Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Zelenskiy sitcom lasted just one night after alluding to Putin in crude sub-language
A Russian television channel has abruptly cancelled a sitcom starring Ukraine’s president after an allusion to a crude joke about Vladimir Putin was aired in Russia’s far east.
The political satire Servant of the People served as a platform for the former comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to gain popularity and eventually win the Ukrainian presidency, in a vote largely driven by anger at the country’s previous leaders.
Inspector general Michael Horowitz defends report that found FBI investigation into 2016 Trump campaign was justified – follow live
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Two sources told CNN that the whistleblower whose account led to the impeachment inquiry is prepping for a potential subpoena from the Senate to testify. Donald Trump and his allies have made thinly veiled threats to the whistleblower, who is still anonymous, making some question the safety of revealing the whistleblower’s identity. Here’s more from CNN:
A subpoena would put the whistleblower in uncharted territory, and raise the risk that his or her identity could come out in the course of the trial in the Senate -- where, unlike in the Democrat-led House, some Republicans have expressed a desire to hear from the whistleblower. ...
Depending on how senators structure their likely trial, a subpoena could compel the whistleblower to cooperate with anything from written questions to a closed-door interview in a secure location to a public hearing that would expose the whistleblower’s identity.
Friendly reminder that the House judiciary committee’s debate on the two articles of impeachment will begin tonight at 7pm. Reports say that House Democrats plan to vote on each article separately.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said there will be separate House votes on each article of impeachment when they go to the floor next week, even though the articles are written into a single resolution, per @jeremyherb
Democratic congressional leaders have unveiled articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, a historic move set in motion by a whistleblower complaint warning the president was using the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in a US election.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet Russian counterpart at summit on Kyiv’s five-year war with Russian separatists
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, faces a major test at a high-stakes summit with Vladimir Putin in Paris as he pursues a campaign promise to negotiate an end to the war in south-east Ukraine despite vocal opposition at home.
Zelenskiy and his Russian counterpart will meet at the Élysée Palace on Monday alongside European leaders for their first face-to-face talks since the comedian-turned-president took office in May.
Donald Trump "abused the power of his office for personal and political gain, at the expense of [US] national security", congressional Democrats have alleged in a report laying out damning conclusions after two weeks of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry. Here's a look back at some of the key testimony heard by the House Intelligence Committee that led to this point
Democrats vote to adopt the report, moving the inquiry forward
They say evidence shows president improperly pressured Ukraine to influence 2020 election
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The US House intelligence committee voted on Tuesday evening to adopt Democrats’ damning 300-page impeachment report, moving the inquiry into Donald Trump into its next phase.
Trump “abused the power of his office for personal and political gain, at the expense of [US] national security”, congressional Democrats concluded in the report released on Tuesday, which laid out incriminating conclusions after two weeks of public hearings.
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.