Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Democratic pair say impeachment inquiry will not be slowed
Trump condemned for ‘blatant effort to intimidate witnesses’
Donald Trump has been accused of “incitement to violence” and threatened with obstruction charges in the fast-escalating battle over impeachment, as the president maintained his aggressive counter-attack against Democratic leaders and the whistleblower who precipitated the inquiry.
Iranian president tells cabinet the country had been ready to accept terms of French UN plan
The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has told his cabinet that while the country had been ready to end its nuclear stand-off with the US broadly on terms set out by France at the United Nations, Donald Trump was not prepared to make public an apparent private offer to lift sanctions.
Although his account is inherently not impartial, it is the fullest version of behind-the-scenes diplomacy at the UN general assembly provided by the Iranians.
Tokyo says there’s no damage from what appear to be ballistic missiles ahead of US-North Korea talks resuming this weekend
North Korea has launched two projectiles, one of which landed in waters inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, the Japanese government said on Wednesday, after what appears to have been a show of strength by Pyongyang before it resumes nuclear talks with the US at the weekend.
Japan’s government said the projectiles appeared to be ballistic missiles, adding that there were no immediate reports of damage to shipping or aircraft.
The state department’s inspector general has requested an urgent briefing related to documents on Ukraine with congressional staff members, according to multiple reports.
The inspector general’s unusual request followed secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s assertions that House democrats were trying to “bully” officials into testifying and that the democrats’ schedule for depositions related to the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry was “not feasible”.
The US president appears to believe Australian spies are part of a deep-state conspiracy. Australia should be wary of the risks of getting drawn into his defence
It really is a poke in the eye – the “Five Eyes”, that is. Donald Trump’s telephone call to Scott Morrison, revealed on Tuesday in the New York Times, where he pressed for help in investigating the origins of the Mueller inquiry, will doubtless put a further strain on what is otherwise a very close intelligence-sharing partnership between the United States and Australia.
Why? Because aside from the unwanted political distraction of putting Australia at the centre of another Trump tirade (just as Morrison was seeking to apply the blowtorch to Labor at home for what he called “naive and immature” remarks about China), the twisted logic of Trump’s allegation is truly extraordinary.
Ex-officer shot and killed Jean in his apartment last year
Chants of ‘black lives matter’ after guilty verdict read out
A former police officer who argued she had a right to use lethal force when she killed an innocent man after mistakenly entering his apartment has been convicted of murder.
Amber Guyger faces a lengthy prison sentence after a jury found her guilty of the murder of Botham Jean in Dallas on 6 September last year – a verdict Jean family attorneys hailed as a significant moment in the battle to hold police accountable.
Secretary of state signals he will not comply with demands to hear depositions but witness are still set to give evidence, House says
Donald Trump’s administration has sought to defy congressional demands to hear depositions from senior officials, in the first major battle of a rapidly growing impeachment inquiry.
On Tuesday, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, dismissed summonses from Democratic committee chairmen in the House of Representatives for five current and former state department officials to testify on the president’s attempts to push Ukraine to dig up dirt on his leading political rival.
Leaked recordings published by the Verge show Zuckerberg fears ‘existential threat’ if Democratic contender becomes president
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said his company will “go to the mat” if Elizabeth Warren is elected president and seeks to fulfil her promise to break up America’s tech giants.
One man sentenced to death and others receive long sentences in further blow to efforts to calm US-Iranian tensions
Iranian courts have sentenced one man to death for spying for the US and jailed two others for 10 years for the same crime, as well as imprisoning a fourth person for six years for spying for Britain, an Iranian judiciary spokesman has said.
“One person has been sentenced to death for spying for America … but the ruling has been appealed,” Gholamhossein Esmaili told the judiciary’s news website, Mizan, on Tuesday.
Supreme court consider whether to take up Laventure v UN
UN peacekeepers introduced disease after 2010 earthquake
Victims of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti, which killed at least 10,000 people and infected hundreds of thousands more, are petitioning the US supreme court on Tuesday to hold the UN accountable for having brought the disease to the stricken country.
The nine supreme court justices will meet in conference to discuss whether to hear Laventure v UN as one of their cases of the new term. The petition goes to the heart of the question: should the world body be answerable in domestic courts for the harm it causes people it is there to serve?
Attorney general and secretary of state both reportedly took part in contacts between Trump and foreign leaders
An effort in recent months by Donald Trump to rewrite the history of the 2016 US presidential election and set up a 2020 re-election victory was both more geographically sprawling and reliant on the day-to-day participation of top cabinet members than previously reported, it emerged on Monday.
Both William Barr, the attorney general, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, collectively participated in contacts between Trump and leaders of at least four foreign countries, according to multiple reports.
In non-impeachment news, representative Chris Collins, a Republican of New York, has reportedly sent a letter of resignation to Nancy Pelosi a day before he was expected to plead guilty to insider trading charges.
Collins, 69, allegedly tipped off his son to confidential information about an Australian biotechnology company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, that he learned as a member of its board. Collins and several others used the information to avoid more than $700,000 in losses, according to prosecutors.
He is scheduled to change his plea Tuesday afternoon in a Manhattan federal court. ...
In addition to calling Trump a “corrupt human tornado,” Hillary Clinton also reacted to reports that the State Department is still investigating the email practices of her employees while she was secretary of state.
As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.
In virtually all of the cases, potentially sensitive information, now recategorized as ‘classified,’ was sent to Clinton’s unsecure inbox.
Donald Trump, already facing impeachment, has provoked fresh outrage by suggesting one of his main political adversaries should be arrested for “treason”.
Diplomat who disputed the US intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003
Joseph Wilson, who has died aged 69 of organ failure, was the American diplomat whose first-hand questioning of the rationale behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq earned him the enmity of the George W Bush administration, and saw his wife Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative exposed publicly in retaliation.
In 2002, with the administration building its case for war with Iraq, the CIA sent Wilson, usually known as “Joe”, to investigate whether the Iraqis had sought to buy yellowcake uranium ore, which might be enriched for use in nuclear weapons, from Niger.
Al-Shabaab claims its fighters launched raid on military base west of Mogadishu
A US military base used to launch drones and a European military convoy have been hit in separate attacks in Somalia.
A Reuters journalist saw a seriously damaged armoured vehicle bearing a small Italian flag sticker in the capital, Mogadishu, on Monday. It was unclear if there were any casualties.
Hundreds of migrants from Africa are stuck in Tapachula because of Mexico’s willingness to bow to Trump and stem the flow of migrants
Neh knew she was taking a risk when she got involved with English-language activists in mostly-Francophone Cameroon.
She had no way of know that her decision would eventually force her to flee her country, fly halfway across the world and then set out on a 4,000-mile trek through dense jungle and across seven borders – only to leave her stranded in southern Mexico, where her hopes of finding safety in the US were blocked by the Mexican government’s efforts to placate Donald Trump’s anti-migrant rage.
Struggling empire is the latest bricks-and-mortar outfit to suffer as shopping moves online
Fashion retailer Forever 21 has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, joining a growing list of bricks-and-mortar players who have failed to navigate the shift towards online shopping.
Since the start of 2017, more than 20 US retailers, including Sears Holdings Corp and Toys ‘R’ Us, have filed for bankruptcy as more customers shift to online retailers such as Amazon.
Whistleblower’s attorney says president’s demands to identify their client has prompted safety concerns
Lawyers acting for the whistleblower at the centre of the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s attempts to solicit foreign help for his re-election campaign have warned that their client’s personal safety is in danger partly as a result of the president’s remarks.
Andrew Bakaj, the lead attorney for the unnamed intelligence official who sounded the alarm on Trump’s activities relating to Ukraine, expressed fears on Sunday that the whistleblower could be put “in harm’s way” were his or her identity made public. In a letter to the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, Bakaj points directly at Trump’s aggressive statements that he said prompted “concerns for our client’s safety”.
Alligator found near a pond on the Gator Country property. A number of his smaller friends, however, are still missing
Residents of Beaumont, Texas, who saw this summer’s alligator horror movie Crawl might have suffered more sleepless nights this week, after the largest gator ever captured in the US was reported missing amid flooding caused by Tropical Storm Imelda.