By Keith Coffman | DENVER DENVER A Colorado talk radio host who once chaired the state Republican Party and has accused Democrats of widespread voter fraud has been charged with forging his ex-wife’s signature on a mail-in ballot in the 2016 election, court records showed on Wednesday. Steven Curtis, 57, who served as state GOP boss from 1997 until 1999, is charged with one felony count of […]
Two-and-a-half years ago, Nathan Law took to the streets of Hong Kong with tens of thousands of fellow students, demanding Beijing give them the right to vote for the leader of their own city government. This Sunday Mr Law will have that opportunity — but not in the way he envisaged during the “Umbrella Revolution” protests. When he was voted on to the city’s Legislative Council in […]
By Patricia Zengerle and Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee set off a political firestorm on Wednesday when he said the communications of members of Donald Trump’s transition team were caught up in incidental surveillance targeting foreigners. Representative Devin Nunes said at a news conference that it was possible President Trump’s own communications were also intercepted and […]
New revelations reported Wednesday further intensify the spotlight on Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chair and a longtime friend, who allegedly worked for years to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and elsewhere. An Associated Press report says Manafort forged closer ties to the Kremlin and the formerly pro-Russian government in Ukraine than he had previously disclosed, casting another cloud over the […]
Authored by Robert Parry via The Strategic Culture Foundation, The Kagan family, America’s neoconservative aristocracy, has reemerged having recovered from the letdown over not gaining its expected influence from the election of Hillary Clinton and from its loss of official power at the start of the Trump presidency. Former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick […]
BEIRUT: The head of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said a US-backed assault to drive Daesh from its de facto capital Raqqa would begin at the start of April and the YPG would be taking part, despite fierce opposition from neighboring Turkey.A spokesman for the US Pentagon said no decision had been made yet on the Raqqa offensive.US-backed forces, including the YPG, are closing in on the […]
SEOUL Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye left prosecutors’ offices early on Wednesday after being questioned in an investigation into a corruption scandal that brought an early end to her political career. Park did not respond to reporters’ questions as she emerged from the building after nearly 22 hours and got into a waiting car to be driven to her private home in the capital, Seoul. Prosecutors […]
WASHINGTON Republicans considering whether or not to back U.S. President Donald Trump’s healthcare reforms in a crucial House of Representatives vote this week face a painful choice. If they vote against, they could face the wrath of a vengeful and combative president. If they vote for it, they risk retribution from the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and other powerful right-wing players whose money can be […]
SKOPJE Macedonia needs to rise above political feuding and form a government as soon as possible to unblock the Balkan country’s path to European Union membership, the EU said on Tuesday. An EU summit earlier this month placed the Balkans high on its agenda to show that despite lingering ethnic tensions and the scars from wars fought in the 1990s, the region is a priority for the […]
Neil Gorsuch was emerging largely unscathed from an all-day marathon of sometimes hostile questioning from senators weighing his nomination for a lifetime Supreme Court post. The Denver-based federal appellate judge clashed with Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island in an exchange over the role of money in American politics. And he came under fire from another Democrat, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, for what the lawmaker called his “absurd” […]
By Stephanie Nebehay | GENEVA GENEVA North Korea has nothing to fear from any U.S. move to broaden sanctions aimed at cutting it off from the global financial system and will pursue “acceleration” of its nuclear and missile programmes, a Pyongyang envoy told Reuters on Tuesday. This includes developing a “pre-emptive first strike capability” and an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), said Choe Myong Nam, deputy ambassador at […]
BELFAST Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander who was deputy first minister of Northern Ireland for a decade, has died aged 66, his party, Sinn Fein, announced on Tuesday. A key figure throughout five decades of conflict and peace in the UK province, McGuinness had announced on January 19 that he was bowing out of politics and would not lead his nationalist party into elections […]
Bahraini liberal opposition figure Ibrahim Sharif was charged on Monday with “inciting hatred” against the regime with his tweets, a human rights group said. The Britain-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said Sharif was questioned by the Gulf state’s public prosecution about comments he tweeted. Apart from voicing support for detained rights activists, Sharif questioned moves by the justice ministry to dissolve the secular, opposition […]
By Susan Cornwell and David Morgan | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Congressional Republicans recrafted their Obamacare replacement bill on Monday in hopes of satisfying critics as U.S. President Donald Trump prepared to promote his first major legislative initiative on Capitol Hill. In a sign of deepening concern among Republicans about the bill’s future, Trump will speak to the party’s lawmakers in Congress on Tuesday about the healthcare overhaul, two […]
By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Democrats raised questions on Monday about whether Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, would rule against abortion rights and gun control while favouring corporations as his Senate confirmation hearing began, with the court’s ideological balance at stake. Judiciary Committee Republicans praised Gorsuch, the conservative appeals court judge from Colorado nominated by Trump on Jan. 31, […]
FBI director James Comey is on Capitol Hill today, where he is testifying to the House intelligence committee on the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere in last year’s US presidential election. He is testifying alongside NSA Director Michael Rogers. Mr Comey, who came under fire during the election campaign for his handling of Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton’s email server probe, was questioned about […]
SEOUL A lawyer known as her “bullet-proof vest” is on former South Korean president Park Geun-hye’s legal team. So are two failed candidates for parliament from her ruling party. Park has turned to a group of loyalists for her legal defence as she faces questioning on Tuesday from prosecutors as a criminal suspect in a widening corruption probe that has already cost her the presidency. Her legal […]
By Susan Cornwell and Valerie Volcovici | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. House Republicans are working on changes to their healthcare overhaul bill to provide more generous tax credits for older Americans and to add a work requirement for the Medicaid program for the poor, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Sunday. Ryan said Republican leaders still plan to bring the healthcare bill to a vote on the […]
The Trump administration’s budget blueprint, released this morning, proposes to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, as well as many public radio and television stations across the United States. In a section on page 11 labeled “major agency budget highlights,” the budget summary lists the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as among the independent agencies that will be defunded, along with […]
A few days ago Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic Senator from New Hampshire, introduced a piece of legislation that would give the Department of Justice “new authority” to investigate potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by the ‘Russian Times’. Among other things, Shaheen said the legislation was necessary to determine whether “RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic […]
LONDON Allegations from the United States that British spy agency GCHQ snooped on Donald Trump during his election campaign are “arrant nonsense”, the deputy head of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) said in an interview on Saturday. President Trump has stood by unproven claims that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 White House race. On Thursday his spokesman cited a media report that […]
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts, I am convinced that the US, and probably the entire Western world, that is, the American Empire, has entered an era in which respect for truth does not exist in public and private institutions. We have been watching this develop for some time. Think, for example, back to August 3, 2002, a recent time in terms of our present predicament, but a […]
SEOUL South Korean prosecutors will question the chairman of the SK Group on Saturday in connection with an influence-peddling scandal that brought down President Park Geun-hye, the company and the Yonhap news agency said. Park, South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be removed from office, faces allegations that she colluded with a friend, Choi Soon-sil, to pressure big businesses to donate to foundations set up to […]
By Ben Blanchard | BEIJING BEIJING China is likely to express its anger at being told to rein in nuclear-armed North Korea when U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives in Beijing on Saturday, his first visit to the country since taking office last month. Beijing is expected to call on Washington to share responsibility in lessening tensions in the region, while strongly opposing this month’s deployment […]
