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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Secret Service is investigating presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s former butler over a Facebook post calling for President Barack Obama’s assassination. The former butler, Anthony Senecal, 74, said in a Facebook post Obama should be hanged for treason. He made the statement in 2015, and the magazine Mother Jones wrote on Thursday about the post and other similar remarks by Senecal. Senecal worked for decades as a butler at Trump’s Palm Beach mansion, Mar-a-Lago. After reports of Senecal’s comments began to circulate, the Secret Service said in a statement, “The U.S. Secret Service is aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation.” The story broke as Trump, whose proposals to ban Muslims from entering the United States and build a wall along the Mexican border have drawn heavy criticism, concluded a charm offensive on Capitol Hill. He attended a series of meetings there on Thursday with Republican lawmakers to try to win the party establishment’s support for his candidacy. Senecal has not served as a butler to the billionaire candidate since 2009, but he was identified in a March 15 profile in the New York Times as a current employee of Mar-a-Lago, serving as the estate’s historian. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, said in a statement, “Senecal has not worked at Mar-a-Lago for years, but nevertheless we totally and completely disavow the horrible statements made by him regarding the president.” She declined to comment on the Times report about Senecal’s recent role. Senecal did not respond to a call seeking comment and could not be reached by email. “It is time for our Military to drag that fraud out of the white mosque and hang his ass for treason and other high crimes against AMERICA !!!!!!!” Senecal wrote on Sept. 13, 2015, in reference to Obama. Mother Jones reached Senecal on Thursday. The magazine reported that Senecal said of his Facebook comments, including a private comment on Wednesday in which he said Obama should be shot: “I wrote that. I believe that.”

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union s executive may trigger a process on Wednesday to begin to strip Poland of its voting rights in the bloc, officials say, as months of tensions between Brussels and Warsaw come to a head. In what would be an unprecedented move, the European Commission could invoke Article 7 of the European Union s founding Lisbon Treaty to punish Warsaw for breaking its rules on human rights and democratic values. Unless the Polish government postpones these court reforms, we will have no choice but to trigger Article 7, said a senior EU official before a Commission meeting on Wednesday, where Poland s reforms are on the agenda. Poland s new prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Brussels last week that the decision has already been made . The Commission s deputy head Frans Timmermans warned in July that Poland was perilously close to facing sanctions. Such a punishment could still be blocked. Hungary, Poland s closest ally in the EU, is likely to argue strongly against it. But the mere threat of it underlines the sharp deterioration in ties between Warsaw and Brussels since the socially conservative Law and Justice (PiS) won power in late 2015. The Commission says Poland s judicial reforms limit judges independence. Polish President Andrzej Duda has until Jan. 5 to sign them into law. If all EU governments agree, Poland could have its voting rights in the EU suspended, and may also see cuts in billions of euros of EU aid. The PiS government rejects accusations of undemocratic behavior and says its reforms are needed because courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist era-mentality. Following a non-binding European Parliament vote last month calling for Article 7 to be invoked, the Commission appears to have little leeway to grant Warsaw more time to amend its legislation. The reforms would give the PiS-controlled parliament de facto control over the selection of judges and end the terms of some Supreme Court judges early. The Council of Europe, the continent s human rights watchdog, has compared such measures to those of the Soviet system. The Commission fears letting Poland off the hook could weaken its hand, especially in the ex-communist east, and risk damaging the EU s single market and cross-border legal cooperation.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s military said on Thursday it had accomplished its mission of defeating Islamic State in Syria, and there were no remaining settlements there under the group s control. Russian bombers had used unprecedented force in the final stages to finish off the militant group, a senior Russian officer said. The mission to defeat bandit units of the Islamic State terrorist organization on the territory of Syria, carried out by the armed forces of the Russian Federation, has been accomplished, Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi, head of the general staff s operations, said on Rossiya 24 TV channel. Syrian government forces were now combing and de-mining areas where Islamic State had had their strongholds, he said. The final stage of the defeat of the terrorists was accompanied by the unprecedented deployment and intense combat use of Russia s air force, he said. The air strikes included 14 sorties of groups of long-range bombers from Russia made in the past month, he said. Russia s military deployed in Syria would now focus on preserving ceasefires and restoring peaceful life, he said.

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COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka s parliament approved on Friday a raft of tax concessions for a Chinese-led joint venture which will handle the southern port of Hambantota under a $1.1 billion deal that has sparked public anger and concerns in India and elsewhere. The deal, signed in July, leases the port to a Chinese firm for 99 years and the tax concessions include an income tax holiday of up to 32 years. The port is near the main shipping route from Asia to Europe and likely to play a key role in China s Belt and Road initiative. The joint venture comprises the China Merchants Port Holdings, which holds a 70 percent stake, and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), which has the remaining 30 percent. Today the parliament approved two motions... to grant certain tax incentives to those two companies operating the Hambantota port, Ports Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told Reuters. In the 225-member parliament 72 lawmakers backed the tax concessions and seven voted against. Many opposition deputies boycotted the vote. The government pressed ahead with the vote despite a suggestion from opposition lawmaker Dinesh Gunawardena, who suggested the measures should require a two-thirds majority, or more than 150 votes, given the strategic nature of the issue. Government and diplomatic sources have told Reuters that the United States, India and Japan had raised concerns that China might use the port as a naval base and could be a threat to security and stability in the Indian Ocean. An initial plan to give the Chinese firm an 80 percent stake triggered protests by trade unions and opposition groups, forcing the government to make some revisions that limit China s role to running commercial operations while retaining for Colombo oversight for broader security issues. The government will hand over the port, built with Chinese loans at a cost of $1.5 billion, to the joint venture on Saturday and will receive $300 million, or around 30 percent of the deal, Samarasinghe said. He also said the SLPA and the Chinese firm had signed the lease agreement just before parliament s approval of the tax exemptions. There has also been widespread public anger over plans for a 99-year lease of 15,000 acres (23 sq miles) to develop an industrial zone next to the port. This land lease is under negotiation. The parliamentary vote came a day after Sri Lanka s Supreme Court set a date for Jan. 11 to rule on three petitions against the leasing of land around the port to China. Sri Lanka has said the Chinese firm will invest an additional $600 million to make Hambantota port operational and $1.12 billion from the deal will be used for debt repayment. India is in advanced talks with Sri Lanka to operate an airport near Hambantota port.

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KIBBUTZ SHAAR HAAMAKIM, Israel (Reuters) - An Israeli kibbutz is taking considerable pride in a former volunteer, U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, even though no one on the communal farm can quite remember him. In 1990 Sanders, then running for Congress, told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper he had volunteered for several months as a young man at Kibbutz Shaar Haamakim, a community with deep socialist roots on the edge of the Biblical Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. Sanders, 74, has mentioned in the past that he once worked on a kibbutz, but its name remained a mystery until Haaretz republished its interview with him earlier this month. There are no records at Shaar Haamakim of Sanders’ stint in 1963 and none of its veteran members can say for sure they ever met him. That hasn’t stopped journalists from streaming into the community to try to dig for details about Sanders’ experience at the kibbutz, where the Brooklyn-born Vermont senator, who is Jewish, is now the talk of the farm. “The fact that Bernie Sanders’ name was linked with Kibbutz Shaar Haamakim is a big honor for the kibbutz,” said its chairman Yair Merom. “The values that Bernie Sanders speaks about and his ideology in the presidential race - the modern social democratic values - are incredibly compatible with Kibbutz Shaar Haamakim.” Kibbutz elder Albert Ely, 79, told Reuters he couldn’t put a face to the name but he remembered that “an American called Bernard” had once been a volunteer. “Everybody mentions it. Now that the election campaign began, there is great happiness in the entire kibbutz,” said Gilad Hershkikovich, who tends to its cows. “I’m sure he had a good time here.” (Reporting by Elana Ringler; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Tom Heneghan) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - President Donald Trump discussed a possible free trade agreement (FTA) with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his trip to Tokyo, the U.S. ambassador to Japan said on Friday, contradicting Japanese officials who had said such talks never took place. Japan has so far shown little interest in pursuing an FTA with the United States, preferring instead to push for a modified version of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) after Trump pulled his country from the pact. On Nov. 6, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters Trump had not mentioned an FTA when he met Abe for talks on relations between the two countries. At a news conference in the Japanese capital on Friday, however, the U.S. envoy, William Hagerty, said, They discussed a full range of trade options including an FTA. Washington may push Tokyo for an FTA to help reduce what it sees as an unfair trading deficit with Japan, Hagerty added. An FTA is one of the tools we may need to address that, he said. Trump returned to Washington this week after his first official visit to Asia, a 12-day tour that started with a two-night stay in Japan.

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Catholic Church’s highest-ranking diplomat wished U.S. President-elect Donald Trump well on Wednesday, saying he would pray for the new incumbent to be “enlightened”. “We wish the new president well, that he may have a truly fruitful government,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told the papal state’s radio station. “We pledge to pray that God enlightens him and supports him in the service of his country of course, but also in the service of wellbeing and peace in the world. I think today everyone needs to work to change the global situation, which is one of deep laceration and serious conflict.” Earlier this year, Pope Francis suggested Donald Trump was “not Christian” because of his stance on immigration. A papal spokesman later said this was not a personal attack on the Republican party candidate.

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(Reuters) - Burlington Stores Inc joined other retailers, including Nordstrom Inc, in deciding not to sell products of Ivanka Trump’s brand online, news website Business Insider reported. Burlington will no longer stock the brand’s accessories and clothing online, according to the report, but it was unclear if the off-price retailer would sell the products in its stores. Burlington and Ivanka Trump’s representatives were not immediately available for comment. Earlier this month, Nordstrom said it would stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s apparel because of falling sales, pushing President Donald Trump to defend his daughter on Twitter by saying she was treated “unfairly” by the retailer. Neiman Marcus [NMRCUS.UL] has also said it would not sell Ivanka Trump’s jewelry line while TJX Cos Inc told its employees to dump any signs related to the brand. HSN Inc has stopped selling Trump Home products, but still sells Trump presidential memorabilia. Sears Holdings and its unit, Kmart, had also removed 31 Trump Home items from their online product offerings to focus on more profitable items this month.

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(Reuters) - Best known as a New York hedge fund industry executive, Anthony Scaramucci, President Donald Trump’s incoming communications director, has stakes in a film company, a glitzy Manhattan steakhouse and a nutrition business accused by U.S. regulators of making false claims in 2015, financial disclosures show. Overall, Scaramucci has assets in a range of approximately $61 million to $85 million, the forms show. He also has liabilities, such as mortgages and personal loans, of between $6.9 million and $25.8 million. Scaramucci’s income since the start of 2016 - more than $10 million - is mostly derived from SkyBridge Capital, the hedge fund investment business that he founded in 2005 and is now in the process of selling to join the Trump administration. The disclosure says Scaramucci stands to make more than $50 million from the SkyBridge sale, which he said in May would likely close in June. The deal is on hold pending a regulatory review of its foreign-linked buyers. Scaramucci did not respond to a request for comment. His wife Deidre is listed on the forms as making $256,250 for investor relations work at SkyBridge starting last year. A SkyBridge spokeswoman said Deidre Scaramucci no longer works at the firm but did not say when she left. The disclosure document, obtained by Politico, was made to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Scaramucci’s appointment in June as chief strategy officer to the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Scaramucci on Thursday was not listed on the bank’s leadership web page. At first, when Politico reported the disclosure on Wednesday, Scaramucci decried it on Twitter as a criminal leak. Scaramucci later deleted the tweet. The form is a public document available on request. As a proud son of what he calls blue-collar Long Island, Scaramucci has long rooted for the New York Mets and made an investment in the baseball team valued between $1 million and $5 million, the disclosures show. It paid him $53,000 over the last year and a half. Scaramucci has an investment of as much as $250,000 in Strat-O-Matic Media LLC, which creates online simulations for baseball, football, hockey and basketball. A love of entertainment, particularly the Hollywood kind, is also apparent. Investments include a $50,001 to $100,000 stake in the film company behind “American Psycho” and “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” According to media reports, Scaramucci paid $100,000 to have himself and SkyBridge make appearances in the 2010 sequel to the 1987 Oliver Stone-produced hit, “Wall Street.”Scaramucci, the document shows, is a financial backer of “Crazy for the Boys,” a movie in production about a group of high school girls who take a stand against bullying. Real estate features prominently in Scaramucci’s portfolio. It ranges from residential property valued between $1 million and $5 million in Southampton, Long Island, where wealthy hedge fund managers often spend their summer weekends, to a loan valued at up to $100,000 to the Manhattan property of the restaurant he co-owns, Hunt & Fish Club. Scaramucci has often mingled with celebrities, professional athletes and media types at the steakhouse, which features $130 porterhouses, personalized steak knives and shoeshines during dinner. There is a smattering of smaller holdings. One is a stake worth between $30,002 and $100,000 in two Genesis nutrition supplement companies founded and previously led by Lindsey Duncan. The company sells diet drink powders and vitamins. In 2015, Duncan and related companies settled charges by the Federal Trade Commission for falsely claiming that green coffee bean supplements cause rapid weight loss on The Dr. Oz Show and The View. It was unclear when Scaramucci made the investment. Duncan and a spokeswoman for Genesis did not respond to a request for comment. Another small holding is in NSSI Life Settlement Services Inc. The exact nature of the business was unclear. Life settlements are generally a niche investment product where policy owners sell rights to life insurance payouts to a third party in exchange for cash while they are still alive.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, warning against the danger of sleepwalking into war, said on Thursday that Security Council resolutions on North Korea s nuclear and missile programs must be fully implemented by Pyongyang and other countries. Guterres made the comments to reporters after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo just days after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions. The White House said Wednesday that no negotiations could be held with North Korea until it improves its behavior. The White House has declined to say whether President Donald Trump, who has taken a tougher rhetorical line toward Pyongyang, gave approval to Tillerson s overture. It is very clear that the Security Council resolutions must be fully implemented first of all by North Korea but by all other countries whose role is crucial to ... achieve the result we all aim at, which is the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, Guterres said. Guterres added that Security Council unity was also vital to allow for the possibility of diplomatic engagement that would allow denuclearisation to take place. The worst possible thing that could happen is for us all to sleepwalk into a war that might have very dramatic circumstances, he said. Japan says now is the time to keep up maximum pressure on Pyongyang, not start talks on the North s missile and nuclear programs. China and Russia, however, have welcomed Tillerson s overture. Abe, who spoke to reporters with Guterres, reiterated that dialogue needed to be meaningful and aimed at denuclearisation. We fully agreed that the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is indispensable for the peace and stability of the region, Abe said. Tillerson s overture came nearly two weeks after North Korea said it had successfully tested a breakthrough intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire United States mainland within range. In September, North Korea fired a ballistic missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the second to fly over Japan in less than a month. North Korea appears to have little interest in negotiations with the United States until it has developed the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile, something most experts say it has still not proved. United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman, who visited Pyongyang last week, said on Tuesday senior North Korean officials did not offer any type of commitment to talks, but he believes he left the door ajar .

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has thrown her backing behind Senator Ted Cruz for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, South Carolina newspaper Post and Courier reported on Wednesday. The show of support comes the day after Haley’s first pick, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, dropped out of the race following a devastating loss in his home state of Florida’s primary.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday he could make some cabinet announcements before the party’s July convention in Cleveland, Fox News Channel reported on Wednesday. “I like the idea of doing some of this before we go into Cleveland. Yes, I could do that and I think it would be well-received,” it quoted Trump as saying in an interview.

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli and a Palestinian were killed on Thursday in two separate incidents in Israel and the occupied West Bank, officials said. An Israeli man was stabbed to death in the southern Israeli city of Arad in what police said was most probably a terrorist attack . The investigation is continuing and police units are searching for the suspect who fled the scene, said a police spokesman. Earlier in the day, an Israeli settler shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank, in what the Israeli army said was a response to an attack by Palestinians throwing rocks, an account that Palestinians denied. The Israeli military said the shooter had opened fire in self-defense as part of a group of settlers hiking near the village of Qusrah who had come under attack. Local villagers identified the Palestinian who was killed as Mahmoud Odeh, a 48-year-old farmer. They denied that any clash had taken place before the shooting. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the incident as a cowardly act and evidence to the world of the ugly crimes conducted by settlers against unarmed Palestinians , his office said in a statement. The Israeli military said troops arrived at the scene after the shooting. Israeli police said they were investigating the incident. A wave of Palestinian street attacks that began two years ago has largely dissipated and it is uncommon for two deadly events to occur in the same day.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roadside apartments, industrial lots and a trailer park in New Jersey counted among the sources of wealth for Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, before he took up his new role as a senior White House adviser. A lengthy financial disclosure form released on Friday by the White House, along with scores of others for senior White House staffers, showed the downscale New Jersey roots of the family business run until recently by Ivanka Trump’s husband. For instance, in the 12 months before he began his White House employment, Kushner made more than $2,500 in rental income from tenants of Union, New Jersey’s Park Lane Mobile Home Park. A small, industrial lot nearby brought in no more than $5,000. In the town of Wayne, New Jersey, Kushner disclosed ownership of a block of street-level apartments that returned more than $15,000, according to the paperwork. Kushner’s stakes in such holdings were among the smallest he reported. White House ethics officials said the legally required disclosure document gave a snapshot of the assets and positions Kushner held when he entered his new job as adviser to his father-in-law, and before he would have started selling assets that could pose conflicts of interest. Kushner’s 54-page report also included most of the assets and income of his wife. It covered scores of assets worth six- and seven-figures. The New York Times reported the couple’s real estate and investment empire was worth as much as $741 million. As reported, Kushner’s property portfolio did not rival the collection of glitzy hotels, casinos and golf courses owned, controlled or licensed by the president. But Kushner reported an interest in the Puck Building, a landmark in New York City. It was one of his most valuable holdings and delivered millions of dollars in income. Kushner’s grandfather anchored the family real estate business in northern New Jersey. His father, Charles, built that empire until 2004 when he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making unlawful campaign donations and was sentenced to two years in prison.

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner said on Wednesday he will entertain tax measures to address the state’s deep financial woes but continued to tie his possible support to the legislature agreeing to measures he thinks will spur economic growth. In his third budget address to the legislature, the Republican governor said a bipartisan Senate bill package aimed at breaking the state’s nearly 20-month budget impasse could win his support. “First and foremost: the final result must be a good deal for taxpayers and job creators: a grand bargain that truly balances the budget once and for all, and really moves the needle when it comes to job creation,” Rauner said in a speech punctuated with Democratic snickering and laughter. He conditioned his support for an income tax hike proposed by Senate leaders to a permanent freeze on local property taxes rather than for two years as the Senate package dictates. He also was open to broadening Illinois’ sales tax base but rejected taxing food and medicine. Illinois is limping through a record-setting second consecutive fiscal year without a complete budget due to an ongoing feud between Rauner and Democrats who control the legislature. A six-month fiscal 2017 budget expired on Dec. 31. Rauner’s fiscal 2018 general fund budget calls for $37.3 billion in spending but projects $32.7 billion in revenue, leaving $4.57 billion in unspecified cuts and revenue increases to be negotiated with the legislature. The budget also depends on changes to state worker pay and health care benefits that unions have fiercely opposed. Analysts at S&P Global Ratings, which released a highly critical report on Illinois’ budget stalemate this month, said it was unclear how Rauner’s plan provides a spending framework supported by sufficient revenue. “I’m not sure how far it moves the ball down the field,” said S&P analyst Gabe Petek. Illinois’ credit ratings, the lowest among the 50 states, have been downgraded six times since Rauner took office in January 2015 and now are just two notches above junk level. Before Rauner’s speech, some Democrats taped sheets of paper to their desks saying “Rauner Budget = Fake News” and “Rauner Budget = Alternative Facts.” Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, who rejected a Republican call to remove the signs, condemned Rauner for having “failed to introduce a balanced budget” for a third straight year. The Senate’s so-called grand bargain consists of 12 bills to raise income taxes by a third, borrow $7 billion to winnow down a $12 billion record-setting pile of unpaid bills and expand casino gambling. It would also change how workers are compensated for on-the-job injuries and impose term limits on legislative leaders. A key bill to ease Illinois’ $130 billion unfunded pension crisis was rejected by the Senate this month.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans said Tuesday they will seek to bring their healthcare overhaul to the Senate floor next week after a lengthy intraparty struggle, but it remained unclear whether they had the votes to pass the measure or even what form it would finally take. With his reputation as a master strategist on the line, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out a timetable for Senate consideration of legislation to fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to dismantle the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. In a departure from Republican orthodoxy on tax-cutting, the legislation likely will retain some of the taxes that were imposed on the wealthy under Obamacare, Senate sources said. But it was unknown whether a revised version of the bill to be announced on Thursday morning can satisfy both moderates and hard-line conservatives in the Republican majority who voiced opposition to a draft unveiled last month on very different grounds. With Trump urging the Senate to act before taking the August break, McConnell pushed back the Senate’s planned August recess by two weeks to allow senators more time to tackle the measure that would repeal key parts of Obamacare, as well as pursue other legislative priorities. McConnell’s announcement drove a turn-around in stock prices in afternoon trading on Wall Street after an earlier sell-off, on hopes that a shortened recess could mean progress on the stalled Republican legislative agenda. A dark mood lingered among some Republicans over the healthcare subject, with party leaders appearing to act because of the need to dispense with healthcare and turn to other issues, among them increasing the U.S. debt ceiling. “I think we’ve narrowed down now to where we know where the decision points are, and we just have to make those decisions,” Senator John Thune, a junior member of the Republican leadership, told reporters. Leaders were still trying to “figure out how we get to 50” votes, he said. Republicans, who hold 52 seats in the 100-seat Senate, would need 50 votes to pass the bill, with Vice President Mike Pence providing the tie-breaking vote. “I am very pessimistic” about the prospects for Republican healthcare legislation, Chuck Grassley, a senior senator, told Fox News on Tuesday. Another Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, was working on his own healthcare proposal and will unveil it this week, a Graham aide said. McConnell said the plan was to vote on the healthcare bill next week, and said he hoped to have a fresh analysis of the bill from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office at the start of the week. He did not reveal any of the planned changes to the draft, on which he postponed action last month after it failed to gather enough support. But Senate sources said it is likely that two Obamacare taxes on the wealthy will be kept in place - a 3.8 percent net investment tax and a 0.9 percent payroll tax that helps finance Medicare - which would appeal to moderates who have balked at the prospect of cutting taxes for the wealthy while reducing benefits for the poor. “Obviously that’s the direction I think that a lot of our members want to move, is to keep some of those (taxes) in place and be able to use those revenues to put it into other places in the bill,” Thune said, while stressing that no decisions were final. Republicans could also retain Obamacare’s limit on corporate tax deductions for executive pay in the health insurance industry, one Senate source said. It was unclear whether the bill would include a proposal by conservative Republican Ted Cruz that would allow insurers to offer basic low-cost healthcare plans that do not comply with Obamacare regulations. Cruz argues it would help to lower premiums, but critics say it would allow insurers to offer skimpier plans that may not cover essential health benefits while also charging more for more comprehensive, Obamacare-compliant plans. The Senate Republican healthcare bill unveiled last month would phase out the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid health insurance for the poor and disabled, sharply cut federal Medicaid spending beginning in 2025, repeal many of Obamacare’s taxes, end a penalty on individuals who do not obtain insurance and overhaul Obamacare’s subsidies to help people buy insurance with tax credits. Democrats are united in opposition to the bill and at least 10 Republicans have said they oppose the existing draft. The House of Representatives passed its own version in May. Moderate Republicans are uneasy about the millions of people forecast to lose their medical insurance under the draft legislation, and hard-line conservatives say it leaves too much of Obamacare intact. Democrats call the Republican legislation a giveaway to the rich that would hurt the most vulnerable Americans.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A display of U.S. state flags in a tunnel under Washington’s Capitol complex will be replaced because of controversial Confederate symbols on some of the flags, an administrative committee said on Thursday. In its place, in the busy passageway between the Capitol and adjacent office buildings, depictions of commemorative quarters representing the 50 states, the U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., will be installed, said Committee on House Administration Chairwoman Candice Miller. Michigan Republican Representative Miller said in a statement that she decided to replace the display because of the controversy surrounding the Confederate flag, which is widely seen today as a symbol of racism and slavery. “I am well aware of how many Americans negatively view the Confederate flag, and, personally, I am very sympathetic to these views,” she said. Lawmakers who choose to hang their home states’ flags outside their offices may still do so. “In this way all state flags are displayed on Capitol Hill,” Miller said. Only the Mississippi state flag still depicts the Confederate battle flag, in the top left corner. Symbols from various Confederate flags are evident in the flags of Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Arkansas. All these states were among those that seceded from the union in 1860-1861 and joined the pro-slavery Confederate States of America that was defeated by the anti-slavery union in the American Civil War. Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who pushed last year for his state’s flag to be removed from the Capitol, praised Miller’s announcement as a step toward removing all signs of the “Confederate revolt against our own country.” Criticism over public display of the Confederate flag intensified last year after a white man who gunned down nine black churchgoers in South Carolina was pictured on social media with it. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, told a weekly news conference that he supports the decision to change the display. It is expected to be installed once renovations of the tunnel are finished later this year.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said on Friday that President Donald Trump’s rejection of the Paris climate change agreement was fueling, rather than weakening, momentum among environmental activists. Gore, whose follow-up to his 2006 Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” is showing in movie theaters worldwide this month, said governments and companies had stepped up since Trump’s decision in June to withdraw from the 2015 global pact. “The entire world the next day re-doubled their commitments to the Paris agreement and in the U.S, the governors of our largest states and hundreds of mayors, thousands of business leaders all stood up to fill the gap and said ‘We are still in the Paris agreement,’” Gore told Reuters Television. “I do think that the reaction to Donald Trump is actually driving much more momentum in the climate movement,” he added. Gore’s new documentary, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” argues that fighting climate change is a moral battle, on a par with the civil rights movement in the United States or the fight for gay rights. Shot mostly before Trump’s election, it also shows the Republican on the 2016 campaign trail promising to abolish environmental regulations and boost the coal and oil industries. “An Inconvenient Truth” is credited with bringing climate change into mainstream political discourse in the United States a decade ago. It won the best documentary Oscar in 2007 and helped propel Gore to a Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Friday it was identifying new areas where it could work with allies to put pressure on Iran in support of President Donald Trump s new strategy, which promises a far more confrontational approach to Tehran. Trump struck a blow against the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on Friday in defiance of other world powers, choosing not to certify that Tehran is complying with the deal and warning he might ultimately terminate it. He also promised to address Iran more broadly, including its support for extremist groups in the Middle East. Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman, told Reuters the Pentagon was assessing the positioning of its forces as well as planning but offered few details. We are identifying new areas where we will work with allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, neutralize its destabilizing influences, and constrain its aggressive power projection, particularly its support for terrorist groups and militants, he said. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said his first goal would to talk with U.S. allies in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere to gain a shared understanding of Iran s actions. Certainly we intend to dissuade them from shipping arms into places like Yemen and explosives into Bahrain and the other things they do with their surrogates, like Lebanese Hezbollah, Mattis said. The U.S. military has long been a strident critic of Iran, accusing it directly and indirectly of trying to undermine the United States and its allies, including in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The tensions escalated in recent months in Syria, where American pilots shot down two Iranian-made drones this summer. Still, a more aggressive approach to Iran could trigger a backlash from Iran s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and forces that it backs. That includes in Iraq, where U.S. troops are fighting Islamic State and trying to keep their distance from Shi ite militia aligned with Iran. U.S. forces in Iraq are quite exposed, and coalition forces are quite exposed to the risk of attack if Iranian elements so choose, said Jennifer Cafarella, lead intelligence planner at the Institute for the Study of War, a think-tank in Washington. The U.S. military is analyzing an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, that killed an American soldier in Iraq this month. The reappearance of the device, which Iran-backed Shi ite militia routinely used to target American troops in Iraq before their withdrawal in 2011, has startled U.S. officials. CIA Director Mike Pompeo noted the device was detonated in an area controlled by a militia backed by Tehran. We do not have evidence of a direct link to Iran, but we are closely examining this tragic incident, Pompeo said on Wednesday. Cafarella said the killing of the U.S. soldier may have been a warning from Iran. I think it is possible that the Iranians have been attempting to signal their commitment to retaliate against the U.S. strategy, she said. Mattis said the United States was watching for any new provocations from Iran. Asked whether he thought Tehran might retaliate, he said: It would be ill advised for them to attack us. Reuters has previously reported that options to increase pressure on Iran include more aggressive U.S. interceptions of Iranian arms shipments, such as those to Houthi rebels in Yemen, It could also direct U.S. naval forces to react more forcefully when harassed by armed IRGC speed boats. The Pentagon on Friday detailed a series of major concern about Iran, including its ballistic missile development and cyber attacks against the United States and U.S. allies. The Pentagon promised to review U.S. security cooperation activities with allies in the region, something that could lead to alterations in U.S. arms sales and military exercises. It also signaled a willingness to re-examine the positioning of the roughly 70,000 American troops the Pentagon says are stationed in the Middle East. Still, Mattis said: Right now we are not changing our posture.

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrain said on Wednesday a bomb attack on a police bus which killed an officer and wounded nine last month was carried out by a militant cell trained by its arch-foe Iran. After authorities quashed Shi ite Muslim-led Arab Spring protests on the Sunni-ruled island in 2011, militants have launched deadly bombing and shooting attacks against security forces that Bahrain blames on Tehran s Shi ite theocracy. Iran denies any role in Bahrain s unrest. There was no immediate Iranian reaction to Wednesday s Bahraini interior ministry statement, which added that authorities had arrested one member of the cell while others were fugitives in Iran. The terrorist cell received extensive training in Iranian Revolutionary Guard camps on the use and manufacture of explosives and firearms, as well as material and logistical support, the ministry said. Bahrain said earlier this week that an explosion at its main oil pipeline on Friday was caused by terrorist sabotage, linking the unprecedented attack to Iran. A key Western ally and host to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Gulf Arab monarchy Bahrain has for years grappled with protests and sporadic violence coming from its Shi ite majority.

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OSLO (Reuters) - Norway s Foreign Minister Boerge Brende has resigned from his position to become president of the World Economic Forum, he told a news conference on Friday Brende will keep his position until mid-October. Before becoming foreign minister in 2013, he was the WEF s managing director in 2008-2009 and 2011-2013 Prime Minister Erna Solberg won re-election on Monday and is in talks to other parties to form a new government.

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MADRID (Reuters) - Catalan authorities will not respond on Thursday to the Spanish government s order that they clarify whether they have declared independence from Spain, Catalonia s TV3 reported on Monday, citing sources. Catalan head Carles Puigdemont failed on Monday to respond to an ultimatum to answer yes or no and Madrid has now given him until Thursday to change his mind - saying it would suspend Catalonia s autonomy if he chose secession.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in Congress on Monday accepted an invitation to meet U.S. President Donald Trump and Republicans for talks to avert a government shutdown this week, even as the Democrats pressed demands on funding priorities and protecting young immigrants. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who canceled a meeting with Trump last week after he posted a disparaging note about them on Twitter, said on Monday they hoped the president would remain open-minded about reaching a deal with Democrats. “We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement. “There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items.” The meeting was scheduled for Thursday, a day before funding for the federal government is due to run out. House Republicans over the weekend introduced a stopgap measure that would fund the government at current levels until Dec. 22 to give lawmakers time to reach a deal on a longer-term bill. Congress is expected to vote on the measure this week. Conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus asked House Republican leaders to extend the duration of the stopgap measure through Dec. 30 in exchange for their votes for the House to go to conference with the Senate on tax legislation, which moved Congress closer to a final bill for a major tax overhaul. “There is a better chance of going to the 30th than the 22nd, but no commitment,” Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters. The House Republican leadership agreed to consider the Dec. 30 date and talk to the Senate leadership about it, a House Republican leadership aide said. Trump is scheduled to have lunch with Republican members of the Senate at the White House on Tuesday. Republicans have a majority in both the House and Senate. But they will need some Democratic support to get the spending bill past Senate procedural hurdles that require 60 votes, since there are only 52 Republicans in the 100-member chamber. Schumer said on Monday that everyone should be working to avoid a shutdown, and he did not believe Republican congressional leaders wanted one. “The only one at the moment who’s flirted with a shutdown is President Trump, who tweeted earlier this year that ‘we could use a good shutdown to fix the mess,’” Schumer said. The Republican bill will provide some short-term help for states that are running out of money to finance a health insurance program for lower-income children, Republican aides said. Schumer and Pelosi on Monday listed that program among their priorities, which also included the opioid crisis, pension plans, rural infrastructure and protection for young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, known as “Dreamers.” Those young immigrants must be taken care of now, Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin declared on the Senate floor. He said Democrats had offered in return to toughen border security, a Republican priority. “How can we in good conscience pass a spending bill giving authority and resources to this administration to go out and arrest and deport these young people - and not address the underlying issue of their legality and future in the United States?” Durbin asked.

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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - An Australian mother of three escaped the death penalty on Wednesday after a Malaysian court found her not guilty of drug trafficking. Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, 54, was found with more than 1 kg of methamphetamine in her backpack while in transit in Kuala Lumpur enroute to Melbourne from Shanghai in December 2014. Under Malaysian law, anyone found guilty of possessing more than 50 grams of illegal drugs is considered a trafficker and faces a mandatory death penalty. The law was amended last month to do away with the mandatory death sentence, allowing judges to use their own discretion. But the changes have not yet come into effect. Exposto s lawyers said she was the victim of an internet romance scam and was lured into carrying a bag containing drugs unknowingly by a friend of her online boyfriend, who claimed to be a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan. I agreed with the defense s argument that the accused had no knowledge of the drugs that were in her bag, Judge Ghazali Cha said on Wednesday. Exposto s conduct during her arrest showed she was naive and her behavior was that of an innocent person, he said. The judge referred Exposto to Malaysia s immigration department for deportation. I m happy now that I m free, Exposto said in brief comments to reporters. Three Australian nationals have been executed by Malaysia for drug trafficking: Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers in 1986, and Michael McAuliffe in 1993.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election will enter a new phase as early as Monday, when the first charges resulting from the probe could be unsealed and a target taken into custody. A federal grand jury approved the indictment on Friday and a federal judge ordered it sealed, a source briefed on the matter has told Reuters, adding it could be unsealed as soon as Monday. The indictment could mark a dramatic turn in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 race and any possible links with officials from President Donald Trump’s campaign. The Russia investigation has cast a shadow over Trump’s 9-month-old presidency and widened the partisan rift between Republicans and Democrats. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russia interfered in the election to try to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit her. Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been looking into possible links between Trump aides and foreign governments, as well as potential money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crimes, according to sources familiar with the probe. He also is exploring whether Trump or his aides have tried to obstruct the investigation. Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation a week after Trump’s May 9 firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was heading a federal probe into possible collusion with Russia. Trump initially said he fired Comey because his leadership of the FBI was inadequate. In a later interview with NBC, he cited “this Russia thing” as his reason. Trump has denied the allegations of collusion with the Russians and called the probe “a witch hunt.” The Kremlin also has denied the allegations. On Sunday, Trump tried to shift the focus back to Democrats and Clinton, tweeting that the Russia issue was being used to sidetrack the Republican push for tax reform and praising Republican “anger and unity” on the need to look into whether Democrats and the Clinton campaign paid for a portion of a dossier that detailed accusations about Trump’s ties to Russia. Special White House counsel Ty Cobb said the president’s tweets “are unrelated to the activities of the Special Counsel, with whom he continues to cooperate.” Investigators led by Mueller have interviewed former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former spokesman Sean Spicer and other current and former White House and campaign officials. In July, FBI agents raided the Virginia home of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, whose financial and real estate dealings and prior work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine are being investigated by Mueller’s team. Mueller also has investigated Michael Flynn, an adviser to Trump’s campaign and later his national security adviser. Flynn was fired from that post in February after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the extent of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak last year. The indictment in Mueller’s probe was first reported by CNN, which said the target could be taken into custody on Monday. That possibility spurred some of Trump’s conservative allies to call for Mueller’s firing. Sebastian Gorka, an outspoken former adviser who left the White House in August, said on Twitter that Mueller “should be stripped of his authority” and investigated if he executed warrants in the probe. The White House said in the summer that Trump had no intention of firing Mueller even though he questioned his impartiality. Republicans also criticized leaks to the press about the indictment and raised the possibility that those responsible could be prosecuted. But Republican Senator Rob Portman said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump had been “too defensive” about the Russia probe. He said there should be broad outrage about Russia’s attempted meddling.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - In her first interview since her stunning presidential election defeat by Republican rival Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton on Thursday called for the United States to bomb Syrian air fields. Clinton, in an interview at the Women in the World Summit in New York, also called Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election a theft more damaging than Watergate. MORE FROM REUTERS Exclusive: Mexico opens up its heroin fight to U.S., U.N. observers Macau billionaire's aide pleads guilty in U.N. bribe case Slideshow: Top photos of the week Asked whether she now believes that failing to take a tougher stand against Syria was her worst foreign policy mistake as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Clinton said she favored more aggressive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “I think we should have been more willing to confront Assad,” Clinton said in the interview, conducted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them.” Clinton noted that she had advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after leaving government, something that Obama opposed. Her remarks came two days after a poison gas attack in Syria that killed at least 70 people, many of them children. The U.S. government believes the chemical agent sarin was used in the attack. The United States and other Western countries blamed Assad’s armed forces for the worst chemical attack in Syria in more than four years. Trump said on Thursday that “something should happen” with Assad after the attack, as the Pentagon and the White House studied military options. When asked about Russian interference in the presidential election she lost as the Democratic candidate in November, Clinton called for a bipartisan investigation. “I don’t want any Republican candidate to be subjected to what I was subjected to....I don’t want anybody running campaigns to have their communications stolen,” she said. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that Russia provided hacked material from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks through a third party. Russia has denied the hacking allegations. “It was a more effective theft even than Watergate,” Clinton told Kristof before an audience of about 3,000 people at New York’s Lincoln Center, referring to the U.S. political scandal of the 1970s that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. “We aren’t going to let somebody sitting in the Kremlin, with bots and trolls, try to mix up our election. We’ve got to end that and we have to make sure that is a bipartisan, American commitment.” Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican, earlier on Thursday stepped aside from the congressional inquiry into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election because he is under investigation for disclosing classified information. Representative Mike Conaway, the second-ranked Republican on the House of Representatives intelligence committee, will now lead the probe. Clinton attributed her White House loss to both Wikileaks and FBI Director James Comey’s sending a bombshell letter to Congress only days before the election announcing he was reinstating an investigation into her emails. Asked whether it was bittersweet to watch the stumbles of the Trump administration in its early days, she declined to agree. “I don’t take any pleasure in seeing the kind of chaotic functioning,” Clinton said. Clinton said she has no intention of another run for public office and said she is writing a book that, in part, delves into just what derailed her attempt to become America’s first woman president. “For people who are interested in this, the nearly 66 million people who voted for me, I want to give as clear and as credible an explanation as I can.”

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(The story refiles, to fix quote in 14th paragraph to read “middle-aged white guy,” not “middle-aged white man”; read “has seen his world,” not “who’s seen his world”; add dropped word “and”) By Jeff Mason CHICAGO (Reuters) - With a final call of his campaign mantra “Yes We Can,” President Barack Obama urged Americans on Tuesday to stand up for U.S. values and reject discrimination as the United States transitions to the presidency of Republican Donald Trump. In an emotional speech in which he thanked his family and declared his time as president the honor of his life, Obama gently prodded the public to embrace his vision of progress while repudiating some of the policies that Trump promoted during his campaign for the White House. “So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are,” Obama told a crowd of 18,000 in his hometown of Chicago, where he celebrated his election in 2008 as the first black president of the United States. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, proposed temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country, building a wall on the border with Mexico, upending a global deal to fight climate change and dismantling Obama’s healthcare reform law. Obama made clear his opposition to those positions during fiery campaign speeches for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but has struck a more conciliatory tone with Trump since the election. In his farewell speech, he made clear his positions had not changed and he said his efforts to end the use of torture and close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were part of a broader move to uphold U.S. values. “That’s why I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans,” he said in a clear reference to Trump that drew applause. He said bold action was needed to fight global warming and said “science and reason” mattered. “If anyone can put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we’ve made to our healthcare system that covers as many people at less cost, I will publicly support it,” he said in another prodding challenge to his successor. Trump has urged the Republican-controlled Congress to repeal the law right away. Obama, who came to office amid high expectations that his election would heal historic racial divides, acknowledged that was an impossible goal. “After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America,” he said. “Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.” However, Obama said he remained hopeful about the work that a younger generation would do. “Yes we can,” he said. “Yes we did.” In an indirect reference to the political work the Democratic Party will have to do to recover after Clinton’s loss, Obama urged racial minorities to seek justice not only for themselves but also for “the middle-aged white guy who from the outside may seem like he’s got advantages, but has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change.” Trump won his election in part by appealing to working-class white men. First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, his wife Jill Biden, and many current and former White House staff members and campaign workers attended the speech. Obama wiped his eyes as he addressed his wife and thanked his running mate. They all appeared together on stage after the address. The Chicago visit is Obama’s last scheduled trip as president, and even the final flight on the presidential aircraft was tinged with wistfulness. It was the president’s 445th “mission” on Air Force One, a perk he has said he will miss when he leaves office, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. All told, Obama will have spent more than 2,800 hours or 116 days on the plane during his presidency. Obama plans to remain in Washington for the next two years while his younger daughter, Sasha, finishes high school. Sasha, who has an exam on Wednesday, did not attend the speech but her older sister Malia was there. The president has indicated he wants to give Trump the same space that his predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush, gave Obama after leaving office by not maintaining a high public profile.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee said on Monday legislation to address Puerto Rico’s growing debt and humanitarian crisis will be introduced for discussion on Wednesday, with a committee vote a week later. Earlier attempts at introducing a bill out of the committee failed to gain enough attention or understanding among lawmakers, prompting its chairman, Rep. Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican, to delay and rework the bill. The basic premise of installing an independent oversight board to lead the restructuring of the U.S. commonwealth’s credit and work with the local government to develop an economic reform plan remains in place. “What we are seeing in Puerto Rico is if you push it off, the situation gets worse, the debt gets worse, the humanitarian crisis gets worse. If you don’t want a bailout and you put it off long enough, you probably will be forced into a position of being in a bailout and I’m not going to vote for that,” Bishop said. Puerto Rico has already defaulted on some of its debt and faces an overall bill of $70 billion it cannot pay. A staggering 45 percent poverty rate and increased migration of citizens to the U.S. mainland drains economic activity. Bishop said the changes to the bill were relatively small and that the U.S. Treasury has been “marvelous” to work with in developing the plan. “Obviously the relationship between the Obama administration and this Congress has not been warm and fuzzy. So this is unusual in the amount of help they have given us,” Bishop said, adding: “At the same time I want it finished. I want them to actually sign off and in some of the small areas, I think they have been dragging their feet.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew visited a Puerto Rican school and hospital on Monday where teachers, nurses and doctors described and showed dire conditions due to the lack of funding. Lew later told reporters he had not seen the latest language in the draft bill, but that the Treasury has provided technical advice. He said it was up to the committee to decide when to release the legislation. “I hope Congress does not, as it sometimes does, try to find that last possible moment and miss it,” Lew said. Puerto Rico defaulted on May 1 for a third time on some of its debt, missing a roughly $400 million payment owed by the Government Development Bank, the island’s main fiscal agent. However, some of the GDB’s major creditors are forgoing lawsuits for at least a month after reaching a tentative restructuring deal with the bank. “If we don’t get a bill passed, then lawsuits are going to be coming fast and furiously,” Bishop said. The May 1 default and the nearly $2 billion July 1 debt payments have spurred congressional activity. “The goal being that everyone eventually gets paid. And who is first in the line is maybe not as important as the fact that at the end of the day everyone has the chance to be treated fairly and will get their investment back,” Bishop said. Lew, in his remarks, added that the bill will have to take into account many stakeholders, not just bondholders. “The interests of retirees on the island have to be balanced, not treated necessarily equally, but balanced,” Lew said, adding that television advertisements calling the legislation a bailout “crossed the line and are deceptive.” Puerto Rico’s government has said it has not asked for a taxpayer-led bailout, nor has one been offered. While the legislation will include bankruptcy language, it is not a stealthy way around a prohibition for Puerto Rico to use the U.S. bankruptcy code to restructure its debt, Bishop said. “We are putting this language in the code that deals specifically with the territories. So everything we do has got to have that firewall between that which will have an impact on the states versus what is there in the territory.”

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WASHINGTON/CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration approved TransCanada Corp’s (TRP.TO) Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, cheering the oil industry and angering environmentalists even as further hurdles for the controversial project loom. The approval reverses a decision by former President Barack Obama to reject the project, but the company still needs to win financing, acquire local permits, and fend off likely legal challenges for the pipeline to be built. “TransCanada will finally be allowed to complete this long-overdue project with efficiency and with speed,” Trump said in the Oval Office before turning to ask TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russell Girling when construction would start. “We’ve got some work to do in Nebraska to get our permits there,” Girling replied. “Nebraska?” Trump said. “I’ll call Nebraska.” Trump announced the presidential permit for Keystone XL at the White House with Girling and Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, standing nearby. He said the project would lower consumer fuel prices, create jobs and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The pipeline linking Canadian oil sands to U.S. refiners had been blocked by Obama, who said it would do nothing to reduce fuel prices for U.S. motorists and would contribute to emissions linked to global warming. Trump, however, campaigned on a promise to approve it, and he signed an executive order soon after taking office in January to advance the project. TransCanada’s U.S.-listed shares (TRP.N) dipped 5 cents to close at $46.21 on Friday. Trump has claimed the project would create 28,000 jobs in the United States. But a 2014 State Department study predicted just 3,900 construction jobs and 35 permanent jobs. The president said he would get in touch with Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts later in the day. TransCanada applied to the Nebraska Public Service Commission in February for approval of the pipeline’s route through the state. The company said it expects that process to conclude this year. Ricketts said in a statement posted on Twitter that the project would help his state. “I have full confidence that the Public Service Commission will conduct a thorough and fair review of the application,” he said. The White House has said the pipeline is exempt from a Trump executive order requiring new pipelines to be made from U.S. steel, because much of the pipe for the project has already been built and stockpiled. “As we move forward, we’ll continue to look to buy the rest of the materials we need from ... American manufacturers. We’ll put American workers to work,” Girling told reporters. Environmental groups vowed to fight it. Greenpeace said it would pressure banks to withhold financing for the multibillion-dollar project, and others said they would fight the pipeline in court. “We’ll use every tool in the kit,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Since Obama had nixed the pipeline based on an environmental assessment commissioned by the State Department in early 2014, opponents will likely argue in court that Trump cannot reverse the decision without conducting a new assessment. Fred Jauss, partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whitney and a former attorney with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said local permitting would also be a challenge. “The Presidential Permit is only one part of a web of federal, state, and local permits that must be obtained prior to starting construction,” he said. “Other federal agencies, such as the Army Corps of Engineers, state regulatory commissions, and even local planning boards may have requirements that need to be fulfilled by Keystone prior to construction.” “In addition, TransCanada may still need to reach deals with hundreds of potentially affected landowners on the pipeline’s route. There is a lot of work ahead for TransCanada.” The Keystone XL pipeline would bring more than 800,000 barrels per day of heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta into Nebraska, linking to an existing pipeline network feeding U.S. refineries and ports along the Gulf of Mexico. The project could be a boon for Canada, which has struggled to bring its vast oil reserves to market. “Our government has always been supportive of the Keystone XL pipeline and we are pleased with the U.S. decision,” said a spokesman for Canada’s minister of natural resources. “The importance of a common, continental energy market cannot be overstated.” The president of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, said the approval was “welcome news” and would bolster U.S. energy security. Expedited approval of projects is part of Trump’s approach to a 10-year, $1 trillion infrastructure package he promised on the campaign trail. The White House is looking for ways to speed up approvals and permits for other infrastructure projects, which can sometimes take years to go through a regulatory maze. TransCanada tried for more than five years to build the 1,179-mile (1,897-km) pipeline, until Obama rejected it in 2015. The company resubmitted its application for the project in January, after Trump signed the executive order smoothing its path.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - When Theresa May visits Brussels on Friday, EU negotiators will be listening intently for signs the British prime minister is preparing to risk a domestic backlash and raise her offer to secure a Brexit deal in December. European Union officials and diplomats from the other 27 member states involved in the process hope that within a week to 10 days of meeting European Council President Donald Tusk, during a summit with ex-Soviet neighbors, May will deliver movement on three key conditions so that her EU peers can launch a new phase of Brexit negotiations when they meet on Dec. 14-15. I don t know what room for maneuver May has, but what we can see is a willingness to act, one senior EU official told Reuters. Another spoke of efforts to arrange the choreography of a deal over the next three weeks, including an EU-UK joint report pinning down interim accords to unlock talks on trade. I feel the tectonic plates moving now, a diplomat handling Brexit for an EU government said. Time is running out and a failure in the December Council would serve nobody s purpose. There has been only a day of top-level talks between the two lead negotiators since a mid-October summit that dismissed May s call for immediate talks on a future trade agreement. But talks are continuing apace behind the scenes, ahead of a deadline of early December to strike a deal which can then be formalized by the 27 government leaders at the summit. Everyone is talking to everyone already, at all levels, the European Commission s chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters on Thursday when he confirmed that May would meet Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4. That is two days before envoys from the 27 meet on Dec. 6 to discuss a first draft of the Dec. 14-15 summit conclusions, including, crucially, whether the leaders should accept Britain has made sufficient progress to merit opening trade talks. Hopes in Brussels have been raised by reports in British media that May has secured backing from pro-Brexit hardliners in her cabinet to increase the amount of a financial settlement of what Britain owes to the Union when it leaves in March 2019. If there is a political willingness in Britain, we should be ready, a senior EU official said, while warning that nothing was being taken for granted. May s room for maneuver to cut a deal that would please business while irritating Britons who want a sharper break with Brussels is limited. And Germany and France, the Union s lead powers, have taken a tough line so far. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel distracted at home by a search for a new coalition, May can expect little focus from her to help smooth a deal, several diplomats said. Some in Britain have suggested May could take advantage of Merkel s weakness at home to drive a harder bargain. But EU diplomats argue that Merkel s troubles make it harder for her, and so for the 27, to water down their existing demands. So any brinkmanship around the summit could mean no deal in December. That would create some kind of crisis in negotiations, the second EU official said, noting that time was already short to complete a treaty by late next year to ensure an orderly Brexit. But maybe that is necessary. The sides already believe they are quite close on agreeing the scope of rights for expatriate citizens in Britain and on the continent, though the EU will be particularly looking to pin Britain down to accepting its demands that any agreement be subject to enforcement through the Union s legal system. The third key criterion for moving to Phase Two, an outline agreement on how to avoid the new EU-UK land border disrupting the peace in Northern Ireland, remains a potential stumbling block. Differences of opinion between London and Dublin have been marked this month, worrying EU officials. However, it is the financial settlement that has been the most concerning for the past few months. Officials believe that could be resolved by a combination of May stating clearly that Britain will pay a share after leaving of two major EU budget lines, staff pensions and agreed but undisbursed spending. British press reports, seen in Brussels as planted leaks from May, suggesting she might offer to pay something like 40 billion pounds ($53 billion) have encouraged EU negotiators. While that is well short of the 60 billion euros ($71 billion) the European Commission has mentioned, that was always seen by EU officials as a maximum demand. And they are willing, they say, to help May massage the public messaging of the amount in order to limit the political flak she takes at home. On presentational issues, Barnier is ready to help, not to call things by their real name, an EU official said.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - An Islamic State car bomb killed 20 people and injured 30 others at a site where displaced families are located in eastern Syria near the city of Deir al-Zor, Syria s SANA state news agency reported on Friday. It said the bombing took place near the al-Jafra area, which is located south of the city and is controlled by the Syrian government.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with the foreign ministers of Southeast Asian countries on May 4 in Washington ahead of planned regional summits in November, a State Department official said on Thursday. The foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations requested the meeting with Tillerson in an effort to engage with the new U.S. administration, said Patrick Murphy, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for southeast Asia. Tillerson and the ministers are likely to discuss trade, territorial claims in the South China Sea, trafficking, crime and other issues.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Politicians from four German parties seeking to form a coalition government agreed on Tuesday to stick to the policy of balanced budget, a document seen by Reuters showed. Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democrats, their Christian Social Union Bavarian allies, the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats also agreed to explore at later talks what fiscal flexibility they have to fund investments and tax cuts.

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(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will target a handful of Obama-era green regulations, including a federal coal mining ban and an initiative forcing states to cut carbon emissions, in an executive order as soon as next week, a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday. Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress are seeking to unravel former Democratic President Barack Obama’s initiatives to combat global climate change, which they say are costly for U.S. business and have hampered drilling and mining without providing any clear benefits. “Rescinding the federal coal leasing moratorium is part of that executive order, which has lots of different components, including the Clean Power Plan,” the White House official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. The official said the order was scheduled to come next week. The Clean Power Plan is Obama’s centerpiece initiative to combat climate change, requiring states to slash emissions of carbon dioxide, but it was never implemented due to legal challenges launched by several Republican states. Legal experts have said Trump could begin the process of killing the regulation by having the Environmental Protection Agency ask the courts to return it to the agency for review, effectively ending its legal defense. Killing the coal mining ban would be easier. Trump could reverse the ban by asking the Department of Interior to lift it and resume its coal leasing program. Obama’s administration imposed the temporary ban on new federal coal leases in January 2016 as part of a broad environmental and economic review of the program aimed at ensuring lease deals account for coal’s contribution to global climate change and yield fair returns to taxpayers. But it angered some Western state lawmakers and people in the mining industry, who said it stymied development. Trump has already rolled back some Obama-era green regulations, including the Stream Protection Rule limiting coal mining waste dumping, and the Waters of the U.S. rule that expands the waterways under federal protection. (This version of the story was refiled to fix punctuation in paragraph one)

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that he would work to implement a rapid exchange of prisoners held on both sides of the line of conflict in eastern Ukraine, a spokesman for Merkel said on Friday. Merkel spoke by telephone with Poroshenko on Friday, a day after she spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Merkel s deputy spokesman Georg Streiter. Merkel and Poroshenko welcomed a decision by the parties to recommit to a ceasefire agreement signed in 2015 ahead of the Christmas holiday, and both agreed it should lead to a longer-term improvement of the security situation in the region. A Russian-backed separatist insurgency erupted in 2014 and bloodshed has continued despite the ceasefire. More than 10,000 people have been killed, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis. Poroshenko and Merkel underscored the importance of an agreement by the parties to exchange prisoners, calling it an important step toward implementation of the Minsk agreements, Streiter said. President Poroshenko stressed that he would push to ensure that this exchange happened as soon as possible, he added. The two leaders also discussed the withdrawal of Russian officers from the Joint Center for Control and Coordination that plays an important role in supporting the observer mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They agreed that the Russian officers should return to the center quickly, and said German and French experts could get involved in a mediating role in coming days. Merkel also welcomed Poroshenko s plan to submit a draft law to set up an independent anti-corruption court, the spokesman said.

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PARIS (Reuters) - During his rapid rise to the presidency, France s Emmanuel Macron was sometimes referred to as a lucky general a leader with the right skills for the job but also a generous dose of the good fortune needed to win the day. The 39-year-old certainly took advantage of a string of lucky breaks, especially a corruption scandal that derailed the campaign of front-running, center-right rival Francois Fillon. But six months into his occupation of the Elysee Palace, there are niggling signs Macron s luck could be starting to turn. In particular, the uncertain political picture in Germany has complicated his ambition to reform Europe s single currency zone, something he has put at the heart of his presidency and that stands or falls on Franco-German cooperation. And while changes he introduced early on to France s employment rules provoked less unrest than expected, the impact on the economy has so far been muted. His plans to amend the pensions and benefits system may not be so readily accepted. From a fiscal point of view, one of his main objectives is to bring the national deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product for the first time in a decade. Yet current indications are that he will struggle with that goal, leaving France at odds with the EU s executive Commission. And within his own party En Marche, formed as a grassroots movement a little over a year ago there is unease among some members about a top-down structure that goes against the ethos that propelled him to a five-year term in May. Some breaks continue to fall in Macron s favor. France last week won the right to host the European Banking Agency in a lucky dip against Dublin, and domestically he faces little serious opposition from either the left or right. But his biggest ambitions rely on a deep and sustained relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose position after 12 years as Germany s leader has been weakened over two months of so-far fruitless talks to form a governing coalition. We are naturally paying close attention to everything that might help stabilize the political situation (in Germany), Benjamin Griveaux, a close Macron ally who was recently named the government s new spokesman, said on Monday. Without a strong partner it will obviously be more difficult to carry out the president s ambitious European project. At one level, the fact that Merkel is now talking to Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) about a grand coalition , after overtures to the Liberals and Greens failed, is positive for Macron since the SPD is more avowedly pro-EU. But there s no guarantee the SPD will sign up to Macron s agenda, even if its leader, Martin Schulz, is a former European Parliament president who is committed to the project. Schulz has only gone as far as to say Macron s ideas need to be discussed in coalition talks with Merkel, while other SPD officials say domestic reforms to health insurance and pensions are a more pressing consideration. Europe is not a theme where we can simply push things through, said Johannes Kahrs, a budget expert for the SPD in parliament and leader of the party s conservative wing. Macron s ideas for overhauling the euro zone, including the creation of a region-wide budget, finance minister and separate parliament, may be just too ambitious for Germany to swallow. It would be nice if the conservatives went along with the idea of a budget for the euro zone, but they need to want it, said Kahrs. It would make no sense to try to bully them. Even as he focuses on his grand ambitions, Macron and his finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, must battle to get the state s historically overstretched finances in order, while hoping that France s currently steady growth rate doesn t falter. The budget deficit has been falling and should dip just below 3 percent next year, but from the European Commission s point of view that is insufficient. It wants more done on the structural deficit, which strips out the business cycle. If Macron and Le Maire are to achieve more, it will likely mean cutting deeper into regional budgets, where planned reductions have already provoked anger among mayors. Unemployment figures show job creation is at a record high but the jobless rate still ticked higher in the third quarter, rising to 9.7 percent. While it is forecast to decline again, the French rate remains way above Germany s of 5.6 percent. Jean Pisani-Ferry, a leading economist and former adviser to Macron, believes perhaps the biggest risk Macron faces is ensuring his European strategy pays off, because his domestic agenda will in large part be influenced by it in turn. Yet that depends a lot on Germany, and the wider EU. He s making a huge political investment (in Europe), said Pisani-Ferry, a professor of economics and public management at Sciences Po university. And if you re making a huge political investment, you want at some point some pay-off. If there is no pay-off whatsoever, then obviously there will be domestic political consequences. It will be a setback for him.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - A senior German conservative said on Monday that Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble would make an ideal president of parliament, raising the possibility of a change of roles for a man long associated with unflinching austerity in the euro zone. Schaeuble has controlled Germany s powerful finance ministry since 2009 but the outcome of Sunday s federal elections has raised doubts over whether he can hold onto the job. Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives remain the largest bloc in the lower house Bundestag and are expected to seek a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens. The FDP has signaled it would like the finance ministry. If Chancellor Angela Merkel and Schaeuble agree, he would make an ideal candidate for the post of Bundestag president, Guenther Oettinger, the European Union s budget commissioner, told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper. Schaeuble, who has refused to discuss his future after the election, is a hate figure in Greece and other parts of southern Europe for his insistence on tax hikes and spending cuts at a time of deep economic recession in return for euro zone bailout loans. But Schaeuble, 75, is widely respected in Germany as a responsible steward of the nation s finances and has enjoyed Merkel s strong support during the euro zone debt crisis that almost tore the single currency bloc apart. The current president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert of Merkel s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is not up for reelection. Under separation of power rules the Bundestag president cannot simultaneously hold a ministerial post.

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ANKARA (Reuters) - Germany has no right to block a planned update of Turkey s customs union with the European Union, Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said on Thursday, touching on a simmering row between Ankara and Berlin. Last week German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she did not think it was appropriate to carry out further discussions with Ankara about the customs union. Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Zeybekci said there were no problems in Turkey s accession negotiations with the EU and that the process continued.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Environmental group the Sierra Club sued the U.S. Energy Department on Monday in hopes of forcing it to reveal the groups it has consulted in conducting an eagerly awaited study on the electricity grid. It was the latest push-back on the department’s study from backers of renewable energy such as wind and solar power who fear it could be used by the Trump administration to form policies that could slow growth in the industry. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who commissioned the 60-day study in April, ordered his department to see whether “regulatory burdens” by other administrations including former president Barack Obama’s had forced the premature retirements of so-called baseload power plants, fired by nuclear and coal. Perry said those policies potentially put at risk the reliability and security of the national power grid. The Sierra Club, in the suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said the department had ignored a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in May. That request sought the release of communications between staff and outside groups it had consulted, in the belief that the Energy Department had mostly relied on fossil fuel backers. “We want to make sure that when this study is finally released, that the public and policy makers fully understand how it went about doing it, who they were influenced by, and whose views they did not take into consideration,” said Casey Roberts, a Sierra Club lawyer. The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It had initially said the report would be released in July, but the release has been delayed. A draft of the study, conducted by a contractor who included contributions from staff across the department, said that intermittent renewable power has not harmed the grid, was leaked to the media last month. But an energy department spokeswoman said then that the draft was “outdated” and had not been reviewed by political or career staff, leading Sierra Club and others to believe the final draft could favor coal and nuclear. Several lawmakers with strong renewable power output in their states have said that the Energy Department had already completed long-term studies of renewable power’s impact on the grid that concluded there has been no harm. Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, raised concerns in a letter sent to Perry in May that the secretary had commissioned a study that appeared “geared to undermine” the wind energy industry.

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LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday she would stay on as leader to provide stability after a former chairman of her Conservative Party said he had garnered the support of 30 lawmakers who wanted her to quit. May is trying to face down a rebellion by some of her own lawmakers just as Britain enters a crucial stage in Brexit talks, 18 months before the country leaves the European Union and must redefine its place in the world. Some Conservative plotters say her authority is shattered beyond repair after a disastrous speech at her party s conference, which comes after she called a snap election and lost her party its majority in parliament. Speaking from her parliamentary constituency of Maidenhead in southern England, May said in a televised statement: What the country needs is calm leadership and that s what I m providing with the full support of my cabinet. Senior ministers rallied around May, who has just over a year to agree a divorce deal with the EU ahead of Britain s exit in March 2019. May said she planned to hold a scheduled meeting about Brexit with business leaders on Monday in Downing Street. But former party chairman Grant Shapps told BBC radio: I think she should call a leadership election. After May s bungled election, her failure to unite the cabinet and a poor party conference the writing is on the wall, he said. May s authority was already diminished by her decision to call a snap election in June that lost her party its majority in parliament days before Brexit talks opened. Though no Conservative ministers have publicly indicated any support for the plot, such a blunt demand for May to quit indicates the extent of her weakness while she attempts to navigate the intricacies of the negotiations to leave the EU. Her survival has so far been dependent on the absence of an obvious successor who could unite the party and the fear of an election that many Conservatives think would let opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn into power. Sterling fell earlier in the day but then rallied by around a quarter of a cent against the U.S. dollar following May s remarks. It later fell after U.S. payrolls data was released. May s speech to activists on Wednesday was ruined by coughing fits, a comedian handing her a bogus employment termination notice and by letters falling off the slogans on the set behind her. She had hoped to use the speech to her party in the northern English city of Manchester to revive her premiership. Look, I ve had a cold all this week, May said, adding that she would be updating lawmakers next week on her Brexit plans and introducing a draft bill to cap domestic energy prices. Shapps, who chaired the party between 2012 and 2015, said the plot to remove her existed before this week s party conference and included both supporters and opponents of Brexit. He said the group did not have a unified view on who should replace May. However, grassroots Conservative members did not share his desire for a change in leadership, said James Pearson, Vice President of the National Conservative Convention which represents the party s voluntary wing. I don t think there s much support in the Conservative Party for Grant Shapps. I don t see this as anything that s really serious to be honest, Pearson told Reuters. The general feeling is we don t have the time or the appetite for a lengthy leadership election, nor do we actually want it, Pearson, who sits on the Conservatives Board, the party s ultimate decision-making body, added. To trigger a formal leadership challenge, 48 Conservative lawmakers need to write to the chairman of the party s so-called 1922 committee. Number 10 must be delighted to learn that it s Grant Shapps leading this alleged coup, Charles Walker, vice-chairman of the 1922 committee, told BBC radio. Grant has many talents, but one thing he doesn t have is a following in the party, so really I think this is now just going to fizzle out to be perfectly honest. If May stays, talks on leaving the European Union will be guided by one of the weakest leaders in recent British history. EU diplomats and officials expressed astonishment about the uncertainty in London. Supporters, including her most senior ministers, said she should remain in charge to deliver Brexit. Under the headline Theresa May will stay as Prime Minister and get the job done, interior minister Amber Rudd wrote in The Telegraph newspaper that she should stay . May s de facto deputy Damian Green said she would carry on. Environment Secretary Michael Gove also said he hoped she would continue. I know that she is as determined as ever to get on with the job, she sees it as her duty to do so and she will carry on and she will make a success of this government, Green, the first secretary of state, told BBC television. Many Conservative activists fear a leadership contest would exacerbate the divide in the party over Europe, an issue that helped sink the previous three Conservative prime ministers - David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher. A leadership contest could also pave the way for an election that some Conservatives worry could be won by Corbyn, whom they cast as a Marxist who would reverse decades of free market policies. The Conservatives have no plan for Britain and their posturing will not deliver the change our country is crying out for, Corbyn said on Friday.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - When lawyers for Donald Trump asked a court to throw out one of the proposed class actions over Trump University, they backed it up with a financial disclosure meant to bolster the Republican presidential candidate’s credentials as a global businessman. But the form they filed with the court was actually that of the man Trump hopes to succeed in the White House, Democratic President Barack Obama. The president’s nine-page disclosure filed before his 2012 re-election was erroneously included as an exhibit to a motion Trump filed in April asking U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel for the Southern District of California to toss the case before trial, according to a person familiar with the case. A corrected exhibit was filed on Tuesday. Plaintiffs’ lawyer Jason Forge seized on the goof in a court document filed late on Friday opposing Trump’s motion. Forge said the candidate’s filing was meant for a court in “Bizarro world.” “This is just one example of Trump’s statement’s complete lack of credibility,” Forge said. Julie Fei, a spokeswoman for O’Melveny & Myers, the firm that has been representing Trump in the case, declined to comment. In court filings, Trump’s lawyers said the form supported the “undisputed fact” that Trump is chairman, president and chief executive of the Trump Organization, which conducts business around the world and is affiliated with over 500 companies. Instead, it showed Obama’s royalties from his memoir “Dreams from My Father” and disclosed the first family’s 2011 assets of between $2.6 million and $8.3 million. Trump is facing two lawsuits in California and one in New York over Trump University that allege the series of real estate seminars taught students nothing and defrauded them of as much as $35,000 each in fees. The presumptive Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election has raised the litigation on the campaign trail, calling the lawsuits baseless and politically motivated, and accusing the Indiana-born Curiel of being biased against him because of his Mexican ancestry. Trump’s lawyers intended to file the 92-page financial disclosure form he made public last summer at the time he announced he was running for president. That lists some $1.4 billion in assets, including real estate and other holdings, and $265 million in liabilities. The disclosure does not note his net worth, which he has said is over $10 billion.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions acknowledged on Tuesday he was aware of contact between Donald Trump’s election campaign and Russian intermediaries, again modifying a previous statement about the extent of connections to Moscow. The comment by Sessions to a House of Representatives panel did not reveal any new link between the Trump team and Russia but it was another example of the top U.S. law enforcement official offering a different version of events as lawmakers try to work out if the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee that he now recalls a meeting last year with then-candidate Trump where a campaign adviser said he had connections with Moscow and could help arrange a Trump meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I do now recall” the meeting where adviser George Papadopoulos made the proposal, Sessions said, “but I have no clear recollection of the details of what he said during the meeting.” Sessions has previously told Congress he was unaware of any Trump campaign contacts with Russia, leading Democrats on Tuesday to accuse him of lying under oath. “I will not accept and reject accusations that I have ever lied under oath. That is a lie,” Sessions told the panel. Accusations of collusion with Russia during the election campaign have dogged Trump’s first 10 months in office. Sessions’ testimony appears likely to keep the controversy over Russia boiling as Special Counsel Robert Mueller accelerates his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Since Mueller’s probe began, numerous Trump advisors have acknowledged interactions with Russian intermediaries. They include Donald Trump Jr., former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russian representatives. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election to help Republican Trump’s campaign. The Kremlin denies that and Trump says there was no collusion between his campaign and Russian officials. Sessions faced tough questioning from committee Democrats on Tuesday. Representative Hakeem Jeffries accused Sessions of hypocrisy, saying Sessions, while he was a U.S. attorney, had prosecuted a police officer for perjury after the officer corrected his testimony. “The Attorney General of the United States should not be held to a different standard than the young police officer whose life you ruined,” Jefferies said. That prompted an angry backlash from Sessions. “Nobody! Nobody - not you or anyone else, should be prosecuted, not me. . .for answering a question the way I did in this hearing. I have always tried to answer the questions fairly and accurately.” During the March 2016 campaign meeting where Russia was discussed, Sessions shut down Papadopoulos’ idea of engaging with Russian contacts, according to a source familiar with the matter. Sessions said that was the version of events he recalled. “After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government, or any other foreign government, for that matter,” Sessions said on Tuesday. After that meeting, Sessions said, he did not have “any further knowledge” of additional contacts between the campaign and Russian officials. It was not the first time that Sessions, who was a senior Trump campaign aide and Republican senator, has revised his comments about contact between the campaign and Russia. He said during January’s confirmation hearing that he was unaware of such communications. News reports then emerged showing that Sessions had himself met Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at least twice in 2016. Under pressure, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. He told reporters he was “honest and correct” in his response in the hearing, although he acknowledged he should have mentioned he had met with the ambassador in his role as a senator. Sessions also said on Tuesday he did not challenge a statement by another campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, that he told Sessions in a brief encounter that he was about to leave for Moscow. But he said he had no memory of that conversation. The hearing was starkly divided. Majority Republicans demanded that Sessions appoint a second special counsel to investigate a series of issues involving Trump’s election rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, including the sale of a uranium company to Russia while she was U.S. secretary of state. Sessions was cautious on that score. When Republican Representative Jim Jordan detailed what the controversy “looks like” to him, the attorney general responded: “‘Looks like’ is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel.” Earlier, Sessions confirmed that he has asked senior federal prosecutors to look into the potential appointment of a second special counsel. Democrats say that five congressional committees have looked into the uranium sale and found nothing improper.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The latest U.S. sanctions imposed on five Russians and Chechens are grotesque and groundless, and Moscow will hit back with tit-for-tat sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed the new sanctions on the five people, including on Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, for alleged human rights abuses.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson framed an embarrassing lapse on foreign affairs as simple human error on Thursday after he responded to a question about a flashpoint in the Syrian civil war by asking, “What is Aleppo?” The gaffe came during an MSNBC interview about the continuing battle for Syria’s biggest city, Aleppo, which has been divided for years into government and rebel sectors and has been in the news daily in recent weeks. “What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo,” Johnson was asked. “About Aleppo. And what is Aleppo?” he responded. “You’re kidding?” the MSNBC interviewer said. “No,” Johnson said. “Aleppo is in Syria. ... It’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis,” the interviewer said. “OK, got it. Got it,” Johnson said. The embarrassing exchange followed a forum on Wednesday night in which Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump sought to showcase their national security and defense credentials. Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, has been trying to turn the two major candidates’ low approval ratings to his advantage in the race to win the Nov. 8 election. However, he has just 8.6 support in the current average of opinion polls by website RealClearPolitics in a matchup with Clinton, Trump, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. While the Libertarian Party has long rejected U.S. military intervention abroad, the candidate’s failure to recognize one of the most troubled spots in the Middle East drew ridicule and prompted speculation that his campaign was essentially over. Clinton, asked at a news conference about Johnson’s remarks, laughed and quipped, “You can look on the map and find Aleppo.” In a statement after the MSNBC interview, Johnson said the mistake showed he was human and explained that, when asked about Aleppo, he was thinking of an acronym and not the Syrian war. “Can I name every city in Syria? No. Should I have identified Aleppo? Yes. Do I understand its significance? Yes,” he said. In the 2012 presidential election, Johnson set a record for most votes won by a Libertarian candidate - about 1 percent of the popular vote - and was aiming to attract disaffected Republicans and Democrats to sustain steady growth in the party. The Libertarian agenda promotes civil liberties and a small-government agenda. Johnson has pledged to cut spending, stick to conservative fiscal policies and legalize marijuana. Appearing on ABC’s talk show “The View” later, Johnson reacted mildly to suggestions the gaffe would kill his campaign. “I guess people will have to make that judgment,” he said.

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MONROVIA (Reuters) - Former soccer star George Weah was set to win the first round of a presidential election in Liberia after the elections commission said on Sunday he was leading with 39 percent of votes and less than 5 percent of precincts still to be counted. He will face Vice President Joseph Boakai, who was in second place with 29.1 percent, in a second round poll next month. Boakai was more than 280,000 votes ahead of the third placed candidate, lawyer Charles Brumskine, on 9.8 percent. The final certified results from Tuesday s poll must be announced by Oct. 25. But with more than 1.5 million votes counted so far and 95.6 percent of polling stations having reported, it was mathematically impossible that Brumskine could move into second place. Turnout based on votes counted so far was nearly 75 percent. A total of 20 candidates competed in last week s poll seeking to succeed Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in what would be Liberia s first democratic transfer of power in more than 70 years. Weah and Boakai had both predicted outright victory in the first round. Supporters at Weah s headquarters in the capital Monrovia crowded around cars listening to the results broadcast on the radio and voiced frustration as it became clear that a second round of voting was unavoidable. We need to be calm. But we are worried that they are going to cheat us. We feel disenchanted from 2005 and 2011. People say no second round because of the desire they have, Weah supporter Luke Harris, 31, said. Weah, a national hero in Liberia, became the first non-European to win European soccer s player of the year award in 1995, the same year he picked up the African and world player of the year awards. He finished runner-up to Johnson Sirleaf in a 2005 election that helped draw a line under years of civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. He was the vice-presidential candidate on a ticket with Winston Tubman, who lost to her six years later. Officials from both Weah and Boakai s campaigns said they would accept the result. We are disappointed that there is going to be a run off. We had anticipated that we would win in the first round. But we will accept it and go with it, said Mohammed Ali, spokesman for Boakai s ruling Unity Party. Even before Sunday s results announcement, both campaigns had already begun courting other candidates, seeking their support in the run-off. Ali confirmed that Boakai s campaign had met with fourth placed candidate Alexander Cummings and ex-warlord-turned-senator Prince Johnson, who was in fifth place. Johnson said he had also been contacted by Weah. Brumskine has denounced the vote, claiming it was plagued by fraud and called for a new election though international observers gave the poll a clean bill of health. The vote will be re-run in two polling places in Nimba County on Tuesday, however, due to irregularities, although that measure only concerns a few thousand votes.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An election-year fight over addressing the spreading Zika virus intensified in the U.S. Congress as the Senate on Thursday approved $1.1 billion in emergency money one day after the House of Representatives voted $622.1 million financed through cuts to existing programs. The two chambers would have to reach agreement on a spending level before they can send it to President Barack Obama, who in February requested $1.9 billion. The White House has called the House measure “woefully inadequate” and has threatened to veto it. Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington State urged Congress to act quickly, saying, “This is a public health emergency and Congress should treat it like one.” The Senate will enter negotiations with the House with a strong hand: a bipartisan 68-30 vote in favor of the emergency funds to battle Zika, a virus that has been spreading rapidly through the Americas, with more than 100 confirmed cases in the U.S. state of Florida. However, the conservative group Heritage Action is lobbying against any Zika funding bill that is not paid for with an equal amount of spending cuts. The Senate’s funding was attached to an unrelated transportation and housing appropriations bill that also passed the chamber on Thursday. U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults. Conservative Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah tried unsuccessfully to kill the Senate funding, saying the Obama administration already had enough money to deal with Zika. “What we should not do, however, is allow the Zika virus to be yet another excuse to run up the national debt,” Lee said. But Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, countered that U.S. debt problems were rooted in the rapid growth in the cost of huge programs such as Social Security and Medicare and not so-called “discretionary” spending like on Zika.

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TOULON, France (Reuters) - France has decided to arm its surveillance drones in West Africa as part of counter-terrorism operations against Islamist militants, Defense Minister Florence Parly said on Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron has made fighting Islamist militants his primary foreign policy objective and the move to armed drones fits into a more aggressive policy at a time when it looks increasingly unlikely Paris will be able to withdraw from the region in the medium to long-term. France currently has five unarmed Reaper reconnaissance drones positioned in Niger s capital Niamey to support its 4,000-strong Barkhane counter-terrorism operation in Africa, and one in France. Beyond our borders, the enemy is more furtive, more mobile, disappears into the vast Sahel desert and dissimulates himself amidst the civilian population, Parly said in a speech to the military. Facing this, we cannot remain static. Our methods and equipment must adapt. It is with this in mind that I have decided to launch the process to arm our intelligence and surveillance drones. A further six of 12 Reaper drones, built by U.S. firm General Atomics and ordered after France s 2013 intervention in Mali to eventually replace its EADS-made Harfang drones, are due to be delivered by 2019. The defense ministry said on Tuesday the new drones would be delivered with Hellfire missiles while the existing six would be armed by 2020, possibly with European munitions. Previous French administrations have shied away from purchasing armed drones, fearing a possible increase in civilian casualties. Al Qaeda s north African wing AQIM and related Islamist groups were largely confined to the Sahara desert until they hijacked a rebellion by ethnic Tuareg separatists in Mali in 2012, and then swept south. French forces intervened the following year to prevent them taking Mali s capital, Bamako, but they have since gradually expanded their reach across the region, launching high-profile attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, as well as much more frequent, smaller attacks on military targets. At the end of July, at the military base in Niger, officers and pilots had told Reuters it was imperative to arm the drones to be more efficient and quick in tackling jihadist groups. In the future, armed drones will enable us to accompany surveillance ... with the capacity to strike at the opportune moment. We will be able to gain in efficiency and limit the risk of collateral damage, Parly said. France is also working with Germany, Italy and Spain to develop a European drone, which is expected to be ready by 2025.

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ROME (Reuters) - Rape allegations leveled against foreigners are fuelling anti-immigrant sentiment in Italy ahead of elections due early next year, when migration is likely to top the political agenda. Anti-immigration politicians have leapt on the crimes to ram home their message that the center-left government has been lax on border controls, allowing more than 600,000 migrants, mainly Africans, to enter the country over the past four years. There are too many of them. I will send quite a few home, Matteo Salvini, the head of the rightist Northern League, wrote on Twitter this week after police said a Bangladeshi man had been arrested in Rome on suspicion of raping a Finnish au pair. The Rome case came two weeks after a young Polish tourist said she was gang raped by four Africans, three of them aged under 18, on a beach in the Adriatic resort of Rimini. The woman s partner was badly beaten by the youths and a Peruvian transsexual said she was raped and assaulted by the same quartet later the same night. The leader of the gang was named as a Congolese asylum-seeker who had been allowed to stay in Italy on humanitarian grounds. The other three were Moroccan brothers aged 15 and 17, who were born in Italy, and a 16-year-old Nigerian. A gang of Maghreb worms, said Georgia Meloni, head of the rightist Brothers of Italy party, which is expected to be allied with the Northern League and Silvio Berlusconi s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party at the election. An opinion poll in la Repubblica newspaper on Wednesday showed 46 percent of Italians thought migrants represented a threat to their personal safety and to public order against 40 percent in the last such survey in February. Five years ago the figure stood at just 26 percent. Opposition parties say the government cannot ignore the issue, pointing to official data showing that in the first seven months of the year 1,534 Italians were arrested or accused of rape compared with 904 foreigners suspected of the same crime. Some 40 percent of rapes are being committed by foreigners who make up 8 percent of the population. You can t sweep this under a carpet, said Deborah Bergamini, a lawmaker with Forza Italia. The influx of migrants is having major consequences. Though Italy was a colonial power in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries and migrants have come to Italy for decades, the country mainly served as a transit route for the rest of Europe and so remains an overwhelmingly white country. However, EU migration policy means that increasing numbers of would-be asylum seekers are having to stay to secure residency permits, meaning many more Africans and refugees from the Middle East are trying to make Italy their home. Rising public concern over the inflows is starting to affect government policy-making, with the ruling center-left Democratic Party on Tuesday freezing a long-promised bill that would have granted citizenship to the children of immigrants. Some 70 percent of Italians backed the measure earlier this year, but support has now plummeted to just 52 percent, according to the la Repubblica survey. Interior Minister Marco Minniti has also intervened to stem the flow of migrants. I feared for democracy in this country, Minniti said last month, explaining why, after months of a de-facto, open-door policy, the government finally introduced measures aimed at preventing people from leaving Libya for Italy. Over the past 2-1/2 months, the number of migrants reaching Italy has fallen 70 percent from the same period a year ago to some 16,500, but the rape cases have ensured that media headlines have remained highly negative about the newcomers. German media were accused last year of initially ignoring allegations of sex assaults by migrants at New Year festivities in Cologne in order not to fuel anti-foreigner sentiment. The Italian media has no such hesitancy. First poverty, now they bring us disease, a front page headline in Libero daily said this month when an Italian child died of malaria just days after she had shared a hospital ward with two African children suffering the same illness. Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes and cannot be passed person-to-person. It was eradicated from Italy in 1970 and doctors do not know how the girl, who had never been abroad, caught the disease. Cecile Kashetu Kyenge, a Congolese-born European parliamentarian with the ruling Democratic Party, says those sorts of headlines show how racism is on the rise. The newspapers turn migrants into the enemies of Italy and people start to believe this nonsense, said Kyenge, a former minister who receives regular racist abuse on social media. Racism is used as a political weapon and the situation is getting worse. The problem is we are living in a perpetual election campaign and politicians play on peoples fears. The Northern League has led the anti-migrant charge with its leader, Salvini, regularly denouncing migrants on Facebook. The party has been rewarded by a jump in support from 6 percent in 2014 to more than 15 percent today, making it the third largest political force in Italy in many opinion polls. The rise of the Northern League can be put down to the party s anti-migrant stance and Salvini s undoubted ability to play the populist card, said pollster Renato Mannheimer. He predicted that the issue would continue to predominate. The economy is a much more important issue, but sadly I think it will take a back seat to immigration in the coming election campaign, he said.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed confidence on Friday that her conservatives can reach a coalition deal with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), but her would-be partners say the talks could still fail. After bleeding support to the far right in last month s election, and with her former coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), determined to go into opposition, Merkel must bring together three disparate blocs to secure a majority. Party leaders are slated to meet on Monday evening before the larger negotiating teams launch into more detailed talks. Difficult deliberations lie ahead of us in the coming days, Merkel told reporters on arrival for a fresh round of exploratory talks. But I still think we can tie the ends together if we try and work hard. Failure to forge a coalition would likely result in a new election that could see more gains for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which surged into parliament last month. SPD leader Martin Schulz ruled out any prospect of resuming the outgoing grand coalition if Merkel failed to reach agreement with the Greens and FDP. If Mrs. Merkel can t put a government together, there must be new elections, he said in an interview to be published Saturday by the RND newspaper chain. Marco Buschmann, head of the FDP parliamentary group and a member of the party s negotiating team, told Saturday editions of Die Welt newspaper that his party was ready to move into opposition if the coalition talks failed. A new election could strengthen the far-right Alternative for Germany that entered parliament with 13 percent of the vote, but voters might not turn to the AfD as a protest vote if the differences among the other parties were more clear, he added. The would-be allies agreed during Friday s talks on the need to relieve the financial burden on families, increase child care options and combat child poverty, negotiators said. They also agreed to support Germany s role in NATO and other multilateral organizations, to strengthen cooperation with France and to maintain good relations with Russia. But they remain at odds about immigration caps, whether to end coal production, how to combat climate change and increasing defense spending, among other issues. And the divisive issue of transport was not discussed at all on Friday. Negotiators agreed to be nicer to each other , FDP deputy leader Wolfgang Kubicki told reporters, adding: I m willing to try, but everyone has to play along. The parties will now spend the weekend distilling their priorities before Merkel meets the other party leaders on Monday. We have all the many ingredients on the table. Now we have to combine them all into a tasty dough, said Michael Kellner, a top Greens negotiator. Fellow Greens negotiator Juergen Trittin struck a less conciliatory tone, telling ARD television that, after 10 days of debate on 12 topics, the parties still haven t even managed to agree on what we disagree about . FDP leader Christian Lindner and Buschmann put the odds of a coalition being formed at 50-50. Greens foreign policy expert Omid Nouripour said the talks might fail altogether. Merkel has said she expects a stable government before Christmas, but senior conservatives close to her say it may take until next year for a new government to be formed. Horst Seehofer, embattled head of the CSU, sister party to Merkel s CDU, said he was encouraged by very constructive, trustworthy discussions among party leaders in recent days. He urged negotiators to stop airing their conflicts in public. We can hit the reset button and hope that things change in the next few days, he said. Seehofer came under fire from his party s youth wing for cancelling a speech to the group, which has called for a more youthful image ahead of Bavarian regional elections next year. Hans Reichhart, head of the CSU youth group, suggested the move could exacerbate debate about Seehofer s future after sharp losses in the Sept. 24 election. Seehofer had urged party members to put off debating the leadership until later this month, arguing that it could weaken his negotiating position in the coalition talks.

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga on Tuesday called for pickets and petitions against an election he boycotted last week won by President Uhuru Kenyatta but stopped short of appealing for mass protests or announcing a court challenge to the result. Odinga pulled out of the vote saying it would be unfair because the election board had failed to implement reforms after the Supreme Court cited procedural irregularities and annulled an Aug. 8 vote that had been won by Kenyatta. Odinga said the Oct. 26 result would not stand but did not announce measures likely to overturn it or force the government to negotiate. He said his opposition coalition would form a people s assembly to study issues of governance and issue recommendations to county assemblies. The resistance movement shall be responsible for implementing a vigorous positive political action program that includes economic boycotts, peaceful processions, picketing and other legitimate protests, he said. This election must not stand .... It will make a complete mockery of elections and might well be the end of the ballot as a means of instituting government in Kenya. It will completely destroy public confidence in the vote, he said. The ruling party controls a majority in both houses of parliament and most of the 47 county governorships, making it difficult for the opposition to implement its proposals. Odinga s proposals left many of his supporters confused. I don t understand what he wants, said Felix Wanga, a 25-year-old waiter who listened to the speech in Kisumu, the western city that forms the bedrock of Odinga s support. I will have to wait until tomorrow to hear from our local leaders. On Monday, Kenyatta was declared the winner of the repeat presidential election with 98 percent of the vote, handing him a second five-year term at the helm of the region s richest economy. In a sign of the tensions raised by the election, Odinga s speech was delayed when the media walked out en masse after his supporters assaulted two journalists, whom they accused of bias. Odinga apologized for the incident. The election crisis had blunted growth in Kenya, a trade and diplomatic hub for east Africa and a headquarters for multinational companies because of its relatively free market, pro-Western diplomacy and stability. The extended electoral season sparked clashes between Odinga s protesters and police, and in recent days fanned an undercurrent of ethnic tensions that frequently surfaces during Kenyan elections. Reuters journalists confirmed two people were killed in ethnic clashes. Around 50 people died in political violence after the Aug. 8 elections, and another 14 people since Thursday s vote, according to diplomatic sources. A provisional government tally said nine people had been killed since Thursday. Political violence has shaken the nation before, when around 1,200 people were killed after political protests sparked ethnic clashes a decade ago. Diplomats and civil society leaders have publicly urged the two leaders to meet and engage in post-election national dialogue . In his acceptance speech, Kenyatta ruled out the possibility of dialogue with Odinga if the opposition lodged any legal cases contesting his victory.

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WASHINGTON/PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s White House transition team, a mix of former advisers of President Barack Obama, close confidants, long-time colleagues and former elected officials, reflects the sense of careful organization the Democratic candidate has aimed to project in her presidential campaign. But her Republican rival, Donald Trump, could seize on the group to make the point that she is part of the establishment he aims to defeat in November’s election, and to reiterate his charge that a Clinton administration would be an Obama “third term.” The group, which the Clinton campaign named on Tuesday and which will lay the groundwork for her to take charge quickly if she wins, is evidence of Clinton’s long experience in Washington as a former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady. Transition teams aim to help the president-elect make key decisions during the period between the election and the inauguration, in this case from Nov. 8 to Jan. 20, so the new White House occupant can fill leadership posts quickly. “They are the names you would expect – people who have been advising her for a long time; people who have worked with her for a long time and people who are peers, who she respects,” Matt Bennett of the moderate Democratic group Third Way said of Clinton’s transition team. The group will be headed by Ken Salazar, a former interior secretary and U.S. senator. He will lead four co-chairs: former Obama national security adviser Tom Donilon; former Obama aide Neera Tanden, who now leads the progressive think tank the Center for American Progress; former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Maggie Williams, the director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Heather Boushey, the executive director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, will be the chief economist. Two additional policy advisers from Clinton’s campaign, Ed Meier and Ann O’Leary, will also move full-time to the transition team, the campaign said in a statement. The transition team does not necessarily reflect future policy. “The job here is to give options, not just say there is one policy course you want to take,” said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who advised the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry. Clinton would be the first woman elected to the U.S. presidency and Shrum said Clinton’s team “has got to be the first transition team in history where the majority of its members are women.” Shrum added that Clinton is largely following Obama’s template as he prepared for his transition after the 2008 election. Tanden, who played a key role in shaping Obama’s health care overhaul, is a member of Clinton’s tight-knit inner circle, and has also worked for her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Williams was the 1992 transition director for Clinton when she became first lady, and then her chief of staff in the White House. Clinton worked closely with Donilon when she led the State Department from 2009-2013. Granholm, the former governor, is also a former state attorney general and has years of experience in Democratic politics. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee applauded the selection of O’Leary and Boushey, praising their economic positions. The environmental group Greenpeace criticized Salazar for not curbing fracking in his home state of Colorado. The announcement of the team came as Clinton has gained momentum in the opinion polls, with the current RealClearPolitics average of national polls showing her 6.7 points ahead, at 47.7 percent to Trump’s 41 percent. Trump’s campaign has struggled after he made a string of controversial remarks since formally winning his party’s nomination last month. More establishment Republicans, alarmed by Trump’s inability or unwillingness to rein in his provocative remarks, have distanced themselves from the candidate in recent weeks. The Wall Street Journal, a leading conservative voice, said in an editorial on Monday that he should fix his campaign in the next three weeks or hand over to his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Trump, a New York businessman who has never held elected office, picked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to head his transition team in May.

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GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian refugees could again seek to reach Europe in droves if aid programs are not sustained in five neighboring countries hosting the bulk of them, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was giving details of the $4.4 billion appeal to support 5.3 million Syrian refugees in surrounding countries as well as to host communities in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt that have taken them in. The agency, which has received only 53 percent of its $4.63 billion appeal for 2017, needs international support, Amin Awad, director of UNHCR s Middle East and North Africa bureau, told a news briefing. He listed many reasons , including: The vast number of refugees that we have in the region, the geopolitical status of that region, the risk that a population of 5.3 million people can bring to an area, a small region already volatile as it is, if there is no assistance. We had the experience of 2015, we don t want to repeat that, he said. The lack of funding led to an acute shortage of services that year, when one million refugees fled to Europe, he added. About half were Syrians, UNHCR figures show. An EU-Turkey deal has largely halted the flow, but a UNHCR funding shortfall has led to fresh cutbacks in vital programs providing food, health care, education and shelter to Syrian refugees, Awad said. That means we re not able to provide stoves, we are not able to deliver kerosene, we are not able to deliver enough thermal blankets, we are not able to winterise tents, we are not able to drain water and snow from camps, we are not able to do engineering work to insulate some of the buildings. People are sitting in cold, open buildings, he said. Turkey currently hosts 3.3 million Syrian refugees, the largest number, followed by Lebanon with one million. These are the biggest donors, these are the real donors. They provided space, international protection, Awad said. Now the material assistance is left to the donors and international community... And that s not coming through. So we have to be prepared for consequences, he said. Awad, asked about countries in the region closing their borders to Syrian refugees, replied: Borders are managed, in some instance are closed. Host countries have cited concerns over security, economic crises, and xenophobia, but Syrians continue to arrive, he said. Lebanon is still accepting vulnerable cases, medical cases, so is Turkey, Awad said. There have been cases of refoulement , returning refugees to places where they could face war or persecution, in violation of law, he said. We are seeing expulsion, we are seeing people sent back. UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards declined to provide specifics on Syrian refugees being expelled.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Friday designated U.S. election infrastructure as critical, widening the options the government has to protect voting machines from cyber attacks. The decision, announced in a statement by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, followed a 2016 presidential campaign marred by concerns that hackers could disrupt the election. Also on Friday, U.S. intelligence agencies released a report accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of directing a campaign to hack Democratic Party computers in an effort to help Republican Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency. U.S. officials determined hackers targeted more than 20 states’ voter registration systems during the election but that there was no evidence tallies were altered when ballots were cast on Nov. 8. Elevating election systems to critical infrastructure puts it on par with other sectors eligible to receive prioritized cyber security assistance from DHS, including communication and transportation systems, the banking industry and the energy grid. Election infrastructure includes polling places, centralized vote tabulations locations, storage facilities and voter registration databases and voting machines, Johnson said. Johnson said he and his staff had consulted with state and local election officials and that he was “aware that many of them are opposed to this designation.” Some conservative states such as Georgia objected when the idea was floated during the presidential campaign, claiming elections have historically been overseen by local officials. The classification was not “a federal takeover, regulation, oversight or intrusion concerning elections in this country,” Johnson said in a statement. “This designation does nothing to change the role state and local governments have in administering and running elections.”

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri warned on Sunday Lebanon was at risk of Gulf Arab sanctions because of the Shi ite group Hezbollah s regional meddling and said he would return to Lebanon within days to affirm he had resigned as the country s prime minister. In a television interview, the Saudi-allied Hariri held out the possibility he could yet rescind his resignation if Hezbollah agreed to stay out of regional conflicts such as Yemen, his first public comments since he read out his resignation on television from Riyadh eight days ago. He indicated the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in the Gulf could be at risk, as well as trade, vital to the stability of the Lebanese economy. Hariri said his resignation was intended as a positive shock to his country, which he saw in danger. Top Lebanese government officials and senior sources close to Hariri believe Saudi Arabia coerced Hariri into resigning and has put him under effective house arrest since he flew to Saudi Arabia over a week ago. Ahead of his interview, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Hariri s movements were being restricted in Saudi Arabia, the first time the Lebanese authorities have publicly declared their belief that Riyadh is holding him against his will. Hariri said he was a free man. The resignation and its aftermath have thrust Lebanon back to the forefront of the conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran. Aoun refused to accept Hariri s resignation unless he tendered it in person in Lebanon. Hariri, who has not returned to Lebanon since he declared his shock resignation, said he stepped down for the sake of the Lebanese national interest, repeatedly saying the country must stick by a policy of disassociation from regional conflict. I am freely in the Kingdom, and if I want to travel tomorrow, I will travel, Hariri said of his presence in Saudi Arabia. He said he would return to Lebanon within two or three days. When he resigned on Nov. 4, he said he feared assassination. His father, a long-serving former prime minister, was killed by a bomb in 2005. Hariri said he must be sure his security had not been penetrated before returning. Hariri s eyes welled up with tears at one point in the interview. Asked by the interviewer if he would take more questions, Hariri said no because he was tired. We know there are American sanctions (targeting Hezbollah), but (do) we add to them also Arab sanctions? What is our interest (in that) as Lebanese, because we see today interventions in Yemen and Bahrain by Iran and Hezbollah, said Hariri. He added: Disassociation is the foundation of Lebanon s interest. Where do we export our goods, is it not to the Arab states? Where do our sons work ...? We must work to preserve this interest, and this interest was threatened, so for this reason I did what I did, he said. He singled out Yemen, where a Saudi-led alliance is bogged down in a war with Iran-allied Houthi rebels, asking what a Lebanese group was doing there, in reference to Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia has accused Hezbollah of a role in firing a ballistic missile from Yemen towards Riyadh earlier this month. In order for him to go back on his resignation, Hariri said the the diassociation (policy) must be respected and regional interventions by Hezbollah halted. Lebanon cannot bear them, he said. Hezbollah is Lebanon s most powerful group thanks to a powerful arsenal. It has deployed fighters to Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad. The group denies a role in the fighting in Yemen but is fiercely supportive of the Houthis in its statements. Hariri s resignation from abroad and the week of silence that followed has destabilized his country, where Sunni, Shi ite, Christian and Druze factions fought a civil war from 1975-1990, often backed by rival powers around the region. After Hariri announced his resignation, Saudi Arabia accused Lebanon of declaring war against it because of Hezbollah. The Hezbollah leader on Friday said it was Saudi Arabia that had declared war on Lebanon. Western countries including the United States and France have reiterated their long-standing policy of support for the Lebanese government since the Saudi declaration that the Beirut government was a hostile party. Before Hariri s interview, Aoun said Hariri s situation in Saudi Arabia threw doubt over anything that he had said or would say, and his statements could not be considered as an expression of his full free will. Aoun said Hariri was living in mysterious circumstances in Riyadh which had reached the degree of restricting (his) freedom and imposing conditions on his residency and on contact with him even by members of his family . Saudi Arabia has denied Hariri is being held against his will or that he had been forced to resign. It has advised its citizens not to visit Lebanon and those there to leave as soon as possible.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jared Kushner, adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, was questioned for nearly three hours on Tuesday by members of a House of Representatives intelligence panel investigating possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. “I found him to be straightforward and forthcoming. He wanted to answer every question that we had,” Republican Representative Mike Conaway said. Democratic Representative Adam Schiff said Kushner and his lawyer were receptive to coming back for additional questioning. “It was a very productive session,” Schiff said.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s odds at winning the White House improved significantly after his decisive victory in Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire, online betting site Ladbrokes PLC said on Wednesday. Trump’s odds for winning the presidency in the November election are now 9/2, compared to 7/1 following the Iowa caucuses last week. Iowa kicked off the parties’ process of nominating their presidential candidates and in the Republican race, the real estate tycoon placed second. His chances of victory in November are now 18 percent, up from 13 percent, putting him second to Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose odds of winning the presidency were even, or 50/50, on Wednesday. Clinton was roundly beaten by Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, in New Hampshire. Her odds of winning the presidency slipped from 4/5, or a 56 percent chance at the White House, seen immediately after the Iowa caucuses. Clinton, a former secretary of state, has for long been the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination but has been challenged by a surge of support for Sanders. “New Hampshire couldn’t have worked out much better for Trump,” said Matthew Shaddick, head of political odds at Ladbrokes. “This might be bad news for the Republican Party, but it’s not much better for us bookmakers, who are facing some huge payouts on the one-time 100/1 no-hoper.” He was referring to Trump’s 100/1 odds, giving him a 1 percent chance, when he declared his candidacy last June. Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida whose chances for the Republican nomination improved after he did well in the Iowa caucuses, faces longer odds after his middle of the pack finish in New Hampshire. According to Ladbrokes, Rubio’s odds are now 8/1, giving him an 11 percent chance at becoming president. After Iowa, Rubio’s odds at becoming president had been 11/4, giving him a 26 percent chance. Ohio Governor John Kasich, who surged to a surprising second place finish in the New Hampshire’s Republican primary, still faces relatively long odds of 33/1, giving him a 3 percent chance at winning the presidency. The candidates have embarked on what can be a months-long state-by-state battle to win party support. The parties formally announce their presidential nominees at summer conventions. Interest in Kasich on social media surged - he received 30,500 mentions on Twitter on Tuesday, more than four times what he got during the Iowa caucuses, according to Brandwatch. (Reporting by Anjali Athavaley; Editing by Frances Kerry) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.

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KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan police raided the office of a local newspaper, detaining staff and confiscating equipment on allegations it had published an inaccurate story, the paper s lawyer and police said on Wednesday. The day before the Tuesday evening raid, Red Pepper, Uganda s leading tabloid, published a story alleging that Rwanda believed President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was plotting to oust President Paul Kagame. The article cited unnamed sources. The government said there were no tensions between Uganda and Rwanda. Police spokesman Emirian Kayima said eight managers and editors at the newspaper s Kampala head office were detained after police searched the paper s Kampala office and confiscated computers and mobile phones. Kayima said the eight staff were being held at a detention facility in eastern Uganda and would appear in court when investigations were complete. He said the story contained serious statements and insinuations...that have grave implications on national and regional security and stability. The paper s lawyer Maxma Mutabingwa said uniformed police told Red Pepper staff during the search that they wanted material and information on a story published on Monday . He said some managers homes were also searched but gave no details. Red Pepper was not published on Wednesday and staff had not been allowed to access the offices since the raid, Mutabingwa said. Human rights groups say harassment of independent media by security personnel has been escalating in the East African country where Museveni, 73, has ruled for 31 years. Local media including Red Pepper have reported this month on tensions between Uganda and neighboring Rwanda over a range of economic and security disputes. There s no tension between Uganda and Rwanda...we have no problem at all (with Rwanda), Uganda s foreign affairs ministry spokeswoman, Margaret Kafeero, told Reuters. She said Uganda had not received any official complaint from Rwanda regarding any allegations of a plot against Kagame and that the reports in Ugandan media were rumors . Relations between the two countries are often complicated by a shared history which has by turns been a source of mutual suspicion and amity. Kagame, the Rwandan leader, grew up as a refugee in Uganda and also occupied a top position in the Ugandan army after serving in the guerrilla movement that helped Museveni take power in 1986. The Rwandan leader launched his own rebellion from Uganda that ushered him into power and halted a genocide in Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed.

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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkish security forces killed 17 Kurdish militants near the border between Iraq and southeast Turkey, the armed forces said on Thursday, after eight members of Turkey s security forces were killed in clashes. Early on Thursday, Turkish forces killed five Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in clashes after the militants sought to cross the border into Hakkari province s mountainous Semdinli district, the armed forces said in a statement. It said six Turkish soldiers and two members of the country s state-backed village guard militia were killed in the fighting. A helicopter-backed operation was started in search of further PKK militants, and Turkish warplanes later killed another 12 militants who were trying to escape across the border to northern Iraq, the military said. Separately, President Tayyip Erdogan said another five PKK militants were killed in clashes in the southeastern province of Tunceli. He said the clashes in Turkey s southeast were continuing. The PKK launched a separatist insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ public testimony before a Senate panel on Tuesday sets up another potentially dramatic hearing on possible ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race. Sessions will likely face tough questions at the open Senate Intelligence Committee hearing over his dealings with Russian officials during the campaign and whether he had a role in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Until a statement on Monday from committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican, it had been unclear whether Sessions would testify in an open or closed setting. Initially, Sessions expected to testify in a closed-door session, said two sources familiar with the attorney general’s thinking. But he left the decision up to Burr, the sources said. A Justice Department spokeswoman said that Sessions requested the open setting because “he believes it is important for the American people to hear the truth directly from him.” Comey told the same panel last week that the FBI had information in mid-February on Sessions that would have made it “problematic” for the attorney general to continue leading a federal probe into Russian attempts to influence the presidential election. Sessions recused himself from that inquiry in March after media reports that he had been in two previously undisclosed meetings last year with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Tuesday’s testimony, scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m. (1830 GMT), will be the first for Sessions in a congressional hearing since he became attorney general. During his nomination hearing in January, the former senator told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had no contacts with Russian officials as part of the Trump campaign. Sessions is likely to be questioned over the truthfulness of his answers in January. A spokesman for the Justice Department said after media reports emerged in March of the meetings that Sessions had answered honestly because the encounters were part of his job as a senator and not as a surrogate of the Trump campaign. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of both the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, has said Sessions should answer questions about his January testimony. Intelligence Committee members will also likely ask Sessions about a possible third undisclosed meeting with Kislyak that is now under investigation, according to media reports. Sessions, an early supporter of Trump’s election campaign, will be the most senior government official to testify to the committee on the Russia issue, which has dogged the Republican president’s early months in office. Critics charged that by firing Comey on May 9, Trump was trying to hinder the FBI’s Russia probe. The former FBI chief added fuel to that accusation with his testimony last week. Trump has denied he tried to interfere with the probe. In his testimony, Comey said he had asked Sessions not to leave him alone with Trump following meetings where he said Trump had asked Comey for his loyalty. The attorney general may also face questions on that. Media reports last week said Sessions offered to resign because of tensions with Trump over his decision to recuse himself from the FBI’s Russia probe. The allegations are being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller and several congressional panels, including the Senate Intelligence Committee. Russia has denied interfering in the U.S. election. The White House has denied any collusion with Moscow.

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SYDNEY (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency on Tuesday urged Australia to accept New Zealand s offer to resettle 150 refugees from an abandoned Australian-run detention center in Papua New Guinea, as about 450 men remain barricaded inside without food or water. The asylum seekers have been holed up inside the center for the past two weeks defying attempts by Australia and Papua New Guinea to close the facility, saying they fear for their safety if moved to transit centers. With many detainees complaining of illness bought about by the unsanitary conditions in the camp, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) urged Australia to allow 150 of them to resettle in New Zealand. We urge Australia to reconsider this and take up the offer, Nai Jit Lam, deputy regional representative at the UNHCR told Reuters. Most of the asylum seekers are from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria. Australia s sovereign borders immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores, has been heavily criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups but has bipartisan political support in Australia. Australia says allowing asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores would only encourage people smugglers in Asia and see more people risk their lives trying to sail to Australia. Two motions introduced in Australia s parliament by the Labor and Green parties, and passed in the upper house on Tuesday, call on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to approve the New Zealand proposal. This is a foul and bloody stain on Australia s national conscience, Greens senator Nick McKim told reporters. Turnbull this month rejected the refugee resettlement offer from his New Zealand counterpart, Jacinda Ardern, preferring instead to work through an existing refugee swap deal he negotiated with former U.S. President Barack Obama last year. Under the U.S. deal, up to 1,250 asylum seekers detained by Australia in Papua New Guinea and Nauru in the South Pacific could be resettled in the United States in return for Australia accepting refugees from Central America. So far, the United States has accepted only 54. Despite Turnbull rejecting the offer, Ardern this week said it remained on the table and she would seek a second meeting with Turnbull to discuss the unacceptable situation inside the Manus island detention center. Water and electricity to the center were disconnected two weeks ago after Australian security withdrew and the camp closed on Oct. 31. The camp gad been declared illegal by a Papua New Guinea Court. Papua New Guinea has threatened to forcibly move the men if they remain inside the center. It has set three deadlines but all have passed largely without incident.

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LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will stress the value of free trade and her support for the Iran nuclear deal when she meets U.S. President Donald Trump later this week, her spokeswoman said on Monday. Trump’s election has raised questions over the future of the so-called special relationship that has underpinned close British-American ties for decades, but the new U.S. leader has praised last year’s vote to leave the EU and says he wants to arrange a swift bilateral trade deal with Britain. Supporters of Britain’s exit from the European Union have cheered these comments, but others have questioned how this will fit with Trump’s protectionist policies, including his inaugural speech promise to put “America first”. “You can expect the prime minister to be very clear during her U.S. visit on the benefits of free trade and championing them and wanting to look at what more can be done to increase that,” May’s spokeswoman told reporters on Monday. The spokeswoman said she expected the prime minister would also make clear to Trump that Britain is a strong supporter of the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers, which the new U.S. leader has threatened to either scrap or change. At the White House, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said the new U.S. president will discuss the potential for greater trade with Britain in his meeting with May. He said he did not believe there were plans for the two leaders to hold a news conference. Spicer acknowledged the “special relationship” between the United States and the UK, adding, “but we can always be closer.” May is due to attend the annual “Republican Retreat” in Philadelphia on Thursday, becoming the first serving head of state to speak at the event, before holding bilateral talks with Trump in Washington on Friday. Thousands of women marched in London on Saturday to protest about Trump’s attitude to women, joining demonstrations held in major cities across the globe. When asked during a BBC interview on Sunday about controversy over Trump’s comments on women, May, Britain’s second female premier, said she would not be afraid to challenge any “unacceptable” talk from Trump. She is also expected to discuss NATO with Trump, who has described the military alliance as “obsolete.” Ahead of her U.S. visit, May spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Sunday. “They discussed the continued importance of the alliance as the bulwark of our defense and agreed on the need for the alliance to continue to evolve to be able to effectively counter the biggest threats of the day, in particular terrorism and cyber attacks,” a spokesman for May said after the call. “The prime minister said she would be taking these messages to Washington later this week.”

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EDINBURGH (Reuters) - British outsourcer G4S has suspended nine members of staff at an immigration removal center while it investigates a BBC report alleging abuse in the treatment of migrants, the company said on Friday. We have received written allegations of abhorrent conduct at Brook House and on that basis we have deemed it serious enough to suspend the staff involved, a spokeswoman for G4S said. She said the company had not yet seen footage of the alleged incidents, however. BBC Panorama, a flagship documentary program, said on its website that an investigation revealed chaos, incompetence and abuse in the treatment of migrants in a program which will be aired next week. The incident has been reported to the police, the spokeswoman said. Officers were not immediately able to comment. The kind of behavior alleged is completely unacceptable, and does a great disservice to the vast majority of staff who do a great job in very difficult circumstances, the spokeswoman said. The issue highlights the difficulty of running sensitive services for the government and the potential reputational damage for outsourcing companies. Earlier this year an investigation at the G4S-run Medway Secure Training Centre resulted in allegations of abuse and mistreatment of youngsters. The center is now run by the government s National Offender Management Service. Brook House, near Gatwick Airport, is staffed by more than 200 employees and has around 500 occupants. More than 14,000 people passed through it in the last year. The unit houses a mix of those who have not fulfilled their visa requirements and criminals who are being deported.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation on Monday to bar the U.S. government from renting rooms at President Donald Trump’s hotels for official business. “Donald Trump should not be allowed to line his or his family’s pockets with taxpayer dollars,” Representative Don Beyer of Virginia said in a statement. He said the amendments he was introducing to a spending bill were necessary because of the Republican president’s “unprecedented failure to divest from his business, and the ongoing entanglement between the Trump Organization and the White House.” Republicans control the House and the Senate. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month, the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit alleging that government payments to Trump’s businesses violated the U.S. Constitution.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Rand Paul said he spoke to President Donald Trump by phone about healthcare reform on Monday and told the president he thought Trump had the authority to create associations that would allow organizations to offer group health insurance plans. Paul, a Republican, told reporters that Trump was considering taking some form of executive action to address problems with the healthcare system after the Senate failed last week to pass a measure to reform the system. Allowing groups like AARP, which represents retirees, to form health associations could enable individuals and small businesses to form larger groups to negotiate with health insurance companies for lower rates.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - A Donald Trump presidency does not mean the United States will withdraw from the South China Sea, but rather will continue pursuing “regional hegemony”, Chinese academics who drafted a report for an influential government think tank said on Friday. Ensuring “absolute control” over the South China Sea was the crux of U.S. military strategy in the Asia-Pacific, according to what the authors said was China’s first ever public report on the U.S. military presence in the region, released on Friday in Beijing. “There will be no overturning change to U.S. policy in the South China Sea,” said Wu Shicun, head of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, an influential Hainan-based think tank that wrote the report. Trump rarely mentioned the South China Sea on the campaign trail, but concentrated on the economic relationship with Beijing, threatening to label China a currency manipulator and impose import tariffs on Chinese imports. U.S. commitments to its allies would not change, nor would its stance on protecting freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, said Wu. As such, tensions between China and the United States in the South China Sea would likely grow in lock-step with China’s military growth, he added. China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims. Recent U.S. efforts to counter what it sees as China limiting freedom of navigation in the South China Sea have drawn Beijing’s ire and stoked fears of military conflict. A patrol by U.S. warships in October was dubbed “illegal” and “provocative” by the Chinese Defence Ministry. “From the U.S. perspective, China’s large-scale construction activities in the South China Sea confirmed U.S. suspicion that China intended to implement an anti-access/area-denial strategy,” the report said. There would be “more continuity than change” in Trump’s military policy in the Asia-Pacific, said Zhu Feng, director of the South China Sea Center at Nanjing University, at the report launch. Trump may not use the term “rebalancing” to the region, but he would likely retain most of policies, he added. Both academics agreed that there was a high possibility of increased U.S. military spending in the Asia-Pacific under Trump. A Trump administration would “not be an exception” to other Republican-led governments that increase military spending when they take office, said Zhu Feng. The build-up of military might in the region has led to worries of a rising risk of accidental collisions that could spark conflict. Zhu said that the decision to release a public report now was not China “preparing for war” but rather to avoid an “arms race” between China and the United States.

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(Reuters) - Highlights for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday: The Trump administration could respond to North Korea’s latest failed missile test by speeding plans for new U.S. sanctions against Pyongyang, including possible measures against specific North Korean and Chinese entities, a U.S. official says. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warns failure to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile development could lead to “catastrophic consequences” while China and Russia rebuke Washington for its threat of force. Trump signs a bill approved by the Republican-led Congress to avert a U.S. government shutdown and give lawmakers another week to work out federal spending through Sept. 30, with tricky issues like defense spending still unresolved. Trump pledges to uphold Americans’ right to possess guns in a speech that he uses to revisit some 2016 election campaign themes from his vow to build a border wall to dismissing Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.” Trump tells Reuters he will either renegotiate or terminate what he calls a “horrible” free trade deal with South Korea and says Seoul should pay for a U.S. anti-missile system he prices at $1 billion. A 5-year-old U.S.-South Korean trade deal could be improved to increase access for American vehicles and deter currency manipulation but changes will not necessarily shrink the U.S. trade deficit with the Asian export powerhouse. OBAMA-ERA REGULATIONS Lawmakers, lobbyists and interest groups are making a final push in their fight over regulations enacted during former President Barack Obama’s last months in office, with the financial services industry working hard to kill a rule on retirement plans run by states. Trump signs an executive order to extend offshore oil and gas drilling to areas that have been off limits — a move meant to boost domestic production but that could fall flat due to weak industry demand for the acreage. A U.S. appeals court grants a Trump administration request to put on hold a legal challenge by industry and a group of states to Obama administration regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants, rules Trump is moving to undo. In an unexpected triumph for privacy advocates, the U.S. National Security Agency says it has stopped a form of surveillance that allowed warrant-less collection of the digital communications of Americans who mentioned a foreign intelligence target in their messages.

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(Reuters) - Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since late August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts are not known. Reuters driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at a police compound and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not return to the car. Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said the arrests were a blatant attack on press freedom and called for the immediate release of the journalists. Here are reactions to their detention from politicians and press freedom advocates around the world: - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. - British Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said, I absolutely strongly disapprove of the idea of journalists, going about their everyday business, being arrested. We will make it clear in the strongest possible terms that we feel that they need to be released at the earliest possible opportunity. - Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom called the arrests a threat to a democratic and peaceful development of Myanmar and that region. She said, We do not accept that journalists are attacked or simply kidnapped or that they disappear ... To be able to send journalists to this particular area is of crucial importance. - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and freedom of the press in Myanmar. Guterres said, It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country. He added: And probably the reason why these journalists were arrested is because they were reporting on what they have seen in relation to this massive human tragedy. - Canada s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, the former managing director and editor, consumer news, at Thomson Reuters, tweeted that she was deeply concerned by the reports about the arrests. Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian government department that manages its foreign and trade relations, issued a separate statement on Saturday calling for the reporters release and said that no person should ever face intimidation in the exercise of their profession. - President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the two reporters. - Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said, We strongly denounce arrests of Reuters journalists and feel that those reporters be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting. - Japan s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s spokesman Motosada Matano said his government was closely watching the situation, and that Japan has been conducting a dialogue with the Myanmar government on human rights in Myanmar in general. - Australia s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said its embassy in Myanmar was registering Canberra s concern at the arrest of the two journalists. A free and functioning media is an essential part of a modern democracy, the department said in an e-mail to Reuters on Monday. - The Committee to Protect Journalists said, We call on local authorities to immediately, unconditionally release Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance. - The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests. Daniel Bastard, the head of the group s Asia-Pacific desk, said the charges being considered were completely spurious . - Advocacy group Fortify Rights demanded the Myanmar government immediately and unconditionally release the two Reuters journalists. The environment for media right now is as hostile as it s been for years, and if adequate pressure doesn t mount on the civilian and military leadership, we can expect it to worsen, Matthew Smith, chief executive officer of Fortify Rights, said in a statement on Thursday. - Myanmar s Irrawaddy online news site called on Dec. 14 for the journalists release in an editorial headlined The Crackdown on the Media Must Stop. The newspaper said that it is an outrage to see the Ministry of Information release a police record photo of reporters handcuffed as police normally do to criminals on its website soon after the detention. It is chilling to see that MOI has suddenly brought us back to the olden days of a repressive regime. - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance asked for the immediate release of the journalists. These two journalists are only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict, said SEAPA executive director Edgardo Legaspi. With this arrest, the government seems to be sending the message that all military reports should be off limits to journalists. - The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, a group of local reporters who have demonstrated against past prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . A reporter must have the right to get information and write news ethically, said video journalist A Hla Lay Thu Zar - a member of the group s executive committee. - The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about the state of press freedom in Myanmar. It called on authorities to ensure the reporters safety and allow their families to see them. - The Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand, The Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, and the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, have also issued statements of support for the journalists. (Refiles to add dropped surname of Swedish foreign minister.)

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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Friday it believed North Korea was behind the WannaCry cyber attack in May that disrupted businesses and government services worldwide, including the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Security Minister Ben Wallace said Britain believed quite strongly that the ransomware attack came from a foreign state. "North Korea was the state that we believe was involved in this worldwide attack on our systems," he told BBC radio. We can be as sure as possible - I can t obviously go into the detailed intelligence but it is widely believed in the community and across a number of countries that North Korea had taken this role. WannaCry infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries in a matter of days, demanding victims pay ransoms starting at $300 to regain access to their machines. Cyber security researchers quickly identified a possible link to North Korea. More than a third of England s 236 NHS trusts and an estimated 19,000 appointments were affected, Britain s National Audit Office said on Friday in a report on the attack. It said WannaCry was a relatively unsophisticated attack that could have been prevented by the NHS had it followed basic IT security best practice. No NHS organization paid the ransom but the government does not know how much the disruption to services cost the NHS, it said. Wallace said Britain needed to redouble its efforts to strengthen cyber security. It s a salient lesson for us all that all of us, from individuals to governments to large organizations, have a role to play in maintaining the security of our networks, he said.

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MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) - With a grimace, Brigadier General Melquiades Ordiales of the Philippines 1st Marine Brigade recounted the painful gains made against Islamist militants in Marawi City. It took us one week from this point to that point, to cross that street, he said, casting his eyes to the other side of a two-lane road in the heart of the southern Philippines city, lined by three-storey buildings shattered by air strikes and the remaining walls riddled with bullet holes. It was really very, very tough. The grinding urban warfare that has destroyed much of the grandly named Sultan Omar Dianalan Boulevard shows just how much of a threat Islamic State is to the Philippines and potentially other countries in the Southeast Asian region. But when the fighting started, Philippine authorities were unfazed. After the Islamic State-backed militants took over large parts of picturesque, lakeside Marawi in May, the country s defense minister, Delfin Lorenzana, predicted the entire conflict would be over in one week. Now, after four months of intense aerial bombardment and house-by-house battles, Philippine commanders believe they are in the final stages of the operation to oust the rebels from the city. In the past two weeks, military officials say they have conquered three militant bastions, including a mosque, and restricted about 60 remaining guerrillas to about 10 devastated city blocks in the business district. Patrols have been increased on the lake to prevent the supply of armaments and recruits to the holed-up militants. HIGH-POWERED WEAPONS Military officers who have skirmished for years with Islamic insurgents in the southern Philippines say the battle in Marawi has been more intense and difficult than earlier encounters. The Islamic State militants are better armed, with high-powered weapons, night vision goggles, the latest sniper scopes and surveillance drones, said Captain Arnel Carandang, of the Philippines Army First Scout Ranger Battalion. He said he has served for almost a decade in the remote jungles and mountains of Mindanao, the southern Philippines region that has long been wracked by insurgencies. Now, Carandang says, the military is in unfamiliar urban terrain. The militants have exploited the battlefield to their advantage and held off Philippines forces despite a 10-to-1 numerical advantage for the government troops. Borrowing heavily from Islamic State tactics in the Iraqi city of Mosul, they have surrounded themselves with hostages and used snipers and a network of tunnels. Marawi s underground drainage system and rat holes - crevices in the walls of high floors allowing access to adjacent buildings - have enabled the rebels to evade bombs and remain undetected, soldiers at the battlefront said. We believe there have been some foreign terrorists that have been directing their operations that s why they are, how do I define this, really good, said Carandang. We have seen some cadavers of foreigners. Some are white, some are black and some tall people we guess are Asians (from outside the Philippines). We have been hearing in their transmissions some English speaking terrorists. Hostages - many of them Christians - have been deployed to build improvised explosive devices, scavenge for food and weapons in the heat of battle and fight for the Islamist rebels, according to those who escaped. When we were first moved to the mosque, there were more than 200 of us, an escaped hostage, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons, told Reuters last week. We gradually became fewer. People would go on errands but they wouldn t come back. They either escaped or died. By the time I left, there were only about 100 of us. The account could not be verified, but military officials confirmed the man escaped from Marawi in early August. The hostage said the militants were excited by their successes in Marawi, speaking often of the advantages of urban warfare and talking about some of their next possible targets, including other cities in Mindanao and the Philippines capital Manila. They said they could hide well in the cities. They can get civilians to become hostages and it s more difficult in the mountains with only the soldiers, he said. Many of the fighters are young recruits, who are fanatical and accomplished fighters, the soldiers said. By the way they move and their tactics, you can see they ve been trained, said Colonel Jose Maria Cuerpo, deputy commander of the 103rd Brigade fighting in Marawi. For a description of how Mindanao youngsters are recruited by militants, click on [nL3N1KB1Z5] Much of this bloodshed could have been avoided, local political leaders told Reuters. Naguib Sinarimbo, a Muslim leader who has negotiated between the military and Islamic separatists for years, said he and other elders had urged the armed forces to allow militias and rival Islamist groups to take the lead in ousting the Islamic State militants. The groups were familiar with Marawi s terrain and, through family and clan links, could influence many of the fighters to lay down their weapons, they told the armed forces. The proposal was rebuffed, Sinarimbo said. Air power, the military assured them, was the path to a quick win. Zia Alonto Adiong, a provincial politician, said the military also had doubts about the loyalty of some of the political personalities offering to provide their militias to push out the fighters. The result was a city in ruins, hundreds of thousands of residents displaced and emboldened Islamists, Sinarimbo said. They proceeded with the aerial bombing but they didn t take the city, Sinarimbo said. The military lost authority. In addition, the devastation of the city will play into militants hands, creating resentment and further radicalising many youngsters, he said. Marawi residents in evacuation centers or staying with relatives elsewhere are becoming increasingly frustrated, said Adiong, who is a spokesman for the local government s crisis management authority. Some residents were disappointed and angry that requests for a moratorium on bank loan repayments had not been met, he told Reuters. Philippines central bank governor Nestor Espenilla told Reuters legislation would be needed for a debt moratorium and was being studied. Mindanao has long been marred by the decades of Muslim hostility to rule from Manila. After years fighting insurgent groups and then long negotiations, the government signed an agreement in 2014 to give Muslim majority areas in Mindanao autonomy. But the deal has been long delayed. This part of the Philippines is fertile ground to plant violent extremism, Adiong said. There is a narrative of social injustice that is strong. Young people are fed up with the peace process and nothing concrete or sustainable has developed. [The militants] use this as the basis to entice people, to get support of the local people. In Marawi, some in the armed forces are hopeful that at least some militants will surrender and hand over between 45 to 50 civilian captives. Carandang, the Scout Rangers captain, however said indications were the rebels are preparing for a bloody final stand. We are monitoring the enemy s transmissions and it s like during these final days they are being more fanatical, he said. Transmissions indicate they are preparing for suicide bombings. An unused suicide vest was discovered this month in Marawi s Grand Mosque, a former stronghold of the militants, government sources told Reuters. Suicide attacks are rare in the Philippines despite decades of Islamist insurgency. That s the difference between here and Syria and Iraq, said Ordiales, the marine general. It s almost the same war tactics and fighting tactics, the one thing that s not the same is the human bomb or the suicide bombing. It hasn t happened, not yet.

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BARCELONA (Reuters) - Catalonia s High Court has asked for Spanish national police to provide extra security at the court building in case the Catalan parliament goes ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence, the court said on Monday. The decision to ask for Spanish national police to supplement Catalan police guarding the building was taken in order to increase the security of the building and to guarantee its full and normal operation in the event of a Catalan declaration of independence from Spain, the court said in a statement.

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LONDON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump plans to visit Britain in February to open the new U.S. embassy in London but will not meet Queen Elizabeth, the Daily Mail newspaper reported on Wednesday. Trump s planned visit to Britain has proved controversial since Prime Minister Theresa May invited him for a state visit, which typically involves lavish pageantry and events hosted by the queen. However nearly 2 million people have signed a petition saying Trump should not be invited because it would cause embarrassment to the queen, and protests could be expected to greet the U.S. leader. The Daily Mail cited a source in Westminster as saying Trump had told May during a call on Tuesday that he planned a working visit to Britain to open the new embassy, a billion-dollar building which overlooks the River Thames, in late February. A spokesman for May s Downing Street office declined to comment on the report. He said the position on the state visit had not changed. An offer had been extended but no dates have been arranged. May originally invited Trump to visit by the end of 2017. Britain regards its close ties with Washington as a special relationship and a pillar of its foreign policy as it prepares to leave the European Union. However the ties have been strained in recent months, most recently when Trump sparked outrage by rebuking May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos.

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PARIS (Reuters) - France s young new president, Emmanuel Macron, said life as a world leader is less cool than it might seem, citing talks with Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan as an example. Asked by Le Point magazine in an interview if he was trying to be the new cool kid on the global stage, Macron replied: The global stage is not really a cool scene, you know. Asked to give an example, he said: I am the one who has to talk with Erdogan every 10 days. He did not elaborate. Erdogan is often criticized by leaders in Western Europe and he has clashed with the European Union over human rights and other issues. The last known conversation between Macron and Erdogan was on Aug. 27, when they discussed the fate of a French journalist jailed in Turkey. An aide to Macron later said the French president had not meant to mock or criticize his Turkish counterpart. The conversations with Mr. Erdogan are always very serious, the aide explained.

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SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Rohingya Muslims who return to Myanmar after fleeing to Bangladesh are unlikely to be able to reclaim their land, and may find their crops have been harvested and sold by the government, according to officials and plans seen by Reuters. Nearly 600,000 Rohingya have crossed the border since Aug. 25, when coordinated Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts sparked a ferocious counteroffensive by the Myanmar army. The United Nations says killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs since late August amount to a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has no control over the military, has pledged that anyone sheltering in Bangladesh who can prove they were Myanmar residents can return. Reuters has interviewed six Myanmar officials involved with repatriation and resettlement plans. While the plans are not yet finalised, their comments reflect the government s thinking on how Suu Kyi s repatriation pledge will be implemented. Jamil Ahmed, who spoke to Reuters at a refugee camp in Bangladesh, is one of many Rohingya who hope to go back. Describing how he fled his home in northern Rakhine state in late August, Ahmed said one of the few things he grabbed was a stack of papers - land contracts and receipts - that might prove ownership of the fields and crops he was leaving behind. I didn t carry any ornaments or jewels, said the 35-year-old. I ve only got these documents. In Myanmar, you need to present documents to prove everything. The stack of papers, browning and torn at the edges, may not be enough, however, to regain the land in Kyauk Pan Du village, where he grew potatoes, chilli plants, almonds and rice. It depends on them. There is no land ownership for those who don t have citizenship, said Kyaw Lwin, agriculture minister in Rakhine state, when asked in an interview whether refugees who returned to Myanmar could reclaim land and crops. Despite his land holdings, Myanmar does not recognize Ahmed as a citizen. Nearly all the more than 1 million Rohingya who lived in Myanmar before the recent exodus are stateless, despite many tracing their families in the country for generations. Officials have made plans to harvest, and possibly sell, thousands of acres of crops left behind by the fleeing Rohingya, according to state government documents reviewed by Reuters. Myanmar also intends to settle most refugees who return to Rakhine state in new model villages , rather than on the land they previously occupied, an approach criticized in the past by the United Nations as effectively creating permanent camps. The government has not asked for help from any international agencies, who are calling for any repatriation to be voluntary and to the refugees place of origin. The exodus of 589,000 Rohingya - and about 30,000 non-Muslims - from the conflict zone in northern Rakhine has left some 71,500 acres of planted rice paddy abandoned and in need of harvesting by January, according to plans drawn up by state officials. Tables in the documents, reviewed by Reuters, divide the land into paddy sown by national races - meaning Myanmar citizens - or Bengalis, a term widely used in Myanmar to refer to the Rohingya, but which they reject as implying they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Kyaw Lwin, the state minister, confirmed the plans, and said there was a total of 45,000 acres of ownerless Bengali land . Two dozen combine harvesters operated by officials from the agriculture ministry will begin cutting stalks this month in areas under military control. The machines will be able to harvest about 14,400 acres according to official calculations contained in the plans. It is unclear what will become of the remaining crop, but officials told Reuters they would try to harvest all the paddy, recruiting additional labor to harvest manually if necessary. An acre of paddy in Myanmar typically makes more than $300 at market, meaning the state will gain millions of dollars worth of rice. The harvested rice will be transported to government stores, where it would either be donated to those displaced by the conflict or sold, Rakhine state secretary Tin Maung Swe told Reuters by phone. The land was abandoned. There is no one to reap that, so the government ordered to harvest it, he said. Human Rights Watch (HRW) deputy Asia director Phil Robertson, said the government should at least guarantee that the rice would be used for humanitarian support and not for profit. You can t call a rice crop ownerless just because you used violence and arson to drive the owners out of the country, he said. Many refugees are fearful to return and are skeptical of Myanmar s guarantees. Those who do decide to cross back into Myanmar will first be received at one of two centers, according to government plans reviewed by Reuters, before mostly being relocated to model villages. International donors, who have fed and cared for more than 120,000 mostly Rohingya internally displaced persons (IDPs) in supposedly temporary camps in Rakhine since violence in 2012, have told Myanmar that they will not support more camps, according to aid workers and diplomats. The establishment of new temporary camps or camp-like settlements carries many risks, including that the returnees and IDPs could end up being confined to these camps for a long time, said U.N. spokesman Stanislav Saling in an emailed response. Satellite imagery shows 288 villages, mostly Rohingya settlements, have been fully or partially razed by fires since Aug. 25, according to HRW. Refugees say the army and Buddhist mobs were responsible for most of the arson. The government says Rohingya militants and even residents themselves burned the homes for propaganda. The hamlets where Rohingya farmers lived were not systematic , and so should be rebuilt in smaller settlements of 1,000 households set out in straight rows to enable development, said Soe Aung, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement. In some villages there are three houses here, four houses over there. For example, there s no road for fire engines when fire burns the villages, Soe Aung said. Those who decide to cross back into Myanmar will first be received at one of two centers, according to government plans reviewed by Reuters. At the centers, officials said, the returnees will fill out a 16-point form that will be cross-checked with local authorities records. Immigration officials have for years visited Rohingya households at least annually for checks, photographing family members. For refugees who lost all their documents, the government would compare their photos to those that immigration authorities have on file, said Myint Kyaing, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population. Officials will accept as evidence national verification cards handed out in an ongoing government effort to register Rohingya that falls short of offering them citizenship. The card has been widely rejected by Rohingya community leaders, who say they treat life-long residents like new immigrants. We are not going to go back like this, said Mushtaq Ahmed, 57, a farmer from Myin Hlut village now living in the Tenkhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, where Jamil Ahmed is also staying. If I can go back to my house, and get my land back, only then I will go. We invested all our money into those paddy fields. They are killing so many of us with swords and bullets, and killing the rest of us like this.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Donald Trump was being a gentleman, British Prime Minister Theresa May said, describing when the U.S. president held her hand during her visit to Washington earlier this year. In an interview with U.S. magazine Vogue, May played down the importance of the two leaders holding hands. “I think he was actually being a gentleman,” she said. “We were about to walk down a ramp, and he said it might be a bit awkward.” May was the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his inauguration as president, and her visit was hailed by her aides as a resounding success in cementing the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States. But she has been criticized by opposition lawmakers for failing to take the U.S. president to task on contentious issues in order to win promises for future trade as Britain navigates its departure from the European Union. “I like to think we got on,” she told Vogue. “We don’t comment on private conversations that take place. All I would say is, I’ve been very clear: I’m not afraid to raise issues. And the nature of the relationship is such that we should be able to be frank and open with each other.”

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LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Thursday U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital was not helpful and that the world would like to see some serious announcements from President Donald Trump on how to resolve Middle Eastern issues.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration would virtually eliminate federal funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for vehicle emissions and fuel economy testing but will seek to raise fees on industry to pay for some testing, a government document shows. The cuts would slash by more than half the staff of the EPA department that conducts vehicle, engine, and fuel testing to verify emissions standards are met and mileage stickers are accurate. Its work helped lead to Volkswagen AG’s (VOWG_p.DE) 2015 admission that it violated vehicle emissions rules for years. In a March 21 budget document posted online by the Washington Post, the Trump administration proposed eliminating $48 million in federal funding for EPA vehicle and fuel testing and certification. It represents a 99 percent federal cut to the vehicle testing budget and would require “pretty much shutting down the testing lab,” said Margo Oge, who headed the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality under President Barack Obama. The proposal, which would also cut 168 out of 304 full-time jobs, seeks to partially fund current operations by boosting fees automakers and engine manufacturers pay for testing. An EPA official confirmed the document’s authenticity. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the EPA’s budget by 31 percent and eliminating more than 50 programs. EPA spokesman John Konkus declined to answer questions about how the cuts could affect vehicle testing. “We know we can effectively serve the taxpayers and protect the environment. While many in Washington insist on greater spending, EPA is focused on greater value and real results,” Konkus said. Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an auto trade association, said automakers were concerned the proposed cuts could delay certification of new vehicles “and getting products to consumers.” Janet McCabe, a former EPA official in the Obama administration, said Monday that companies that take care to comply with the rules can be at a disadvantage without strong enforcement of the rules. “We know that a little bit of cheating can mean a lot of air pollution,” McCabe said. The administration plans to release a detailed budget plan in May. In March, Trump ordered a review of tough U.S. vehicle fuel-efficiency standards put in place by the Obama administration. The EPA stepped up scrutiny of automakers after Volkswagen admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests in 580,000 U.S. vehicles. VW agreed to pay up to $25 billion in penalties and buyback costs and pleaded guilty in March to felony charges. In September 2015, EPA said it would review emissions from all U.S. diesel vehicles after Volkswagen’s admission it used secret software to emit up to 40 times allowable emissions. That review prompted the allegation by the EPA in January that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV used undisclosed software to allow excess diesel emissions from 104,000 U.S. trucks and SUVs. Fiat Chrysler denies wrongdoing. The EPA is also scrutinizing emissions from Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz vehicles. It has not approved Daimler or Fiat Chrysler’s request to sell 2017 model diesels. The EPA has also investigated cases of several automakers overstating mileage on window stickers in recent years. In 2014, the EPA hit Korean automakers Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors Corp with $350 million in penalties for overstating fuel economy ratings.

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A local court in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou is using social media to shame people into repaying their debts, the China Daily reported on Tuesday. Citizens who ignore court repayment orders have been subjected to targeted advertisements on the popular Chinese social media app WeChat, notifying their contacts about the amount of money they owe, the paper said. It said the court in Wenzhou s Ouhai district had released the names and photos of 20 local defaulters owing a total of 10.7 million yuan ($1.61 million). Though China has sought to make more credit available to individuals in a bid to develop a consumer economy, officials have expressed concern about surging levels of household debt, which is estimated to have doubled in less than a decade to reach around 50 percent of gross domestic product. China s outstanding household consumer loans surged nearly 30 percent by the end of September from a year earlier, and the country s central bank governor recently issued a strong warning about the risks of rapidly rising debt. With no reliable nationwide credit rating system, authorities across the country are looking for ways to crack down on people who fail to repay.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has invited former FBI Director James Comey to testify at a closed hearing on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the committee’s chairman, Richard Burr, said. The invitation was extended by Burr, a Republican, and Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat. There was no immediate word on whether Comey, whom President Donald Trump dismissed from his position at the FBI on Tuesday, would appear. Comey had been due to testify before the committee both publicly and behind closed doors on Thursday, but Acting Director Andrew McCabe will now appear at the committee’s hearing on Worldwide Threats.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China wants to improve its military relationship with Singapore, but is resolutely opposed to any country having defense ties with self-ruled Taiwan, China s Defence Ministry said on Thursday, obliquely criticizing Singapore s Taiwan links. China is suspicious of the city state s good military relations both with the United States and Taiwan, claimed by China as its own. Singaporean troops train in Taiwan, despite a lack of formal diplomatic relations between the two, which has been an irritant in China-Singapore ties. Last November, Hong Kong port authorities impounded nine Singaporean armored military vehicles being shipped home from training grounds in Taiwan, leading to tensions between Singapore and China. Hong Kong later released the vehicles. Asked about a visit of Singaporean Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen to China last week and speculation this may lead Singapore to end its military training in Taiwan, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said relations with Singapore s military had been generally developing smoothly. There are high level talks, mutual visits of warships and other exchanges, which has deepened mutual understanding and achieved practical results, Wu told a monthly news briefing. China is willing to work with Singapore to create favorable conditions to develop an even more mature military relationship, he said. I also want to stress here that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. We resolutely oppose any country having any form of official exchanges with Taiwan or military links. Ng s meeting with Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan came as part of a trip to Beijing by Singapore s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, where there was no public mention of the Taiwan matter. Influential state-run Chinese newspaper the Global Times said last week that it was inevitable the military training in Taiwan would end, though it offered no proof. Taiwan is one of China s most sensitive issues. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring what it considers a wayward province under its rule. Ties across the Taiwan Strait have nosedived since Tsai Ing-wen from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won presidential elections last year. China suspects she wants to push for the island s formal independence. She says she wants to maintain peace with her giant neighbor. In recent months, Chinese air force jets have carried out a series of drills around Taiwan which have included bombers and advanced fighter jets. Spokesman Wu reiterated that the drills were routine. We will continue with such exercises, he added. Taiwan s Defence Ministry declined to comment.

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CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked to the world of digital currency to circumvent U.S.-led financial sanctions, announcing on Sunday the launch of the petro backed by oil reserves to shore up a collapsed economy. The leftist leader offered few specifics about the currency launch or how the struggling OPEC member would pull off such a feat, but he declared to cheers that the 21st century has arrived! Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency, backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said in his regular Sunday televised broadcast, a five-hour showcase of Christmas songs and dancing. The petro, he said, would help Venezuela advance in issues of monetary sovereignty, to make financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade. Opposition leaders derided the announcement, which they said needed congressional approval, and some cast doubt on whether the digital currency would ever see the light of day in the midst of turmoil. The real currency, the bolivar, is in freefall, and the country is sorely lacking in basic needs like food and medicine. Still, the announcement highlights how sanctions enacted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump s administration are hurting Venezuela s ability to move money through international banks. Washington has levied sanctions against Venezuelan officials, PDVSA executives and the country s debt issuance. Sources say compliance departments are scrutinizing transactions linked to Venezuela, which has slowed some bond payments and complicated certain oil exports. Maduro s pivot away from the U.S. dollar comes after the recent spectacular rise of bitcoin, which has been fueled by signs that the digital currency is slowly gaining traction in the mainstream investment world. The announcement bewildered some followers of cryptocurrencies, which typically are not backed by any government or central banks. Ironically, Venezuela s currency controls in recent years have spurred a bitcoin fad among tech-savvy Venezuelans looking to bypass controls to obtain dollars or make internet purchases. Maduro s government has a poor track record in monetary policy. Currency controls and excessive money printing have led to a 57 percent depreciation of the bolivar against the dollar in the last month alone on the widely used black market. That has dragged down the monthly minimum wage to a mere $4.30. For the millions of Venezuelans plunged into poverty and struggling to eat three meals a day, Maduro s announcement is unlikely to bring any immediate relief. Economists and opposition leaders say Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, has recklessly refused to overhaul Venezuela s controls and stem the economic meltdown. He could now be seeking to pay bondholders and foreign creditors in the currency amid a plan to restructure the country s major debt burden, opposition leaders said, but the plan is likely to flop. It s Maduro being a clown. This has no credibility, opposition lawmaker and economist Angel Alvarado told Reuters. I see no future in this, added fellow opposition legislator Jose Guerra. Maduro says he is trying to combat a Washington-backed conspiracy to sabotage his government and end socialism in Latin America. On Sunday he said Venezuela was facing a financial world war.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday failed to override President Barack Obama’s veto of legislation that would have dismantled his signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act. At least a two-thirds vote of the House was needed to knock down Obama’s veto; the Republican-majority House fell short by more than three dozen votes. The vote was 241-186, and ends consideration of the bill; the Senate will not take it up. The widely expected outcome was the latest chapter in the lengthy clash between Republicans and Democrats over the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” Republicans have been vowing to gut the law since 2010, when the then Democratic-majority Congress passed the landmark program designed to provide healthcare for millions of uninsured Americans. The House has voted to dismantle Obamacare dozens of times, but Republicans could not get a repeal through the Senate until late last year, when they used a procedural maneuver denying Democrats’ ability to block the legislation. Obama vetoed the bill last month; it was the eighth veto of his presidency, and none have been overridden. Republicans were anxious to show they had done everything they could to take down Obamacare, which they say has raised insurance costs and reduced health care choices. They said Tuesday that this was not the end of the story. “The end of Obamacare is coming,” predicted Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “When a Republican president takes office next year, we know we can get this passed ... Obamacare can be gone once and for all.” Such a scenario assumes, however, that the Republicans capture the White House in November elections, and maintain their majorities in the Senate and House as well. Democrats mocked Republicans, saying they were proposing to deprive millions of their health insurance without a replacement. About 11.3 Americans have signed up this year for insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. “While we have voted as of today 63 times to dismantle it, how many times have we voted to replace it? Zero! Zero times to replace it!” declared Representative Chris van Hollen, a Democrat. The bill also would have taken funds away from Planned Parenthood, another target of Republican criticism after undercover videos showed the women’s healthcare provider discussing the use of fetus parts for research. Two anti-abortion activists behind the filming of the videos were indicted by a Texas grand jury last month, while the jury cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Texas Governor Rick Perry has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and is open to being his running mate, CNN reported on Thursday. In September, Perry was the first member of the initially crowded Republican field to drop out of the 2016 White House race, following a failed bid in the 2012 race. The longest-serving governor in Texas history had languished near the bottom of the 17-strong Republican presidential pack since entering the current race in June. Trump is now the last one left and the presumptive Republican nominee.

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - At least 33 people died in the Kenyan capital Nairobi during a police crackdown on opposition supporters after elections in August, including a child and a pregnant woman, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said on Monday. Protests erupted after President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared winner over opposition leader Raila Odinga in the vote. The Supreme Court later voided the result. Odinga has withdrawn from a re-run on Oct. 26, leaving Kenyatta as the only candidate, prompting further protests. Kenyan police disputed the rights groups report, which brings the nationwide death toll in the crackdown to at least 45. Human Rights Watch had earlier documented 12 killings after the vote by police in western Kenya, the main opposition stronghold. HRW and Amnesty said police in Nairobi had used excessive force and that most of (the 33 who died) were killed as a result of action by the police. Among them was a nine-year-old child shot dead while standing on a balcony and a woman who was eight months pregnant and was trampled to death after fainting from inhaling tear gas, the rights groups said in the report. Kenya s National Police Service said in a statement the report was totally misleading and based on falsehoods. Immediately after the violence in August, police said only criminals and thugs had been killed or injured. The report is likely to bolster the case of Kenyan activists and rights groups who accuse police of brutality and extrajudicial killings but say few officers are charged and convictions are extremely rare. Researchers found that although police behaved appropriately in some instances, in many others they shot or beat protesters to death, the groups said in the report. On Thursday the government banned demonstrations in the central business district of Nairobi, the coastal city of Mombasa and the western city of Kisumu, where protesters had been gathering twice a week, calling on the election board to make reforms to ensure a fair poll. Police had used tear gas to disperse them.[L8N1MO1O3] A group of U.N. human rights experts called for the government s ban on protests to be listed and denounced a pattern of police brutality in response to recent demonstrations. During the violence the parents of a six-month-old baby in western Kenya told Reuters their child was clubbed by police in her home and died later in hospital from brain trauma. Kenya receives financial support for security from the United States, Britain and other international donors.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has made too many troubling statements recently that lend uncertainty over its ties with the United States and are at odds with their alliance, the White House said on Thursday. “We’ve seen too many troubling public statements from President Duterte over the last several months,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a daily press briefing. “And the frequency of that rhetoric has added an element of unnecessary uncertainty into our relationship that doesn’t advance the interests of either country.”

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LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday she would stay on as leader to provide stability after a former chairman of her Conservative Party said he had garnered the support of 30 lawmakers who wanted her to quit. May is trying to face down a rebellion by some of her own lawmakers just as Britain enters a crucial stage in Brexit talks, 18 months before the country leaves the European Union and must redefine its place in the world. Some Conservative plotters say her authority is shattered beyond repair after a disastrous speech at her party s conference, which comes after she called a snap election and lost her party its majority in parliament. Speaking from her parliamentary constituency of Maidenhead in southern England, May said in a televised statement: What the country needs is calm leadership and that s what I m providing with the full support of my cabinet. Senior ministers rallied around May, who has just over a year to agree a divorce deal with the EU ahead of Britain s exit in March 2019. May said she planned to hold a scheduled meeting about Brexit with business leaders on Monday in Downing Street. But former party chairman Grant Shapps told BBC radio: I think she should call a leadership election. After May s bungled election, her failure to unite the cabinet and a poor party conference the writing is on the wall, he said. May s authority was already diminished by her decision to call a snap election in June that lost her party its majority in parliament days before Brexit talks opened. Though no Conservative ministers have publicly indicated any support for the plot, such a blunt demand for May to quit indicates the extent of her weakness while she attempts to navigate the intricacies of the negotiations to leave the EU. Her survival has so far been dependent on the absence of an obvious successor who could unite the party and the fear of an election that many Conservatives think would let opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn into power. Sterling fell earlier in the day but then rallied by around a quarter of a cent against the U.S. dollar following May s remarks. It later fell after U.S. payrolls data was released. May s speech to activists on Wednesday was ruined by coughing fits, a comedian handing her a bogus employment termination notice and by letters falling off the slogans on the set behind her. She had hoped to use the speech to her party in the northern English city of Manchester to revive her premiership. Look, I ve had a cold all this week, May said, adding that she would be updating lawmakers next week on her Brexit plans and introducing a draft bill to cap domestic energy prices. Shapps, who chaired the party between 2012 and 2015, said the plot to remove her existed before this week s party conference and included both supporters and opponents of Brexit. He said the group did not have a unified view on who should replace May. However, grassroots Conservative members did not share his desire for a change in leadership, said James Pearson, Vice President of the National Conservative Convention which represents the party s voluntary wing. I don t think there s much support in the Conservative Party for Grant Shapps. I don t see this as anything that s really serious to be honest, Pearson told Reuters. The general feeling is we don t have the time or the appetite for a lengthy leadership election, nor do we actually want it, Pearson, who sits on the Conservatives Board, the party s ultimate decision-making body, added. To trigger a formal leadership challenge, 48 Conservative lawmakers need to write to the chairman of the party s so-called 1922 committee. Number 10 must be delighted to learn that it s Grant Shapps leading this alleged coup, Charles Walker, vice-chairman of the 1922 committee, told BBC radio. Grant has many talents, but one thing he doesn t have is a following in the party, so really I think this is now just going to fizzle out to be perfectly honest. If May stays, talks on leaving the European Union will be guided by one of the weakest leaders in recent British history. EU diplomats and officials expressed astonishment about the uncertainty in London. Supporters, including her most senior ministers, said she should remain in charge to deliver Brexit. Under the headline Theresa May will stay as Prime Minister and get the job done, interior minister Amber Rudd wrote in The Telegraph newspaper that she should stay . May s de facto deputy Damian Green said she would carry on. Environment Secretary Michael Gove also said he hoped she would continue. I know that she is as determined as ever to get on with the job, she sees it as her duty to do so and she will carry on and she will make a success of this government, Green, the first secretary of state, told BBC television. Many Conservative activists fear a leadership contest would exacerbate the divide in the party over Europe, an issue that helped sink the previous three Conservative prime ministers - David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher. A leadership contest could also pave the way for an election that some Conservatives worry could be won by Corbyn, whom they cast as a Marxist who would reverse decades of free market policies. The Conservatives have no plan for Britain and their posturing will not deliver the change our country is crying out for, Corbyn said on Friday.

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis’s suggestion that Donald Trump was “not Christian” because of his views on immigration was not a personal attack on the U.S. Republican presidential candidate, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said on Friday. Lombardi told Vatican Radio that the pope’s comments, made to reporters during a flight back from Mexico in response to a specific question on Trump, were simply an affirmation of his long-standing belief that migrants should be helped rather than shut off behind walls. “In no way was this a personal attack, nor an indication of how to vote,” Lombardi said. Trump, the longtime Republican party front-runner in opinion polls, dismissed the pope as “disgraceful” for questioning his faith. He has said that if elected president in November, he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to keep out immigrants who enter illegally. Lombardi said the pope believed people “should build bridges, not walls”. He added: “This is his general view, which is very consistent with courageously following the indications of the gospel on offering welcome and solidarity.”

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Adolfo Lagos, the head of struggling Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa s telecoms unit izzi, was shot dead on Sunday on the outskirts of Mexico City, the state attorney general s office said in a statement. The attorney general s office for the State of Mexico, which surrounds the capital, said it was investigating the homicide near the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids. It said Lagos was on a bicycle when he was shot. He died in hospital from his wounds. Press reports said Lagos died after group of men tried to steal his bike. In his Twitter profile photo, Lagos is shown riding a bike. The attorney general s office could not immediately be reached for comment. Grupo Televisa profoundly laments the death of izzi Director Adolfo Lagos Espinosa that took place in the State of Mexico. Our condolences to his wife, daughters and family members, the company wrote on Twitter. izzi offers phone, internet and cable television services. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took to Twitter to offer his condolences, saying that the federal attorney general s office would help state prosecutors investigate. The death of Lagos, a well-known former banker, is a fresh pain for Televisa, which is struggling with declining ad sales and tough competition from the widespread move to online video. The company s longtime chief executive will step down next year, the company said last month, and Televisa has also faced U.S. allegations that it was among media companies that paid bribes to secure television rights for soccer matches. The testimony came during the first trial to emerge from the U.S. investigation of bribery surrounding FIFA, soccer s world governing body.

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(Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday called for a “21st century” version of the 1933 Glass-Steagall law that required the separation of commercial and investment banking, a change the Republican Party also supported in its 2016 policy platform. Trump gave no details about his banking plan other than to say he would prioritize “helping African American businesses get the credit they need.” Democrat Hillary Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, signed legislation in 1999 that repealed Glass-Steagall. U.S. banking law was comprehensively revised by the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010 as a response to the financial crisis of 2008.

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BARCELONA (Reuters) - Catalan regional leader Carles Puigdemont accused Spanish authorities of using unjustified, disproportionate and irresponsible violence in a crackdown on a Catalan independence referendum on Sunday. The batons, rubber bullets and violence used by Spanish police to prevent voting in what Spanish authorities have said was an illegal referendum had shown a dreadful external image of Spain , he told reporters. The unjustified, disproportionate and irresponsible violence of the Spanish state today has not only failed to stop Catalans desire to vote ... but has helped to clarify all the doubts we had to resolve today, he said.

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ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday it does not know where President-elect Donald Trump got his figure of more than $4 billion to replace the Air Force One plane that transports presidents, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Trump urged the federal government on Tuesday to cancel an order with Boeing Co to develop a new Air Force One, saying costs were more than $4 billion and “out of control.” “Some of the statistics that have been cited, shall we say, don’t appear to reflect the nature of the financial arrangement between Boeing and the Department of Defense,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to work together on steps to counter North Korea s nuclear and missile development, ahead of the U.S. leader s visit to Asia, the Japanese government said late on Monday. In a 20-minute phone call, Trump and Abe discussed the schedule of the president s coming visit, which includes a Nov. 5-7 stop in Japan, and agreed to remain in close contact over North Korea, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters. Trump told Abe he is looking forward to his visit to Japan, that Japan and America are 100 percent together and there is no room to doubt the Japan-U.S. alliance, Nishimura said. They agreed to deepen their discussions on the North Korean situation and other matters during Trump s visit, he said.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - A workaholic keen swimmer with an extensive knowledge of foreign literature China s state news agency Xinhua on Friday cracked open the door to President Xi Jinping s private life in an unusual and glowing profile. The private lives of senior Chinese leaders have traditionally been shrouded in secrecy, and tell-all books with juicy gossip strictly off limits. But since Xi took power five years ago the government has on occasion released personal details, as it seems both to burnish his image as an approachable man of the people who will lead China to greatness, and control the narrative about who he is. Xi emerged from a twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress last month with his power ever further cemented and key allies appointed to top new positions. In a lengthy story published in Chinese and English in the early hours of Friday, Xinhua hailed Xi as the unrivalled helmsman , a term more frequently used to refer to the founder of modern China Mao Zedong rather than any other leaders. Wherever he works, he makes a remarkable impact, Xinhua said. While some of the anecdotes have previously been reported by state media - like his 2014 stroll around old Beijing alleyways during one of the city s periodic smog crises - others were new. Xi personally reviews every draft of major policy documents, sentence by sentence, Xinhua said. Sources close to him told Xinhua that all reports submitted to him, no matter how late in the evening, were returned with instructions the following morning. But he also takes time out of his busy schedule to swim over 1,000 meters a time , it added, without saying how often he manages to fit this in. Xi can reel off the names of foreign, especially Russian, writers, and his extensive knowledge of literature and the arts makes him a consummate communicator in the international arena . Xi treats everyone with sincerity, warmth, attentiveness, and forthrightness, it said. However, underscoring China s sensitivities about more difficult parts of its recent past, the Chinese version of the profile skipped a description of the suffering inflicted on Xi s father Xi Zhongxun during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, when Mao declared class war. In 1962, Xi Zhongxun s 16 years of suffering from political persecution began. However, he never gave in to adversity and ultimately helped clear the names of others who were persecuted, Xinhua said in its English profile. When his father was wronged, Xi Jinping went through some tough times, it added, without elaborating. Public discussion of the Cultural Revolution is generally taboo in China.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s nominee to head the CIA sought on Thursday to repair damage from the president-elect’s feud with U.S. intelligence agencies, saying he accepted their findings on Russian hacking, would not comply if ordered to renew use of harsh interrogation techniques and would always “have their backs.” Mike Pompeo’s testimony at his Senate confirmation hearing appeared aimed at reassuring staff at the agency he has been picked to lead, even at the risk of contradicting or distancing himself from some of Trump’s strongest criticism of the intelligence community. Diverging from Trump’s stated aim of seeking closer ties with Russia, Pompeo accused the Russian leadership of “aggressive action” in meddling in the November U.S. elections, of “asserting itself aggressively” by occupying part of Ukraine and of doing “doing nearly nothing” to destroy Islamic State. Pompeo, a Republican member of the House of Representatives and a former U.S. Army officer, insisted that if necessary he would be ready to stand up to Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, and would shield CIA operatives against any effort to politicize its work. “You have my commitment that every day, I will not only speak truth to power, but I will demand that the men and the women (of the CIA) ... follow my instruction to do that each and every day,” he said. For weeks, the Republican president-elect questioned the intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia used hacking and other tactics to try to tilt the election in his favor - an unprecedented breach between an incoming U.S. leader and the intelligence operatives he will soon command. Trump said on Wednesday that Russia was behind the hacking but that other countries were hacking the United States as well. Asked about the hacking, Pompeo said he was very clear about what he called an “aggressive action” ordered by the Russian leadership, and accepted the U.S. intelligence report on the matter. “I’ve seen nothing to cast any doubt on the findings in the report,” he said. Trump this week also furiously denounced intelligence officials for what he said were leaks to the media by intelligence agencies of a dossier that makes unverified, salacious allegations about his contacts in Russia. By contrast, Pompeo voiced strong support for the agency, saying he has seen Central Intelligence Agency staff “walk through fire.” He said he understood it would be a problem “if folks were afraid there would be political retribution” and promised “to have their backs at every single moment. You have my word I will do that.” Pompeo also signaled he would stand firm if necessary against Trump on the issue of enhanced interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects. Such techniques, which were introduced under President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, are widely regarded as torture and their use has been banned by Congress. Trump said during the election campaign the United States should bring back tactics such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, although since the election he has said he has heard arguments against such methods. Asked about the issue, Pompeo said that he would “absolutely not” restart enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA if asked by the president-elect. He noted it would take a change in the law for the CIA to use interrogation techniques that go beyond those permitted by the Army, adding he could not imagine that Trump would order the CIA to use illegal methods. Pompeo, a conservative lawmaker from Kansas who is on the House Intelligence Committee, emphasized that he would be a neutral assessor of challenges and threats. In opening remarks he said he understood that if confirmed his role would switch from policymaker to provider of information. Noting that the CIA does not make policy on any country, he added, “it is a policy decision as to what to do with Russia, but it will be essential that the Agency provide policymakers with accurate intelligence and clear-eyed analysis of Russian activities.” Equally, he said that he would drop the opposition he has had as a lawmaker to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers. He said the CIA must be “rigorously fair and objective” in assessing the deal. But he called the Iranians “professionals at cheating” and said he would work to improve U.S. capability to detect violations of Tehran’s commitment to curb its nuclear activities. He called Iran an “emboldened, disruptive player in the Middle East, fuelling tensions” with Sunni Muslim allies of the United States. Pompeo listed it among the challenges facing the United States along with what he called a “resilient” Islamic State and the fallout from Syria’s long civil war. Pompeo also named North Korea, which he said had “dangerously accelerated its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.” He said China was creating “real tensions” with its activities in the South China Sea and in cyberspace as it flexed its muscles and expanded its military and economic reach.

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress should discipline President Jacob Zuma for bringing the party into disrepute, housing minister and presidential hopeful Lindiwe Sisulu said on Friday. Sisulu s comments are the latest swipe taken at Zuma by former allies as the ANC fractures ahead of an elective conference in December where a new party leader will be chosen. Zuma can remain head of state until a 2019 parliamentary election. Sisulu, a veteran cabinet minister who comes from a prominent family in the struggle against apartheid, is seen as an outside bet to succeed Zuma. She said a report presented at the ANC s policy conference in July found that scandals surrounding Zuma had caused tensions and disquiet within the party. If we all agreed at the policy conference that that is what happened to the president, why was he not taken through a disciplinary process? Sisulu told Eyewitness News, a domestic news service. I have been insisting that there must be a disciplinary process so that if there is an interpretation that you put the ANC into disrepute, that is an offense. Spokesmen for Sisulu and Zuma did not respond to calls for comment. Members of the ANC have called for Zuma to step down in recent months following a series of corruption scandals, a much-criticized cabinet reshuffle and a failure to handle an economy that slipped into recession this year. Lawmaker Makhosi Khoza, a strident critic of Zuma, quit the ANC on Thursday, labeling Nelson Mandela s 105-year-old liberation movement alien and corrupt . Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma, former chair of the African Union and Zuma s ex-wife, and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa are viewed as the frontrunners to take over as ANC leader. Dlamini-Zuma has the support of Zuma s powerful faction within the ANC while unionist-turned-business tycoon Ramaphosa is more popular with investors.

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SARANDE, Albania (Reuters) - Whatever the outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election, the Albanian town of Sarande is backing Hillary Clinton by erecting a bronze bust to thank her for supporting Albanian causes. Albania is a staunch ally of the United States and has a history of commemorating its presidents. Woodrow Wilson has a statue there for helping foster the young Albanian state. So does George W. Bush, who visited Albania in 2007 and backed the independence of Kosovo, whose population is mainly ethnic Albanian. Bill Clinton has a statue in Kosovo in recognition of his role in the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 in support of Kosovo. “This bust in our most central public space is an expression of our gratitude through Mrs. Clinton to the American people and state for what they have done for the Albanian people and nation,” Sarande Mayor Florjana Koka told a small crowd. It was also a tribute to Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, as an example to women in politics, said Koka, the first female mayor of Sarande. American tourist Jessica Rightmayer wiped away tears as the U.S. national anthem was played. “I think it is beautiful and I really think it is a very good likeness,” she said. Sculptor Idriz Balani said the idea for the statue came to him when Hillary Clinton told the Albanian parliament in 2012 that Albania and the United States had together marked the Balkan country’s first centenary and would be friends for another 100 years. Her “charm, elegance and vitality” had convinced him to sculpt her. “I used three photos to get her smile, hair, posture and attire right and kept the necklace. She exudes benevolence. I hope they like it,” Balani told Reuters.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is expected to nominate attorney John Sullivan as deputy secretary of state, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing U.S. officials familiar with the discussions. Sullivan, 57, has been a partner in the Washington office of law firm Mayer Brown and served in the George W. Bush administration in senior roles in the Commerce Department and the Defense Department, the Journal reported. He was initially picked to become general counsel at the Pentagon, but the Trump administration recently decided to nominate him for the No. 2 post at the State Department, the Journal quoted the officials as saying.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - The more sanctions the United States and its allies impose on North Korea, the faster it will move to complete its nuclear plans, the reclusive nation s official KCNA news agency said on Monday, citing a foreign ministry spokesman. The latest sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council represent the most vicious, unethical and inhumane act of hostility to physically exterminate the people of the DPRK, let alone its system and government, the spokesman said on Monday, using the North s official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a U.S.-drafted resolution a week ago mandating tougher new sanctions against Pyongyang that included banning textile imports and capping crude and petrol supply.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department filed an appeal late Saturday to restore President Donald Trump’s immigration order barring citizens from seven mainly Muslim countries and temporarily banning refugees, even as travelers raced to enter the country while the ban was lifted. The government moved to reverse a federal judge’s Friday order that lifted the travel ban and warned the decision posed an immediate harm to the public, thwarted enforcement of an executive order and “second-guesses the president’s national security judgment about the quantum of risk posed by the admission of certain classes of (non-citizens) and the best means of minimizing that risk.” Friday’s ruling prompted Trump to denounce the “so-called” judge in a series of tweets on Saturday.. The appeal now goes to a three-judge panel which can act at anytime to uphold the order or suspend it pending a full appeal. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment beyond the filing. A ruling could come at any time. Seattle U.S. District Judge James Robart’s decision barred the administration from enforcing the sweeping order that also indefinitely barred Syrian refugee admissions and prompted large protests across the United States. Trump, whose personal attack on Robart, decrying his opinion as “ridiculous,” went too far for some who said the president was undermining an institution designed to check the power of the White House and Congress, said he was confident the government would prevail. “We’ll win. For the safety of the country, we’ll win,” he told reporters in Florida. Robart’s ruling came in a case brought by the state attorney general of Washington state and was backed by major state employers Amazon.com Inc and Expedia Inc.. The lawsuit is one of several now filed against the Trump executive order around the United States, but it was the first case leading to a broad decision that applies nationwide. The Justice Department appeal criticized Robart’s legal reasoning, saying it violates the separation of powers and steps on the president’s authority as commander chief. The appeal said the state of Washington lacked standing to challenge the order and denied that the order “favors Christians at the expense of Muslims.” Congress gave the president “the unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class” of visitor, the Justice Department wrote. “Courts are particularly ill-equipped to second-guess the president’s prospective judgment about future risks,” the appeal said, calling the decision “vastly overbroad.” Washington state lawyers worked around the clock last weekend against the backdrop of turbulent scenes at U.S. airports, where immigrants were detained by federal officials unprepared to implement the president’s directive. A spokesman for Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson didn’t immediately comment early Sunday. The U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security said they were complying with Robart’s order and many visitors are expected to start arriving on Sunday, while the government said it expects to begin admitting refugees again on Monday. A decision to reinstate Trump’s order could again cause havoc at U.S. airports because some visitors are in transit, as was the case when the order took effect on Jan. 27. As the ban lifted Friday, refugees and thousands of travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen who had been stopped in their tracks last weekend by the executive order scrambled to get flights to quickly enter the United States. The panel that will decide whether to immediately block the ruling includes three judges appointed by former Republican president George W. Bush and two former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. U.S. immigration advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union on Saturday in a joint statement urged those with now valid visas from the seven nations “to consider rebooking travel to the United States immediately” because the ruling could be overturned or put on hold. A U.S. State Department email reviewed by Reuters said the department is working to begin admitting refugees including Syrians as soon as Monday. Trump’s Jan. 27 order had barred admission of citizens from seven majority Muslim nations for 90 days, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and indefinitely barred Syrian refugees. It is unusual for a president to attack a member of the judiciary, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check to the power of the executive branch and Congress. Reached by email Saturday, Robart declined comment on Trump’s tweets. Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in a statement Saturday that Trump’s “hostility toward the rule of law is not just embarrassing, it is dangerous. He seems intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.” In an interview with ABC scheduled to air Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said he did not think that Trump’s criticisms of the judge undermined the separation of powers. The court ruling was the first move in what could be months of legal challenges to Trump’s push to clamp down on immigration. The sudden reversal of the ban catapulted would-be immigrants back to airports, with uncertainty over how long the window to enter the United States will remain open. In Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Fuad Sharef and his family prepared to fly on Saturday to Istanbul and then New York before starting a new life in Nashville, Tennessee. Virtually all refugees also were barred by Trump’s order, upending the lives of thousands of people who have spent years seeking asylum in the United States.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Allan Landon prepared for his job at the Federal Reserve for two-and-a-half years during the Obama administration before his nomination sank into the partisan quicksand of Washington D.C., a swamp which has only deepened under President Donald Trump, leaving more vacancies than ever at the top of the U.S. federal government. Former U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Landon as a Fed governor in early 2015. With the community-banking experience sought by the Republicans who controlled Congress and a non-partisan background, he should have avoided any political pitfalls on the way to Senate confirmation. Landon, a former Bank of Hawaii chief executive, began preparing for the job immediately after the White House’s initial phone call in mid-2014. He sold assets, stepped back from university lecturing and corporate boards, met Fed Chair Janet Yellen and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and even attended a Senate confirmation hearing to study for his own. But his confirmation hearing never came. Neither the Republican Senator who chaired the key committee, Richard Shelby, nor his staff met with Landon, he said in an interview. While not bitter, he was left disillusioned by an increasingly political nomination system that can block promising candidates from public service, leaving top jobs unfilled at agencies and departments across Washington. “Along the way you run into some things that are hard to understand if you are outside the system,” Landon, 69, told Reuters from his home in Park City, Utah. “It requires a level of trust and confidence, and when you wait two years you conclude that maybe that really never existed.” Republican party control of both the White House and the congressional committees that approve nominees has not solved these problems during the Trump administration. A dearth of nominations by Trump, hearings delayed by Democrats, and disinterest by prospective candidates has left most of the 577 key federal government positions requiring Senate confirmation unfilled. According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, an organization whose mission is to inspire a new generation of civil servants, Trump had nominated 277 people to these top government positions by Wednesday, compared to 433 nominees at this point in Obama’s first presidential term, and 414 in that of President George W. Bush. Obama and Bush each had more than twice as many nominees confirmed at this point than does Trump, who has 124. Big staffing vacancies remain at the U.S. departments of State, Justice and Defense, and some high-profile names have backed down after having been nominated. Three vacancies remain at the Federal Reserve, which has not had a full slate of seven board governors for more than a decade. “It’s a brutal, long road and it seems to be getting worse,” former Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said of the nomination process. As part of his vetting in late 2014, in which he and his wife almost leased a home in the trendy Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington D.C., Landon said he “felt an obligation to help” when he realized the sitting Fed governors were doing the jobs of two or three people. “You wish there were a more certain path to the job,” he said. (For a graphic of the Fed's doves and hawks, click here)

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KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - A Saudi man was arrested for allegedly threatening to attack women drivers, the Interior Ministry said on Friday, following a royal decree that ends a ban on women driving in the kingdom. Many Saudis welcomed Tuesday s announcement by King Salman lifting the ban by next year, but some expressed confusion or outrage after the reversal of a policy that has been backed for decades by prominent clerics. The ministry said on Twitter that police in the kingdom s Eastern Province had arrested the suspect, who was not identified, and referred him to the public prosecutor. I swear to God, any woman whose car breaks down - I will burn her and her car, said a man wearing a traditional white robe who appeared in a short video distributed online earlier in the week. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the video. Saudi media, including the Arabic-language Okaz newspaper, quoted the Eastern Province s police spokesman as saying the man in custody was in his 20s and that the arrest had been ordered by its governor. Separately, Okaz reported late on Thursday that authorities directed the interior minister to prepare an anti-harassment law within 60 days. The directions cited the danger posed by harassment ...and its contradiction with the values of Islam . Saudi authorities have in the past taken a broad view of sexual harassment, including attempts by men to get to know unrelated women by asking to exchange phone numbers or commenting on their beauty. In a country where gender segregation has been strictly enforced for decades in keeping with the austere Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam, the end of the driving ban means women will have more contact with unrelated men, such as fellow drivers and traffic police. The ban is a conservative tradition that limits women s mobility and has been seen by rights activists as an emblem of their suppression. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that still bans women from driving.

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