Policy bans aid going to foreign groups that support abortion rights as secretary of state Pompeo says: ‘This is decent and right’
The Trump administration has expanded its ban on funding for groups that conduct abortions or advocate abortion rights, known as the global gag rule, and has also cut funding to the Organisation of American States for that reason.
Related: How Trump signed a global death warrant for women | Sarah Boseley
Continue reading...Government watchdog reveals contract workers subjected to assault and unlawful detention, with property confiscated
A report into US efforts to rebuild Afghanistan’s war-damaged infrastructure has called for urgent action after revealing that Afghan security forces have been harassing, abusing and stealing from contractors at military bases.
Members of the Afghan national defence and security forces (ANDSF) have held workers at gunpoint and confiscated their equipment, costing the US hundreds of thousands of dollars, a US government watchdog said.
Continue reading...We wanted Robert Mueller to rescue us. The death of that fantasy means the real work for Democrats can now begin
We should have known better. We should have known better! We should have learned from the time that we believed we were on the verge of the first female president – the derivative T-shirts, the chilling champagne – only to find that our hopes had been dashed by a racist misogynist demagogue. Yet here we are again, a mass of deflated blue balloons, as the Monday morning headlines confirming our worst fears. Robert Mueller has issued his report. And Donald J Trump is still the president, happily golfing our taxes away.
Related: No collusion, plenty of corruption: Trump is not in the clear | Richard Wolffe
Continue reading...The fourth annual Bombay Beach Biennale took place last weekend on the shores of the Salton Sea in California. Artists and performers donated their time and talent to this volunteer-led event that transformed the town into a fully immersive artistic experience for 72 hours.
Continue reading...Avenatti charged with attempting to extort millions from Nike, and also charged with wire and bank fraud in separate case
The high-profile attorney Michael Avenatti was charged with trying to extort more than $20m from the sports company Nike.
Avenatti, the former lawyer for Stormy Daniels and a prominent critic of Donald Trump, threatened to release damaging information about Nike unless it paid him off, according to a criminal complaint filed by federal authorities in New York.
Continue reading...Space agency blames shortage of outerwear after first-of-its-kind mission falls through
Nasa’s plans for an all-female spacewalk have fallen through – at least in part because the agency doesn’t have enough spacesuits that fit the astronauts.
Early this month, Nasa announced that Christina Koch and Anne McClain would take part in the first-of-its kind mission on 29 March, walking outside the international space station (ISS) to install new batteries. In the past, missions have been all-male or male-female.
Continue reading...Israeli forces and Hamas exchanged rocket fire on Monday night amid fears of a new conflict in Gaza.
Israeli forces carried out strikes against what they called “Hamas terror targets” across the Gaza Strip, after an earlier rocket attack that destroyed a family home and wounded seven people in a neighbourhood north of Tel Aviv. The army also said it was reinforcing troops along the Gaza border and calling up reserves.
Continue reading...Findings play into the president’s narrative of ‘no collusion’ as he embraces the role of victim
Donald Trump is set to weaponise the special counsel’s finding of no collusion with Russia in his bid for re-election, turning vindication into vengeance with an assault on Democrats and the media.
Robert Mueller found no evidence Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 election and reached no conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice, according to a four-page summary of his findings by the attorney general, William Barr.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has complained of a 'false narrative' promoted by people who have done 'evil ... treasonous things' after the completion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations of collusion with Russia. US attorney general William Barr's summary, released on Sunday, said the report had not established that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government. 'We can never let this happen to another president again,' the US president said, promising to 'look into' those people
What’s in the attorney general’s summary of the Trump-Russia investigation? And will the report be made public?
William Barr: Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.
Continue reading...A professor at an elite US school says an influx of unskilled and entitled students is monopolizing faculty time: ‘They will eat you alive’
If you think corruption in elite US college admissions is bad, what happens once those students are in the classroom is even worse.
I know, because I teach at an elite American university – one of the oldest and best-known, which rejects about 90% of applicants each year for the small number of places it can offer to undergraduates.
Continue reading...Chairman of the US house of representatives judiciary committee, Jerrold Nadler, tells a news conference on Sunday that his committee plans to call on attorney general William Barr to answer questions about Robert Mueller's Russia report.
Continue reading...Bill Barr released a summary of the long-awaited report into allegations the Trump campaign colluded with Russia
The US Attorney general Bill Barr released a summary on Sunday of special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report into allegations that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
Here are the main findings of the two-year investigation that the president regularly denounced as a witch hunt, before claiming vindication upon its completion:
Continue reading...A second student from the Florida high school targeted in a mass shooting has died in little more than a week, police said on Sunday.
The boy was believed to be a survivor of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas school on 14 February 2018 in which 17 people were killed and 17 wounded.
Continue reading...Donald Trump is claiming 'complete and total exoneration' following the release of a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's report into collusion with Russia. The president spoke before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington from Florida on Sunday afternoon. The Justice Department said that Mueller's investigation did not find evidence that Trump's campaign 'conspired or coordinated' with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mueller also investigated whether Trump obstructed justice, but did not come to a definitive answer
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that neither Donald Trump nor any of his aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, according to a letter delivered to Congress on Sunday by the US attorney general.
Related: No collusion, plenty of corruption: Trump is not in the clear | Richard Wolffe
Continue reading...Vicky Ward has produced a damning depiction, a lethal amalgam of Page Six-like dish and firsthand investigative reporting
Like Donald Trump, Americans are displeased with Jared Kushner, the president’s squeaky sounding son-in-law. As the reality that Kushner received his White House security clearance the same way he got into Harvard sinks in – “Daddy” pulled some very expensive strings – his popularity will not be rebounding anytime soon.
Related: Revealed: Kushner 'challenged on conflicts of interest by Trump aides'
Continue reading...Pressure builds on other institutions to disavow Sackler family over OxyContin, powerful painkiller linked to opioid deaths
Earlier this year at the Guggenheim in New York, activists objecting to donations from the Sackler family draped protest banners from the museum’s famous spiraling balconies, dropped flyers down through the atrium and pretended to die all over the floor. A gobsmacked public looked on.
Tate Modern has just escaped a similar fate.
Continue reading...Barbra Streisand has apologised over her remarks about Michael Jackson and two men who have accused him of sexual abuse, saying she should have chosen her words more carefully and that she admires the accusers for “speaking their truth”.
Streisand had been strongly criticized for her comments about two men who accused Jackson of sexual abuse in the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland.
Continue reading...Washington and America waited with bated breath on Saturday for the next stage in the Trump-Russia drama: the communication to Congress of the “principal conclusions” of special counsel Robert Mueller.
Related: Mueller report: Trump camp celebrates but danger is not past yet
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