Trump's own statements.Until the president's statements, however, even internet speculation did not attribute CrowdStrike's ownership to a rich Ukrainian or suggest that the DNC servers were hidden in Ukraine.George Eliason, an American journalist who lives in eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists fought Ukrainian forces, has written extensively about what he considers to be a "coup attempt" against Trump involving American and Ukrainian intelligence agencies and CrowdStrike. He said he did not know if his writings for obscure websites might have influenced the president."CrowdStrike and Ukrainian Intel are working hand in glove," he wrote in an email. "Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the U.S. to take a hard line stance against Russia? Are they using CrowdStrike to carry this out?"Eliason and other purveyors of Ukraine conspiracies often point to the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington, as the locus of the schemes. The Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk has made donations to the council and serves on its international advisory board; Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike's co-founder, who was born in Russia and came to the United States as a child, is an Atlantic Council senior fellow.That connection seems slender, but it may be the origin of Trump's association of a wealthy Ukrainian with CrowdStrike.Pro-Trump media leaped last week to defend the president's Ukraine theories. Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that Trump's "reference to CrowdStrike, mark my words, is momentous," though he did not say why.And Russian state news outlets are always ready to cheer on Trump's efforts to point the blame for the 2016 hack away from Moscow. On Sept. 25, after the White House released its memo on the Zelenskiy call, Russia's Sputnik news website ran a story supporting Trump's remarks.The Sputnik article cited Eliason's writings and suggested that CrowdStrike might have framed Russia for the DNC hack -- if it occurred at all. It quoted a Twitter account called "The Last Refuge" declaring: "The DNC servers were never hacked."All this mythmaking about the 2016 hack frustrates Robert Johnston, who was the lead investigator for CrowdStrike on the DNC inquiry. Johnston, a former Marine and Cyber Command operator, said he could make no sense of Trump's assertions."It doesn't connect with anything in my experience," he said. "I'd be interested in the president of Ukraine's impression."Johnston, now chief executive of the cybersecurity company Adlumin, said he was weary of the conspiracies surrounding what he considered a straightforward conclusion. Having seen the digital fingerprints of Russian intelligence in earlier hacking cases, he felt there was little doubt about the identity of the perpetrators."I don't know how you get to this point," Johnston said of the fantasies Trump has promoted. "This is a story that just won't die."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| UPDATE 4-UK PM Johnson will ask for Brexit extension if no deal by Oct. 19, court told Posted: 04 Oct 2019 05:01 AM PDT  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will send a letter to the European Union asking for a Brexit delay if no divorce deal has been reached by Oct. 19, the government acknowledged for the first time on Friday. With the clock ticking down to Britain's departure on Oct. 31, Johnson has consistently said he will not ask for a Brexit delay, but also that he will not break a law that forces him to request one if no withdrawal agreement deal has been agreed. On Wednesday, Johnson submitted new proposals to the EU that he hopes will lead to a withdrawal agreement, although the bloc has responded with deep scepticism, saying more concessions are needed if a no-deal Brexit is to be avoided.
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| Gibraltar Thrown Into Disarray Before Brexit Posted: 04 Oct 2019 04:49 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Follow @Brexit and sign up to our Brexit Bulletin. When Fabian Picardo became chief minister of Gibraltar -- the rocky relic of British colonialism at the tip of Spain -- he could scarcely have imagined that his main concern one day would be keeping shelves stocked at the local supermarkets.That was before Brexit posed the greatest risk to the tiny territory and its 32,000 inhabitants in decades.With the U.K.'s European Union exit date just four weeks away and no deal in sight to ensure smooth connections with the Spanish mainland, Gibraltar has been thrown into disarray. That's forcing Picardo to focus on ensuring the fiercely pro-EU territory -- 96% voted to remain in the bloc -- is adequately supplied, with or without access to British comforts like Oxo instant gravy, Bovril beef extract and Branston pickle."My role as chief minister of Gibraltar, my core function in government, is to ensure that Gibraltar has food -- not that it has particular British brands," Picardo said, sitting in his office beneath a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.Since a 13-year blockade by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco ended in 1982, Gibraltar has enjoyed relative tranquility, thriving on tourism, financial services and online gambling. Its 300-year-old status as a British outpost guarding the narrow strait that separates the Mediterranean from the Atlantic had little noticeable impact since then, thanks to common membership in the EU.Every day, roughly 15,300 workers -- including 9,700 Spaniards -- turn off Avenida Principe de Asturias in the town of La Linea and onto Winston Churchill Avenue, the only road into the territory. A visitor on foot flashes a passport to a lone Gibraltarian official while a bank of passport-reading machines on the Spanish side are only periodically in use -- at least for now. Brexit threatens to bring that comfortable co-existence to an abrupt end.Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who this week warned the EU to compromise, has a week to secure an agreement, with failure meaning the U.K. could leave the bloc without a deal on Oct. 31 or suffer another humiliating postponement.The British government laid out the range of problems facing the 2.6-square-mile territory in its so-called Yellowhammer report on the risks of a crash Brexit. It warned of border delays of more than four hours for at least a few months, as well as disruption to supplies of goods and medicines.Another conundrum facing Picardo, who has been in charge of the territory's 2.2 billion-pound ($2.7 billion) economy since 2011, is how Gibraltar will dispose of its waste if it loses access to a landfill facility shared with Spanish towns across the border."The prime minister has assured the chief minister that, as a member of the U.K. family, the U.K. will protect Gibraltar's interests as we leave the EU," a spokesperson for the British government said in an emailed statement. While the territory is responsible for its own preparations, there is regular contact to ensure that "robust plans are in place," he added.Gibraltar has been no stranger to tension since Spain ceded the Rock to Britain in 1713. The territory's siege tunnels, old naval dockyards and former gun batteries all bear witness to its martial past. Spain maintains its claim to the territory, and in 2016, the government even floated the idea that Brexit offered the best chance to reclaim control in centuries."We go from the French shooting at the Germans and Germans shooting at the French and the Italians shooting at the French and the British shooting at everyone to the British initiating a process where we all decide to shoot ourselves in the foot," Picardo said in an interview at Government House in the shadow of the famous Rock. "Europe has turned its guns on itself."Brexit has already impacted the territory's key industries. In January, Denmark's Jyske Bank A/S put its Gibraltar business up for sale, in part because it would be subject to different legislation when the U.K. and Gibraltar leave the EU. The bank has since been sold to a buyer from Vietnam. Bet365 Group Ltd. is moving part of its business from Gibraltar to Malta, while William Hill Plc has shifted some regulatory functions to the Mediterranean island, which is an EU member state.Gibraltar is compact, with human settlement squeezed in along the coast. The runway for the airport juts into the bay, and drivers have to cross the tarmac to get into town.Tony Hernandez, who owns a wine store and restaurant business, is worried about what will happen at the frontier. He employs three Spanish chefs and six waiters who cross every day to work. Another concern is whether customers who come to Gibraltar to buy his wines -- the territory has no value-added tax -- may be charged duties by Spain when they return, hitting demand."I was at a wine fair in Dusseldorf and I was talking to some suppliers who were asking what happens next with Brexit," he said. "I wish I knew."The concerns are on both sides of the border. Neighboring La Linea, which already suffers from high unemployment, relies on Gibraltar for jobs, and the mayor is worried about a potential hit if economic ties become strained."No one feels more Spanish than the people of La Linea," said Mayor Juan Franco. "But what they have to care about is whether there is money at the end of the month and food on the table."Empty ShelvesPicardo recently made a weekend shopping trip to Wm Morrison Supermarket Plc's store in Gibraltar only to find shelves were bare after a spree by British expats. The risk is that after a crash Brexit, such empty shelves could become more frequent and shoppers will blame him, he said.Morrison's Gibraltar store, supplied with British goods brought in by trucks, provides a case study for the sort of difficulties the territory may face. Goods shipped overland from the U.K. would have to be cleared into the EU and then out again through a Spanish customs post across the bay in Algeciras.Morrison's is "focused on serving customers in Gibraltar as best we can" and is "preparing for all eventualities," the company said in an emailed statement.Picardo can at least console himself that the problems Gibraltar face from Brexit pale in comparison with those the U.K. and Spain will have to confront. Its economy is small and manageable and already trades with the EU as a third country for goods, meaning that in effect it only faces "one or two new rules," he said.One option to secure supplies would be to make extra storage space available. The administration has also been looking into developing sea routes via Portugal and Morocco. The territory already airlifts some supplies such as medicines and could expand that. Basic Gibraltarian food supplies, such as squid and lettuce, will come in from the EU via relatively straightforward customs procedures."The question is if you want Bovril, if you want Oxo, if you want Scottish beef, the things that come from the U.K., which are available on our shelves and which make Gibraltar feel British," he said. "That doesn't concern me very much at all."(Adds U.K. government comment in 10th paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Penty in Madrid at cpenty@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Iain Rogers, Chris ReiterFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| UK PM Johnson will ask for Brexit extension if no deal by Oct. 19 - court documents Posted: 04 Oct 2019 04:26 AM PDT ![UK PM Johnson will ask for Brexit extension if no deal by Oct. 19 - court documents]( "UK PM Johnson will ask for Brexit extension if no deal by Oct. 19 - court documents") British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will send a letter to the European Union asking for a Brexit delay if no divorce deal has been agreed by Oct. 19, according to government papers submitted to a Scottish court, the BBC reported. Last month, opposition lawmakers and rebels from Johnson's Conservative Party forced through a law requiring Johnson to request a Brexit extension but Johnson, while promising to abide by the legislation, has said Britain would leave the EU, "do or die", on Oct. 31. In submissions to a Scottish court where anti-Brexit campaigners are seeking to gain an order to force him to comply with the law, the government said that Johnson accepted that he was obliged to send a letter to the EU asking for a delay.
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| Trump told China he would keep quiet on Hong Kong protests, report says Posted: 04 Oct 2019 04:15 AM PDT  Donald Trump reportedly told China's president he would remain quiet on protests in Hong Kong as trade talks between Washington and Beijing progressed.The US president pledged not speak out over the months-long unrest in the Chinese territory during a phone call with Xi Jinping in which he also discussed his political rivals Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, according to US broadcaster CNN.
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| Labor group: Venezuela gov’t must stop violence against foes Posted: 04 Oct 2019 04:07 AM PDT  A panel of experts at the U.N. labor agency is calling on Venezuelan authorities to halt violence, threats and other forms of "aggression" against workers and employers who oppose President Nicolas Maduro's government. The three-person commission at the International Labor Organization, which unites states, employers and workers, made the call after an investigation was launched in March last year into a complaint initially filed by 33 employers' delegates in mid-2015. The call comes after the commission members met and interviewed complainants, witnesses and others from the public and private sectors both in Venezuela and in Geneva, where ILO is based.
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| Rory Stewart Quits Tories to Run for London Mayor Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:45 AM PDT ![Rory Stewart Quits Tories to Run for London Mayor]( "Rory Stewart Quits Tories to Run for London Mayor") (Bloomberg) -- Rory Stewart, who ran against Boris Johnson to be Tory leader and was expelled from the Parliamentary party for voting against the prime minister's Brexit strategy, announced he won't run for election again and has quit the Conservative Party.But he almost immediately announced his next move. To run as an independent candidate for mayor of London, which he described as "the greatest city on earth."Dismissing Parliament as a "Gothic shouting chamber," and saying its divisive politics carried on "as if Trump has never left London," he said in a video posted online that he wants to move away from the extremism dominating U.K. debate in favor of the politics of "love.""Our politicians have been taken hostage by public relations consultants, and despite their optimistic promises, they are privately uneasy, pessimistic, and indecisive leaders, who have little experience of how to actually change the world," Stewart wrote in an open letter to Londoners published in the Evening Standard newspaper on Friday. "We are only going to succeed when we finally break free from the suffocating embrace of our dying party politics."Stewart, a former army officer who has confessed to smoking opium, took the Tory leadership contest by surprise with his campaign, in which he pledged to see Theresa May's Brexit deal over the line and refused to countenance a no-deal split from the EU.Despite attending Eton, the same elite private school as Johnson, he cut a different figure from his rivals, styling himself as an outsider and making videos as he strode around the country speaking to voters in a series of "Rory's walks." He got to the last five candidates before being knocked out of the contest."I am proud of not being a professional politician," he wrote. "I will be spending the coming weeks walking around London — not campaigning, but listening and learning, and walking through every borough."To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Robert Hutton, Caroline AlexanderFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Trump reportedly brought up Biden and Warren with China in June, gave Xi a pass on Hong Kong Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:44 AM PDT ![Trump reportedly brought up Biden and Warren with China in June, gave Xi a pass on Hong Kong]( "Trump reportedly brought up Biden and Warren with China in June, gave Xi a pass on Hong Kong") President Trump publicly asked China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son on Thursday, but he has also privately discussed both Biden and 2020 Democratic co-frontrunner Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with Chinese President Xi Jinping, CNN reports. In a June 18 call with Xi, Trump brought up the political prospects of both Warren and Biden, CNN reports, citing two people familiar with the discussion. "In that call, Trump also told Xi he would remain quiet on Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed." Financial Times had a similar report in July.On Twitter, Warren brushed off whatever Trump said about her.> Trump can say what he wants about me, but it's outrageous that any president would sell out the people of Hong Kong behind closed doors. > > The public must see the transcript of Trump's call with Xi. And we need a leader who will stand up for our values.> > -- Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 3, 2019The transcript of the Xi call was stored in the same classified codeword server used to irregularly store Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, CNN says. The whistleblower complaint concerning that call prompted the discovery that Trump aides are using the system to store politically sensitive Trump communications, not just national security secrets, and it also pushed the House to start an impeachment process. China, like Ukraine, says it does not want to get enmeshed in U.S. domestic politics.Trump's National Security Council and the State Department are also reportedly frustrated that Trump hasn't denounced China's crackdown on pro-democracy activists who have held weekly protests in Hong Kong for months. On Tuesday, when Hong Kong police shot a teenager in the chest with live ammunition, Trump focused on the other big event in China, tweeting: "Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China!"
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| North Korea to reopen tourist region as opening gambit for fresh US nuclear talks Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:44 AM PDT  The United States has promised to lift some "low-level" sanctions imposed on North Korea when the two nations' negotiators meet in Stockholm for the first time since talks broke down, with a resumption of tours to the North's Mount Kumgang resort area one possible concession. Diplomatic sources said Washington will use Saturday's talks to propose reopening the land border through the Demilitarised Zone that divides South and North Korea to permit tourists to travel to Mount Kumgang, The Korea Times reported. The resort was first opened in 1998 as part of efforts to build trust and promote exchanges between the two countries. Around 1 million South Koreans visited the 204-square-mile resort region, an important source of hard currency for the regime, until a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist who had inadvertently entered a restricted zone in July 2008. North Korea has repeatedly called for the resort region to be reopened to foreign visitors, although sanctions imposed by the United Nations in response to repeated ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests have meant the border has remained closed. Talks unexpectedly broke down over sanctions relief earlier this year Credit: Susan Walsh/AP "The US permitting the resort to reopen could be used to start the ball rolling in discussions", said Robert Dujarric, a professor of international relations at the Tokyo campus of Temple University. "It would not be controversial because it does not involve weapons, the transfer of technology or imports or exports that might contravene other sanctions", he told The Telegraph. "It's essentially a harmless gesture that is primarily an issue between the two Koreas, which makes it easier than anything else to do". Reopening the resort would also prove popular with Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, who has also been calling for a resumption of visits in order to improve bilateral relations. US media outlet Vox reported on Wednesday that Washington will offer to suspend some sanctions on the North for 36 months in return for the decommissioning of the Yongbyon nuclear facility. The online media also said that the US would cancel a joint military exercise with South Korea and that President Donald Trump would sign a declaration to formally end the 1950-1953 Korean War, which only ended in an armistice. US officials have dismissed the report. The discussions in Stockholm may only be working level talks from which both sides will report back to their respective leaders, but it is clear that significant concessions will have to be made if Mr Trump and Kim Jong-un are to have another summit. Their last meeting took place in Hanoi over two days in February but ended abruptly and without any agreement when the US delegation left. Mr Trump later said he ended the summit because North Korea demanded that all sanctions be lifted. Pyongyang's representative later denied that claim and said it only requested the partial lifting of five UN sanctions. With one eye on next year's presidential election and keen to secure diplomatic breakthrough, some analysts believe Mr Trump may be willing to be more flexible on the previous policy of the "complete, verifiable and irreversible" elimination of the North's nuclear capabilities. "Mr Trump wants to say that he has reached a deal with the North, to claim that he has succeeded where all other presidents have failed and to say that he is better than all his predecessors", Mr Dujarric said. "This president seems to have no red lines that he is not willing to sacrifice".
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| UPDATE 1-Kremlin hails special relationship with China amid missile system cooperation Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:39 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Kremlin hails special relationship with China amid missile system cooperation]( "UPDATE 1-Kremlin hails special relationship with China amid missile system cooperation") The Kremlin said on Friday that Moscow's move to help Beijing build an early warning system to detect missile attacks showed the two countries had a special relationship. President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia was helping China build an early warning system to spot intercontinental ballistic missile launches, something only Russia and the United States possess at the moment.
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| New round of talks on Nile waters starts in Sudan’s capital Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:27 AM PDT  Irrigation ministers of three key Nile Basin countries were meeting Friday in Sudan's capital, seeking to resolve differences over Ethiopia's soon-to-be-finished Blue Nile dam, which Cairo claims threatens its water supply. Egypt fears Ethiopia's $5 billion project, which is set to be Africa's largest hydraulic dam, could reduce its share of the Nile River _ a lifeline for Egypt's 100 million people.
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| AP PHOTOS: Sunset on Turkey’s massive stone heads Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:21 AM PDT  Visitors snap photos of massive stone heads that stare down on them from the summit of Mount Nemrut, in Turkey's southeastern Adiyaman province, their faces illuminated by sunset lighting. Perched at an altitude of 2,150 meters (over 7,000 feet), the statues are part of a temple and tomb complex that King Antiochus I, of the ancient Commagene kingdom, built as a monument to himself. Son of the founder of the Commagene kingdom, Antiochus reigned between 64 and 38 BC, until he was deposed by the Romans.
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| Europe’s Biggest Fans Are Out in the Cold Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:02 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Want to receive this post in your inbox every day? Sign up for the Balance of Power newsletter, and follow Bloomberg Politics on Twitter and Facebook for more.Some of the European Union's biggest supporters are not even in the bloc.The eagerness of Balkan nations like Kosovo and Serbia to embrace Brussels — where they see the bright lights of more jobs and investment — is palpable. But there's a big elephant in the room: Serbia does not recognize Kosovo, which broke away in 2008, almost a decade after they fought a bloody ethnic war. Until it does, the EU will not even begin to entertain membership.As Jasmina Kuzmanovic reports, the issue will dominate Sunday's elections in Kosovo, a wide-open contest among three or four parties who agree talks with Serbia must happen but are split over terms for even beginning them. Serbia is due for elections in the spring.Add into the mix greater uncertainty about the role of the big powers in the region. Russia backs Serbia and the U.S. supports Kosovo. But even there the game is potentially changing, with Washington consumed by Donald Trump's impeachment wrangling and the 2020 election, and Russia seeking to slow Serbia's EU engagement.Despite the modern cafes and bars in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, the region feels stuck in the past, with ethnic tensions still lurking just below the surface. EU integration would probably help — but that remains a distant prospect.Global HeadlinesBrexit wrangle | U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit offer to the EU landed badly in Brussels, which said he had a week to improve it. Exasperated Irish politicians pointed out that they have repeatedly rejected the sort of border checks Johnson proposes. Despite his office declaring it his final offer, sources say Johnson is considering accepting the EU's proposal to avoid a hard border in Ireland, but with a time limit.Fundraising tool | Trump's fundraising strategy shows he views the impeachment fight more as a political battle than a legal one. Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an inquiry on Sept. 24, Trump's campaign has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook and Twitter ads mentioning impeachment that direct supporters to the president's re-election fund.Two top American diplomats tried to strike a deal on behalf of Trump for Ukraine's leader to investigate (discredited) allegations of wrongdoing by Joe Biden and his son in return for improved relations with the U.S., according to documents released by House Democrats. Michael Pompeo remains one of Trump's most prominent defenders even as the Ukraine matter threatens to engulf the secretary of state.Click here to read how Trump is relying on the same tactics that he used to fight Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Facing the law | Protesters gathered in downtown Hong Kong, occupying some streets, as leader Carrie Lam invoked emergency powers for the first time in more than 50 years to ban face masks for demonstrators. Lam said the move was necessary to quell weeks of increased violence and would help police enforce the law. Face masks have become symbols of resistance among protesters who fear retribution if they're identified.Fuel-price backlash | President Lenin Moreno declared a state of emergency in Ecuador after widespread protests over his decision to end diesel and gasoline subsidies. Demonstrators clogged key highways with vehicles and burning tires. Blocked routes to Quito's airport forced American Airlines, Iberia, Air France, and KLM to reroute flights.Portugal votes | Populism and factionalism have disrupted much of Europe, but Portugal may give a lesson in political stability on Sunday when Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa is likely to win another four-year term. Polls indicate his Socialist Party, which governed without a majority, may need to rely on other partners this time too. After five consecutive years of growth, Costa's biggest challenge will be a sharply slowing economy.Pop quiz, readers (no cheating!). Which country's Green party saw its support triple at elections this week, a sign that global climate protests led by Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg are shifting Europe's political goalposts? Send your best guesses to balancepower@bloomberg.net. You can also tell us how we're doing or what we're missing.What to WatchBiden's campaign said he'd raised $15.2 million during the third quarter, putting him behind lower-polling candidates Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. Fundraising reports are due Oct. 15. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte may address a parliamentary panel today on secret meetings between U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Italian intelligence chiefs that were reportedly part of a U.S. investigation into the genesis of the special counsel probe into Trump's possible ties to Russia.And finally … Hong Kong and Shenzhen are neighboring cities whose proximity and growth prospects mean they are becoming entwined, as are the competing systems that govern them. While Shenzhen has flourished under China's Communist Party, many Hong Kongers are protesting to maintain the political freedoms promised to them when Britain handed the territory back in 1997. As Bloomberg reports, the two cities offer competing visions of China's future, and the jury is out on which will prevail. \--With assistance from Kathleen Hunter, Raymond Colitt, Robert Hutton, Karen Leigh and Alan Crawford.To contact the author of this story: Rosalind Mathieson in London at rmathieson3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Halpin at thalpin5@bloomberg.net, Karl MaierFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Hong Kong Invokes Rare Emergency Powers, Sparking Fresh Protests Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:55 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong invoked emergency powers for the first time in more than half a century to ban face masks for protesters after months of unrest, prompting demonstrators to occupy downtown streets.Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Friday the move was necessary to stem increased violence in recent weeks, including attacks by protesters using petrol bombs, corrosive liquids and other weapons. The prohibition on face masks will deter violence and help police enforce the law, she said, adding that the measure didn't mean Hong Kong was under a state of emergency.As Lam spoke, protesters began gathering in Hong Kong's Central district and occupying major boulevards. Shops closed early in anticipation that demonstrations would grow violent, similar to clashes between police and protesters in recent weeks."The violence is destroying Hong Kong," Lam told reporters, flanked by 16 members of her cabinet. "We must save the present Hong Kong and the future Hong Kong."Lam called the situation "fluid" and said the government may consider additional measures if the situation worsened. She asked the international community to respond "in a comprehensive and impartial manner.""I don't see how you could relate this to a step closer to authoritarianism," Lam said in response to a question. "This is a responsible act to deal with an extremely difficult situation, which I hope the world has sympathy."The face mask has become a symbol of resistance among protesters who fear retribution if they are identified: China has applied pressure to businesses such as Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. to fire employees who participate in demonstrations. The move comes shortly after a protester was shot on Oct. 1, as President Xi Jinping celebrated 70 years of Communist rule in Beijing.Almost four months of protests have turned parts of Hong Kong into battle zones on weekends and holidays, wreaked havoc on the tourism industry and sent the $360 billion economy hurtling toward recession. Hong Kong stocks fell ahead of the briefing, before paring slightly as officials spoke. The Hang Seng Index slipped 1.1% to close below the key 26,000 point level.The Civil Human Rights Front, which has organized some of the largest protests in the past few months, called the mask ban "dictatorship rule" and said "unspeakable consequences will follow.""This is like opening a Pandora's box -- who knows what will come next after this ban?" said one man protesting in central Hong Kong on Friday afternoon, who only gave his surname Lau. "But the government should know that if it insists, and doesn't listen to the people, we won't give up and will keep the government accountable. We will continue our fight."The emergency law, first passed by the British government nearly a century ago to quell a seamen's strike in Hong Kong's harbor, was last used by the colonial administration to put down riots in 1967. Denounced by protest leaders, it could give the government greater leeway to arrest citizens, censor publications, shut off communications networks and search premises without warrants, among other measures."Put simply, if there's no escalation of violence, we don't need to come out with any new measures," Lam said. "But if violence escalates, we need to maintain law and order in Hong Kong, we need to make sure that people can conduct their lives as usual."Hong Kong's education department sent a letter to school directors and principals saying students, teaching staff and service providers should "lead by example" and avoid wearing face masks inside and outside of school premises, unless it's for health or religious purposes.Demonstrations erupted at 11 sites and shopping centers across the city as news broke of the face mask ban on Thursday, prompting police to fire tear gas in one location. More protests are planned for the weekend."I'm terrified of the possible backlash," said Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong. "The young are saying they're prepared to die for this cause. They'll still be out there wearing their masks. And the police will charge at them."Hong Kong Security Secretary John Lee said similar legislation is on the books in the U.S., France, Germany, Spain and Canada, and that journalists would be exempted when they are on duty. In China, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Communist Party-backed Global Times newspaper, said in a tweet that Western countries shouldn't apply "nasty double standards" when reacting to the ban.The move risks fueling international condemnation of Lam's government. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, called for the U.S. to stand up to China in Hong Kong. She also urged America to stop exports of police gear to the city and provide temporary protected status to its residents.Demonstrators on Friday night said the mask ban wouldn't deter them from hitting the streets."Protesters will still come out, no matter whether this law is being enforced or not," said a 26-year-old worker in the insurance industry who only gave his surname Chan. "The anti-mask law only has one year, so the cost would be much less compared to other laws that we are violating."(Updates throughout.)\--With assistance from Melissa Cheok, Chua Baizhen, Chelsea Mes, Dominic Lau and Stephen Tan.To contact the reporters on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Annie Lee in Hong Kong at olee42@bloomberg.net;Natalie Lung in Hong Kong at flung6@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net, ;Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Karen LeighFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Russian journalist detained in Iran Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:51 AM PDT ![Russian journalist detained in Iran]( "Russian journalist detained in Iran") A Russian journalist has been arrested in the Iranian capital and kept in custody since earlier this week, the Russian embassy to Tehran said on Friday. The embassy's press attaché told the Tass news agency that Yulia Yuzik flew into Tehran last Sunday and that Iranian officials seized her passport at the airport for unknown reasons. The attaché could not immediately say why the journalist was under arrest.
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| The anti-establishment right is a mess of contradictions Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:50 AM PDT ![The anti-establishment right is a mess of contradictions]( "The anti-establishment right is a mess of contradictions") President Trump radiates so much moral toxicity, and his administration displays so much malice and ineptitude in policymaking, that his opponents often fall into the habit of making everything about him. Trump's racism. Trump's corruption. Trump's demagoguery. Trump's authoritarianism.There's truth to all of that. But it might not be the wisest way to wage a political war against the right. Trump's vileness is all there, right on the surface, broadcast without shame or apology to the largest possible audience every single day. People either love it or hate it -- and there are already significantly more people in the latter camp. Why not let the president's polarizing personality speak for itself and instead take a different, broader tack against the right-wing party and movement he leads?Every political coalition is a conglomeration of factions that put aside or suppress their differences for the sake of mutual gain. In the case of the many right-populist parties and movements around the world, those differences are especially sharp and ripe for exploitation by political opponents.Consider Germany's far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD). The German establishment treats the upstart party as ideologically beyond the pale because of its nativist and xenophobic position on immigration. But the AfD is actually a conglomeration of two very different factions. One of them is a genuine neo-fascist movement that traffics in outright racism, but the other focuses on economic policy, advocating for lower taxes and cuts to regulations on business. The two factions fight often and bitterly, but they stick together out of electoral self-interest, realizing that they have a greater chance of gaining and holding power if they collaborate in taking aim at the political establishment (even though they disagree in many ways about what that establishment has done wrong).This broad fissure -- between hard-core nationalist anti-liberalism and an amped-up form of neoliberal or libertarian ideology -- can be found embedded in nearly every right-wing populist party or movement. It certainly plays a role in the interminable Brexit debate in Great Britain. Many of those clamoring to leave the European Union do so in xenophobic opposition to the free movement of people allowed and encouraged by Brussels. But many others have no objection to high rates of migration and instead bristle at EU regulations that stand in the way of the UK becoming a free-market mecca parked just outside the over-regulated monetary union like an Anglophone Singapore ready to cash in on a craving for unbridled commerce.The same tensions are present on multiple dimensions in the Trumpified Republican Party. A number of them have been there in the GOP since the time of Ronald Reagan. But they've been pushed to the edge of utter incoherence since Trump's hostile takeover of the party in 2016.In recent months, members of the religious right have taken a sharply anti-liberal turn, denouncing the aspiration toward liberal fairness and impartiality in government, which they now consider a sucker's game that keeps conservatives perpetually on the defensive. In its place, the religious right increasingly advocates a politics oriented toward the "highest good," which it defines in terms of traditional Christian morals.As a model, this faction of the right looks longingly toward the explicitly anti-liberal government of Viktor Orban's Fidesz Party in Hungary. A Republican Party that followed Orban's lead would include policies designed to restrain and restrict capitalism, ultimately subordinating the economy to moral concerns. (This would likely include obscenity laws, censorship of pornography, regulations aimed at taming the "creative destruction" of markets, and the enactment of pro-natalist policies.)Even aside from the singular absurdity of Donald Trump serving as the leader of a theologically inspired moral crusade, the Trump administration has done something close to the opposite -- cutting taxes and regulations on the corporate sector and reining in government-imposed oversight and restraint, even when businesses would prefer otherwise. Far from subordinating the economy to a moral vision, this is a libertarian's wet dream of unconstrained profit-seeking.Another dimension to the religious right's more aggressive agenda is an emphasis on local communities (often low-density rural areas where farming remains an important aspect of daily life) as the proper locus of the yearning for moral regeneration. Yet these hopes for the future revitalization of moral standards and limits are projected onto an administration in which the Secretary of Agriculture recently warned that family farms don't have much of a future, because "in America the big get bigger and the small go out." Once again, a radicalized conservative critique of liberalism sits side-by-side with a radicalized form of economic libertarianism.Nowhere are such tensions more apparent than in foreign policy, where a sizable number of Republicans pine for a revival of realism and restraint (fewer wars and fewer obligations for American soldiers to police the world), whereas many others appear to favor bombing more people than ever as a way of throwing our weight around, showing the world who's boss, and bullying other nations (allies and enemies alike) into doing our bidding in purely transactional terms. These two visions of America's role in the world stand in stark contrast with one another, and the haphazard, incontinent character of the Trump administration's foreign policy is the result.Put it all together and we're left with a picture of a political movement in complete ideological disarray, unsure of what it wants to do, and in constant danger of internal conflict. That's something that Democrats can and should be attempting at every opportunity to encourage and exploit.A house divided against itself cannot stand. And neither can a political party.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.
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| UK Brexit plans stir talk of Irish unity among activists Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:45 AM PDT  Irish republicans are expressing renewed hopes of reunifying their island in the wake of the U.K.'s recent Brexit proposals, seeing that as a solution to the problems that Britain's departure from the European Union is bringing. What to do about the border between the Republic of Ireland and the U.K.'s Northern Ireland has been the biggest stumbling block in Britain's attempts to negotiate a departure deal with the EU. Making Northern Ireland part of the republic would be one way to solve that problem.
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| The Latest: Iraqi cleric suspends parliament activities Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:36 AM PDT  An influential Iraqi Shiite cleric whose political coalition came in first in last year's national elections says he's suspending participation in parliament activities until the government introduces a program that serves Iraqi aspirations. The move comes after Iraq's top Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, blamed lawmakers for failing to enact reforms and eradicate corruption. Three Gulf Arab nations have advised their citizens to avoid traveling to Iraq and those who are there to leave the country immediately.
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