Trump compares whistleblower’s source to a ‘spy’, audio reveals – live

Trump says he wants to know who gave information to the whistleblower: ‘You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies?’

Warren is defiant against Wall Street critics

Earlier today, CNBC reported that democratic Wall Street donors are threatening to vote for Donald Trump if Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken critic of big business, won the democratic nomination.

I'm fighting for an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the wealthy and well-connected. I'm not afraid of anonymous quotes, and wealthy donors don't get to buy this process. I won't back down from fighting for the big, structural change we need. https://t.co/nx7GczQhHl

Since Donald Trump took office, his administration has been accepting fewer and fewer refugees. In fiscal year 2018, the administration capped the number of asylum seekers it would admit at 45,000 and this year the cap was 30,000.

“The President is using people seeking safety as an opportunity to rile up hostility and create a climate of fear. Though the vast majority of people support welcoming refugees, this administration seeks to strip away long-standing protections and values for its own interests.”

Related: Trump sets cap for refugee admission at an all-time low

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EU may be forced to withdraw from nuclear deal, Iran told

EU warns it may have no choice if Iran takes further steps away from deal

The European Union has privately warned Iran that it will be forced to start withdrawing from the nuclear deal in November if Tehran goes ahead with its threat to take new steps away from the deal.

Iran has already taken three separate calibrated steps away from the deal, and has warned it will take a fourth in November unless the US lifts economic sanctions.

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Trump-Ukraine scandal: what did the whistleblower say and how serious is it?

Democrats are going ahead with an impeachment inquiry, with the accusation Trump pressured a foreign government for dirt on an opponent

Democrats in the House of Representatives are moving forward with an impeachment inquiry to explore whether the US president should effectively be put on trial by the US Congress and, if convicted, removed from office.

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‘This is very strange’: Ukraine’s view of the Trump whistleblower complaint

News of US pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskiy has sparked fears among reformers, but on the streets it is seen as an American affair

The revelations that Donald Trump attempted to pressure Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden’s family have reverberated through civil society and political circles in Kyiv, prompting some to ask if the United States can be viewed as a trustworthy ally in the country’s attempts to reform and stave off pressure from Russia.

Members of Ukraine’s civil society and veterans communities on Thursday complained about the threat of withholding military funding and US political support to score points in domestic US politics.

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Whistleblower report reveals how far Trump’s dubious ethics have spread

Report indicates there were a lot of people involved in Trump’s scheme to tamper in the 2020 election and prosecute opponents

The critics are calling it “horrifying,” “pure dynamite,” and “INSANE”.

It’s a blockbuster that arrived too late for summer, but with the president obsessing, Congress investigating and main street America processing, the buzz around a whistleblower complaint about Donald Trump released early on Thursday appears likely only to grow.

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‘This is a cover-up’: Nancy Pelosi on Trump whistleblower complaint – video

Nancy Pelosi started her weekly press conference by directly addressing the release of the whistleblower complaint. Recounting the whistleblower’s allegations that the White House tried to keep details of the Ukraine call from becoming public, the House speaker said: ‘This is a cover-up.’ Pelosi also explained her thinking behind deciding to launch a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump: ’Last week we saw something that removed all doubt as to whether we should move forward’

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Cardi B: I was sexually assaulted on magazine photoshoot

US rapper alleges that a photographer exposed himself and attempted to coerce her into sex

US rapper Cardi B has detailed a sexual assault she experienced during a magazine photoshoot.

Speaking to TV and radio host Angie Martinez, she said: “I went to shoot for this magazine and the photographer, he was trying to get close to me like, ‘Yeah, you want to get in this magazine?’ Then he pulled his dick out. I was so fucking mad … You know what’s crazy? I told the magazine owner and he just looked at me like, ‘So? And?’”

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California Trip: how Dennis Stock caught the darkness beyond the hippy dream

His iconic portraits of James Dean in a wintry New York won him fame. But it was his travels in the west coast that brought out his true genius, as he captured the cracks in the 60s counterculture

‘For many years California frightened me,” Dennis Stock wrote in the preface to California Trip, first published in 1970. “For a young man with traditional concerns for spiritual and aesthetic order, California seemed too unreal. I ran.”

Stock, a naturally sceptical New Yorker who had served in the US Navy before hustling his way into the ranks of the esteemed Magnum photo agency, had instinctively picked up on the edgy undercurrents of the late 1960s Californian hippy dream. As the idealism of that decade peaked and faded, California became what Stock called a “head lab” – fomenting various radically alternative lifestyles fuelled by eastern mysticism, experiments in communal living, and all kinds of post-LSD mind expansion.

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Trump pressed Ukraine leader to investigate Biden, memo reveals

US president asked Volodymyr Zelenskiy for ‘a favor’ and to ‘look into’ Biden as impeachment inquiry launched against Trump

Donald Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to work with the US attorney general to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, a damning White House memo revealed on Wednesday, raising the stakes in an acrimonious and polarising impeachment inquiry.

Democrats said the US president’s conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskiy detailed in the five-page rough “transcript” was a devastating betrayal of his country that merited their investigation, while Republicans claimed it showed no quid pro quo and offered complete vindication.

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Zelenskiy meets Trump: sitcom president finds himself trapped in a whodunnit

Sitting down in front of cameras at the UN, Zelenskiy looked miserable and Trump rambled about his achievements

In this new screwball comedy, an American reality show host and a Ukrainian TV comedian somehow find themselves elected president and almost get away with it – until a seemingly routine phone call ends up determining the fate of both their nations.

It is a script that has bypassed the big screen to go straight to reality in 2019, and it was playing on Wednesday in both Washington and New York.

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House intelligence chair: whistleblower complaint shows ‘serious wrongdoing’ – live news

President gives rambling press conference as controversy swirls

Democratic and republican lawmakers are expressing concern after reviewing whistleblower complaint

It appears that members of the Senate intelligence committee have reviewed the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower complaint.

Chuck Schumer after reading whistleblower complaint: “Having read the documents in there, I'm even more worried about what happened than I was when I read the memorandum of the conversation. There are so many facts that have to be examined. It’s very troubling.”

SASSE after reading the whistleblower complaint: “Really troubling things here. Republicans ought not just circle the wagons, and democrats ought not have been using words like impeachment before they knew anything about the actual substance.”

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has introduced a resolution to get congress to officially avow that it “disapproves” speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry announcement yesterday.

HAPPENING NOW→ I'm introducing a privileged resolution for the House to vote on.

"The House of Reps disapproves of the actions of Speaker Pelosi to initiate an impeachment inquiry against the duly elected President of the US, @realDonaldTrump."

Read the full resolution↓ pic.twitter.com/9xgYoVAl8P

HAPPENING NOW→ I'm introducing a privileged resolution for the House to vote on.

"The House of Reps disapproves of the actions of Speaker Pelosi to initiate an impeachment inquiry against the duly elected President of the US, @realDonaldTrump."

Read the full resolution↓ pic.twitter.com/9xgYoVAl8P

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‘Nobody pushed me’: Ukrainian president addresses Trump phone call – video

Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters on Wednesday that he did not feel pressured by Donald Trump to investigate Joe Biden. ‘I think you read everything,’ the Ukrainian president said, referencing the White House memo on his phone call with the US president. In the same meeting, Trump made reference to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which occurred during Barack Obama’s presidency, and asserted that Hillary Clinton’s emails may be located in Ukraine

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Favors, dirt, investigations: key takeaways from the Trump-Ukraine memo

The White House released a summary of Trump’s call with Zelenskiy that lies at the heart of the impeachment inquiry

The White House on Wednesday released a five-page summary of a 30-minute call between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that lies at the heart of the growing impeachment process.

Here are five key takeaways:

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Iran’s president rejects nuclear talks before sanctions are lifted

Hopes of a deal with Trump quashed as Rouhani accuses US of ‘economic terrorism’

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has ruled out negotiations on its nuclear programme with the United States so long as sanctions remained in place and said he was not interested in a “memento photo” with Donald Trump.

“I would like to announce that our response to any negotiation under sanctions is negative,” Rouhani said in an address to the UN general assembly in New York.

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Trump seemed to be untouchable – that may have just changed

Documentation has never before emerged of Trump asking for dirt on his opponents – and there are signs he may be in deeper trouble

For decades there has been a “catch me if you can” quality about Donald Trump, skipping from casino bankruptcies to fraudulent universities to porn actor payoffs. As president, Trump has at times seemed likewise untouchable, even as the number of his discarded former allies piles up and his political capital pays out.

But documentation has never before emerged, as it did on Wednesday, of Trump as US president asking a foreign leader for dirt on his political opponents. And there’s reason to believe that much more, and worse, is about to come out.

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Trump scandal: Ukraine fears it could become Russia of 2020 election

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s country, dependent on US aid, is now caught in the middle of a Washington row

As Democratic lawmakers plan to impeach Donald Trump for abuse of power, the novice Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, must run a gauntlet of US partisan pressure that he has sought desperately to avoid.

Zelenskiy is squeezed between a US president urging him to dig up dirt on his political rival Joe Biden and a Democratic party that sees the White House’s pressure on him as a compelling argument to unseat Trump.

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‘It’s a witch-hunt’: Donald Trump lashes out as impeachment calls grow – video

Donald Trump says growing calls for his impeachment are 'nonsense' after it emerged he withheld nearly $400m in aid to Ukraine.

The US president ordered staff to withhold the aid before demanding Ukraine’s president investigate Joe Biden and his son, it emerged on Tuesday. Trump said the controversial phone call, with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had been 'perfect'

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Trump allies pounce on impeachment inquiry to bolster president

Republicans were ready to weaponise Pelosi’s announcement against her, Biden and other Democrats

When, with six American flags at her back, Nancy Pelosi stood in the hallway at the Capitol and, at 5pm on Tuesday, announced an official impeachment inquiry, it was the moment many Democrats had been waiting for.

It was also the moment many allies of Donald Trump had been waiting for.

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Pelosi announces impeachment inquiry into Trump over Ukraine scandal

Investigation will cast a dark cloud over Trump’s already norm-shattering presidency as he faces re-election

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the US House of Representatives would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, setting the stage for an extraordinary constitutional clash over allegations that the president sought the help of a foreign country to harm a political rival.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the constitution,” Pelosi said in a formal address in Washington on Tuesday evening. “The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”

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Plácido Domingo withdraws from Met Opera performances after sexual harassment claims

Opera singer drops role in Macbeth and agrees no longer to perform with New York company

The Metropolitan Opera announced on Tuesday that Plácido Domingo had agreed to withdraw from his slate of scheduled performances at the opera house following allegations of sexual harassment made by multiple women in two Associated Press stories. The opera legend indicated that he would never again perform at the Met.

Domingo had been scheduled to sing the title role in the season debut of Verdi’s Macbeth on Wednesday night, which would have been his first performance in the United States since the AP reported that numerous women had accused him of inappropriate behavior, including one soprano who said he grabbed her bare breast.

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