Michael Bloomberg traded insults with Donald Trump on Sunday, calling the president “a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity and his spray-on tan”.
Related: 'My party is a cult': Republican Joe Walsh on his Iowa challenge to Trump
Continue reading...As a growing number of Republican senators confirmed they will vote to acquit Donald Trump at the conclusion of his impeachment trial on Wednesday, the saga threatened to overshadow the first contest of the Democratic primary season in Iowa on Monday.
Related: 'My party is a cult': Republican Joe Walsh on his Iowa challenge to Trump
Continue reading...The MSNBC host’s show has become a safety blanket for many US progressives. She discusses her demonisation by the right, tackling the president’s lies – and coming out at 17
Rachel Maddow, the US TV host, has a message for her critics: “Bring it. Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on. Give me more. Give me more. I love it!”
That is just as well, given the way she has polarised viewers in the past few years. Maddow, 46, has presented her primetime show on MSNBC, a 24-hour cable news channel, on weeknights since 2008. If most cable news and social media is fast food, she tries to rustle up a three-course meal: sensible, sober, sometimes painfully detailed and replete with oblique references to half-forgotten politicians of yesteryear. Since Donald Trump’s rise in 2016, however, The Rachel Maddow Show has become a nightly safety blanket for many progressives who identify with the “resistance”.
Continue reading...The Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the US and Israel, including those relating to security, after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented by Donald Trump, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said on Saturday.
Continue reading...Outraged by what they see as a coverup in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, grassroots activists are planning a massive “payback project” designed to punish Republican senators at the ballot box.
Related: By denying witnesses, Republicans made clear even a smoking gun would not be enough
Continue reading...CEO defended Facebook’s decision not to ban political ads and said company will ‘stand up for free expression’
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, has unveiled a new approach to political advertising which he described as a stand for the principles of free speech, but also one that will “piss off a lot of people”.
In a candid discussion at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2020 in Salt Lake City on Friday, Zuckerberg said that since his company is criticized for both what it does and does not do in terms of monitoring use of its platform, it will now support free speech “because in order to be trusted, people need to know what you stand for”.
Continue reading...Donald Trump appeared on Saturday to confirm the death of Qassim al-Rimi, the leader of an al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen, through a series of tweets.
Related: Yemeni terror chief warns US: 'Your security has broken away'
Continue reading...Trump has handed his ultra-loyal evangelical base policy victories and in return they turn a blind eye to his scandals
Joanne Craig, a lifelong evangelical Republican and resident of Sioux City, Iowa, couldn’t be more satisfied with the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Donning a large, blue “Christians for Trump” button on a blue pantsuit, the 80-year-old Craig emerged from the Country Celebrations Event Center in this small Iowa city satisfied to have heard Mike Pence and a cadre of Baptist pastors coo about the president’s policy victories.
Continue reading...Death toll rises, with almost 12,000 confirmed cases of infection in China. Follow the latest developments
Public Health England said the University of York student did not come in contact with anyone on campus whilst having the coronavirus symptoms, Sky News is reporting.
Vietnam has declared a public health emergency over the coronavirus epidemic and said it would stop all flights to and from China.
The government said it would also stop issuing visas for foreign visitors who had been in China in the past two weeks.
Continue reading...Andrew has said he is ‘angry and bewildered’ and denies reports that he has been contacted about the Jeffrey Epstein investigation
Claims made this week that Prince Andrew failed to respond to an FBI investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking conspiracy were likely issued by US investigators as an appeal for political support, former sex crime prosecutors say.
Earlier this week, US attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman took the extraordinary step of announcing from the steps of Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion in New York, that prosecutors and the FBI had repeatedly contacted the Duke of York’s lawyers to follow up on his previous pledge that he was “willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency”.
Continue reading...Senate voted 51-49 to block witnesses, with Republicans Mitt Romney and Susan Collins joining Democrats
The US Senate voted against hearing witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump on Friday, paving the way for Trump’s acquittal on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The Senate voted 51-49 to block witnesses, with only two Republicans, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, crossing party lines to support the Democratic call for witnesses.
Continue reading...The US Senate has voted against calling witnesses and collecting new evidence in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, clearing the way for a near-certain acquittal. The Republican-controlled Senate voted 51-49 to block the Democrats' drive to hear testimony from witnesses including former national security adviser John Bolton. Only two Republicans, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, supported the motion. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the result a 'tragedy on a very large scale'.
Continue reading...US officials have declared a public health emergency over the coronavirus outbreak. Foreign nationals who have travelled to China will be barred from entering the country from Sunday. Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, said US citizens who had travelled to China’s Hubei province in the last fortnight would be subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine on their return
Continue reading...
The impeachment trial has resumed, and Trump’s legal team will now have two hours to address the debate over calling witnesses to testify in the trial.
Deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin has taken the podium to argue against witnesses, claiming the senators have heard enough testimony from the officials who participated in the public hearings of the House impeachment inquiry.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was hosting some of his Republican colleagues in his office during the break, likely working through the logistics of the trial’s conclusion, but he is now headed back to the chamber.
So far senators Thune, Tillis, Romney, Alexander and Murkowski have emerged from McConnell's office. I frankly have no idea whether they want to push this through late tonight or punt it to next week.
Aaaand McConnell just emerged to head back to the Senate floor
The Trump administration is expanding the reach of its controversial travel ban to six additional countries.
The United States will stop issuing visas that offer a path to residency to nationals from Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, Myanmar and Tanzania, said Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, in a conference call on Friday.
Continue reading...UK court sanctions fines after firm admits using agents across world to bribe officials to land high-value contracts
Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace multinational, is to pay a record £3bn in penalties after admitting it had paid huge bribes on an “endemic” basis to land contracts in 20 countries.
Anti-corruption investigators hailed the result as the largest ever corporate fine for bribery in the world after judges declared that the corruption was “grave, pervasive and pernicious”.
Continue reading...Amazon founder interviewed as FBI conducts inquiry into Israeli firm linked to malware
Jeff Bezos met federal investigators in April 2019 after they received information about the alleged hack of the billionaire’s mobile phone by Saudi Arabia, the Guardian has been told.
Bezos was interviewed by investigators at a time when the FBI was conducting an investigation into the Israeli technology company NSO Group, according to a person who was present at the meeting.
Continue reading...Flight carrying 83 British people and 27 foreign nationals will land in the UK on Friday as US tells citizens ‘don’t go to China’
A plane carrying more than 100 British and other EU nationals trapped in Wuhan, the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, has left for the UK after Chinese spouses and partners were given permission to travel.
The chartered flight left Wuhan at 9:45am local time on Friday, the Foreign Office said in a statement. The plane was carrying 83 British people and 27 foreign nationals, and was scheduled to land at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire at 1 pm UK time.
Continue reading...Defence secretary Mark Esper confirmed the policy change that would, according to a Pentagon review, increase danger to US armed forces
The US will end its moratorium on the production and deployment of landmines, in another reversal of Obama-era policies and a further breach with western allies, it has been reported.
The defence secretary, Mark Esper, confirmed that a policy change was imminent but refused to describe it. Vox published a leaked state department cable rescinding Barack Obama’s 2014 ban on production or acquisition of anti-personnel landmines (APLs).
Continue reading...Israeli private detective firm employed by mogul to try to foil publication of sexual misconduct allegations, New York court told
The jury in the New York rape trial of Harvey Weinstein has heard that the once-powerful movie mogul employed the Israeli private investigation firm Black Cube to try to squash a New York Times article that blew the lid on sexual misconduct allegations against him and sparked the #MeToo movement.
Dev Sen, a corporate lawyer at the prestigious New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, told the court that his company had acted as go-between connecting the beleaguered movie producer to Black Cube. The private detective firm has a staff largely consisting of alumni of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
Continue reading...