| Revealed: Jared Kushner’s Private Channel With Putin’s Money Man Posted: 23 Aug 2020 05:03 PM PDT  On a late afternoon in March, a large military aircraft bearing the Russian Federation insignia descended into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Its mission: to deliver personal protective equipment and ventilators to nearby hospitals scrambling to treat patients during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Andrew Cuomo had pleaded for weeks with the federal government for additional resources, particularly ventilators, to treat the thousands of COVID-19 patients across the state. Yet news of the Russian delivery surprised those in the governor's office working to obtain additional medical equipment. They'd thought the ventilator support would come from the U.S. stockpile or from an American company.Officials in the U.S. State Department were surprised, too. Despite a department press release announcing the delivery, several senior officials working on the Russia portfolio in the department and elsewhere in the national security apparatus were unaware exactly how the 45 ventilators had ended up on American soil. Half of the shipment was paid for by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), one of the country's sovereign wealth funds, which is under U.S. sanctions. (The sanctions do not prohibit all transactions between U.S. entities and the firm, but they have limited the fund's interactions with American businesses.) And the fund's CEO, Kirill Dmitriev, had been scrutinized by Congress and former special counsel Robert Mueller for his communications with Trump transition officials shortly after Moscow had meddled in the 2016 election.For years, the Trump administration had attempted to find ways to cooperate with Russia on the world stage but largely failed in those efforts because Moscow has continued to engage in activity that threatens U.S. national security, from hacking operations to reportedly offering bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan. A public display of Russian supplies being offloaded caught some officials in the Trump administration off guard. U.S. Warns Russia on Bounties While Trump Cries 'Fake News'But there was a simple answer to the whodunit. The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) told The Daily Beast it had assigned the State Department "to represent the U.S. in the transaction with the Government of Russia." But it was President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who helped facilitate the ventilator delivery, according to two senior administration officials. During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Kushner headed "Project Airbridge"—the medical supply delivery program that worked to fast-track the delivery of personal protective equipment and other medical supplies by using federal funding to underwrite the cost of shipping. In an effort to supply New York City hospitals with the medical equipment they needed, Kushner looked in multiple places for the equipment and found a safe bet in Moscow, those officials said. While the State Department had been involved in the logistics of the onboarding and offloading, it was Kushner who helped strike the deal.The ventilators turned out to be faulty and were cast aside by officials in New York and New Jersey, according to local officials who spoke with The Daily Beast. During that same time period, the city of Los Angeles was told by representatives of the federal government that it had lost a bid for N95 masks to a Russian entity, according to two people familiar with the matter. The L.A. officials were never told the Russian outfit's name. Kushner held the details of the New York shipment closely and accelerated the order by leaning on his personal relationship with Dmitriev, a confidant of President Vladimir Putin who'd been dispatched to make inroads with the inexperienced 2016 Trump transition team. Dmitriev was one of the main participants in the infamous January 2017 Seychelles meeting with former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, in which the two discussed a roadmap for U.S.-Russia cooperation in the new administration. In the years since, Kushner and Dmitriev have communicated—often at a distance, and at times through intermediaries—about ways the U.S. and Russia could work together. The conversations have touched on everything from creating a joint business council to increase investment, to working on a Middle East peace deal, to helping lead negotiations on a recent OPEC deal, to delivering those medical supplies, according to multiple senior officials. Revealed: What Erik Prince and Moscow's Money Man Discussed in That Infamous Seychelles MeetingMore than a dozen Trump administration officials, current and former, described Kushner's relationship with Dmitriev as a byproduct of President Trump's deep-rooted beliefs that he was unfairly punished for beating Hillary Clinton and that the sprawling investigation into his campaign's Russia contacts was a hoax. Trump distrusted the national security and intelligence communities and saw the officials operating in that apparatus as harboring "Deep State" actors whose goal it was to remove him from office.The career officials Trump distrusted have nevertheless attempted to do their jobs—which included safeguarding the U.S. from Russian aggression, officials said. As Fiona Hill, Trump's former top Russia adviser, once put it during her impeachment testimony, officials in her orbit tried to help "with President Trump's stated goal of improving relations with Russia while still implementing policies meant to deter Russian conduct that threatens the United States, including the unprecedented and successful Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election." Most of the time, officials said, it didn't work. "It was a vicious cycle where, even though we were doing a lot of concrete things to take punitive measures against Russia, the president's own personal behavior and how that was portrayed in the domestic context didn't allow us to say, 'We have a coherent Russia policy,'" one former senior official said, referring to later actions the administration took to punish Russia, including expelling diplomats from the country, enacting a slew of sanctions on Russian actors, and pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019.Four other former senior officials described years of frustration—of trying to push ahead on a Russia strategy only to get sidelined from conversations in the White House because, as the investigations into his campaign ramped up, the president grew more distrustful of the people around him.Instead Trump relied on his closest allies—often Kushner—to handle the business of government. Trump depended on his son-in-law to go and deliver on the promises he'd made publicly from the outset, including establishing closer ties with Moscow. As Hill and other top officials who worked on Russia began to step away from their jobs—in some cases because they had been forced out of government—Kushner stepped even further into the vacuum. He emerged as one of the most powerful people in the White House, former National Security Adviser John Bolton said in a recent interview with CNN.The Treasury Department and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The White House did not comment on the record. The Russian Direct Investment Fund and Dmitriev also did not respond to requests for comment."Jared Kushner has worked closely with our NSC team. Prior to my becoming the National Security Adviser, I worked with Jared on hostage recoveries and his support of the President's efforts was critical in bringing several of our hostages and detainees home," National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien said in a statement. "As the NSA, I have seen first-hand how Jared and his office coordinate their work with the NSC and other U.S. Government departments and agencies as he assists President Trump on important foreign and domestic issues." As the U.S. and Russia have struggled to partner on a host of issues—from counterterrorism intelligence sharing to deconfliction of forces in Syria—Kushner and Dmitriev have continued to communicate about alternative ways Moscow and Washington can cooperate. "Dmitriev came into the picture because Putin was always saying, 'Talk to my guy because he can help you with the Gulf and with the Middle East peace plan, we can help stabilize,'" said one former senior administration official. "A lot was going on behind the scenes… they kept it to themselves."While those close to Kushner praise the president's son-in-law's efforts to find ways to circumvent the bureaucratic process of communicating with Russia and "get things done"—as one individual who has worked with him put it—others have been disturbed by the sidelining of career officials on critical matters of national security. Current and former officials tell The Daily Beast the hollowing out of the Russia policy teams across the administration and Trump's continued lack of trust in that community has left the administration without a cohesive, coordinated approach to handling Moscow. Not only have the two countries failed to reach the rapprochement that Trump so badly wanted, but the U.S. and Russia also are now engaged in an active dispute over Moscow's use of anti-satellite missiles, its attempts to hack into the networks of U.S. coronavirus vaccine-makers, and its efforts to meddle in the 2020 presidential election."It's as bad as it's ever been," one former senior national security official said in describing the administration's relationship with Russia. Seychelles RendezvousAfter the 2016 election, President Putin himself tasked Dmitriev directly with trying to make inroads with Trump's transition team, according to a recent report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee and Robert Mueller's special counsel report. Dmitriev got to work, actively trying to connect with members of Trump's inner circle who would eventually wield influence in a new administration. He was particularly interested in connecting with Kushner, those reports said.Dmitriev began his outreach to Kushner by connecting with George Nader, a Lebanese-American politico close to the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed in the United Arab Emirates who helped broker meetings with the incoming Trump administration. Dmitriev's fund, RDIF, had co-invested with the Emirati sovereign wealth fund on a series of projects and the two men had been in frequent contact. Dmitriev invited Nader to a chess tournament and asked him to invite Kushner, though Nader never passed on the message, the reports said. Over the next several weeks, Dmitriev continued to speak with Nader about the possibility of meeting transition officials like Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. (Nader was later sentenced on child pornography charges in the Eastern District of Virginia).Dmitriev also reached out to Rick Gerson, who ran a New York hedge fund and was a close friend of Kushner's. According to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report, "Dmitriev told Gerson that Putin had tasked him with developing a reconciliation plan for United States-Russia relations." Dmitriev's team previously pushed back on his connection with Putin in a series of articles The Daily Beast published in 2018. Gerson told Dmitriev that he would find the right people to talk to about the plan. In the following days, the pair drafted bullet points for the plan and Dmitriev communicated that he had shared the document with Putin.Days later, Dmitriev flew to the remote archipelago of the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Executives from across the world had gathered on the island to meet with the crown prince. Several of them stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel in villas overlooking the water. One of those individuals was Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, who was close with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and throughout the campaign had tried to connect to Trump's circle.Mueller Exposes Erik Prince's Lies About His Rendezvous with a Top RussianPrince met with Dmitriev, who was there with his wife, twice while on the island. Prince later told congressional investigators that he'd run into Dmitriev by chance and spoke with the Russian fund manager over a beer. But Prince was made aware of Dmitriev's planned trip to the island through Nader, who sent Prince Dmitriev's bio ahead of time, according to the Mueller report.Dmitriev and Prince discussed opportunities to improve the U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship under the incoming Trump administration and the bullet points that Gerson had helped draft. Nader was also present. The Daily Beast previously obtained the reconciliation plan Dmitriev had worked on with Gerson and which Dmitriev sent to Gerson for final approval Jan. 17—five days after his meeting in the Seychelles with Prince. In his congressional testimony in November 2017, Prince said he told Dmitriev that "if Franklin Roosevelt can work with Joseph Stalin after the Ukraine terror famine, after killing tens of millions of his own citizens, we can certainly at least cooperate with the Russians in a productive way to defeat the Islamic State."The reconciliation plan called for, among other things, improvement of U.S.-Russian relations over a one-year period, which included building a pathway for the countries to develop "win-win economic investment initiatives." It noted that Russian companies would "make investments with RDIF financing to serve the U.S. market in the Midwest, creating real jobs for hard hit areas with high employment."The next day, Gerson went to see Kushner at the White House to brief him on Dmitriev and hand him the reconciliation plan. Kushner told the Senate Intelligence Committee during an interview that he gave a copy of that plan to Bannon and incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to a recent committee report.In the weeks leading up to Trump's inauguration, senior officials in the White House who worked alongside the transition team said it became clear that Trump's inner circle, including Kushner, were going to bypass career officials to make critical national security decisions. In the early days of his administration, Trump didn't meet with the national security team on Russia policy. "We were still coming to terms with the aggressiveness with which [the Russians] attacked our electorate process. The whole kit and caboodle—the leaks, the information campaign, the social media initiatives. The new administration just seemed to ignore that," that same official said. "There was a general feeling that we could accommodate the Russians in some way."Wild ideas flew—withdrawing U.S. troops from the Baltics just to please Putin, cooperating with the Russian military to such an extent it would have broken the law. One former official said there were "whispers" of the Trump team attempting to roll back sanctions on Russia for the election attack and for its invasion of Ukraine. "Their thought was... if we scale back sanctions we can work with them in the Middle East. That was just stupid because the Russians had already offered and asked to work with us," the official said. "Our idea was: Don't give up the shit that's free." Ships in the Saudi NightTwo individuals familiar with the matter said Trump was briefed on the Dmitriev U.S.-Russia reconciliation plan ahead of his first call with Putin on Jan. 28, 2017. A White House readout of the call said Trump and Putin spoke for about an hour on subjects ranging from mutual cooperation in defeating ISIS to creating investment opportunities for both countries—two bullet points included in that reconciliation memo.During the same time period, Kushner was beginning to lay the groundwork for the development of a Middle East peace plan—one Team Trump thought could evolve with considerable international buy-in, including from Russia. The idea for a peace plan had been in the works before Trump took into office, officials said. At an event before his inauguration, Trump spoke with reporters from the Times of London about the idea, saying Kushner would lead the peace plan process. Meanwhile, stories began to leak to the press that Trump's inner circle had worked for weeks behind the scenes to backchannel with Russian officials. In February, The Washington Post reported a series of stories saying National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had spoken with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak about sanctions and lied to the FBI about it. In February 2017, Flynn was pushed out of his national security job after the news broke that he'd lied to the feds. Before long, talk of rolling back sanctions began to recede.Russian business executives, lawyers, and lobbyists—including some of those connected to RDIF—tried to ease the financial burden by promoting opportunities for American businesses in Russia. RDIF was beginning to develop major partnerships with sovereign wealth funds and other large financial hubs, co-investing in large projects related to oil, transportation, technology, and medicine. The hope was that the Trump administration could help promote business relations between the two countries. One former senior official said Putin had tapped Dmitriev specifically to try to work with American companies.Jon Huntsman, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, held business roundtables at the embassy, in an effort to help push forward conversations about creating business opportunities for American companies in Moscow with the help of RDIF.Dmitriev looked to California, where RDIF already had an investment in Los Angeles-based technology company Virgin Hyperloop One, headed by British businessman Sir Richard Branson.In Washington, Hill moved into her position as the National Security Council's top Russia hand in April 2017. Slowly, officials under the new national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, fleshed out a concrete Russia strategy for the administration."We had a brief moment after Flynn had been retired —a window under McMaster—to put together a Russia policy," one senior former official said.The document called for closer cooperation on fighting ISIS in Syria while ramping up deconfliction efforts in the country, working toward a non-aggression pact in cyberspace, and laying out a roadmap for a dialogue on arms control. But it did little to provide focus to the administration's approach to handling Moscow, officials said, because the national security, diplomatic, and intelligence communities were often ostracized from conversations with Trump's inner circle. As officials in those communities took steps to try and hold Russia accountable for meddling in domestic politics, they found themselves held back from making progress because the president publicly sided with Putin. Meanwhile, Kushner was quickly becoming Trump's go-to on all things foreign policy, tapped not only for the Middle East Peace plan but also for engaging with Middle Eastern leaders, including Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Zayed in the UAE and Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. National security and intelligence officials worried about Kushner's interactions with world leaders, and not only because he lacked government experience and had not been briefed on critical national security matters. Officials said they were also concerned about how his former business ties played into his communications with certain individuals. "I'd always worried that he'd go and say something that he shouldn't and that it would blow up in all our faces," one former senior official said.In October 2017, Kushner, who had settled into his role as one of the interlocutors of meetings with foreign officials, took an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia. Then-Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, who traveled with Kushner to Riyadh, would become one of the plan's key designers. Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell also joined. The Kremlin—and specifically Dmitriev—was seen as having a significant role to play. The White House did not give details of who Kushner met with while in Riyadh. During that same week, the kingdom hosted the Future Investment Initiative—a conference that Branson and Dmitriev both attended. Dmitriev told reporters there that he would invest "billions" in NEOM, a high-tech, futuristic project led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in the northwestern part of the country. Several individuals who attended the conference said Kushner met with individuals on the sidelines of the summit, though they could not remember if the president's son-in-law spoke with Dmitriev in a sit-down setting. One senior official said Kushner and Dmitriev did not meet at the conference.That same month, Dmitriev announced that RDIF pledged to invest again, this time with the Chinese Investment Corporation—China's sovereign wealth fund—in Branson's Hyperloop."There were questions being asked about where Russia might want to spend its money. Dmitriev was the money guy and held the strings," one former U.S. senior official said. "And the idea on Russia's part was, 'We can sell to Jared and everyone else on Middle East peace.'" IRL EncounterThe details of Kushner's conversations with foreign officials about the peace plan and other areas for business opportunities for the U.S. remained closely held throughout the next two years. As the president's son-in-law continued to use his personal relationships with foreign leaders to advance the White House and President Trump's goals, the administration's Russia policy fell into disarray, as career officials struggled to balance the national security interests of the country with the reality that Trump did not want to address Russia's interference head on. Officials said that tension grew increasingly worse as Congress demanded the administration punish Russia for its actions. In January 2018, Congress, which was working on implementing the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, asked the Treasury Department to provide a list of oligarchs with links to Putin. One of those individuals was Oleg Deripaska, the owner of one of the world's largest aluminum companies, and former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort's one-time paymaster. The decision to add Deripaska to the list for Congress was "fast and not thoroughly researched," as one former senior administration official put it. Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctioned Deripaska and two companies in which he held stakes, including aluminum giant Rusal and EN+, an energy and metals company. The listings would later cause a massive uproar on Capitol Hill and among European leaders who relied on Rusal for products such as aircraft.The chaos didn't stop there. In the fall of 2017 and winter of 2018, the U.S. State Department and Pentagon had engaged in conversations about whether to send Ukraine Javelins—anti tank weapons—and whether the U.S. would provide those weapons through federal funding."The Secretary [Tillerson] went in to see the president and whether or not we should be doing this—giving Ukraine the Javelins. And the president's reaction was, 'Are you out of your fucking mind? Why are we giving them anything?" one former senior official told The Daily Beast. "His whole attitude was [the sale] would hurt the Russians. I wondered at that time what it was about the Ukrainians that particularly irritated him. Of course, we later found out." Tillerson was fired in March 2018.Later that month, Trump ignored the advice of his national security team, choosing on a phone call with Putin to congratulate him—instead of condemning him for Moscow's election interference or its alleged nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil. Trump even floated the idea that Putin visit the White House."He really wanted to get on track with Putin and we kept having to react," one former senior official said. President Trump fired McMaster just a few days later, replacing him with Bolton. Officials said various Cabinet officials, including new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Bolton, had varying ideas on how to approach the "Russia problem," as one former senior official put it. Not long after, Trump went to Helsinki for a summit to discuss bilateral relations with Putin. The meeting became instantly infamous when Trump publicly rebuked the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia had interfered in the previous election. Trump Fails, Again and Again, to Condemn Putin for AnythingBolton found it curious for another reason. "What both of them [Putin and Trump] really wanted to discuss was increasing U.S. trade and investment in Russia, a conversation that lasted a surprisingly long time given there was so little to say, with so few U.S. businesses really eager to dive into the Russian political and economic morass," Bolton wrote in his book. It was a point Dmitriev and Kushner had been trying to get across for a long time.Meanwhile, back in Washington, senior U.S. officials attempted to engage in intelligence sharing with Russia, including information on terrorist financing. But when the U.S. shared intelligence with Moscow, it was rarely reciprocated—and when it was, the information was unhelpful, officials said. "Moscow took a lot of license to really push our boundaries and our buttons very harshly," as one senior official described it. Things were only made worse for national security officials when, under pressure from allies, the Treasury Department was forced to walk back its previous sanctions designations on Deripaska and Rusal in December 2018.Officials said when Congress asked for the names of oligarchs earlier that year, the Treasury Department panicked. It didn't want to be seen as soft on Russia, and it didn't want to piss off the White House. So the department made a quick decision. One former senior official said the department drafted the list with such speed that it had not had the chance to fully understand what sanctioning Rusal would do to the world's aluminum industry. And, that official said, the department hadn't "unpacked the Rusal ownership structure." When the Trump administration announced the sanctions, global metal prices skyrocketed."At the time we had to get that list out, Mnuchin thought he had to do something demonstrative that we were going to punish Russia for election meddling," one former senior official said. "You had all of the Europeans asking us to delist and for understandable reasons. So, we went through a painful process of trying to force Deripaska out of Rusal so we could delist Rusal."Tensions between the national security community and the White House persisted. Kushner carried out negotiations on his peace plan and included Dmitriev in those talks. The contents of those conversations stayed within Kushner's circle. One individual familiar with the matter said Kushner met Dmitriev in person "for the first time" in May 2019, though this official close to the president's son-in-law refused to say where the meeting took place. The official said Huntsman, then the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, introduced the two. During this same time period, Kushner spoke publicly about the Middle East peace plan process and appeared at a Washington think tank's annual dinner for a panel about his work on the issue.Two months later, in June 2019, Kushner and his team flew to Manama, Bahrain, to attend a summit for a series of meetings on how to implement one of the major aspects of his plan—investing in Palestine. Hundreds of foreign dignitaries, and investors from across the globe, including Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman, attended the lavish event at Manama's Ritz-Carlton. They gathered in ballrooms for panels and speeches. Kushner gave a presentation on investing in the Palestinian territories. Dmitriev attended. An official with knowledge said Kushner and Dmitriev "crossed paths" at the conference but did not offer more details about their interaction.That summit spurred additional conversations in Bahrain and afterward among Kushner's peace plan team, Dmitrev, and a host of other financiers and banking executives on how best to bring about investments in the Palestinian territories. But the details of those conversations remained closely held within Kushner's inner circle. "No one ever really knew what Jared was up to," one former official said. Another former senior official said they heard bits and pieces of the Kushner peace plan—and word of Russia's involvement in helping craft portions of it—but that officials in the State Department and National Security Council were primarily kept in the dark. "There were maybe three or four people who really knew what Jared was up to and who he was speaking with and what was included in the plan," that official said. "But they didn't dish to anyone. And sometimes even people working with Jared didn't know exactly who or how he was communicating with foreign officials."On Aug. 14, Kushner, along with President Trump, announced a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that marked a significant step in establishing peace in the Middle East. Kushner was the lead negotiator on the deal, in which Israel and the UAE, among other things, signed on to establishing embassies, increasing trade, and partnering on the fight against the coronavirus. Under the agreement, Israel also promised to temporarily suspend annexation of the West Bank. Multiple senior officials said they expect the president's son-in-law in the next several weeks to deliver similar agreements between Israel and other Arab nations. Kushner is in conversations with several countries about those deals, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Bahrain, those officials said. Why Can't We Be Friends?Kushner wasn't Trump's only agent of behind the scenes diplomacy. Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, along with Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, worked to deliver messages to Ukraine that officials there should announce investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. In December 2019 the Senate officially launched an impeachment trial into whether the president had withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for President Volodymyr Zelensky announcing an investigation into the Bidens and the allegations that a Ukrainian company had interfered in the 2016 election. Trump was acquitted of a charge of abuse of power with a 58-42 vote and of a charge of obstruction of justice by a vote of 53-47. By that time, key Russia experts, including Hill and Tim Morrison, who took her place on the council, had left the administration. "It all slowly unraveled and by the end we felt like we didn't have a Russia policy at all," one former senior official said. Now, in the lead-up to the November election, the Trump team is focusing on trying to create a situation through which the U.S. and Russia could work together on arms control. But officials are not optimistic about the chances of brokering any kind of serious negotiations. Not at a time when Moscow is batting off allegations that it paid bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan—and is actively interfering in the 2020 campaign.Dmitriev, meanwhile, has continued to try and work with U.S. officials on creating a business council where the U.S. and Russia could look for mutually beneficial investment opportunities. In January 2020, Dmitriev went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to push the message. "I think business cooperation between Russia and the U.S. is important. It's non-existent right now," Dmitriev said, adding that he believed sanctions are "wrong… Particularly U.S. sanctions, because they really undermine the U.S. long term." Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, and Secretary Mnuchin were at Davos as well, leading the American delegation. This spring, a few days after that Russian plane loaded with protective gear landed in New York City—the shipment made possible in part by Kushner's "Project Airbridge"—Saudi Arabia and Russia struck a deal to cut oil production in order to stabilize the market that had been rattled by the coronavirus. OPEC and its allies agreed to cut production by 9.7 billion barrels a day in May and June after oil prices fell to 18-year lows. One senior administration official said Kushner and Dmitriev worked behind the scenes to help negotiate the deal.During the last-minute negotiations, Dmitriev published an op-ed with CNBC saying the U.S. and Russia should work together to defeat the coronavirus."During World War II, American and Russian soldiers fought side by side against a common enemy," Dmitriev wrote. "Just as our grandfathers stood shoulder to shoulder... now our countries must show unity and leadership to win the war against the coronavirus." Dmitriev's article was viewed in the administration as the most recent proposal by the Russians to work with the United States. He often appears on television and publishes opinion articles in CNBC and other American media outlets proposing new pathways for cooperation between the U.S. and Russia. He also pitches ideas publicly at international forums, including in Davos. Dmitriev's plan for cooperation on the virus seemed to those working on the Russia portfolio like a way the two countries could legitimately partner on a major international crisis. In May, a U.S. Air Force aircraft landed in Moscow. Officials with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) carried out the delivery of a $5.6 billion shipment with ventilators meant to help Russia fight the virus—even though USAID ceased operations in the country in 2012. The agency did not respond to a request for comment for this story.In its communiqué, the U.S. State Department used language similar to Dmitriev's: "Particularly in times of crisis, we must work together—much like we did during the Second World War, when the people of our two nations and other allies fought valiantly, suffered great losses, and endured great hardship."Two months after that, the U.S. and United Kingdom intelligence communities accused hackers working for the Kremlin of breaking into the networks of groups working on a COVID-19 vaccine.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| Coronavirus in South Africa: Whistleblower questions winter tent deaths Posted: 23 Aug 2020 04:04 PM PDT  Suspected Covid-19 patients were routinely left in an open tent, in sub-zero temperatures, the BBC finds.
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| UK leader urges parents to let kids to return to school Posted: 23 Aug 2020 01:35 PM PDT  Britain's prime minister is asking parents to set aside their fears and send their children back to school next month when schools in Britain fully reopen for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic shut then down more than five months ago. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was the government's "moral duty" to reopen the schools as he stressed that authorities now know more about COVID-19 than they did when the country went into lockdown on March 23. Johnson's comments came hours after Britain's top public health officials issued a joint statement saying that children were more likely be harmed by staying away from school than from being exposed to COVID-19.
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| Libyan commander dismisses rivals' cease-fire as 'deception' Posted: 23 Aug 2020 12:57 PM PDT |
| Republican National Convention Promises Gavel To Gavel Trumps, Including The President All Four Nights Posted: 23 Aug 2020 11:50 AM PDT |
| Trump announces plasma treatment authorized for COVID-19 Posted: 23 Aug 2020 10:57 AM PDT  President Donald Trump on Sunday announced emergency authorization to treat COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma — a move he called "a breakthrough," one of his top health officials called "promising" and other health experts said needs more study before it's celebrated. The announcement came after White House officials complained there were politically motivated delays by the Food and Drug Administration in approving a vaccine and therapeutics for the disease that has upended Trump's reelection chances. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump put himself at the center of the FDA's announcement of the authorization at a news conference Sunday evening.
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| Residents flee as Gulf Coast sees possible tandem hurricanes Posted: 23 Aug 2020 10:52 AM PDT  The Gulf Coast braced Sunday for a potentially devastating hit from twin hurricanes as two dangerous storms swirled toward the U.S from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. A storm dubbed Marco grew into a hurricane Sunday as it churned up the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana. Another potential hurricane, Tropical Storm Laura, lashed the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and was tracking toward the same region of the U.S. coast, carrying the risk of growing into a far more powerful storm.
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| Republicans Rush to Finalize Convention ('Apprentice' Producers Are Helping) Posted: 23 Aug 2020 08:39 AM PDT  Democrats set a high bar last week for the pandemic-era political convention, dispensing with cheering crowds in favor of a virtual pageant that encompassed passionate speeches, a charming cross-country roll call vote, vignettes from an Oscar-winning filmmaker and a low-fi fireworks display above a parking lot. A few hiccups aside, even jaded network executives conceded the party mostly pulled it off.Now it's the Republicans' turn in the prime-time spotlight -- and the party led by a former reality TV star is rushing to measure up.After scrapping plans for a full-bore, in-person spectacle in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida, because of the coronavirus crisis, Republicans are working to finalize a week's worth of events that can match the production put on for the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, while meeting the exacting -- and frequently shifting -- standards of President Donald Trump.Two producers of "The Apprentice," where Trump rose to TV stardom, are involved in the planning. Sadoux Kim, a longtime deputy to "Apprentice" creator Mark Burnett, is a lead consultant on the production. Kim once served as a Miss Universe judge when Trump owned the pageant. Chuck LaBella, a former NBC entertainment executive who helped produce "The Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump," is also on the payroll.Party officials say their convention -- during which Trump is expected to speak every night in the 10 p.m. hour -- will ultimately surpass the Democrats' telethon-like show, which the president and his allies have repeatedly called "dark," depressing and thin on policy proposals. "We're going to have more of it live than what they did," Trump told Fox News on Thursday. "I think it's pretty boring when you do tapes."Exactly what that looks like remains an open question.As Monday's kickoff looms, Republican officials were still deciding what segments to air live and what would be recorded in advance. Typically, convention broadcasts require weeks of highly technical preparation. By the weekend, producers at the major TV networks had only a foggy idea of what to expect, although Republicans provided a more detailed rundown Saturday evening. Still, broadcasters will head into the week with some unknowns."We're treating this as breaking news," Steve Scully, the political editor at C-SPAN, said in an interview. "Once we know who's speaking where and when, we'll send cameras."Republicans involved in the planning admit that anxiety began to set in two weeks ago. But on Saturday, they said that they were now confident that a fully realized lineup was in place -- and that in contrast to the Democrats' virtual event, voters could expect something more akin to a regular convention, with a focus on live onstage moments featuring Trump, whom aides described as the week's "talent in chief."Typically, the nominee makes a mundane appearance early in the convention -- waving or watching from the wings -- before a major speech at the end. Trump has dismissed that model and plans to directly address the nation in prime-time on each of the convention's four nights. The president wants the opportunity to rebut charges made against him throughout the Democratic program, aides said, particularly on his handling of the coronavirus crisis.A stage has been built at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, a neo-Classical event space where most of the speakers will address a live audience. Regulations in Washington prohibit gatherings of more than 50 people; Republican aides say they have hired "COVID experts" to determine how many onlookers can enter the auditorium and what audience participation can look like.The list of speakers is heavy on the president's relatives and White House staff members, including Dan Scavino, Trump's former caddie who is deputy chief of staff for communications, and Larry Kudlow, the national economic adviser. Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, will also speak, according to a person involved in the planning.The lineup also includes Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the Missouri couple that toted weapons at Black protesters and have since become right-wing media stars, and Nicholas Sandmann, the Kentucky teenager who sued news outlets over coverage of his encounter last year with a Native American protester in Washington.Each night's events are expected to begin at 8:30 p.m., a half-hour earlier than the Democrats' program, although the major broadcast networks do not start covering until 10 p.m.A "Democrats For Trump" segment is planned, although the participants remain a closely guarded secret. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the sole Black Republican in the Senate, will speak, along with two future potential presidential candidates: Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations."The Democratic convention was a Hollywood-produced, Old Guard-laden convention, if you ask me," Kellyanne Conway, Trump's counselor, told reporters at the White House on Friday, adding that viewers "are going to see and hear from many Americans whose lives have been monumentally impacted by this administration's policies.""We definitely want to improve on the dour and sour mood of the DNC," added Conway, who is also scheduled to speak at the convention.Shirlene Ostrov, the Republican state party chairman from Hawaii, said she expected the convention "will be much more positive" than the Democrats' offering."If the Democrats could articulate any reason to vote their way without mentioning the word 'Trump,' you can't hear it," she said in an interview Saturday in Charlotte.The president is set to accept his party's nomination on Thursday from the White House, with fireworks above the South Lawn. The first lady, Melania Trump, will speak Tuesday from the Rose Garden, and Vice President Mike Pence will appear Wednesday from Fort McHenry in Maryland, the site of a battle in the War of 1812 that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner."All of the sites are controlled by the federal government, which some ethics experts say would violate the Hatch Act, a Depression-era law that bans the use of public spaces for political activities. Trump aides said that the White House venues being used are considered part of the residence and therefore are authorized for political use. Some of Trump's aides privately scoff at the Hatch Act and say they take pride in violating its regulations.The president's sensitivity to TV production values has also raised pressure on Republican aides to pull off a glitch-free affair.The Democrats' relatively smooth experience belied the complexity of mounting a virtual event, from juggling dozens of remote video feeds to avoiding embarrassments like losing picture or sound. To ensure professionalism, the Democrats relied on Ricky Kirshner, the producer of the Super Bowl halftime show and the Tony Awards.The Republicans' celebration is being coordinated by longtime Trump loyalists including Conway; Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager; Hope Hicks, a senior White House adviser; and Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law. Tony Sayegh, a former Treasury Department official who was brought on as a consultant to help handle the convention, is overseeing plans with Max Miller, a former White House official who took charge of campaign events after Trump's sparsely attended rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and who has little experience in television production.The team is consulting Kim, who served as Burnett's head of business development for about a decade, earning production credits on "The Celebrity Apprentice" and "The Voice."Kim, whose production firm has received $54,274 in payments from the Republican Party's convention committee, has a relatively low profile in the TV industry. Several producers who worked on "The Apprentice" said last week they had never heard of him. In 2010, he served as a judge for the Miss Universe pageant, with an official bio saying he "negotiates, packages and manages deals with brands and agencies" for Burnett's programs.LaBella, the other consultant, has a long relationship with Trump dating to his time as a talent wrangler on "The Apprentice"; he also worked on pageants for Miss Universe and Miss USA. He was linked to Trump's inner circle after Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, steered LaBella to Keith Davidson for legal work. Davidson was the Hollywood lawyer who negotiated payments on behalf of two women who said they had affairs with Trump.A company owned by LaBella has received $81,603 in payments from the Republican convention committee, according to financial disclosure reports. (Republican aides declined to make Kim or LaBella available for interviews.)For viewers at home, there is a chance that Trump's desire for in-person events could backfire.The Democrats' virtual roll call, featuring YouTube-friendly dispatches from delegates in their home states and territories, won praise for its kookiness and made an internet star of a masked Rhode Island calamari chef. Republicans, in contrast, are planning an in-person roll call in Charlotte, but the event is scheduled to take place Monday morning, meaning fewer Americans will see it.Privately, Republican aides admitted it was a mistake for the president and his campaign operatives to lower expectations for Biden's ability to deliver his acceptance speech, which ended up being well-received, including by analysts on Fox News.Now, aides say, they feel confident that -- for the same reason -- skepticism about Trump's convention will play to their benefit this week.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| A year after Elijah McClain's death, activists want charges Posted: 23 Aug 2020 08:13 AM PDT  In the year since Elijah McClain died after being stopped by police in suburban Denver on his way home from a store, the number of people calling for justice to be done in his case has grown to millions of people around the world. Three Aurora officers, including one involved in the encounter with McClain, were fired and one resigned in July over photos that mocked the neck hold that was used on McClain on Aug. 24, 2019. A district attorney said last year he could not pursue criminal charges because an autopsy did not determine how McClain died, but state Attorney General Phil Weiser is looking at whether criminal charges are warranted in the case.
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| Pompeo heads to Mideast as part of Trump's Arab-Israeli push Posted: 23 Aug 2020 07:55 AM PDT  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on a trip to the Middle East, the first of two senior U.S. officials to travel to the region this week as the Trump administration presses an ambitious Arab-Israeli peace push that President Donald Trump hopes will burnish his foreign policy credentials ahead of November's election. Pompeo is traveling to Israel, several Gulf Arab states and Sudan and will be away when he is scheduled to speak on Tuesday to the Republican National Convention, which will nominate Trump for a second term. Should Pompeo appear by remote or recorded video, it will break a long tradition of secretaries of state declining to participate in the public political nomination process.
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| Video shows armed Belarus president as protests roil capital Posted: 23 Aug 2020 07:50 AM PDT  The authoritarian president of Belarus made a dramatic show of defiance Sunday against the massive protests demanding his resignation, toting a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest as he strode off a helicopter that landed at his residence while demonstrators massed nearby. In the 15th day of the largest and most determined protests ever in independent Belarus, a crowd of about 200,000 rallied against President Alexander Lukashenko in a square in Minsk, the capital. Video from the state news agency Belta showed a government helicopter landing on the grounds and Lukashenko getting off holding what appeared to be a Kalashnikov-type automatic rifle.
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| How starving public health fueled a COVID fire in Florida Posted: 23 Aug 2020 07:01 AM PDT  On a sweltering July morning, Rose Wilson struggled to breathe as she sat in her bed, the light from her computer illuminating her face and the oxygen tubes in her nose. Wilson, a retiree who worked as a public health department nurse supervisor in Duval County for 35 years, had just been diagnosed with COVID-19-induced pneumonia. Staring back from her screen was Dr. Rogers Cain, who runs a tidy little family medical clinic a couple of blocks from the Trout River in north Jacksonville, a predominantly Black area where the coronavirus is running roughshod.
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| 10 things you need to know today: August 23, 2020 Posted: 23 Aug 2020 07:01 AM PDT |
| Germany just took delivery of its new VIP plane that will fly the country's top government officials – take a look Posted: 23 Aug 2020 05:36 AM PDT  Germany ordered the A350s following a mid-air mechanical failure on its current VIP aircraft that saw Angela Merkel fly commercial to the G20 in 2018.
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| 13 die in Peru disco stampede after police lockdown raid Posted: 23 Aug 2020 05:28 AM PDT  Thirteen people died in a stampede at a disco in Peru after a police raid to enforce the country's lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic, officials said Sunday. The stampede happened at the Thomas disco in Lima, where about 120 people had gathered for a party on Saturday night, the Interior Ministry said.
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| Trump delivered on some big 2016 promises, but others unmet Posted: 23 Aug 2020 04:42 AM PDT  It's a theme that will play a major role in the upcoming Republican National Convention, as the president tries to convince a weary nation that he deserves a second term, even when millions of Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, the economy is in tatters and racial tensions are boiling over. Back in 2016, Trump was criticized for failing to release detailed policy plans akin to those of his rival, Hillary Clinton. What Trump did do was lay out a vision for a new America — one driven by a nationalist self-interest and disregard for Democratic norms.
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| Iran: UN nuclear chief's visit to Tehran no link to US push Posted: 23 Aug 2020 03:52 AM PDT  Iran said Sunday that an upcoming visit this week by the head of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog agency to Tehran has nothing to do with a U.S. push to impose so-called "snapback" sanctions on Iran — even as Tehran acknowledged a recent explosion at a major uranium enrichment site was "sabotage." The Trump administration last week dismissed near-universal opposition to its demand to restore all U.N. sanctions on Iran, declaring that a 30-day countdown for the "snapback" of penalties eased under the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers had begun.
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| Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny 'under constant surveillance' before suspected poisoning Posted: 23 Aug 2020 03:47 AM PDT  Russian security agents were tracking every move of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the days before he fell suddenly ill and claim they did not see any attempt to poison him, according to local media. Mr Navalny, Russia's most outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was transferred to a German hospital on Saturday and remains unconscious after what supporters say was an attempt on his life in Siberia. Doctors who treated him in a Siberian hospital before he was allowed to travel abroad have rejected claims of poisoning, saying he was suffering from a "metabolic disorder".
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| Comatose Russian dissident visited by wife, aide in Germany Posted: 23 Aug 2020 03:45 AM PDT  Alexei Navalny's wife and a top aide visited him Sunday in a Berlin hospital where the comatose Russian dissident is being treated by German doctors after a suspected poisoning. Navalny was flown to Germany on Saturday from Siberia after doctors determined he was stable enough to be brought to the capital's Charité hospital for treatment. After his arrival, hospital spokeswoman Manuela Zingl said the 44-year-old would be undergoing extensive diagnostic tests and that doctors wouldn't comment on his illness or treatment until they were able to evaluate the results.
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| Israel's Netanyahu accepts compromise, avoids election Posted: 23 Aug 2020 03:00 AM PDT  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that he had accepted a proposal to extend budget negotiations, preventing the government from collapsing and plunging the country into a new election. In a nationally televised address, Netanyahu said that now was not the time to drag the country into a fourth parliamentary elections in less than two years. Netanyahu and his rival and coalition partner, Benny Gantz, had faced a Monday night deadline to agree on a budget.
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| China's war on religion Posted: 23 Aug 2020 02:55 AM PDT  To secure its hold on power, the Communist Party is tightening its control over all faiths in China. Here's everything you need to know:When did the crackdown begin? Religious repression has intensified across China since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013. The brutal crackdown on minority Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang — where mosques and madrasas are being demolished and more than 1 million Uighurs have been detained in re-education camps — has sparked international outrage. But the Communist Party's assault on faith is not limited to Islam. Authorities have used the world's distraction over the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate an ongoing campaign against Christianity. Officially atheist, the party sees adherence to any faith, particularly those with foreign origins such as Christianity and Islam, as a threat to its dominance. So Xi has embarked on the "sinicization" of religious practice, ordering Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian leaders to integrate Chinese communist thought into their belief systems. The party wants people "to love the motherland and their faith," says You Quan, head of the body that oversees ethnic and religious affairs in China. Sinicization has resulted in thousands of churches and mosques being shuttered and razed; those that remain fly Chinese flags.How is Christianity practiced in China? For decades, Chinese Catholics and Protestants have been divided between those who attend state-sanctioned churches — in which clerics are appointed by Beijing — and those who attend so-called underground churches. About half of China's 12 million Catholics worship in the underground churches loyal to the Vatican. To try to heal that schism, Beijing and the Vatican struck a deal in 2018 that gave Chinese authorities the right to recommend new bishops and the pope the power to approve or veto them. Beijing has exploited that agreement by refusing to name bishops to half of China's 98 dioceses, while pressuring priests to adhere to party regulations, saying that the Vatican pact means that the pope commands them to do so. Portraits of the Virgin Mary have been replaced by portraits of Xi, and priests have been compelled to incorporate Xi's sayings into their sermons.What about Protestant churches? Protestantism is China's fastest-growing religion, and so is especially worrisome to Xi. The state-registered church, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, claims some 39 million adherents. But at least another 40 million are thought to worship in underground "home churches" — pushing the share of Chinese who are Protestants to nearly 6 percent, about the same as the membership of the Communist Party. Beijing is determined to control the faith. Online bookstores have been banned from selling Bibles as authorities prepare a new Mandarin translation that some fear will omit whole chapters. Pastors have been ordered to attend government-sponsored training sessions, where they are told that in China the "state leads and church follows." Thousands of underground churches have been closed. At those that remain open, symbols of faith have been purged, with crosses and Bibles burned. Facial recognition cameras have been installed so that authorities can track and harass worshippers, a tactic pioneered against Buddhists in the autonomous Chinese province of Tibet.What happened in Tibet? Tibetan Buddhism has been targeted by Beijing for decades because it is a central pillar of Tibetan identity. That repression has ramped up under Xi. Tens of thousands of party members have been deployed to temples and villages under an outreach initiative that doubles as a surveillance program. And since 2016, up to 17,000 Buddhist monks and nuns have been evicted from two key training institutes and sent to indoctrination centers where, the U.S. State Department reports, they were beaten and shocked with electric batons. Chen Quanguo, the Politburo member who oversaw the Tibet crackdown, was sent to Xinjiang in 2016 to use the same playbook against Uighur Muslims. Detainees are forced to say "there is no God, there is only the Communist Party," said Omer Kanat, head of the U.S.-based Uighur Human Rights Project.Are other religious groups being repressed? The Hui, a Muslim minority of some 10 million people in central China, are now suffering the same fate as the Uighurs. Their mosques are being sinicized, stripped of domes and minarets, and the call to prayer has been banned. Many Hui fear that concentration camps may come next. The only faith that remains relatively free is Chinese Buddhism, which is seen as indigenous. Still, it, too, is being pressed into party service: In 2018, the Shaolin Monastery — birthplace of kung fu — was forced to fly the Chinese national flag for the first time in its 1,500-year history.How has the U.S. responded? The Trump administration has sanctioned dozens of companies and governmental bodies connected to human rights abuses in Xinjiang. And last month, Chen and three other top officials were hit with sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, freezing their U.S. assets and banning American companies from doing business with them. The U.S. will not stand by, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as the Communist Party attempts to eradicate Uighurs' "culture and Muslim faith." But outside pressure is unlikely to alter Chinese policy, says Karrie Koesel, an expert on religion in China. "The state," she says, "sees religion as an existential threat."Eradicating Falun Gong The Chinese government has identified "five poisons" that threaten its rule: pro-democracy activists, Taiwanese nationalists, Tibetan dissidents, Uighur separatists, and Falun Gong — a spiritual discipline that mixes traditional qigong with New Age philosophy. Founded in northeast China in 1992 by former trumpet player Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong ("law wheel practice") promises salvation to those who study Master Li's texts and practice a regimen of gentle physical movements. Li attracted some 70 million followers in a matter of years, a level of popularity that worried the Communist Party. It banned Falun Gong in 1999, labeling the movement an "evil cult" and arresting tens of thousands of adherents. Human rights activists say thousands were killed and had their organs harvested for transplant. Falun Gong practitioners who fled to Hong Kong, where they could practice freely, fear a sweeping new security law imposed on the city by Beijing could now be wielded against them. "It is a hanging knife over our heads," said Ingrid Wu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman.This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.More stories from theweek.com The Trump show has jumped the shark The only way Trump can win 6 things the GOP can learn from the virtual DNC
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| The Anarchist Neighborhood of Athens Posted: 23 Aug 2020 02:32 AM PDT  I heard the first helicopters fly over a little after 3 p.m. Panagiotis had gone to the pharmacy near his mother's house to get Malox and Riopan in case we got gassed. Pharmacies in our neighborhood had been sold out of these items for days in the lead up to anti-American demonstrations, and we'd waited too long to look for them. The Malox was to pour on our eyes, the Riopan to swallow. There would be medics on the street today, Panagiotis said, but he didn't want to risk it. During an anti-austerity demonstration on Syntagma Square in 2012, corralled by the police and running, a tear gas canister exploded beneath his feet. The blindness was nearly instantaneous but he kept running. Street medics grabbed him before he could fall, dragging him away, dousing his face in antacid to stop the burning, squeezing the gel into his mouth while a wave of anarchists rushed past, into the gas, hurling rocks at the police.In spring 2019, after decades of weighing an exit from the US, I secured a long-term visa to live and work in Greece. I settled in Exarchia—anarchist-occupied Athens. I was by no means the only one leaving the US for Europe after the 2016 election, nor the only one hoping to shed ties to a failed state, but I was among a smaller number following a dream of leaving the idea of nations behind. By March 2020, COVID-19 would be offering instruction on interdependence and the fantastical nature of borders; a crash course for anyone still holding tight to the idea of the nation-state. But Exarchians didn't need a global catastrophe to spell it out. They'd had a 47-year head start. That day of helicopters hovering, we headed down the slope from my house toward Patission Street, cutting through the Polytechnic on our way to Omonia Square. The streets and boulevards were empty as if under a heatwave or curfew. Bored-looking police in riot gear, with gas masks dangling around their necks, stood drinking take out-coffee in the eaves of modernist arcades. We'd dressed like tourists and were speaking English, so we would be easily ignored, but the cops and empty streets still had us on edge. Earlier that day, my neighbor told me everything would be fine and I should stay inside until Monday morning. But I wasn't in Exarchia to stay inside.My first apartment in the neighborhood was in a terraced building above a café on Kalidromiou, next to Gare Squat—a solidarity house that operated a public bath and laundry. The squat rose tall, a massive building filled with balconies, next to a partially burnt cliff house on the slope of Lofos Strefi, a lush and rocky outcropping of a park in the center of the neighborhood. Gare was one of dozens of squats and solidarity houses in Exarchia that offered everything from housing for migrants and free clinics to language and music classes, open air cinemas and pay-what-you-can cafes.The streets of Exarchia are green, lined with bitter orange trees and terraced balconies full of geraniums, hanging plants, and climbing wisteria. Buildings in the neighborhood are a mix of squats, stately neo-classical houses, and wide, white, low-rise buildings built in the 60s and 70s; roofs a tangle of TV antennas. The lower halves of every building, whether anarchist occupied or privately owned, are covered with murals and graffiti. A smiling octopus holding a Molotov cocktail above the words Octopus Will Win, a spectral face with the phrase I see Dead People but Who Doesn't? painted beside it. A map of Airbnb apartments—each marked with an icon of a fire and the words Welcome to Exarchia; murals of sleeping bums, and pink cats, whole walls painted with yellow globe thistles rising to the sun, ornate calligraphic slogans reading "Fuck the Police."The neighborhood comprises a dozen winding blocks in the center of Athens, many of them pedestrian corridors, between the Polytechnic Institute and the National Archeological Museum, and the posh borders of Neapoli and Kolonaki. The streets along Exarchia Square are lined with outdoor cafes, bookstores, and record stores. One rarely sees people gazing into their phones in Exarchia or sitting in cafes staring into laptops. They talk; leaning into conversations, or sit, relaxing together on the same side of the table, smoking, reading, thinking. People make eye contact. Like all Mediterraneans in the days before coronavirus, they kiss to greet one another.From my place on Kalidromiou I could see the Acropolis and mountains rising blue in the distance; the sun shining gold on the cliffs of Lycebettus—a forested mountain inside the city that overlooks the vast white sprawl of Athens and beyond to the sea. Every Saturday a farmer's market bloomed the length of Kalidromiou then packed up and disappeared in the evening—street sweepers washing away crushed oranges and busted crates of horta; the lingering smell of fresh fish rising from piles of ice in the gutter.In the evening the neighborhood rang with music and the murmur of conversation; a cheerful, languid energy fueled by endless cigarettes, free shots of mastica, and food so good and simple you felt you'd found the very source of joy. People packed outdoor cafes where lights were strung between trellises and stray cats begged. In the restaurant operating out of an abandoned school across from my building, kids formed little troops playing out on the sidewalk or running between tables before being whisked off to bed.This is what a neighborhood that's been autonomous for 47 years looks like.It also looks like the charred and smoldering remains of flipped cars, the gutted and trash-strewn hollows of buildings that have been burned but not demolished, overflowing dumpsters, smashed storefronts, cracked marble sidewalks, police buses and armed military police stationed at the perimeter of the neighborhood, and cadres of young men and women dressed in black burning things in the center square. The freedom and ease of life in Exarchia is preserved by the constant and immediate will to set shit on fire, throw tear gas canisters back at the police, maintain aesthetic control of the neighborhood, and use petrol bombs to remind everyone the place is not for sale.Below the razor wire on the roof of Gare Squat, a black banner reads We won't end the occupation, Police and landlords we will trample you. In the spring of 2019 this aspiration seemed, despite the perennial pessimism of leftist academics, and the salivating optimism of foreign real estate speculators, not impossible. The predictions that Exarchia would fall to the same gentrification that took Manhattan's East Village and Alphabet City, then spread like a virus through every mid-sized city in America, ignored Exarchia's history and underestimated anarchist tactics. It was true Chinese and Israeli investors had bought buildings in Exarchia, it was true Airbnb was doing its worst. It was true the drug dealers, pushed out by anarchists years before, were making a police assisted-return, not unlike the junkies who heralded Alphabet City's transformation into starter condos for young professionals. The difference was that fascist tactics and capitalist aggression in Exarchia had never gone unchecked. Anarchists, supported by the broader population, evicted the police from Exarchia in December 2008 in an uprising that swept through every neighborhood and suburb of Athens, expanding out to the broader mainland and then to the islands. The catalyst was the murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, by two policemen. Grigoropoulos spent his days in Exarchia but still lived at home in the suburbs with his parents. He could have been anyone's son.In the days following the boy's murder; shops, banks, and cars in the center of the city were torched; fires tore through public buildings around Syntagma Square, the seat of parliament. "But the heart of the protest," my friend tells Maria tells me, "was everyday people; women dressed for work in suits and heels lobbing cinder blocks through bank windows." Grandmothers spitting in the face of police. The cop who shot Grigoropoulos, Epaminondas Korkoneas, was sentenced to life in prison, his partner was charged as an accomplice and sentenced to 10 years. The government condemned the shooting; the police issued an apology. Christmas festivities in Athens were canceled.It's hard for an American to imagine this kind of reaction to the murder of a child by the police. Last year in the US, 1,000 civilians—14 of them children—were killed by cops. Even in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, Americans couldn't fathom a police officer getting life in prison. Maria said she'd read comments in the American press after Grigoropoulos was killed asking how Greeks could riot over "just one child.""The day we don't tear things down because the government murdered a child," she says. "Is the day we're no longer human."Those weeks of rage in Greece were sparked by Grigoropoulos's murder, but they came on the heels of government corruption and massive overspending on construction projects, and they came from a deep-seated understanding of the brutality that unchecked authority is capable of. On Nov. 17, 1973, the U.S.-backed military Junta ended a non-violent occupation at the Polytechnic Institute in Exarchia by driving a tank through the gates of the school, murdering 27 people, including students, workers and bystanders; injuring hundreds, and arresting thousands. The aftermath required soldiers to clean pools of blood from the sidewalk into the gutters and sewers. Radio transmissions from inside the school recorded students appealing to the soldiers as their brothers, begging them to disobey military orders. Among the last sounds broadcast from inside the school was an adolescent voice reciting the national anthem, "Hail Freedom," then silence.These killings were a catalyst for the 1982 Academic Sanctuary law—which forbade police and soldiers from entering any university, protecting dissidents, radicals, and petty criminals alike. The Polytechnic uprising is memorialized with a yearly demonstration, a march through the city providing an occasion to make other demands and ending, traditionally, with riots in front of the U.S. embassy. This massive annual anti-American demonstration that gets little or no U.S. press coverage was where Panagiotis and I were headed.In the years following the massacre, anarchists organized and grew the movement. The next two decades saw a cultural revival in the neighborhood from the bottom up; car parks turned into gardens and playgrounds, a boom of public art, bookstores and publishing collectives, punk, folk, and Rembetika music on the air.In the 1970s and '80s, 10,000 anarchists lived in Exarchia and it still rings with their presence, including an anti-fascist soccer team called the Exarchia Stars whose fans are legendary for screaming anti-capitalist slogans from the stands. Black flags, and the black and red flags of the anarcho-communists, fly from the windows and roofs of buildings. Many of the bookstores (there are more than a dozen between Exarchia square and University of Athens alone) are small press publishers and pamphleteers, like Black and Red on Veletsiou Street, started by George Garbis in the early 70s. "The state wants to evacuate this area and sell it to the multinationals," Garbis says. "but there are still young people throwing molotovs—young and old people—they don't give in here."Black and Red often finds itself a gathering place for older radicals, who sit on folding chairs around Garbis's cluttered desk, amid the stacks of rare editions and classic anarchist texts, smoking cigarettes and arguing."They want to drink or talk about the past or find love here," Garbis says of his friends. "But some years there are real battles. And they are real militants: 60, 70 years old and still militant."I first returned to Exarchia in 2015. I was editing a novel I began writing in Athens in the '90s when I lived near Omonia Square, working under-the-table jobs with other teenage dropouts. What I'd planned as a two week trip to Athens to get settings and historical details straight turned into years of going back and forth between Exarchia and Lower Manhattan, even after the book was published, studying Greek, and finally settling in the neighborhood. I no doubt fall into a category of unacknowledged migration; Americans returning to Europe and parts of Africa as our economy, health care and education systems, and social contracts fail, and our government turns harder to the right. There are currently 8.7 million Americans living as expatriates abroad, a number that has doubled in the last decade. My family came to the United States from Italy and Ireland recently enough for me to qualify for a foreign passport, but living in Exarchia was the closest I could come to anything that felt like a legitimate birthright return. The same is true for Dalia Heller. Heller, whose father is Greek and mother is Slovenian, grew up in Canada, is based in New York City and works on international public health initiatives. Heller recently bought a house on the northern slope of Lofos Strefi, which she planned to use partly for an arts and community space. The house is now occupied by a couple of women who live rent free, while Heller does public health work in the US related to COVID-19.Heller says COVID-19 is showing the world that borders are permeable and all lives are interconnected. "This is the moment we need to act," she says. "When people are seeing that a different way of being is possible."Heller's optimism is understandable. In the early days of the virus in New York, even Governor Andrew Cuomo's statements to the press sounded like they'd been written by anarcho-syndicalists, as he called for mutual aid, coordinated efforts to share medical equipment; for individual responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. The tenets of anarchism were suddenly being voiced by politicians and conservative grandparents and Britney Spears. Everyone was finding themselves to be a closet syndicalist."I wanted to live in Exarchia," Heller says, because there's a shared purpose and a shared responsibility. If you're homeless you're more likely to get a plate at a restaurant in Exarchia. There are restaurants here that fed everyone for free during the general strikes. You feel, walking down the street at night that everyone looks out for one another. The squats are part of the community and they represent what Exarchia is about. When you come into the neighborhood—you cross over Academias, head up Benaki and it's like an invisible curtain opens up and closes behind you. It's like a warm embrace." Garbis describes the period between 1973 and the mid 1990s in Exarchia as "paradise.""People came from all over Greece and all over the world to settle here. Antifascists, anarchists, leftists, we lived together in a positive atmosphere. We wanted to promote theoretical work so people could know who they were—not promote violence."The first time I'd experienced the burn of tear gas I was headed out to meet friends from language school at Oxo Nou, a restaurant at the corner of Benaki and Andrea Metaxa. I'd been studying all day and was excited to be out in the pale light and crisp air as the sun was setting. I'd made it three blocks from my house when my face began to burn and I couldn't breathe, and I stupidly tried to speed through the gas to the restaurant. By the time I got to the place, there were little pools of fire on the street and the owners were waving people inside—shepherding them into the kitchen to rinse their eyes. Young men and women with molotovs and bandannas over their faces were headed up the street toward the perimeter set up by police.I tried to wait, to wash up, to stay with my friends who were at the sink, but my body was already back out on the street, and headed home.I rushed past people pulling their shirts up over their faces and people still standing on the corner of Veletsiou, grilling meat and smoking cigarettes, unmoved; and I felt like a coward—keying back into my place, stripping out of my clothes as soon as I got in the door, rinsing my burning mouth and eyes, blowing my nose and feeling my sinuses explode in pain, shutting the windows, stepping into the shower. An hour later I stood behind the glass door of the balcony and watched the lights of the city shine. Helicopters passed over. Music and voices drifted up from the café. People cleaned and tended their terrace gardens. One could feel that nothing had happened because the police were already gone, because the pace of life had barely changed. I remembered Maria telling me someone threw a live grenade into the building next to her office."Nothing happened," she said."They didn't increase security in your building?" I asked her."Why?" She said. "They could tell he wasn't serious."Serious is burning whole neighborhoods, not a random bomb unconnected to demands. When the Greek government decided to add a nominal yearly surcharge to what had always been free health care for the population, people flipped cars and set them on fire. There were riots. "That's just tradition," Maria said. In July 2019, Greek voters were weary of these traditions, and voted to replace Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, leader of the SYRIZA party who was sympathetic to the movement. They elected New Democracy's Kyriakos Mitsotakis' a Harvard-educated former banker who ran in part on a vow to "clean up" Exarchia. And while it would be easy to define ND as right or center right—this is not a universal terminology. ND positions are in fact to the left of the Democratic Party in the U.S., and in America would be considered socialist. For perspective; the demands made by protesters occupying Seattle's Capitol Hill district in June 2020 were for rights and policies that already exist throughout Europe; universal health care, access to education, limited funding for police and more funding for community, social services and housing. Still, Mitsotakis got to work in the name of capital; ordering raids on squats, sending Syrian families who'd been living in them and whose children were enrolled in schools, to refugee camps. Riot police evicted solidarity houses throughout the summer and fall stationing guards outside to prevent residents from reoccupying them. In August, New Democracy overturned the sanctuary law—specifically targeting the Polytechnic, as a center for organizing and escaping police violence in Exarchia. And then, as a final insult, they released Alexandros Grigoropoulos's killers from prison.Each new affront brought clashes with the police. On a hot, bustling day at the end of August 2019, police descended on K-Vox—a café at the top of Exarchia square that serves as a gathering place for the Rouvikonas—a militant wing of the movement that formed during austerity. They smashed the front window and bombed the café with tear gas. The raid resulted in arrests, injuries, and a hospitalization.The Rouvikonas are not like the young rebels tending fires and taunting police with petrol bombs. Largely made up of middle-aged people, and supported by solidarity lawyers, the Rouvikonas believe in propaganda of the deed. They provide support for refugees, run a cultural center, and have stepped in where the social safety net has failed. Since 2014 they've successfully carried out more than 50 actions, involving property destruction, attacks on embassies, interventions against fascists and gentrifiers, and attacks on biotech, and oil companies. True propagandists, they film all their actions, blurring out faces, to prevent arrest and police disinformation, and, they say "to inspire." Since the pandemic, K-Vox has become a collection site for food and supplies that they deliver throughout the city.In an interview with anti-authoritarian media, T. a member of the Rouvikonas described anarchism as "the only normal model for organizing a civilized society.""I see the way we live now as abnormal," he said. "I see as abnormal 1 percent of the population having 50 percent of the wealth. I don't think people who are exploiting other people don't know what they do is wrong. I think there's a very clear class consciousness from the upper classes."During the summer 2019 raids on Exarchia, the first squat to be evicted was Spirou Trikouri, which had a library and classrooms for children. Residents were removed by gunpoint and sent to detention centers and migrant camps. In the months to come the sounds of midnight and early morning raids would become common; Gare squat was next with its public bath and laundry, 5th School—a self-organized squat housing families from Syria, Iran and Afghanistan was evicted in September. The government relocated residents to refugee camps in Corinth, despite demands from parents and teachers' associations that they return the children to their schools. Notara 26, a former tax office that has sheltered more than nine thousand people and was the first squat in Exarchia to house migrants was repeatedly attacked by the police but held strong. By the fall cops were actively patrolling inside Exarchia where I had never seen them before. In the weeks before November 17, there was a seething sense that this anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising would be a time for catharsis, for score settling. That was why the pharmacies in the neighborhood were out of Riopan. Panagiotis and I heard the crowds before we reached Omonia Square and when we arrived it was stunning to see normally congested Stadiou Street with no traffic; to see the sheer number of people marching up its center. Each block was organized into affinity groups, labor, anarchists, various parties. In some cases three generations of anarchists walked together all dressed in black—grandparents, parents, young teenagers .Marchers carried banners and flags with thick wooden bases that could be used as clubs. A white van with speakers mounted on it drove slowly through the crowd, broadcasting the amplified voice of a man shouting, "People don't bow down, hold your heads up high." And "Americans are murderers of the people." And "Either you're with capital or you're with the worker." Black Block was already forming chains—marching with their arms entwined so they couldn't be pulled apart or isolated. In the months leading up to November 17, I'd walked through tear gas a number of times and woken in the middle of the night coughing and red-eyed to shut the windows against its suffocating sting. I'll never be the kind who can throw a canister back from where it came, but every month I'm closer to being someone who can remain on the street while the cloud passes. The demonstration grinds to a halt by the luxury hotels on Monastiraki—their doors flanked by lines of riot police. The evening sky is a translucent gaslight blue and the lights of the square sparkle as tourists watch the demonstration from the wide marble sidewalk, like it's a parade they don't want to miss.Thinking we won't be allowed to gather at the embassy, Panagiotis and I head along the sidewalk to the front of the crowd where instead of barricades we see thousands of communists crossing the intersecting street; walking in lock step, holding red flags. Their numbers are truly legion, like CGI animation in a Peter Jackson film. We step off the curb and are swept along and things feel safer like our thuggish big brothers just showed up. No one's been gassed or clubbed and now there are determined bodies between us and the police.The Communist Party in Greece has a dedicated and seemingly immovable place in parliament. The joke is their chairs are bolted to the floor. This, along with the established socialist opposition party, and the recognition of anarchism as a legitimate, and sometimes positive political tendency throughout the country, provides a structural support and long-standing philosophical alternative to capitalism that does not exist in the U.S. In front of the U.S. Embassy in Athens, the communists stood on the median, nose to nose with the cops, chanting. And it was clear by the smug faces of the riot police that this was how it's supposed to be; that this first November 17 since Mitsotakis took office, a lack of violence outside the embassy was a triumph for him to claim; let the minority parties and sympathizers and lesser radicals have their parade—far from the neighborhoods in dispute, let them yell it out of their system and go home—like Panagiotis and I would—to eat pistachios and drink beer and talk about books.Heading back to Exarchia through Mavili Square, we pass the posh cafes, and loop around Lycabettus, diverted only briefly by police at a barricade whom we tell we're out for a stroll. But when we reach the border of the neighborhood it's clear that Exarchia is surrounded; white helmets and plastic shields and respirator masks and here are the barricades we didn't see by Monastiraki, here are the motorcycles. In Exarchia, the night was far from over. The battle of November 17 was just beginning.But while the people of the city and the seat of state control were distracted by memorial marches, anti-American chants and territorial wrangling in the anarchist enclave, the Rouvikonas attacked the headquarters of Volterra and Elpedison—energy companies in the northern suburbs of Athens, as a protest against government plans to privatize the energy sector. Before the march was even over, they'd escaped arrest on motorcycles and had uploaded a video of the action to their site.After Panagiotis left my house that night, I went up to the roof and looked out over the hedge of jasmine and the tangle of TV antennas and the terracotta antefixes shaped like palmettes. White clouds of gas were rising, dissipating beneath the streetlamps. The next morning, I woke late, to the smell of neroli and a burning engine block.Out in Exarchia, it was as if the night of fighting never happened. Small fires burned on the square, people shopped in the record store, tables of books lined the pedestrian street, and Greek hip-hop boomed from speakers. Banners hung over the narrow streets painted with anarchy symbols and circles with arrows of lightning through them—the universal symbol for squat. Kids walked from their karate lessons with their parents, still wearing their uniforms. Stray cats scavenged around an overflowing dumpster, skittering gingerly through piles of shattered safety glass; the cafes on Kalidromiou were packed with people chatting and smoking and drinking and reading, and I sat studying in a patch of sunlight near the steps to Lofos Strefi. The sun was getting low in the sky and there was not a cop in sight.Days later, the Ministry of Citizens Protection released a statement demanding all squats be evacuated and it seemed it would become open season. Some who had been turned out of their houses moved up into Strefi living in the hollows by tall Cyprus trees, where they had high ground to rain molotovs down on the police. Notara 26 hung a banner across the front of the building that read, "You Can't Evict A Movement. Solidarity Will Win."But within weeks it was clear that the government demand was for the public alone, a TV stunt to broadcast to the northern suburbs. In the neighborhood the raids had stopped.The fall and winter were unseasonably warm, and restored the neighborhood to its conviviality. And then COVID-19 came. "Greece isn't an individualist society," an educated friend in the neighborhood told me. "Because of poverty, climate, history, we've had to stick together. You saw this during the financial crisis. In the 10 years of the crisis homelessness did not drastically increase, as was expected, because people took care of one another. And you see this now with coronavirus. Many of us live with extended family—aunts, uncles, grandparents, so we look out for them. We locked down hard before anything could happen to our old people. The collectivist societies of the Mediterranean are an ideal version of the anarchist ethos."Throughout the pandemic, Greece has had some of the lowest numbers of COVID-19 cases in Europe. At the time of writing 7,472 cases total, 3,804 recovered and 232 deaths, but a recent uptick of more than 100 cases in a single day has health officials warning there might be another lockdown. In early July 2020, Mitsotakis and the ruling New Democracy party pushed through an opportunistic law restricting public protest. More than 10,000 people immediately took to the streets of Athens to demonstrate, hurling petrol bombs and chunks of concrete. In Exarchia, the anarchist federation released a statement declaring, "Every organization, every formation of the struggle must go public and declare its disobedience. We clearly state that we will not respect the new law. We will protest whenever we choose and [whenever] the conditions demand and we will face the costs of this choice. We have survived wars, hunger and persecution. Even now our passion for freedom is stronger than all cells."The last time I saw Garbis he told me Exarchia would always stand, because in a disaster the neighborhood came together. "Everyone is trying to save themselves," he said, "But it's impossible to do alone."Cara Hoffman is the author of three award-winning novels including Running, set in the red-light district of Athens, Greece. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Paris Review, Rolling Stone and elsewhere. A Macdowell Fellow, she is currently at work on a book about the anarchist occupation of Exarchia.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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| Iran retrieves data, cockpit talk from downed Ukraine plane Posted: 23 Aug 2020 01:24 AM PDT  Iran has retrieved some data, including a portion of the cockpit conversations, from the Ukrainian jetliner that was accidentally downed by the Revolutionary Guard forces in January, killing all 176 people on board, an Iranian official said Sunday. The development comes months after the Jan. 8 crash near Tehran. Iranian authorities had initially denied responsibility, only changing course days later, after Western nations presented extensive evidence that Iran had shot down the plane.
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| Trump v American democracy: the real battle on the ballot this November Posted: 23 Aug 2020 01:00 AM PDT  The president has claimed the only way he can lose is if the vote is rigged – setting the stage for bitter conflict after election dayThe soaring oratory had been replaced by visible anguish. Barack Obama stood in Philadelphia, where the signing of the constitution laid the foundation stone of American democracy, and warned that his successor is ready to tear it all down to cling to power.Last week's unprecedented attack by a former president on an incumbent at the virtual Democratic national convention crystalised fears that Trump poses a more severe danger to the 244-year-old American experiment than any foreign adversary.Whereas in 2016 Vladimir Putin's Russia meddled in an election, now it is the current occupant of the White House who seems hellbent on subverting an American election."The greatest threat facing the nation was an insider threat and still is," Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, told the MSNBC network this week. "The insider threat is sitting in the Oval Office."Trump will this week be nominated by the Republican party for a second term as president. He will give his acceptance speech from the White House, a break from tradition that signals the formidable tools of incumbency at his disposal. This time, critics say, Trump is running two campaigns.One is a brutally partisan attempt to demonize his opponent Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour on a major party ticket, whom he has already dubbed "mean", "nasty" and "a mad woman". The other is an insidious and potentially catastrophic campaign against the integrity of the election itself.The boundary-pushing president has spent four years eroding the rule of law, upending constitutional norms and slandering the intelligence community. In recent months, faced with dismal polls that show him losing, he has worked to spread disinformation, sow distrust in democratic institutions and plant doubts over whether the election will be a free and fair capture of the popular will.Trump has floated the idea of postponing the election because of the coronavirus pandemic, though he has no power to do so. He has repeatedly refused to say whether he will accept the result, prompting a once unthinkable debate over how he might be physically removed from the White House. At a campaign stop in Wisconsin last week, he warned baldly: "The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged."He has also targeted the postal service. With the pandemic making physical distancing imperative, a record number of mail-in ballots is expected, meaning that the outcome is unlikely to be known on election night. Trump recently admitted that he was blocking money sought by Democrats for the postal service so he could stop people voting by mail.His allergic reaction to mail-in voting is based on the false premise that it is riddled with fraud, an assertion debunked by numerous factcheckers and academic studies Five states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah – already carry out elections almost entirely by mail.Democrats claim that the president's true motive is to disenfranchise millions of their voters; surveys show significantly more Republicans than Democrats say they would feel safe showing up to vote in person.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in Columbia, South Carolina, said: "This is an attempt to do election interference 2.0. This time it's done by this administration and not a foreign adversary. Not only is Trump trying to undermine the integrity of the election, he's trying to strike fear and chaos into our election."We should not be trying to cripple the post office or eliminate what I view as part of the nerve centre of every community. My mother, when I was a child, worked at the postal service so I know what it means for people of colour. What they're doing to dismantle the postal service has double, sometimes triple impact on communities that have already been left out and left behind by other factors."Amid a national uproar, the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor, announced this week that he would suspend cuts to the service until after the election to "avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail". Democrats called it a necessary but insufficient first step in ending Trump's "election sabotage campaign" – which has once again succeeded in dominating the media agenda, a potential self-fulfilling prophecy.The assault demonstrates that Republicans belong to "the party of voter suppression", Seawright added. "I'm black and so all of my life, including my sharecropper grandparents' lives, they have been trying to do everything they can to limit our participation in the election process. This just elevates my concern going into this election. The playbook is pretty much the same."It's just different players implementing the strategy, and the strategy has been recalibrated this time as vote by mail. Keep in mind we're still in the middle of a pandemic where showing up to vote in person could mean life or death for some people. But black people have put their lives on the line to vote before and, if we keep going down this road, I think we are willing and able to do it again because this election is just that important."This week a bipartisan Senate intelligence report revealed the extent of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. It found that Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman, worked closely with "Russian intelligence officer" Konstantin Kilimnik. US intelligence has warned that Russia is already interfering in the 2020 election with the aim of getting Trump re-elected.But such threats currently appear less fundamental than that posed by a president gone rogue – a man who this week welcomed the support of believers in a baseless righting conspiracy theory that holds the world is run by a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles.> It's very clear that Trump will use every lever of governmental power to stay in office> > Charlie SykesCharlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, asked: "Who needs Vladimir Putin when we have Donald Trump? If you were Vladimir Putin and you wanted to disrupt this election, what would you do? You'd spread disinformation. You'd make people doubt the legitimacy of the vote. You'd peddle conspiracy theories and you might want to mess with mail-in voting. That's all happening without him. Our president is doing that."Sykes, founder and editor-at-large of the Bulwark website, warned of a "very ugly" post-election period. "It's very clear that Trump will use every lever of governmental power to stay in office. There'll be many mail-in votes and the mail-in votes will be very different than the same-day votes."What he will do – and it will be very much on brand for Donald Trump – is declare victory on election night and then, as the mail-in votes are counted, he will insist that that they are not legitimate, that the election is being stolen from him, and I think that has the potential to create massive doubt and chaos."Such a scenario promises to dwarf the acrimony, chaos and confusion of the disputed 2000 election between Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore, which went all the way to the supreme court.Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who was an adviser to Gore, said: "I'm not worried that it won't be held and I'm not worried that we won't get, in the end, an accurate result, assuming that we can straighten out this post office thing or just be patient as the votes are counted."I am worried that what Trump is doing means that afterwards, if he loses, we will have a bitterly divided country with about 30% of the population angry, alienated, perhaps in the streets, something we've never seen here before. If Trump loses, he's not gonna be Al Gore who believed he won the election but who, after the supreme court decision, conceded for the good of the country."
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| 6 dead, 10 missing as flooding hits Turkey's Black Sea coast Posted: 23 Aug 2020 12:11 AM PDT  Flooding caused by heavy rains has killed six people along Turkey's Black Sea coast and left 10 others missing, including some rescue workers, officials said Sunday. Television footage showed vehicles and debris being swept away by floods on the main road of the mountain town of Dereli, which lies 12 miles (20 kilometers) inland from the Black Sea in Giresun province. Bridges, roads and buildings were washed away by what Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli said was more than five inches (12.7 centimeters) of rain in less than a day.
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| 'End of the world': Countdown to Beirut's devastating blast Posted: 22 Aug 2020 11:11 PM PDT  The 10 firefighters who received the call shortly before 6 p.m. — a big fire at the nearby port of Beirut — could not know what awaited them. The brigade of nine men and one woman could not know about the stockpile of ammonium nitrate warehoused since 2013 along a busy motorway, in the heart of a densely populated residential area — a danger that had only grown with every passing year. The stockpile was degrading; something must be done.
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| How Donald Trump canceled the Republican party Posted: 22 Aug 2020 11:00 PM PDT  The convention will be a ghastly reminder of what happened to the party of Lincoln – even as it desperately grabs for his mantleThe Republican convention that nominates Donald Trump for a second term will be the greatest event in the political history of cancel culture. What Trump is cancelling is nothing less than the Republican party as it has existed before him. He ran in 2016 in the primaries on cancelling the GOP and in 2020 he ratifies his triumph. After the election, political scientists and historians will study his obliteration of the Republican party as his greatest and most enduring political achievement.The Republican party has been on a long journey away from being the party of Abraham Lincoln, accelerating since Barry Goldwater and rightwing cadres captured it in 1964 in reaction to the civil rights movement. After Richard Nixon embraced the southern strategy and won the nomination in 1968 with the help of Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the Dixiecrat segregationist presidential candidate in 1948, the party increasingly radicalized in every election cycle and became gradually unmoored. In 1980, Ronald Reagan opened his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair, the place where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. Surrounded by Confederate flags, he hailed "states' rights". As brazen an appeal as it was, Reagan felt he had to resort to the old code words.Central to Trump's unique selling proposition is that he dispenses with the dog whistles. His vulgarity gives a vicarious thrill to those who revel in his taunting of perceived enemies or scapegoats. He made them feel dominant at no social price, until his catastrophic mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis. Flouting a mask is the magical act of defiance to signal that nothing has really changed and that in any case, Trump bears no responsibility.But there has also been a political cost to Trump's louche comic lounge act that still transfixes a diehard audience lingering like late-night gamblers for the last show. Trump is the only president since the advent of modern polling never to reach 50% approval. Despite decisively losing the popular vote in 2016, he said he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally". This time, fearing an even more overwhelming popular rejection, he says the outcome will be "rigged" and he has pre-emptively tried to cancel the US Postal Service, to undermine voting by mail.From Reagan onward, even as the fringe moved to the center and took it over, the party did not anticipate that it was slouching toward Trump. Conservatives have consistently failed to grasp the unintended consequences of conservatism. Even when Reagan fostered the evangelical right, George HW Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to the supreme court, George W Bush invaded Iraq and neglected oversight of financial markets that collapsed, and John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republicans believed they were expanding the attraction of the conservative project. When Newt Gingrich, Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh methodically degraded language, it seemed a propaganda technique to herd supporters. When the dark money of the Koch family and the wealthy reactionaries of the cloaked Donors Trust bankrolled the lumpen dress-up Tea Party to do their bidding on deregulation of finance and industry, the munificently funded conservative candidates did their bidding as retainers of privilege.> In the wasteland, only cockroaches and Mitch McConnell may surviveAt the presidential level there still remained residual elements contrary to what metastasized into Trumpism. Reagan represented free trade and western firmness against Russia. George HW Bush was a paragon of public service. George W Bush was an advocate for immigrants. John McCain was the embodiment of patriotic sacrifice.After Trump, all that has been cancelled. Since he first rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, to declare his candidacy against Mexican "rapists", there has always been a new escalator downward. After overcoming his initial hesitation, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, welcomed the election of a QAnon conspiracy-spouting candidate from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then McCarthy condemned QAnon and stated that Greene wasn't part of a movement she continued to defend.Trump hailed her as a "future Republican star". For months, he has been tweeting messages to encourage the racist, antisemitic cult. "There's a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it," Greene proclaimed. "I've heard these are people that love our country," Trump said. In the wasteland, only cockroaches and Mitch McConnell may survive.Stuart Stevens, a prominent Republican political consultant, eyes startled wide open, has entitled his exposé of the party It Was All A Lie. He describes the conservative Trump apologists, the adults in the room, as latter-day versions of Franz von Papen, the German chancellor who enabled the rise of Hitler in the complacent belief that he could be controlled and the conservatives would maintain power.On 4 July, at the mammoth stage set of Mount Rushmore, Trump mugged for his photo op by posing his face next in line to the carving of Abraham Lincoln. He had earlier told the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, "'Did you know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?'" "And I started laughing," she recounted. "And he wasn't laughing, so he was totally serious." (Trump tweeted that it was "fake news" that he had ordered an aide to inquire about immortalizing his face on the mountain.)Ostensibly, Trump came to deliver his ideological message. He denounced "cancel culture", which he said was "the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America". He attributed it to "a new far-left fascism". And he spelled out its punitive nature: "If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished." Thus, he offered a concise description of his own cancel culture's methods.Trump's cancel culture deals in aggressions, not micro-aggressions. The only safe space is where Trump is worshipped. Before, during and after the death of McCain, Trump unleashed tirades of insult. He finally complained that the McCain family never thanked him for approving the senator's funeral arrangements, even though it was Congress that gave approval. For years, Trump has disparaged the Bush family. At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when George W Bush called for setting aside partisanship and embracing national unity, Trump tweeted, "but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside".> Trump's cancel culture deals in aggressions, not micro-aggressions. The only safe space is where Trump is worshippedTrump has invoked Reagan only as a stepping stone of his own monumental pedestal. At a rally in 2019, Trump mused: "I was watching the other night the great Lou Dobbs [of Fox News], and he said, 'When Trump took over, President Trump,' he used to say, 'Trump is a great president.' Then he said, 'Trump is the greatest president since Ronald Reagan.' Then he said, 'No, no, Trump is an even better president than Ronald Reagan.' And now he's got me down as the greatest president in the history of our country, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Thank you. We love you too."When Trump sought to profit for his 2020 campaign by selling a gold-colored Trump-Reagan commemorative coin set, the Reagan Foundation sent him a curt letter, telling him to cease and desist. Trump has constantly retailed a false story about Reagan supposedly remarking after meeting him, "For the life of me, and I'll never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with the president." The chief administrative officer of the Reagan Foundation felt compelled to note that Reagan "did not ever say that about Donald Trump".Trump's petty, vindictive and exploitative abuse of the Bush presidents, McCain and Reagan pales in comparison to his raging obsessions about Lincoln. He has boasted his poll numbers are better than Lincoln's ever were (true), claimed he is more a victim than the assassinated martyr (untrue), and declared he has done more for Black Americans than Lincoln (untrue).Trump, the would-be Great Emancipator and upholder of Confederate monuments, has lately ruminated about giving an address at Gettysburg. There are many such monuments there to the thousands of poor white southerners who gave their lives for the Slave Power and to overthrow the democracy of the United States. Perhaps, contemplating his last campaign, Trump could trudge across the rutted field of Pickett's Charge. He might ask what his bikers and self-styled militia would be willing to do for him. What Lincoln consecrated, Trump would desecrate. But he would undoubtedly speak longer.Trump's compulsive need to elevate himself as greater than the greatest president does not stand alone among strange statements about Lincoln from members of his inner circle. Some fancy that they too resemble Lincoln, alongside Trump. Some insist they are bravely fighting the civil war, on behalf of Trump. Some depict Trump as the reincarnation of Lincoln, to justify his dishonesty. Some summon Lincoln to claim God is on their side. The disconnect of these incoherent and eccentric gestures from any reality past or present is a telltale sign of terminal party identity. Each weird distortion marks the progress of Trump's cancel culture, the eclipse of history bred by one-man misrule that is a half-cocked aspiration to an authoritarian system that might be codified by the likes of William Barr.Stephen Bannon, Trump's now-indicted former campaign manager and senior adviser, appeared in a 2019 documentary about his post-White House crusade to organize an international neo-fascist alliance. The film opens with Bannon cradling a volume of Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln. Bannon says portentously that it's 1862. Then he reads Lincoln's words: "They wish to get rid of me and I am sometimes half-disposed to gratify them. We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me the Almighty is against us and I can hardly see a ray of hope." Lincoln's "fiery trial" to preserve the union is reduced to Bannon's dark apocalyptic mutterings against the forces conspiring against him and Trump: the "Deep State", rootless cosmopolitans, globalists and liberal elites. We're a long way from, as Lincoln said, "the last best hope of earth".> Betsy DeVos's definition of freedom as 'what we ought', that is, what she determines, is more Orwellian than LincolnianIvanka Trump has turned to Lincoln for the occasional non-sequitur defense of her father. Her vacant voice and immobile expression augment the surprise effect of her inapt citations. After Attorney General Barr issued a deceptive characterization of the Mueller Report to mislead the public about its actual content, Ivanka rushed to support Barr's falsehood. She tweeted a quote: "Truth is generally the best vindication against slander – Abraham Lincoln." The difference between Barr and Lincoln was that Barr covered up the truth.During the impeachment inquiry into Trump's withholding of nearly $400m in military aid to Ukraine, to coerce its government to launch an investigation that would smear Joe Biden with fabricated accusations of corruption, Ivanka leaped to protect her father. She claimed the incontrovertible facts were nothing but a partisan attack contrived to malign him, originating from a whistleblower within the intelligence community who was "not particularly relevant"."Basically since the election," she said, "this has been the experience that our administration and our family has been having. Rather than wait, under a year, until the people can decide for themselves based on his record and based on his accomplishments, this new effort has commenced." Once again, she reached for Lincoln as her father's model. "This has been the experience of most," she observed with the sagacious tone of a student of history. "Abraham Lincoln was famously, even within his own cabinet, surrounded by people who were former political adversaries." Ivanka's smug confusion was complete. She had mistaken the whistleblower whose memo triggered the impeachment process with Lincoln's "team of rivals".On 23 January, Betsy DeVos, Trump's secretary of education, a billionaire heiress and funder of rightwing causes, spoke at the Museum of the Bible in Washington to a group from the Colorado Christian University, to claim Lincoln as the imaginary leader for the anti-abortion movement."He too contended with the 'pro-choice' arguments of his day," she said. "They suggested that a state's 'choice' to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it." According to DeVos, women asserting their reproductive rights are engaged in a "vast moral evil", equivalent to slavery."Lincoln was right about slavery 'choice' then, and he would be right about the life 'choice' today," she said. "Freedom is not about doing what we want. Freedom is about having the right to do what we ought."DeVos's mangling of Lincoln, who was an early advocate of women's rights and suffrage but never said a word about abortion, is intended to legitimate the anti-abortion agenda of granting personhood rights to fetuses, which she and other zealots equate to enslaved African Americans. Her definition of freedom as "what we ought", that is, what she determines, is more Orwellian than Lincolnian. Historically, claiming that law should be rooted in theological dogma is in the tradition of the southern theologians Lincoln condemned, who justified slavery by biblical references and divine sanction.Mike Pence, Trump's vice-president, a former rightwing radio host, travelled in January to Ripon, Wisconsin, site of the founding of the Republican party in 1854, garrulously to praise Trump as the true heir to Lincoln in "the advancement of our highest ideals". Once again, Pence explained, we are at a "crossroads of freedom". Trump, the Lincoln manqué, is all that stands between America and the threat of Joe Biden and "socialism and decline". Months before the murder of George Floyd and the wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept across the country, Pence charged, "Joe Biden believes America is, in his words, systemically racist. And despite historically low crime rates prior to this pandemic, Joe Biden believes that law enforcement in America has a, quote, 'implicit bias' against minorities." In conclusion, the evangelical Pence declared, "The Bible says, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom', and "with President Donald Trump in the White House for four more years, we'll make America great again, again."In the long-ago days when there was only one "again", during the 2016 campaign, Pence defended Trump's shout-out to Vladimir Putin to hack and release Clinton campaign emails: "Russia if you're listening …""You know," Pence explained, "Abraham Lincoln said, give the people the facts, and the republic will be saved. I mean, I think that's the point that [Trump is] making. He's not encouraging some foreign power to compromise the security of this country." Bowdlerizing a dubiously sourced Lincoln quote, Pence portrayed Trump as the simple protector of facts and denied he was "encouraging" Russian intervention. Pence's statement was a cover-up in real time. We now know from the Senate intelligence committee report that Roger Stone, Trump's longtime political operative and dirty trickster, was directly in touch with Trump on the theft of the Clinton emails by Russian intelligence and their release by WikiLeaks. To quote Marx – Groucho – "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" If Trump has a faithful servant, it is Mike Pence.Mike Pompeo, Trump's secretary of state and yet another evangelical crusader, has raised Lincoln to justify his own brand of dogma. In a speech entitled "Being a Christian Leader", to the American Association of Christian Counselors at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel at Nashville on 11 October, he explained how God directs him to be humble, forgiving and thrifty."I know some people in the media will break out the pitchforks when they hear that I ask God for direction in my work," he said. "But you should know, as much as I'd like to claim originality, it is not a new idea. I love this quote from President Lincoln. He said … quote, 'I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.'"Unfortunately, in their Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, the historians Don and Virginia Fehrenbacher rate the words Pompeo spoke with a grade D: in other words, bogus. Lincoln is in fact recorded to have referred to "knees" only three times, all involving jokes. The Fehrenbachers also give a D to another well-used "Lincoln" quotation: "You can fool all the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time."Stephen Miller, Trump's senior adviser, originator of the Muslim ban and separating migrant children from their families, author of the cancel culture speech at Mount Rushmore, is impatient for the apocalypse. Observing the protests at Portland before the federal courthouse that were met with a show of armed force, Miller went on Tucker Carlson Tonight to explain why this was Fort Sumter."The Democratic party for a long time historically has been the party of secession," he said. "What you're seeing today is the Democratic party returning to its roots."In his compact and inverted analogy, the protest against police violence was a battle in a new civil war and the ragtag shifting bands of protesters including the "Wall of Moms" were the restoration of the pro-secession Southern Democratic party, which would of course transform Trump into Lincoln. The identity of the enemy may change – Muslims, Mexicans or Moms – but Miller is prepared to draw the sword for whatever clash of civilization may come. He's just not prepared for a virus.During his 2016 campaign, Trump plagiarized not only Reagan's slogan, "Make America Great Again", but also Nixon's appeal to "the silent majority". He also boasted: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." Trump's attorney, asked about "the Fifth Avenue example" by the judge presiding in the case of the Manhattan district attorney seeking Trump's tax returns, argued that Trump would have legal immunity if he killed somebody.Since March, more than 170,000 Americans – the New York Times estimates more than 200,000 – have died of coronavirus. On 20 June, Trump kicked off his campaign with a rally at Tulsa. Campaign workers tore stickers off the seats that encouraged social distancing. In the sparse but closely packed crowd sat Herman Cain, proudly grinning, not wearing a mask. For a brief moment in 2012 the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza and fast-talking Tea Party advocate had been the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Disillusioned after he quit the race when accused of sexual harassment, he called for a third party. Then came Trump.For 2020, the man who said his Secret Service code name as president would be "Cornbread" became chairman of Black Voices For Trump. A month later, he was dead of coronavirus. Cain would miss his speaking slot at the Republican convention. He had joined what the ancient Greeks called "the silent majority". Yet 20 days after Cain's death, on 19 August, his Twitter account posted Trump's latest ad: "Boy, it sure looks like Joe Biden is losing his mental faculties." In death, nobody, not even Mike Pence, could claim greater devotion to the party of Trump. * Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
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| Tensions heightened over fatal police shooting of Black man Posted: 22 Aug 2020 10:23 PM PDT  Community activists said they will present their frustrations and demand racial justice from the leaders of a Louisiana city on Sunday, following a night of violence that erupted after police shot and killed a Black man. Dozens of people took to the streets of Lafayette on Saturday in response to the death of Trayford Pellerin, 31. On Friday night, officers followed Pellerin on foot as he left a convenience store where he had created a disturbance with a knife, Louisiana State Police said.
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| Northern California firefighters dig in ahead of high winds Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:33 PM PDT  Three massive wildfires chewed through parched Northern California landscape Sunday as firefighters raced to dig breaks and make other preparations ahead of a frightening weather system. Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart said 100 officers were patrolling and anyone not authorized to be in an evacuation zone would be arrested.
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| Experts flag risks in India's use of rapid tests for virus Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:32 PM PDT  In June, India began using cheaper, faster but less accurate tests to scale up testing for the coronavirus — a strategy that the United States is now considering. Cases surged faster than labs could scale up testing once India's harsh lockdown was relaxed. Samples tested using both tests increased from 5.6 million in mid-June to 26 million two months later, and nearly a third of all tests conducted daily are now antigen tests, health officials say.
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| Riot declared outside Portland public safety building Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:21 PM PDT  Police forced protesters away from a law enforcement building in Oregon's biggest city early Sunday, as efforts to stop the demonstrators from gathering at the building seemingly fell apart. Streets were blocked amid the mayhem.
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| Emergency postal aid stalls as WH rejects House-passed bill Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:09 PM PDT  Help for the U.S. Postal Service landed in stalemate Sunday as the White House dismissed an emergency funding bill aimed at shoring up the agency before the November elections as "going nowhere" and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged senators to act quickly. "The public is demanding action on this now," Pelosi said. "I can't see how the Senate can avoid it unless they do so to their peril."
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| TS Marco in Gulf aiming at Louisiana, TS Laura also on way Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:07 PM PDT  PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Tropical Storm Marco is swirling over the Gulf of Mexico heading for a possible hit on the Louisiana coast as a hurricane, while Tropical Storm Laura knocked utilities out as it battered Hispaniola early Sunday, following a track forecast to take it to the same part of the U.S. coast, also as a hurricane. It would be the first time two hurricanes appear in the Gulf of Mexico simultaneously, according to records dating to at least 1900, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. Haitian civil protection officials said they had received reports that a 10-year-old girl had died when a tree fell on a home in the southern coastal town of Anse-a-Pitres, on the border with the Dominican Republic.
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| India's virus caseload tops 3 million as disease moves south Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:02 PM PDT  India's coronavirus caseload topped 3 million on Sunday, with the country leading the world in new infections as the disease marched through impoverished rural areas in the north and the wealthier but older populations of the south. Cases have leveled off in India's two largest cities, with serological surveys showing widespread prevalence among the residents of the capital, New Delhi, and financial center Mumbai. New hot spots continue to feed surges in cases in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states in India's north, and in the southern states of Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
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| In recordings, Trump's sister says he 'has no principles' Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:01 PM PDT  President Donald Trump's older sister, a former federal judge, is heard sharply criticizing her brother in a series of recordings, at one point saying of the president, "He has no principles." Maryanne Trump Barry was secretly recorded by her niece, Mary Trump, who recently released a book denouncing the president, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man." Mary Trump said Saturday she made the recordings in 2018 and 2019. In one recording, Barry, 83, says she had heard a 2018 interview with her brother on Fox News in which he suggested that he would put her on the border to oversee cases of immigrant children separated from their parents.
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| California 'dream house,' decades in the making, is in ashes Posted: 22 Aug 2020 03:22 PM PDT  When he closes his eyes at night, Hank Hanson hears sirens in his dreams -- a byproduct of living nearly 30 years in the wildfire-prone wilderness of Northern California between San Francisco and Sacramento. "It started pouring toward us like a waterfall," Hanson, 81, said. The fire was one of the more than 500 wildfires ignited across California this week from what state firefighting officials are calling a "lightning siege" — summer thunderstorms that produce little or no rain but have prompted nearly 12,000 lightening strikes across sun-scorched terrain.
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| Bavi set to strengthen into a typhoon and threaten Japan, China and the Korean Peninsula Posted: 22 Aug 2020 08:43 AM PDT  Following Tropical Storm Higos, Tropical Storm Bavi has developed in the West Pacific Ocean.Bavi formed just east of Taiwan on Saturday morning, local time, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Bavi is known as Igme in the Philippines.Bavi will move over the warm waters of the East China Sea and will be in an area of light wind shear, or the change in direction and speed of wind in the atmosphere, through Sunday. The above satellite image shows Tropical Storm Bavi spinning in the East China Sea on Sunday night, Aug. 23. (RAMMB/CIRA) According to AccuWeather Lead International Meteorologist Jason Nicholls, the light wind shear and warm waters will provide an environment for the system to strengthen as it tracks across the region this weekend.CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APPBefore this system strengthened into Tropical Storm Bavi on Saturday morning, local time, it brought rounds of heavy rain to the Philippines late last week.Bavi is expected to continue on a northeastward trajectory just to the west of the Ryukyu Islands into early this week, bringing rounds of heavy rainfall. Through Monday, bands of heavy rain are forecast to be across the central Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa.Although the core of heaviest rain and strongest wind is expected to remain to the west of the islands, bands of downpours and strong wind gusts are still expected.Rainfall totals across the Ryukyu Islands are forecast to reach 100-200 mm (4-8 inches) with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 250 mm (10 inches), which can lead to flash flooding."Damaging winds will be possible across the Ryukyu Islands depending on the intensity of the system as it passes by," said Nicholls. Current indications show wind gusts of 80-95 km/h (50-60 mph) are possible that can lead to sporadic power outages and some down tree branches.Rough seas will also be found across much of the East China Sea as the tropical system passes through the area. A front moving through eastern China will influence the track of the tropical system. This front is expected to cause Bavi to accelerate to the north into the middle of the week after slowly spinning near the Ryukyu Islands to start the week.Latest forecast information shows that a track near or just to the west of the Korean Peninsula is most likely.As such, interests across South Korea, North Korea and northeast China should monitor the path of this system for potential impacts this week.As Bavi accelerates to the north from Tuesday into Wednesday, heavy rain and strong wind can reach South Korea.Meteorologists expect Bavi to remain a dangerous storm at this time and it has the potential to bring widespread and significant impacts along its path, including widespread power outages, flooding rain and coastal storm surge flooding.Rainfall will generally total 50-100 mm (2-4 inches) over the Korean Peninsula. Heavier rainfall totals of 100-200 inches (4-8 inches) can be expected across portions southwestern South Korea and northwestern North Korea, with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 380 mm (15 inches).Wind gust are expected to be the strongest across the western Korean Peninsula where wind gusts of 80-115 km/h (50-70 mph) are expected. Stronger wind gusts ranging between 115-145 km/h (70-90 mph) can be expected near the southwest coast of South Korea, with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 190 km/h (120 mph) that is most likely on Jeju Island.After passing the Korean Peninsula, Bavi can bring the risk for heavy, flooding rainfall across northeastern China and extreme southeastern Russia late in the week.AccuWeather forecasters are also monitoring Tropical Storm Laura and Tropical Storm Marco in the Caribbean. Together these storms can break a record when they move into the Gulf of Mexico.Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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