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In the remains of a bombed-out Soviet darkroom, hundreds of rolls of film were discovered rotting among the rubble by the photojournalist Samuel Eder earlier this year. He shares his experience in recovering these fragments of history and of reuniting them with their subjects
When war broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, transforming thriving communities into ghost towns overnight. As classrooms became sniper nests, family homes became barracks and community centres turned into ammunition caches, precious remnants of peacetime life were consumed by the war. Among these lost relics are the remains of a bombed-out Soviet photographic lab – with hundreds of rolls of film left rotting among the rubble.
Public testimony in the impeachment hearings has painted a vivid picture of a president fixated on one thing: his own political gain over the fortunes of an ally
Darkness had settled over Kyiv on the evening of 24 April when Marie Yovanovitch, then US ambassador to Ukraine, wassummoned froman event she was hosting at her home to answer an urgent phone call from Washington.
The reception was to honor Kateryna Handzyuk, a young anti-corruption activist who died last year from an acid attack. Though the ambassador and the activist had never met, they shared a mission: trying to end a culture of corruption that has persisted for decades in the former Soviet republic.
The US Navy has thrown out plans to review three officers under scrutiny following Donald Trump’s decision to intervene in a related case.
Trump issued a direct order to halt disciplinary measures against a Navy Seal accused of war crimes in Iraq. On Sunday, defense secretary Mark Esper fired the navy secretary Richard Spencer after Spencer resisted pressure to intervene in the case of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher.
As part of a sting operation, federal agents enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to a Detroit school that marketed graduate programs in technology and computer science. The students paid about $12,000 in tuition and fees per year to attend the university, which was created in 2015.
The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was located on Northwestern Highway near 13 Mile Road in Farmington Hills and staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials...
Attorneys for the students arrested said they were unfairly trapped by the U.S. government since the Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate...
No one has filed a lawsuit or claim against the U.S. government for collecting the money or for allegedly entrapping the students.
Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location. Some CPT programs have classes combined with work programs at companies.
Mark Sandy said unnamed individuals from budget office resigned in part over Trump’s aid freeze, according to closed-door deposition
A lawyer for the White House’s budget office resigned partly because of concerns over Donald Trump’s freeze on military aid to Ukraine, a longtime career official from the office has testified to Congress behind closed doors.
Mark Sandy of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry that an individual in the office’s legal division quit in part over issues with the suspension of security assistance to Ukraine, according to a transcript of his deposition released on Tuesday.
Two Soviet-born Americans who form a key link between Donald Trump and Ukraine “weren’t James Bond”, the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said on Saturday, insisting the men “didn’t have personal communications with the president” during a time period under intense scrutiny in the impeachment inquiry.
Cache published under FOI act show paper trail between Trump’s lawyer and secretary of state to enable Ukraine smear plot
Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in contact with secretary of state Mike Pompeo in the months before the US ambassador to Ukraine was abruptly recalled, according to a cache of documents released by on Friday.
The state department released the documents to the group American Oversight in response to a freedom of information lawsuit. They show that Pompeo talked with Giuliani on 26 March and 29 March.
The fifth day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump saw powerful testimony from Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official and former top Russia expert in the White House, and David Holmes, a state department aide in Kyiv.
Both spoke of Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, as Holmes described a cellphone conversation in which he overheard Trump ask Sondland about 'investigations' and heard Sondland tell Trump the Ukrainians had agreed to them.
The former National Security Council official provided some of the most explosive testimony yet
The fifth, and possibly final, day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump was one of the most explosive. Here are five key takeaways:
Republicans loyal to Donald Trump must stop pushing the “fictional narrative” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election because it plays into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the White House’s former top expert on Russia has told the impeachment inquiry in dramatic testimony.
British-born Fiona Hill, appearing in Washington on Thursday, attacked a debunked conspiracy theory used by Republicans to defend the US president against allegations that he sought to bribe Ukraine for his own political gain.
A former White House official has criticised politicians for advancing discredited conspiracy theories about Ukraine during impeachment hearings.
'I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimise an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine – not Russia – attacked us in 2016,' said Fiona Hill in her opening statement.
Republicans have used the hearings to push the idea that Donald Trump was rightly suspicious of Ukraine because of allegations it attempted to meddle in the 2016 election – a widely debunked claim pushed by some of Trump's closest advisers including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
During the impeachment hearing into Donald Trump, Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, told lawmakers on Wednesday that her staff had received an email on 25 July from the state department saying that Ukraine’s embassy and the House foreign affairs committee were asking about military aid.
25 July was the day of a phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president in which Trump raised the issues of an investigation into Joe Biden, alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election and about aid
Day four of impeachment hearings saw the most explosive testimony so far as Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, claimed Donald Trump had directed a quid-pro-quo with Ukraine through his personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani.
Sondland asserted that an Oval Office meeting with Trump was conditional on Ukraine announcing investigations into Burisma, a gas company linked to the son of the former vice-president Joe Biden, and a widely discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine planted evidence on a server of the Democratic party to show that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
'We followed the president’s orders,' said the Trump appointee in remarks that sent shockwaves through Washington and elicited a furious response from the president.
Democratic presidential contenders backed the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry during the fifth televised debate on Wednesday, saying his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate the former vice-president Joe Biden was an example of his administration's corruption. The debate came hours after a senior US diplomat gave explosive testimony that directly implicated the president in a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine
New evidence from impeachment inquiry witness Laura Cooper knocks down key pillar of Trump’s defence
Ukraine raised concerns about a hold on military aid on the same day as Donald Trump’s infamous phone call with its president, a Pentagon official told the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.
The evidence from Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defence, knocks down a key pillar of the White House’s defence: that Ukraine was unaware of the suspension of nearly $400m in security assistance until a much later date.
The EU envoy was emphatic that the shakedown scheme to hold back Ukrainian aid involved Trump and his top deputies
When Gordon Sondland walked into the congressional impeachment hearing shortly after 9am, reports were circulating that the Trump administration and the Republican party was going to throw him under the bus for his part the Ukraine scandal, painting him as a hotelier turned diplomat who went rogue.
A star witness at the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump has testified to the existence of a quid pro quo with Ukraine and insisted: 'We followed the president’s orders.' Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, said in bombshell evidence that he was forced to work with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, against his will, and criticised the White House and state department for failing to provide records.
'Everyone was in the loop,' Sondland testified in opening remarks. 'It was no secret'
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said everyone in Ukraine is ‘tired about Burisma’, the company at the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. The inquiry is trying to establish whether the US president pressured Ukraine to open an investigation into Hunter Biden, son of former US vice-president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden. Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s largest gas conglomerates
Two witnesses in the impeachment inquiry have described their concern over an “unusual” call between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president in July, in which Trump ignored official talking points about fighting corruption to instead “demand” an investigation tied to Joe Biden.
Republican representative Chris Stewart pressed Lt Col Alexander Vindman on why he corrected Devin Nunes after the GOP ranking member incorrectly called the Iraq war veteran “Mr Vindman.”
“You always insist on civilians calling you by your rank?” Stewart asked. Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, replied that he considered the correction appropriate given that he is in his military uniform and because he has been the subject of attacks meant to “marginalize” his service.
Okay guys can we please stop making this a thing? Active duty service members are literally required to wear their dress uniforms when appearing on Capitol Hill in an official capacity. https://t.co/DWXD9LchoU
Lt Col Alexander Vindman testified that after he reported his concerns on Trump’s July call with the Ukrainian president, he was excluded from several meetings he usually would have attended in his capacity as the top Ukraine expert on the NSC.
Vindman says that after he reported on the July 25 call he was excluded from several meetings & “it was out of the course of normal affairs” to not have him participate.
David Holmes, diplomat at the US embassy in Kiev, says Trump did not ‘give a shit’ about Ukraine and only cared about what would benefit him politically
Donald Trump personally kept up pressure on Ukraine to carry out investigations he had requested in a phone call with a senior US diplomat, who then observed the president did not “give a shit” about Ukraine and only cared about what would benefit him politically, according to dramatic new testimony in congressional impeachment hearings.
In a deposition to the House committees investigating the Ukraine scandal, David Holmes, a diplomat at the US embassy in Kiev, described an extraordinary phone call between Trump and the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, on 26 July.