Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Several witnesses in ‘fear for their lives’ if their identities are revealed, hearing into shooting down of airliner is told
Dutch prosecutors have accused Russia of trying to sabotage the investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 in Ukraine in 2014, saying this has cast “a dark shadow” over the impending trial of four suspects.
Pre-trial hearings began in Amsterdam on Monday. Prosecutors say the defendants – three Russians and a Ukrainian – helped arrange the Russian missile system that shot down MH17, a civilian airliner. All 298 people on board were killed. Most of the passengers were Dutch nationals.
Family of Richard Mayne say it could be years before they know why 298 people died
On Sunday Liz Mayne will make a familiar “pilgrimage” to the Netherlands. In 2015, she flew in to inspect the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down over eastern Ukraine the previous summer. “You could still smell the burning,” she says. “It was an overwhelming experience.”
Her son Richard, a second-year student at Leeds University, was one of 298 people on board. Ten were Britons. All perished. Richard was 20. His body was recovered intact from sunflower fields near the village of Hrabove. He was returned in the clothes he had set off in: sweatshirt and socks bearing the logo of his favourite rugby team, the Leicester Tigers.
The TV comic turned maverick Ukrainian leader on Putin, power and Trump’s impeachment
What’s the difference between playing a president on screen and being one in real life? Not much, according to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the man who’s done both.
“It’s very similar,” he says, his compact frame engulfed by a green leather armchair in his opulent presidential office. Then he changes his mind: in fact, the real job lasts a whole five years, and comes with far greater challenges than can fit into one season of a television show. “It’s true there are more problems. They are catastrophic. They appear, I’m sorry to say, like pimples on an 18-year-old kid. You don’t know where they will pop up, or when.” The 42-year-old speaks in his native Russian, his expressive face switching from boyish amusement to tortured concern in a flash.
In an exclusive interview, Volodymyr Zelenskiy says he is ready to walk away from Russia talks unless there is progress
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, believes he can negotiate a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, but has threatened to walk away from talks after a year if there is no progress with his Russian counterpart.
“Time is ticking,” he told the Guardian in a rare interview, to be published in full on Saturday. “The government can spend one year on the entire agreement. Then it should be implemented. Any longer is prohibited.”
Lifelike scenes of violence in Soviet-influenced experimental movie raises ethical concerns
Tatiana Shorokhova, a film critic from St Petersburg, has admitted to feeling sick and “physically afraid” while watching DAU. Natasha, a controversial film by Ilya Khrzhanovsky produced from a years-long experiment on an immersive set built as a replica of a Soviet-era research institute. In fact, she likened the experience to rape.
It was not just the graphic scenes of violence against the titular character or depictions of real sex while drunk, she said, but the understanding that all of this was, in a way, real.
President said book shouldn’t be published before election
Key impeachment witness Marie Yovanovitch to release memoir
John Bolton is “a traitor” and his book should not be published before the election in November, Donald Trump reportedly told aides and media figures.
The president’s views on news of a book deal for Marie Yovanovitch, another key figure in the Ukraine scandal which led to Trump’s impeachment, were not immediately clear.
Virus is spreading in Middle East, with confirmed cases in Lebanon and Israel
Four Iranians have died after contracting the coronavirus, with health authorities warning it has spread to multiple cities, while Israel and Lebanon declared their first domestic cases as the deadly epidemic spreads across the Middle East.
Asked on Friday if the new cases put the crisis at a tipping point, the World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the “window of opportunity is narrowing, so we need to act quickly before it closes completely”.
Ex-national security adviser criticized by Obama official
‘I would feel like I was shamefully violating the oath I took’
Former national security adviser John Bolton faced a roasting from one of his predecessors on Wednesday night, in his second public appearance since the conclusion of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
Canada, Ukraine, Britain and others ask for box to be sent to third country for examination
Canada and other countries whose nationals were killed in the Iranian strike on a Ukrainian civilian jet leaving Tehran have stepped up their requests for Iran to hand over the black box to a third party for examination.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has suggested specialist equipment should be sent to Tehran to help the Iranians decrypt the contents of the black box and has given a commitment the box will not be opened except in the presence of all interested parties. But with an impasse looming, western aviation experts have said it is not possible to send the cumbersome equipment to Tehran.
She cited a need for the country to be ‘principled, consistent and trustworthy’ while accepting an award for diplomacy
The former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, has warned that the US had adopted an “amoral” foreign policy that “substitutes threats, fear and confusion for trust”.
In her first public remarks since leaving the US foreign service two weeks ago, Yovanovitch said that the Trump administration’s handling of foreign policy risked alienating allies and driving them into the arms of other partners they find more reliable.
Impeachment witness Vindman fired from White House job
David Pressman backs client and decries Trump ‘intimidation’
The lawyer for Lt Col Alexander Vindman condemned Donald Trump on Saturday for making “obviously false statements” about the decorated military veteran, after the president defended sacking him through several critical tweets.
The popular HBO series about the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster has led to a surge in tourists to the site and nearby town of Pripyat
Republican Collins: ‘There’s some gaps that need to be cleared up’
White House counsel to senators: reject articles of impeachment
Schiff says Trump’s lawyers ‘cannot defend president on facts’
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Though Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly told senators privately that he doesn’t have votes to block new witnesses in the impeachment trial, per multiple reports, there are still several days till senators would vote on the matter.
Senate Republicans may still block witnesses, and some GOP lawmakers are confident they’ll be able to do so, according to CNN.
While the votes aren't secured yet, GOP leaders are growing confident they can defeat a vote on witnesses following the initial alarm the Bolton book caused among Senate Rs. Many Rs amenable to argument that witnesses would drag it out with no clear end https://t.co/LKsAaRHEaS
Lev Parnas’ lawyer is expected to attend the Senate trial tomorrow.
Joseph Bondy asked Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer for gallery tickets, according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the news. Bondy’s co-counsel Stephanie Schuman is also expected to appear. Parnas himself may not be able to, as he wears an ankle monitor and electronics are banned in the trial chamber.
Lev Parnas attorney on attending Senate trial: “We are attending the trial w/ or w/o Mr. Parnas bc we believe our presence is important in reminding senators that indeed there should be witnesses heard and evidence taken and that anything short of that would not be a fair trial”
Donald Trump's defence team has urged senators to acquit the president as they wrapped up their arguments in his impeachment trial. Dismissing objections to Trump’s conduct towards Ukraine as 'policy disagreements', Trump's lawyers also sought to marginalise former national security adviser John Bolton's explosive allegations about Trump's conduct as 'inadmissible' in the proceedings
‘Get rid of her. Get her out tomorrow,’ president seems to say of ambassador to Ukraine
Donald Trump demanded the dismissal of Marie Yovanovitch, then US ambassador to Ukraine and now a key figure in the president’s impeachment trial, according to a video recording released to the media.
The footage was reportedly taken during an April 2018 donor dinner at a hotel and released to news media by an attorney for Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Footage obtained from Parnas's lawyer, dating back to April 2018, appears to show Donald Trump ordering attendees at a meal to 'get rid' of the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. The video surfaced on Saturday 25 January.
Although they have been pictured together, Trump has said of Parnas: 'I don’t know him, I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken to him. I don’t need the help of a man I haven’t met before, other than perhaps taken a picture.' The removal of Yovanovitch has played a key role in the current impeachment proceedings against the president
White House counsel says prosecution aims to pull off ‘the most massive interference in an election in American history’
Welcome to Day One of the Trump Show.
It was, admittedly, an inauspicious start to what was teased as a “trailer” for the rollicking show to come next week in the historic impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
Secretary of state screamed obscenities and demanded host Mary Louise Kelly find Ukraine on a map, journalist says
Mike Pompeo is said to have unleashed a foul-mouth tirade at a well known US radio host after she asked him questions about Ukraine in an interview.
Mary Louise Kelly, a respected broadcaster on National Public Radio (NPR), sat down for a pre-arranged interview with the secretary of state on Friday, whose wrath was apparently triggered by a string of questions about Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Kelly asked Pompeo whether he owed Yovanovitch an apology for not defending her in the face of a smear campaign orchestrated by Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his associates.
Tehran issues first acknowledgement of precise number of rounds fired at plane
Iran says its armed forces mistakenly launched two surface-to-air missiles at a Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed with 176 people onboard earlier this month, its first acknowledgement of the precise number of rounds fired at the airliner.
Assessments by western intelligence agencies and video footage from the launch site had pointed to two missiles being fired at the Boeing 737-800 on the morning of 8 January, but Iranian officials had so far referenced only one until the release of preliminary report on Tuesday by the country’s civil aviation authority.
The Ukrainian interior ministry issued a statement on Thursday saying that its position was not to interfere in US domestic affairs but that press reports of messages contain “a possible violation of the law of Ukraine and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which protects the rights of a diplomat on the territory of the foreign country”.