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SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Thursday practical and forceful measures than can inflict pain on North Korea should be included in U.N. sanctions, a new batch of which have yet to be announced. Foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told reporters the measures should be taken in addition to surely severing funds that can be used for the North s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to impose an oil embargo on North Korea, ban its exports of textiles and the hiring of North Korean laborers abroad, and subject leader Kim Jong Un to an asset freeze and travel ban, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

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KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited the war-torn Darfur region on Tuesday in an effort to show his country is ready to have 20-year-old sanctions lifted by the United States just weeks before Washington is expected to issue a decision. In July the Trump administration postponed for three months the decision to permanently lift sanctions, setting Oct. 12 as a deadline for Sudan to meet conditions, including resolving conflicts and stepping up its humanitarian efforts. Conflict in Darfur began in 2003 when mainly non-Arab tribes took up arms against Sudan s Arab-led government. A joint African Union-U.N. peacekeeping operation, known as UNAMID, has been on the ground for the past decade. Fighting between the army and rebels in the southern Kordofan and Blue Nile regions also broke out again in 2011, when South Sudan declared independence. Sudan had announced short-term truces in these regions in June and October 2016, after which fighting eased in Blue Nile and Kordofan but carried on in Darfur. Bashir has extended a ceasefire in response to the U.S. moves. After security and stability, comes development, Bashir said in a speech. He said Darfur s security has begun recovering and insisted that arms will only be in the hands of state forces. Just before leaving office, former U.S. President Barack Obama temporarily eased penalties against Sudan, suspending a trade embargo, unfreezing assets and removing sanctions. His decision was delayed for six months to allow Sudan time to meet the conditions which also included cooperating with the U.S. to fight terrorism and improving its rights record. Gabriel Belal, the spokesman of the Justice and Equality movement, one of the main rebel groups in Darfur, criticized Bashir s two-day visit, saying it aimed to give a wrong image to the international community that the war was over. Bashir s visit is not welcomed by the people of Darfur because he personally issued direct orders for ethnic cleansing, Belal said. Security, humanitarian and political conditions are tense in Darfur and there s no prospect for a political resolution.

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((In March 30 item, corrects spelling of Kislyak in paragraph 3)) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has offered to testify before congressional committees probing potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia but wants protection against “unfair prosecution,” his lawyer said on Thursday. “General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” said a statement from Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner. Testimony from Flynn could help shed light on the conversations he had with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak last year when he was the national security adviser for Trump’s presidential campaign. Kelner said discussions had taken place about Flynn’s availability to testify with officials of the intelligence committees of both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Both committees are investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election campaign last year as well as possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russians. Flynn was forced to resign as Trump’s national security adviser in February for failing to disclose talks with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office about U.S. sanctions on Moscow and misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. Questions remain about the scope of the discussions and what other contacts took place between other Trump advisers with the Russians. Earlier this week, the White House disclosed that Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, met executives of Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank, or VEB, in December. U.S. intelligence agencies have said Russia hacked emails of senior Democrats and orchestrated the release of embarrassing information in a bid to tip the presidential election in favor of Trump, whose views were seen as more in line with the Moscow’s. Russia has denied the allegations. Trump has dismissed suggestions of links with Moscow as Democratic sour grapes for losing the election. The Wall Street Journal, citing officials with knowledge of the matter, reported on Thursday that Flynn had sought immunity from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the House and Senate intelligence panels in exchange for his testimony. The newspaper said he had so far found no takers. The House denied the Journal report. “Michael Flynn has not offered to testify to HPSCI in exchange for immunity,” committee spokesman Jack Langer said in a statement. The FBI declined to comment. The Senate committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kelner’s statement did not mention the FBI. He said Flynn “is now the target of unsubstantiated public demands by Members of Congress and other political critics that he be criminally investigated.” Kelner said Flynn would not “submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.”Independent Senator Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN he could not confirm the Journal report, but “if that turns out to be the case, that’s a significant development I believe because it indicates that he has something important to say.”

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OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday reshuffled his cabinet to put more emphasis on helping aboriginal people, who complain he has broken repeated promises to improve their lives. Trudeau is splitting the federal indigenous and northern affairs ministry in two, with the most important role given to Jane Philpott, who has been praised across the political spectrum in her previous job as health minister. Trudeau, who took office in 2015 promising to repair ties with Canada s 1.4 million aboriginals, said the former ministry had been designed in an earlier colonial era when governments dictated to indigenous peoples rather than talking to them. There s a sense we have pushed the creaky old structures around (the ministry) about as far as they can go ... it could not deliver the reconciliation that we need, Trudeau told reporters after the reshuffle. Philpott will become the minister of indigenous services, in charge of overseeing steps to boost living standards. Carolyn Bennett, who headed the old ministry, will be responsible for ties between Ottawa and aboriginal groups. Aboriginals make up about four percent of the population. Many are mired in poverty and crime and suffer from bad health, exacerbated by widespread lack of access to safe drinking water. Suicides have plagued several isolated towns. Indigenous activists say despite Trudeau s pledges, which include billions of dollars in new spending, they have seen little improvement on the ground. A group of aboriginals mounted a high-profile protest to disrupt the July 1 Canada Day festivities, erecting a tent on Parliament Hill. The Association of First Nations umbrella organization for aboriginals said the changes announced by Trudeau were a significant step. Despite the negative publicity, public opinion polls show Trudeau s Liberals still command a healthy lead. The next election is scheduled for October 2019. In all, the shuffle involved six ministers. Political insiders told Reuters in late May that Trudeau would change his cabinet to revive a flagging agenda. In another significant move, Trudeau promoted sports minister Carla Qualtrough to be the new public works and procurement minister. She replaces Judy Foote, who quit last week for personal reasons. Qualtrough s biggest task will be to sort out a trouble-plagued bid to buy a new fleet of fighter jets.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, asked on Thursday about his participation in any investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign, said he would recuse himself when “appropriate,” NBC News reported. “Whenever it’s appropriate I will recuse myself, there’s no doubt about that,” Sessions told the network, after saying: “I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss any political campaign.” U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called on Sessions to resign on Wednesday after the Washington Post reported he failed to disclose two meetings he had with Russia’s ambassador before Donald Trump was inaugurated as president.

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CHARLESTON, W. Va. (Reuters) - Don Blankenship, the former CEO of coal company Massey Energy who was recently released from jail after a sentence for violating mine safety laws, said on Wednesday he plans to run for U.S. Senate representing West Virginia. “It’s true,” he told Reuters in an email, without elaborating. Local broadcaster WCHS-TV first reported the news earlier on Wednesday, saying Blankenship filed his registration papers this week to run as a Republican, making him an official candidate for the seat during 2018 elections. A Federal Election Commission spokeswoman said she had not yet seen the filing. Blankenship was sentenced to a year in prison in April 2016 for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards, following an explosion in 2010 at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 people. He is the most prominent American coal executive to be jailed for mine deaths. He was released in May 2017. He has maintained that his conviction was unfair and the accident at Upper Big Branch was distorted by the media. If Blankenship wins the Republican nomination, he would be up against incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin, who was governor at the time of the Upper Big Branch explosion and vehemently criticized Blankenship over the incident. Rival Republican Senate candidate Patrick Morrisey said he welcomed Blankenship’s entry into the race.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is ramping up his search for a new chief for the U.S. central bank, meeting with former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh and three others and promising a decision next month. “I’ve had four meetings for Fed chairman and I’ll be making a decision over the next two or three weeks,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn. Trump has previously suggested he may reappoint Fed Chair Janet Yellen to the post. Jerome Powell, one of the current governors on the Fed’s board, also met with Trump earlier this week about the Fed job, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Trump on Friday did not provide details on his meetings. A new Fed chair would take the helm as the central bank eases well away from crisis-era policies in response to a strengthening economy and falling unemployment, though inflation still lingers below the Fed’s 2-percent goal. Under Yellen, the Fed has raised interest rates and launched a plan to shrink its $4.5 trillion balance sheet. Much of the latter was accumulated through a controversial bond-buying program that Yellen said helped the economy avert an even deeper downturn. Her term as chair expires in February. Warsh was a Fed governor between 2006 and 2011 and resigned from the board because of his opposition to the bond-buying program. He has called for a revamp of how the Fed makes monetary policy, saying it needs “fresh air” from markets and from the “real economy.” Treasury yields spurted higher on news of the Trump meetings; Warsh is viewed as more of a hawk than Yellen. “He’s definitely more hawkish on the spectrum. He is quite a contrast to Yellen. It does seem he is the front-runner even though it’s not a sure thing he will be nominated,” Gennadiy Goldberg, interest rates strategist at TD Securities in New York, said of Warsh. As recently as July, Trump had not ruled out reappointing Yellen, telling the Wall Street Journal that he liked her demeanor and desire to keep interest rates low. In addition to Warsh and Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor’s name also has been floated as a contender. Powell specialized in financial regulatory matters during his five years on the Fed Board of Governors, which is led by the Fed chair. There has also been speculation that Trump could turn to his top economic aide, Gary Cohn, for the Fed chair position. A Fed spokesman declined to comment on the process while Warsh and Taylor did not respond to requests for comment.

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GENEVA (Reuters) - Bangladesh called on Myanmar on Monday to allow nearly 1 million Rohingya Muslim refugees to return home under safe conditions, saying that the burden had become untenable on its territory. About 600,000 people have crossed the border since Aug. 25 when Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts were met by a counter-offensive by the Myanmar army in Rakhine state which the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing. This is an untenable situation, Shameem Ahsan, Bangladesh s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told a U.N. pledging conference. Despite claims to the contrary, violence in Rakhine state has not stopped. Thousands still enter on a daily basis. Vital humanitarian aid must continue, Ahsan said, adding: It is of paramount importance that Myanmar delivers on its recent promises and works towards safe, dignified, voluntary return of its nationals back to their homes in Myanmar. Bangladesh s interior minister was in Yangon on Monday for talks to find a durable solution , he said. But Myanmar continued to issue propaganda projecting Rohingyas as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh , Ahsan said, adding: This blatant denial of the ethnic identity of Rohingyas remains a stumbling block. Myanmar considers the Rohingya to be stateless, although they trace their presence in the country back generations. Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, later told journalists that the two countries had begun talks on repatriation . Conducive conditions have to be recreated in Rakhine, he said. This must include a solution to the question of citizenship, or rather lack thereof for the Rohingya community, Grandi said. Khaled al-Jarallah, deputy foreign minister of Kuwait, called on Myanmar authorities to cease the practice of stripping the Rohingya minority of their right of citizenship, which as a result deprives them of the right to property and employment . Jordan s Queen Rania visited Rohingya refugee camps on Monday and called for a stronger response from the international community to the plight of the Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh to escape systematic persecution in Myanmar. One has to ask, why is the plight of this Muslim minority group being ignored? Why has the systematic prosecution been allowed to play out for so long? she asked after touring the camps. The United Nations has appealed for $434 million to provide life-saving aid to 1.2 million people for six months. A total of $344 million has been raised so far, a final U.N. statement said. We need more money to keep pace with intensifying needs. This is not an isolated crisis, it is the latest round in a decades-long cycle of persecution, violence and displacement, U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the talks. An estimated 1,000-3,000 Rohingya still enter Bangladesh daily, William Lacy Swing, head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. He called them: these most rejected and vulnerable people in the world. Joanne Liu, president of the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, described them as the walking dead . There are only 210 hospital beds for 1 million refugees, malnutrition is on the rise and latrines are lacking to prevent contamination, she said. The camp is a time-bomb, ticking towards a full-blown health crisis.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama commuted the prison terms of 42 non-violent drug offenders, nearly half of whom were serving life sentences, in his latest batch of clemency decisions, the White House said on Friday. The individuals “have more than repaid their debt to society and earned this second chance,” Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel, wrote in a blog. They were convicted under drug sentencing laws put on the books before Obama became president that were “outdated and unduly harsh,” Eggleston wrote. Obama has worked to reform the U.S. criminal justice system to reduce the number of people serving long sentences for drug crimes. It is one of the few areas in which the Democratic president has received support from Republican lawmakers. Many of the convicts had been serving time for crack cocaine charges. Crack offenders have for years faced stiffer penalties than offenders of powder cocaine, even though the two substances are molecularly similar. Critics have said the disparity has unfairly hurt minority communities. Obama announced the most ambitious clemency program in 40 years in April, 2014. The program has struggled under a deluge of thousands of unprocessed cases. Some legal experts, including Rachel Barkow, faculty director at the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University, have urged Obama to move faster on the program, saying unless he does, the program will remain a “lottery” for thousands of other convicts. Friday’s commutations bring the total to 348, more than granted by the previous seven presidents combined, the White House said. George W. Bush commuted the sentences of 11 individuals, Bill Clinton granted clemency to 61 and George H.W. Bush granted clemency to three people, the White House said. “We are confident that there will be many more commutations in the months” before Obama leaves office in January next year, Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general, said in a release. The White House also said Obama is committed to strengthening drug rehabilitation programs.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump criticized China on Monday, saying it had benefited from its economic ties with the United States but would not help control North Korea. “China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won’t help with North Korea. Nice!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. failure to retaliate strongly for the 2014 cyber attack against Sony Pictures may have helped inspire Russian hackers who sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, a senior congressional Democrat said on Tuesday. “Russia may have concluded that they could hack American institutions and there’d be no price to pay,” Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, told a press breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. Schiff suggested that Washington team up with European allies to impose sanctions that would hit the Russian economy. Russia was blamed for high-profile attacks on Democratic organizations that damaged the party during the 2016 election campaign, in which Republican Donald Trump won the presidency and his party kept control of the Senate and the House. Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the allegations as U.S. campaign rhetoric. Schiff was one of a group of senior House Democratic lawmakers who wrote to President Barack Obama on Tuesday asking administration officials to brief members of Congress on Russian efforts to influence or interfere in the Nov. 8 U.S. election. “Russia may have succeeded in weakening Americans’ trust” in democratic institutions, said the letter, also signed by Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, and the ranking Democrats on the Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, Oversight and Armed Services committees. Other lawmakers, including some Republicans, have asked for investigations or called for legislation to address the hacking issue. Reuters reported on Friday that James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, asked Congress to remove a provision in an upcoming intelligence authorization bill that would have created a special committee to combat Russian efforts to exert covert influence abroad. Schiff, who backs creation of the bipartisan committee, said on Tuesday the United States needed to do more to stop such hacking. “Unless we establish some kind of deterrent, this is going to be unending,” he said. An Intelligence Committee aide said the panel had changed the provision independent of Clapper’s letter and felt it had “appropriately addressed” intelligence community concerns. In 2016, the hacking benefited Trump, Schiff said. He added, however, that Russian hackers could turn on Trump once he is president if they do not approve of his policies. The Obama administration publicly blamed North Korea for the malicious breaches that crippled Sony in 2014.

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DUBLIN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ireland needs Britain to provide significantly more clarity on its plans for the Irish border, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday, denting hopes that London was on the verge of a deal to move on to the second phase of Brexit talks. But British Prime Minister Theresa May s room to offer additional concessions to Dublin appeared extremely limited as the Northern Ireland party propping up her government hinted it might withdraw its support if she gives too much. Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before Brexit talks can move to negotiations on Britain s future trade relationship with the EU and a possible two-year Brexit transition deal. A mis-step by May could bring down the British government or spook British businesses fearful of a cliff-edge Brexit without a transition deal. We are looking for significantly more clarity than we currently have from the British negotiating team, Coveney told parliament in Dublin, adding that constructive ambiguity from Britain would not suffice. Hopefully we will make progress that will allow us to move on to Phase 2 in the middle of December, he said. If it is not possible to do that, so be it. Britain in the coming days needs to demonstrate sufficient progress on three key EU conditions a financial settlement, rights of expatriate citizens and the Irish border for leaders to give a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. With significant progress on the financial settlement and citizen rights, a deal on the Irish border would pave the way for Brussels to offer British Prime Minister Theresa May a transition deal as early as January. Britain s Times newspaper, without citing a source, said London was close to a deal after a proposal to devolve more powers to the government of its province of Northern Ireland so that it could ensure regulations there did not diverge from the EU rules in place south of the border across the island. The border between EU-member Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after Brexit, and Dublin fears a hard border could disrupt 20 years of delicate peace in Northern Ireland. Ireland has called on Britain to provide details of how it will ensure there is no regulatory divergence after Brexit in March 2019 that would require physical border infrastructure. But any attempt at a solution will have to convince Northern Ireland s pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 members of parliament are propping up May s government. The party ratcheted up the pressure on Thursday by suggesting it might withdraw its support for May s government. If there is any hint that in order to placate Dublin and the EU they re prepared to have Northern Ireland treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, then they can t rely on our vote, DUP member of parliament Sammy Wilson said in an interview with the BBC. European Council President Donald Tusk, who last week set an absolute deadline of Monday for May to demonstrate sufficient progress on the three issues, is due to fly to Dublin on Friday for talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in a bid to break the deadlock. May will then hold talks in Brussels on Monday with EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, and will hope to secure a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. Barnier said on Wednesday the summit would be able to discuss a transition period and that the EU would define a framework next year of the new partnership with Britain that would follow the transition. May has insisted she wants any new offers to be met with simultaneous assurances from the EU that it will maintain the open trading relationship which businesses are demanding to know soon if they are to maintain investment levels in Britain.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Monday that national security adviser Michael Flynn held just two phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to Washington, amid reports that Flynn’s communications are being scrutinized by U.S. counterintelligence agents. Reuters reported earlier this month, citing three sources familiar with the matter, that Flynn had held five phone calls with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak on Dec. 29, the day then-President Barack Obama retaliated for Moscow’s interference in the U.S. presidential election. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Flynn spoke once by telephone to the envoy - he did not give the date - and discussed four topics. Those included a conference on Syria, a plane crash that killed members of a famous Russian military choir, seasonal wishes and setting up a post-inauguration call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, he said. On. Jan. 13, Spicer had said that Flynn and Kislyak had spoken on Dec. 28 and suggested the sole topic had been the logistics of setting up an eventual call between Trump and Putin. At the time, a Trump aide had said the one conversation actually had taken place on Dec. 29. On Monday, Spicer said a second call took place three days ago, apparently just before Trump’s inauguration on Friday, and dealt with arranging a forthcoming phone call between Trump and Putin. Two of the sources told Reuters earlier this month that the timing of the December calls raised a question about whether Flynn had given Kislyak any assurances to soothe Russian anger over the U.S. sanctions and other moves. The differing accounts of the number of calls could not be immediately reconciled. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Flynn’s calls with Kislyak on Dec. 29, as well as earlier calls he held with Russian figures, are under scrutiny as part of probes by the FBI, U.S. intelligence agencies and the Treasury Department into the extent of Russian government contacts with people close to Trump. It is unclear whether the inquiry produced any incriminating evidence or if it is continuing, the newspaper said. The Journal quoted White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders as saying: “We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation.” Asked whether there were other calls between Flynn and “members of the Russian government,” Spicer replied, “Not that I’m aware of. And when I say that, what I’m saying (is) during the transition I asked General Flynn whether or not there were any other conversations beyond the ambassador and he said ‘no.’” Flynn is a retired Army general. A Jan. 6 assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies said that Putin ordered an effort to help Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign.

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HAVANA/CAIBARIEN (Reuters) - Hurricane Irma uprooted trees and tore off roofs in Cuba on Saturday with 125-mile-per-hour (200-km per hour) winds that damaged hotels in the island s best-known beach resorts and forced evacuations as far along the coast as low-lying areas of the capital Havana. Power was out and cellphone service was spotty in many regions as Irma neared the end of a 200-mile (320-km) trek westwards along the top of the island. It was forecast to head north toward Florida in the evening. In the fishing town of Caibarien, residents swept mud from beachside homes after storm surge drove 3 feet (1 meter) of seawater up the shore. In streets carpeted with fresh green seaweed as the water receded, people said it was the strongest cyclone ever to hit the town. Sheets of zinc that came flying into our backyard also damaged the kitchen wall and we lost many roof tiles, said Angel Coya, 52, adding he was optimistic that Cuba s Communist government would help repair the damage. We have to keep on. Irma s turn northward was expected to occur around 150 miles (240 km) east of the capital. Nevertheless, authorities shut off power in large parts of the city and evacuated some 10,000 people from central Havana near the Malecon seawall because of fears of flooding from the storm surge. By Saturday evening, the sea had penetrated two blocks over parts of the city s historic seafront boulevard, and the waters were expected to advance farther as the surge grew. Restaurants on the seaside drive pulled down their shutters and stacked sandbags against the storm. Still, many Cubans expressed a sense of relief after the eye of the first Category 5 storm to make landfall on the island since 1932 passed over the northern keys, just grazing the mainland with its full force. Honestly, I expected worse. I thought I would come back and find the roof gone, said Yolexis Domingo, 39, using a machete to hack the branches off a tree that fell in front of his house in Caibarien. Still, it is going to be a while before I can come back to live here. The water came up to a meter high and some of the roof flew off. Overnight, the storm pounded the chain of pristine keys and tourism resorts that stretch along the coast from central Camaguey province to Villa Clara province, and it was headed toward Varadero, Cuba s most famous beach getaway. Cayos Coco and Guillermo, the crown jewels of what is known as the King s Gardens, with 16 hotels frequented by Canadian and European tourists, sustained serious damage, local authorities in the area said. At least one bridge on a causeway to the area collapsed, and the communications tower for the keys was no longer standing. Dozens of coastal towns were damaged, with some reports of collapsed houses, though no deaths had been reported. This is a beautiful town but now it is a disaster, said local resident Sandro Sanchez, 27, walking through the main square after the hurricane had passed Remedios, in Villa Clara. Corrugated iron from roofs were strewn in the streets alongside rubble. Lampposts were bent double, plant pots smashed and the fronds of palm trees shredded. You can t do anything against nature, he said. We never had a storm wreak so much damage here. This is really a mess. On Saturday, Irma covered most of the island, the Caribbean s largest. Its force sent shockwaves and flooding inward. In the city of Camaguey, Anaida Morales said she just been through a night from hell with her mom, stepson and husband. The trees in the park in front of my house are down and others strewn all over the streets. Lots of roofs are gone and some houses collapsed. The river that runs through the city is about to flood, she said. The wind roared all night and it is still strong. I couldn t sleep. I m scared of hurricanes and this is the worst I have been through, she said. Morales said she made a phone call to her daughter, who shares her name, in Florida, where millions of people were preparing for Irma s arrival. I just spoke to Anaida, it is hard to believe she is getting ready to go through the same thing I just did, she said.

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RIYADH (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Riyadh on Saturday to attend a landmark meeting between officials from Saudi Arabia and Iraq aimed at improving relations between the two countries and countering Iran s growing regional influence. The chief U.S. diplomat flew into King Salman Air Base a little more than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a strategy to contain Iran and compel Tehran to agree to close what he charged are flaws in the multinational 2015 deal designed to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons. Tillerson s only official meeting on Saturday was a working dinner with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. He was stopping in Saudi Arabia on the first leg of a six-day trip that will also take him to Qatar, Pakistan, India and Switzerland. His talks in Sunni Muslim-ruled Saudi Arabia and in Qatar were expected to be dominated by the topic of Shi ite-dominated Iran s growing regional influence. Iran-backed militias have helped turn the tide of Syria s civil war in the government s favor and they have played leading roles in Iraq s battle to recapture Islamic State s self-declared caliphate. This week they aided Iraqi security forces in seizing the oil-rich area of the northern city of Kirkuk as part of an effort to crush a bid for independence made by the Kurdish minority. Washington and Riyadh also allege that Iran is supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen against pro-government forces that are supported by a Saudi-led military coalition backed by the United States. Yemen s grinding civil war was expected to be high on Tillerson s agenda. On Sunday Tillerson is due to attend the inaugural session of the Saudi-Iraqi Coordination Council, a body whose creation was promoted by the Trump administration to improve relations between Saudi Arabia, Iran s main regional rival, and Iraq, whose majority Shi ite-dominated government has close ties with Tehran. During his visit Tillerson is also expected to explore the possibility of renewing a push to end a diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and other U.S. Arab allies, although he has conceded he is not optimistic. In an interview on Thursday with Bloomberg, Tillerson blamed Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt for the lack of progress toward ending the four-month-old crisis. Saudi Arabia and its allies have accused Qatar of supporting hardline Islamist groups and cozying up to Iran at the region s expense. Doha denies the allegations. It s up to the leadership of the quartet when they want to engage with Qatar because Qatar has been very clear - they are ready to engage, said Tillerson, who forged close ties to the Gulf Arab countries in his former position as CEO of Exxon Mobil. A senior UAE official said on Saturday it was up to Qatar to end the crisis ahead of a summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in December. The ball is in its court and it is aware of what is required of it, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash wrote on his Twitter account.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in had initially suggested on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump make a visit to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, a Blue House official told reporters on Wednesday. Trump had told Moon he had been considering such a trip, and Moon said he would accompany Trump should the U.S. president decide to visit the DMZ, the official said. The U.S. president aborted a surprise visit to the DMZ on Wednesday morning due to fog after two attempts.

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LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Slovenia s Prime Minister, Miro Cerar, has canceled a visit to Croatia, accusing the neighboring state of reigniting a long-running maritime dispute, his office said on Friday. Cerar called off next week s trip after his Croatian counterpart, Andrej Plenkovic, told the U.N. General Assembly that an international ruling on their shared waters was invalid. The Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in June that Slovenia should have uninterrupted access to the sea it shares with Croatia. Croatia objected at the time, and Plenkovic said he had merely repeated his country s position at the United Nations on Thursday. In my speech there was nothing new about Croatia s position, I mentioned the facts... We remain open for dialogue with Slovenia and I invite Cerar to come to Croatia on some other date, Plenkovic told a cabinet session in Zagreb. The countries have been arguing over a stretch of their sea and land border since both declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 as it disintegrated into war and broke up. The dispute, which centers on the bay of Piran, held up Croatian accession to the EU for many years. Only after both parties agreed to arbitration was Zagreb granted entry to the bloc in 2013 - though it later withdrew from the proceedings. The Hague-based court ruled that Slovenia gets the vast majority of the Piran bay area recognized as its territorial waters. In addition, the tribunal established a 2.5 nautical-mile wide and some 10 nautical-mile long corridor through Croatian waters to give Slovenia much-coveted direct access to international waters.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court on Monday rejected a request to release classified documents about Swedish World War Two hero Raoul Wallenberg, whose fate remains a mystery seven decades after his reported death, Russian news agencies reported. Wallenberg, a former Swedish diplomat, helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War Two before being captured by Soviet forces in 1945. A Russian report claimed he died in 1947 in the Lubyanka prison in central Moscow run by the Soviet security service, but no definitive proof of his fate has been put forward. Relatives of Wallenberg filed a lawsuit against Russia s Federal Security Service (FSB), seeking access to uncensored documents which they said could provide clues to Wallenberg s fate. But a Moscow court rejected that lawsuit out of hand on Monday, saying the documents could not be released because they contained personal information about other individuals, Russian news agencies reported. Wallenberg s relatives were cited as saying they would appeal.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - No evidence has emerged to suggest Russian hacking influenced the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and it would be irresponsible to jump to conclusions before receiving a final intelligence report, Donald Trump’s spokesman said on Monday. “There is zero evidence that they influenced the election,” Sean Spicer told Fox News. Due to become White House press secretary when Trump enters the White House on Jan. 20, Spicer told CNN the president-elect would see the intelligence report once it was completed later this week. On Saturday, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of U.S. emails. “The idea that we’re jumping to conclusions before we have a final report is irresponsible,” Spicer told CNN. President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian suspected spies and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies last week for alleged Kremlin involvement in hacking that intelligence officials said aimed to help the Republican Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election. Leading lawmakers from both parties have voiced alarm at the suggestion of Russian interference, whether or not it made a difference in the outcome. Republican John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has scheduled a Thursday hearing on foreign cyber threats. The new Congress, elected on Nov. 8, takes office on Tuesday. Calling for closer ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump has repeatedly played down the hacking affair. Over the weekend Trump said he knew “things that other people don’t know” and would disclose some information on the issue on Tuesday or Wednesday. He gave no further detail. “He’s going to talk about his conclusions and where he thinks things stand,” Spicer told CNN. “He’s not going to reveal anything that was privileged or shared with him classified.” On Sunday Spicer said the White House may have disproportionately punished Russia. “It’s baffling,” U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Monday. “President-elect Trump does not have any better information than President Obama.” A Gallup Poll released on Monday showed less than half of Americans were confident in Trump’s ability to handle an international crisis, to use military force wisely or to prevent major scandals in his administration. The poll said at least seven in 10 Americans were confident in presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in those areas before they took office.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron and discussed North Korea s latest missile launch, the Kremlin said in a statement on Friday. Both leaders condemned Pyongyang s provocative actions, which risk leading to irreversible consequences , the Kremlin said. They agreed on the need for a diplomatic solution, including through resuming direct talks on North Korea, according to the statement.

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BOSTON (Reuters) - FBI Director James Comey said he has no plans to step down anytime soon in a speech on Wednesday, days after he reportedly pushed back against President Donald Trump’s allegations that the Obama administration had tapped phones at Trump Tower. “You’re stuck with me for another 6-1/2 years,” Comey said at a Boston College cyber security conference, indicating he expects to serve the remainder of his 10-year term. Comey did not speak with reporters during public appearances in Boston on Tuesday and Wednesday, ignoring questions about the wiretapping accusation that Trump made on Saturday without offering any evidence to support it. Comey, who was appointed FBI director by Barack Obama in 2013, had urged Justice Department officials to refute Trump’s claims because it falsely insinuated the Federal Bureau of Investigation broke the law, U.S. officials have said. The department has not acted on his request. The White House said on Monday that Trump still has confidence in Comey despite his assertiveness in challenging Trump’s claim. Comey also reiterated a plea for technology companies to enable authorities to access encrypted data on mobile devices and in messaging apps. He said strong encryption had become more popular in recent years, particularly after former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. spying programs. The use of the technology for scrambling data has made it increasingly difficult for law enforcement to investigate crimes, even when authorities have court orders giving them permission to access data, he said. As evidence, he said that FBI technicians were unable to access data in about 1,200 of some 2,800 devices that state and local agency asked the bureau to help open from October to December, hampering progress in criminal investigations.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday paved the way for a major ruling on the limits of presidential powers, agreeing to decide the legality of President Barack Obama’s unilateral action to shield more than 4 million illegal immigrants from deportation. The court agreed to hear Obama’s bid to resurrect his plan, undertaken in 2014 through executive action bypassing the Republican-led Congress, that was blocked last year by lower courts after Texas and 25 other Republican-governed states sued to stop it. A ruling is due by the end of June. The case is not the first time Obama has asked the Supreme Court to rescue a major initiative. The court in 2012 and 2015 rejected conservative challenges to his signature healthcare law. The White House expressed confidence the court would now deem as lawful Obama’s immigration action, which was crafted to let millions of illegal immigrants whose children are American citizens or lawful permanent residents to get into a program that protects them from deportation and supplies work permits. Texas and the other states contend Obama exceeded his presidential powers and usurped the authority of Congress. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said courts have long recognized the limits to presidential authority. “The court should affirm what President Obama said himself on more than 20 occasions: that he cannot unilaterally rewrite congressional laws and circumvent the people’s representatives,” Paxton said. The nine justices will review a November ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld a February 2015 decision by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, a city along the Texas border with Mexico, to halt Obama’s action. With some of his major legislative initiatives suffocated by Republican lawmakers, the Democratic president has resorted to executive action to get around Congress on issues including immigration, gun control and the Obamacare law. The most recent executive action came this month when he acted unilaterally to expand background checks for certain gun purchases. His executive actions have antagonized Republicans who accuse him of unlawfully taking actions by executive fiat that only Congress can perform. The case raises several legal issues, including whether states have legal standing to sue the U.S. government over decisions on how to enforce federal laws. The high court added a separate question on whether the president’s action violated a provision of the U.S. Constitution that requires the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The Obama administration called the president’s action mere guidance to immigration officials on how to exercise discretion given by Congress on how to enforce immigration laws. Obama’s action was “consistent with the actions taken by presidents of both parties, the laws passed by Congress and the decisions of the Supreme Court,” White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said. Those eligible for Obama’s program, directed at illegal immigrants with no criminal record, would be able to work legally and receive some federal benefits. States were not required to provide any benefits. His order expanded on a 2012 program that provided similar relief for people who became illegal immigrants as children. The case could have repercussions beyond immigration because it would set a precedent for the circumstances under which states can sue the federal government over a range of executive actions. Future presidents, Republican or Democratic, could face new constraints if the states win. The case is one of the most important the Supreme Court will decide during its current term, along with a challenge to a restrictive Texas abortion law. If the court sides with Obama, he would have until his term ends in January 2017 to implement the immigration plan. With the U.S. presidential election looming in November, it would be up to the next president to decide whether to keep it in place. Obama’s action came after a bipartisan immigration policy overhaul bill passed by the Senate died in the House of Representatives. The immigration issue has driven a wedge between Hispanics, an increasingly important voting bloc, and Republicans, many of whom have offered tough words about illegal immigrants. Most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants are Hispanics, coming from Mexico and other Latin American countries. The ruling is due just months before the presidential election. The two leading Democratic presidential hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, said on Tuesday the court should uphold Obama’s action. Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio said as president they would undo Obama’s immigration moves. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said Obama’s executive action relied on well-established constitutional authority. He said he recently met with the illegal immigrant parents of U.S citizens and lawful permanent residents, saying that “these law-abiding men and women continue to live in constant fear of being separated from their children. These families must be allowed to step out of the shadows and fully contribute to the country that they love and call home.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A majority of the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday voted to advance legislation instructing committees to write legislation repealing President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law. The procedural vote of 235 to 188 clears the way for a vote later on Friday to pass the measure to begin work on repealing Obamacare that already has been approved by the Senate. It strictly followed party lines, indicating solidarity among House Republicans on the issue.

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OTTAWA (Reuters) - An international meeting in Canada on North Korea in January is designed to produce better ideas to ease tensions over Pyongyang s nuclear and ballistic missile tests, Canadian officials said on Wednesday. A Canadian source who declined to be identified said that up to 16 foreign ministers were scheduled to meet in Vancouver, although North Korea itself will not be invited. Canada announced the meeting on Tuesday and said it would be co-hosted by the United States. By discussing the various options out on the table, by listening to ... local wisdom of the regions and especially (to those) who live a bit closer to Korea than we do, you can come up with some better ideas, Andrew Leslie, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, told reporters. Early on Wednesday, North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, putting the continental United States within range and increasing pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump to deal with the nuclear-armed nation. Freeland later told reporters that Japan, South Korea and China would be among those invited to the meeting. It s an important step in terms of showing the unity of the international community in applying pressure on North Korea, she said, sidestepping a question about whether Trump might do something to upset the talks. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who came to power in 2015 promising the world that Canada is back , last week said he had discussed with Cuban President Raul Castro in 2016 the possibility of working together to address the crisis. These are the kinds of things where Canada can, I think, play a role that the United States has chosen not to play, this past year, Trudeau said, referring to Trump s isolationist global stance. Defense experts say North Korean missiles aimed at the United States could land off course in Canada. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters Canada was looking at the threat extremely seriously but declined to say what military counter measures he might be take. We believe the diplomatic solution is the way to go - we feel there is hope for it, Sajjan said. In the meantime, Canada s relations with North Korea appear to be warming up slightly. In September, a Canadian diplomat said the North Koreans perceive us as not an enemy and therefore potentially a friend . Canada established diplomatic relations with North Korea in 2001 but suspended them in 2010.

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NASHVILLE (Reuters) - Educators and other full-time staffers at Tennessee’s public state universities and colleges will soon be able to carry handguns on campus after Governor Bill Haslam allowed a bill to become law on Monday without his signature. The bill that the Republican governor allowed to become law had little opposition in both houses, easily passing 69-24 in the House and 28-5 in the Senate last month. The law will go into effect on July 1. The law, which affects 50 state institutions, was opposed by both the State Board of Regents and the University of Tennessee system. Gun control on college campuses is a growing focus in the national debate over access to guns. Including Tennessee, 10 states now allow guns on campus, although the Tennessee and Arkansas laws allow only faculty and staff to carry handguns, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks policies in all 50 states. In Georgia, Governor Nathan Deal, a Republican, is expected on Tuesday to either sign or veto a measure that would allow licensed gun owners ages 21 and over to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of public colleges and universities in that state. On Aug. 1, 2016, a so-called campus carry law takes effect in Texas, allowing people 21 and older with a concealed handgun license to carry handguns in classrooms and buildings throughout the University of Texas system. In Tennessee, anyone carrying a gun under the new law must have a permit and notify local police or campus security, whichever has responsibility for law enforcement on campus. Students are not allowed to carry handguns on campus. The law does not allow handguns to be carried into arenas and stadiums during school-sponsored events, and guns are barred in meetings related to disciplinary or tenure matters. Haslam had said he did not believe the state should get involved in such local matters, but chose not to veto the bill. “Although SB 2376 does not go as far as I would like in retaining campus control, the final version of the bill included input from higher education and was shaped to accommodate some of their concerns,” he said in a Monday statement. Proponents said the bill will lead to greater safety on campuses. Opponents voiced concern about the safety of students, faculty and visitors on campus.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday said for the first time that he supports the completion of a pipeline project near a North Dakota Indian reservation, which has been the subject of months of protests by tribes and environmentalists. A communications briefing from Trump’s transition team said despite media reports that Trump owns a stake in Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, Trump’s support of the pipeline “has nothing to do with his personal investments and everything to do with promoting policies that benefit all Americans.” “Those making such a claim are only attempting to distract from the fact that President-elect Trump has put forth serious policy proposals he plans to set in motion on Day One,” said the daily briefing note sent to campaign supporters and congressional staff. Activists have spent months protesting plans to route the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a lake near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, saying the project poses a threat to water resources and sacred Native American sites. On Thursday, U.S. military veterans were arriving at a camp to join thousands of activists braving snow and freezing temperatures to protest the pipeline. Republican Trump has been a vocal supporter of another high-profile pipeline project, Transcanada’s Keystone XL, which Democratic President Barack Obama denied a permit for last year. Republican North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said he met with Trump’s transition team to discuss the delayed pipeline. “Today, Mr. Trump expressed his support for the Dakota Access Pipeline, which has met or exceeded all environmental standards set forth by four states and the Army Corps of Engineers,” Hoeven said in a statement. “It is important to know that the new administration will work to help us grow and diversify our energy economy and build the energy infrastructure necessary to move it from where it is produced to where it is needed,” he said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that North Korea s continuing missile tests threaten the entire world and stressed the United States was working closely with regional allies Japan and South Korea on the problem. In East Asia, an increasingly aggressive and isolated regime in North Korea threatens democracies in South Korea, Japan, and more importantly, and more recently, has expanded those threats to the United States, endangering the entire world, Tillerson said to a gathering of the Community of Democracies. We first look to our regional allies South Korea and Japan. By working with them and other democratic partners, we continue to build consensus at the United Nations Security Council to create a united international front that upholds our values and strives to make us safer.

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s King Salman received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Riyadh on Wednesday and reiterated the kingdom s support for the Palestinian people, state news agency SPA reported. The king reassured the Palestinian leader that Saudi Arabia continues to support the right of Palestinians to an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, SPA said. The two leaders also discussed the latest developments in the Palestinian territories, it said. A dozen Saudi princes and officials also attended the meeting. Saudi Arabia condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said any decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached would inflame the feelings of Muslims, official media reported.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany wants to reach out to the future U.S. administration under President-elect Donald Trump to safeguard essential trans-Atlantic relations, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign policy advisor Christoph Heusgen said on Wednesday. Speaking to lawmakers in Merkel’s conservative party, Heusgen also said Germany would have to shoulder more international responsibilities in future. He said Germany would steadily increase military spending towards the NATO goal of 2 percent of gross domestic product. Earlier, Merkel said there would be contacts at all levels with the United States in the run up to meetings of the Group of 20 this year of which Germany is the chair.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian insurgents brought down an army helicopter in southwest Syria on Friday, near the Israel-occupied Golan Heights, a war monitoring group said. The Syrian military could not immediately be reached for comment. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the aircraft went down in government territory southwest of Damascus after a missile hit it. Rebels are fighting Syrian government forces in the vicinity. Two Syrian army officers from the helicopter s crew died, the Britain-based monitor said.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanese prime minister in a televised broadcast from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, will visit Egypt on Tuesday to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Hariri s office said on Sunday. Hariri has since Saturday been in Paris, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron, and has said he will return to Lebanon by Wednesday for its Independence Day celebrations. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has said he will not accept Hariri s resignation until it is delivered in person and all sides in Beirut have called for his speedy return. A leader in Hariri s Future Movement had earlier told Reuters Hariri would visit Egypt on Monday. The resignation sparked a political crisis in Lebanon and put it on the front line of a regional power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hariri criticized Iran and its ally Hezbollah, which is in Lebanon s coalition government, in his resignation statement, and said he feared assassination. Apart from a brief trip to Abu Dhabi, he remained in Saudi Arabia until he flew to France. His stay in the kingdom led to accusations from Lebanese officials and politicians that Saudi Arabia had coerced him to resign, which he and Riyadh denied. On Friday, Hariri tweeted that his presence there was for consultations on the future of the situation in Lebanon and its relations with the surrounding Arab region . On Sunday, Arab League foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in Cairo, requested by Saudi Arabia, to discuss ways to confront Iran and Hezbollah over their role in the region. In a statement afterwards, the ministers accused Hezbollah of supporting terrorism in Arab countries. Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil did not attend.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In an awkward reversal, the U.S. military promptly withdrew an old video by Islamist militants it had released on Friday as evidence that a fatal raid in Yemen by American special forces this week was a counter terrorism success. An expert in radical Islamist media said the footage by unknown militants appeared to be part of videos first released by jihadists online some 10 years ago, undermining the Pentagon’s explanation about its value. A U.S. Central Command spokesman confirmed that the video was removed from the website because the contents were old. “We didn’t want it to appear that we were trying to pass off an old video as a new video,” spokesman Colonel John Thomas said. It is the latest controversy surrounding the raid on a branch of al Qaeda in Yemen, the first such operation authorized by President Donald Trump as commander in chief. The military said the video was found on Sunday in the operation in al-Bayda province in which a U.S. Navy SEAL, militants and civilians were killed. A U.S. Central Command spokesman had said on Friday the clip of a ski-masked man encouraging people to build bombs, was “one example of the volumes of sensitive al-Qa’eda terror-planning information recovered during the operation.” The Department of Defense posted the video on its web site on Friday but pulled it off within several hours when questions began to arise about its age. The footage appeared to be similar to that in other videos that surfaced online in 2007. “The video clip that was posted and abruptly taken down was one of 25 videos that appeared (published) in 2007,” said Adam Raisman, a senior analyst at SITE group which monitors extremists online. He added that the only difference was that the Pentagon video had English subtitles added. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the video was still of worth, even if it may have been created earlier. “It does not matter when the video was made, that they had it is still illustrative of who they are and what their intentions are,” Davis said. U.S. Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens was killed in the raid, which the Pentagon said also killed 14 militants. Medics at the scene said about 30 people, including 10 women and children, also died. U.S. military officials told Reuters this week that the operation went ahead without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations. As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists. But Central Command said earlier this week that it only asks for operations it believes have a good chance of success based on its planning. Pentagon spokesman Davis has said the element of surprise had not been lost in the raid.

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MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish government has secured opposition support for dissolving Catalonia s parliament and holding new elections there in January in its bid to check the regional government s push for independence. The Socialists, the main opposition, said on Friday they would back special measures to impose central rule on the region to thwart the secessionist-minded Catalan government and end a crisis that has unsettled the euro and hurt confidence in the euro zone s fourth-largest economy. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who wants opposition support to be able to present a united front in the crisis, has called an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday to pave the way for Madrid establishing central control in the region. The government would not confirm whether January elections formed a part of the package, with Rajoy saying only that the measures would be announced on Saturday. However a government spokesman saw regional elections as likely. The logical end to this process would be new elections established within the law, said government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo at a weekly government press conference. It will be the first time in Spain s four decades of democracy that Madrid has invoked the constitution to effectively sack a regional government and call new elections. Head of state King Felipe used a prizegiving ceremony in the northwestern region of Asturias to indicate support for the government and affirm the unity of Spain, of which he said Catalonia is and will remain an essential part. Spain needs to face up to an unacceptable secession attempt on its national territory, which it will resolve through its legitimate democratic institutions, said the monarch, a ceremonial figure who sharply criticized Catalan leaders earlier this month. Rajoy wants as broad a consensus as possible before taking the step, which has raised the prospect of more large-scale protests in Catalonia, where pro-independence groups have been able to bring more than one million people out onto the streets. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, a former journalist who is spearheading the secession campaign, has refused to renounce independence, citing an overwhelming vote in favor of secession at a referendum on Oct.1. Regional authorities said around 90 percent voted for independence though only 43 percent of voters participated. Opponents of secession mostly stayed home. Spanish courts have ruled the referendum unconstitutional, but Puigdemont says the result is binding and must be obeyed. The prolonged standoff has caused hundreds of companies to move their headquarters outside Catalonia and prompted the Spanish government to cut its economic growth forecast. The region accounts for a fifth of Spain s economy. In a test of investor appetite for Spanish stocks, housebuilder Aedas (AEDAS.MC) dropped over 6 percent in its debut on the Madrid stock exchange on Friday, although it later regained losses to trade close to its listing price. The uncertainty surrounding the future of the region has rattled the euro. On Thursday, European Union leaders including Germany s Angela Merkel and France s Emmanuel Macron offered their support for Rajoy at an EU leaders summit in Brussels. After Rajoy announces the direct control measures on Saturday, Spain s upper house will have to approve them in a session which could take place on Oct. 27, a Senate spokeswoman said. Actions could range from dismissing the Catalan parliament and government, to a softer approach of removing specific heads of department. Direct rule from Madrid would be temporary while regional elections are held to form a new government.

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RIYADH (Reuters) - A large Saudi public university announced it would dismiss employees suspected of ties to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, adding to concerns that the government is clamping down on its critics in academia and beyond. Activists and rights groups say security forces have rounded up some 30 clerics, intellectuals and others in the past 10 days, in what Human Rights Watch has described as a coordinated crackdown on dissent . Authorities have not explicitly acknowledged the detentions, which come amid widespread speculation - denied by officials - that King Salman will abdicate in favor of his son as well as deepening tensions with neighboring Qatar, which is accused by Riyadh of supporting Islamists, including the Brotherhood. The governing council of Al-Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh advised against renewing contracts for employees it said were influenced by the ideology of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organization . The statement, posted online on Tuesday, did not name the employees or specify their number, but said they included Saudis and foreigners. The employees removal aims to protect the minds of students and university employees from those deviant, partisan ideas and dangerous, destructive trends , it added. Saudi Arabia designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2014. Hardline groups such as al Qaeda and Islamic State are also blacklisted. The ruling Al Saud family has always regarded Islamist groups as a major internal threat to its rule over a country in which appeals to religious sentiment resonate deeply and an al Qaeda campaign a decade ago killed hundreds. Since the kingdom s founding, the Al Saud have enjoyed a close alliance with clerics of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Islam who have espoused a political philosophy that demands obedience to the ruler. By contrast the Brotherhood advances an active political doctrine urging revolutionary action, which flies in the face of Wahhabi teaching. A political Islamist organization founded in Egypt nearly a century ago, it says it is committed to peaceful activism and reform through elections, and its adherents span the region, holding elected office in Arab countries from Tunisia to Jordan. Brotherhood members fleeing repression in Egypt, Syria and Iraq half a century ago took shelter in Saudi Arabia, some taking up roles in the kingdom s education system and helping to establish the Sahwa or Awakening movement which agitated in the 1990s for democracy. The Sahwa mostly fizzled, with some activists arrested and others coaxed into conformity, though admirers and its appeal lingered.

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HAVANA/BOGOTA (Reuters) - Members of Colombia’s Marxist FARC guerrillas will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Cuba, a spokeswoman for Colombia’s government peace negotiators said on Sunday, adding a twist to a historic visit to the island by U.S. President Barack Obama. The meeting with Kerry on Monday will be the first time a U.S. secretary of state has met the negotiators from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who have been talking peace with the Colombian government in Havana for more than three years. “At around 4 p.m. (2000 GMT), the meeting between Kerry and the FARC delegation will take place,” after the Colombian government delegation meet him, the spokeswoman said. A source at Colombia’s Office of the High Commissioner for Peace said the rebels and Colombian government negotiators would also go to an exhibition game between Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays and Cuba’s national team on Tuesday. That game will be attended by Obama, who on Sunday became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years. But FARC negotiator Pastor Alape said he was not aware of an invitation to attend the baseball game. He said that before meeting with Kerry, the rebels would meet the U.S. special envoy for Colombian peace talks, Bernard Aronson, to agree on an agenda. The United States sees the Colombian peace talks hosted in Havana as an example of how restoring normal relations with Cuba can help its wider goals in Latin America. Latin America’s longest war has killed some 220,000 people and displaced millions of others since 1964. The government and rebels are attempting to reach a deal that would be placed before Colombian voters for approval, with a U.N. mission supervising rebel disarmament. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, better known by the nom de guerre Timochenko, had set a self-imposed March 23 deadline to reach a comprehensive pact but have since conceded that goal may not be reached. Washington designated the FARC as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and many of its leaders have been indicted in the United States on charges of cocaine trafficking.

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ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital completely disregarded a 1980 United Nations resolution regarding the status of the city. Erdogan also said the decision would throw the region into a ring of fire . He was speaking to supporters at the airport in Ankara before departing to Greece for an official visit.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney said on Monday he expects the Treasury secretary to use extraordinary cash management measures after the government’s current debt ceiling extension expires on March 15. “The secretary of the Treasury actually makes the decision and I expect him to do what all previous secretaries of the Treasury have done, at least all the ones that I’m familiar with, to use those measures to extend that date,” Mulvaney said in an interview on Fox News. “But we will deal with it,” he said, “certainly” before Congress recesses in August. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at his Senate confirmation hearing last month that he would like to see an increase in the debt ceiling “sooner rather than later” to avoid another standoff with Congress that could upset financial markets. The United States is one of few nations in which the legislature must approve periodic increases in the legal limit on how much money the federal government can borrow. Rather than setting a specific dollar limit on the debt, Congress in 2015 simply suspended the ceiling until March 15, allowing normal borrowing to continue. The debt ceiling will reset at the total debt level outstanding on that day, but Congress will need to approve a new debt ceiling or extension. As of Feb. 23, the federal debt stood at about $19.88 trillion, according to Treasury data. But analysts estimate that Treasury can continue to borrow and avoid a payment default for several months past March 15 even with no action from Congress as it deploys its extraordinary cash management measures. In the past, the Treasury has been able to stave off depletion of its cash reserves with steps such as temporarily halting investments in some pension funds for federal workers and suspending sales of certain securities to state and local governments. Although such steps are known as “extraordinary measures,” they are routinely used by Treasury during debt ceiling debates. In 2011, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time after a gridlocked Congress waited until the government was possibly within hours of defaulting on its debt to raise the ceiling.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Banking Committee will vote on Tuesday on the nomination of Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell to lead the U.S. central bank, the panel said in a statement. The committee said on Thursday the vote would be held at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT). If confirmed by the Senate, as expected, Powell would assume the Fed chair post after Janet Yellen’s term expires on Feb. 3.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged African leaders on Friday to take further actions to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear and missile programs, including downgrading diplomatic ties and expelling North Korean laborers. All nations must act to implement U.N. sanctions in full, Tillerson told a trade and security gathering with African ministers. Further, I urge you to take additional measures to pressure the DPRK by downgrading your diplomatic relationships with the regime, severing economic ties, expelling all DPRK laborers and reducing North Korea s presence in your country. The U.S. State Department said on Thursday that Sudan had committed to severing trade and military ties with North Korea.

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NEW YORK (LPC/IFR) - U.S. regulators said they are open to revising restrictions on leveraged lending, offering an olive branch to a GOP-controlled Congress keen to roll back banking regulations. The three main U.S. bank regulatory agencies, in recent letters seen by Reuters, said they could revisit the guidelines they put in place in 2013. Critics say those guidelines have hampered business, and members of Congress started pressing for a rollback shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. In theory, the guidelines prevent banks from loaning money when doing so would put the borrower’s leverage at six times or higher, or for companies that could not quickly pay down debt. They were broadly intended to prevent the kind of egregious and wanton lending widely seen as contributing to the last global financial crisis. US Senator Pat Toomey asked the Government Accountability Office - the investigative arm of Congress - if the guidelines rose to the level of formal rules. The GAO decided in October that they do, meaning Congress has the right to amend or eliminate the guidelines - which many bankers feel have hampered growth - altogether. But to forestall that development, the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said they could seek further feedback on the guidelines. The three agencies sent their letters to Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer, head of the House Financial Services Subcommittee, who asked them to stop enforcing the guidelines. “This is positive,” said Richard Farley, head of the leveraged finance group at law firm Kramer Levin. “It seems both Congress and regulators are looking towards a revised guidance from the agencies to avoid the 2013 guidance being revoked and leaving the market in limbo.” Several specialists with knowledge of the situation said the response from regulators indicated a desire to avoid a protracted battle with a Congress inclined against regulation. Under the 1996 Congressional Review Act, Congress is entitled to review - and vote to eliminate - formal regulations issued by government agencies. Senator Toomey asked the GAO to decide whether the leveraged lending guidelines, created after the financial crisis, rose to the level of regulations that fall under the Act. Experts say the three agencies have decided to revisit the guidelines, rather than risk a fight on Capitol Hill that could limit the ability to issue similar guidance in future. Two people closely following the matter said the regulators had given Congress the opportunity to declare victory, while preserving their prerogatives. Both described the decision as a purely political one that had little to do with the actual leveraged lending restrictions. “If Congress votes them down, then the agencies are basically barred from coming back,” said Jacques Schillaci, a banking regulation specialist at law firm Linklaters. “If the agencies now come out with something that addresses the concerns and gives banks a bit more leeway, it gives Toomey the ability to say: we got what we wanted.” The three agencies declined to comment. Requests for comment went unanswered by the offices of Luetkemeyer and Toomey. Bankers have frequently complained that the guidelines do not prevent highly leveraged lending from occurring, but only keep their own regulated institutions from getting the business. Instead, they say, lenders not subject to the guidelines, such as non-bank investment firms, get to pick up the business that they cannot touch - and the numbers suggest they are right. According to data from LPC, two-thirds of leveraged buyouts through the first three quarters of 2017 had leverage above six times - and more than 26% topped seven times. The last time the percentage of LBOs with seven times leverage was this high was in 2007, just before the financial crisis kicked in. And not all of that is from institutions exempt from the guidelines: mainstream banks are still able to arrange deals well in excess of the six-times leverage threshold. This can be done by inflating a company’s Ebitda through adjustments - which makes the leverage seem smaller - or by showing the company can generate enough cash to bring leverage down quickly thereafter. Recent financings for Tekni-Plex and Avantor, for example, were all marketed with leverage of around or above seven times. Whatever the methodology, the fact that the guidelines have not entirely prevented leverage topping six times suggests to some in the market that the fuss about them is overblown. “The leveraged lending guidelines are a non-issue,” said Jay Ptashek, a leveraged finance partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis. “People understand the guard rails and are complying, whatever that means. Leverage is generally being maxed out within those guidelines.”

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SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in had initially suggested on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump make a visit to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, a Blue House official told reporters on Wednesday. Trump had told Moon he had been considering such a trip, and Moon said he would accompany Trump should the U.S. president decide to visit the DMZ, the official said. The U.S. president aborted a surprise visit to the DMZ on Wednesday morning due to fog after two attempts.

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PARIS (Reuters) - French counter-terrorism investigators questioned five people on Tuesday after police over the weekend found what appeared to be a ready-to-detonate bomb at an apartment building in one of Paris s poshest neighborhoods. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said one of those arrested was on an intelligence services list of radicalized persons - a list that includes the names of potential Islamist militants. We are still in a state of war, Collomb, speaking after a Sunday attack in which a man stabbed and killed two women outside the train station in Marseille, told France Inter radio. Judicial sources said the explosive device included two gas canisters inside the building in the affluent 16th district of western Paris and two outside, some of them doused with petrol and wired to connect to a mobile phone. More than 230 people have been killed in attacks by Islamist militants in France over the past three years. The Islamic State militant group, whose bases in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by French war planes, has urged followers to attack France. Most of those killed died when Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers targeted Paris in 2015, and when a man drove a large truck into crowds in the Riviera resort of Nice in 2016. Since then, there has been a string of attacks perpetrated by lone assailants, often targeting police or soldiers. The threat is changing form, said Collomb. A counter-terrorism investigation is also under way after the attack on Sunday, when a man slit the throat of one of his victims and killed her cousin before being shot dead by soldiers in the southern port city. Tunisian authorities have identified the attacker as Ahmed Hanachi, Collomb told parliament. He lived in France from 2005 to 2006 and was known to police under several alias for petty crimes, but had not previously caught the attention of French intelligence agencies. Hanachi was arrested in the city of Lyon on Friday on suspicion of theft. He was carrying a Tunisian passport and released 24 hours later, a day before committing the attack. All these years, he used multiple identities in France as well as in Italy, declaring himself to be Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Collomb said. France declared a state of emergency in late 2015 after the Paris attack, giving police special search and arrest powers to combat would-be terrorists. Lawmakers will vote later on Tuesday on a bill to convert many of those emergency measures into common law.

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Chicago City Council on Wednesday approved Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s fiscal 2017 budget which calls for a tax on plastic bags and the first phase of hiring more than 900 police officers. The council voted 48-0 for the budget which begins on Jan. 1. Emanuel last month unveiled his $9.8 billion all-funds spending plan, which includes $3.7 billion for operations. The budget relies on $82.3 million in revenue growth, savings from efficiencies, and a few one-time measures - but no big tax hike. “To think that we’re on the verge today of passing a budget with almost unanimity is remarkable,” Alderman Ed Burke said just before the vote. Emanuel last year pushed through a $543 million phased-in property tax increase for police and firefighter retirement systems. The city enacted a new tax on water and sewer usage in September to rescue its largest pension fund for municipal workers from insolvency. The council previously increased a telephone surcharge for laborers’ pensions. Credit ratings for the nation’s third-largest city have been deteriorating due largely to an unfunded pension liability that stood at $33.8 billion at the end of fiscal 2015 for Chicago’s four retirement systems. The new budget includes a 7-cent fee on store bags and parking rate hikes. It also accommodates the initial phase of the mayor’s two-year plan to add 970 police positions to address the city’s sharp spike in violence. “This is the first year in recent memory that we’ve made investments in public safety with the addition of 1,000 police officers,” said Alderman Jason Earvin. “And we can direct investment in some of the most challenged communities ... and with our youth in some of the most troubled parts of the city.” After the vote, Emanuel noted record-high summer job creation for youth, record-high project starts in commercial and residential real estate and the city using reforms to place pensions on the path to solvency. “Chicago’s employment is at a 15-year high that we haven’t seen since 2000 since the tech bubble,” Emanuel said. “What we have done, not just today, but over the last five years is give people confidence in the city that we are going to take care of our business, get our fiscal house in order.”

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DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh has proposed creating safe zones run by aid groups for Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar s Rakhine state to stop hundreds of thousands of refugees crossing into its territory following a military crackdown. The plan, the latest in a string of ideas floated by Dhaka, is unlikely to get much traction in Myanmar, where many consider the Rohingya community of 1.1 million as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. That will leave Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world, with little choice but to open new camps for refugees. Dhaka sent the proposal to the Myanmar government through the International Committee of the Red Cross to secure three areas in Rakhine, home to the Rohingya community, suggesting that people displaced by the violence be relocated there under the supervision of an international organization, such as the United Nations. The logic of the creation of such zones is that no Rohingya can come inside Bangladesh, said Shahidul Haque, Bangladesh s foreign secretary, the top civil servant in the foreign ministry. The Red Cross confirmed that it had passed on the request to Myanmar but said that it was a political decision for the two countries to make. A Myanmar government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, a mostly Muslim nation of 160 million, from Buddhist-majority Myanmar in recent years. The decades-old conflict in Rakhine flared most recently on Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked several police posts and an army base. Since then, an estimated 270,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, joining more than 400,000 others already living there in cramped makeshift camps since the early 1990s. There are widespread fears that tens of thousands more could try to cross if the violence doesn t abate. Recent pictures from the border between the two countries show hundreds of Rohingya men, women and children trying to cross over into Bangladesh on foot and by boat. The humanitarian crisis next door has left Bangladesh scrambling to deal with people that it does not welcome either. In recent days, Bangladesh officials have said they plan to go ahead with a controversial plan to develop an isolated, flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal to temporarily house tens of thousands of refugees, drawing fresh criticism from the international community. It bowed to pressure on Thursday, with government officials saying that Dhaka would now make another 1,500 acres (607 hectares) of land available for camps to house refugees near Cox s Bazar, where many refugees already live as it is near the border with Myanmar. They will be given temporary shelter, said Kazi Abdur Rahman, additional deputy commissioner of Cox s Bazar. But Rahman added that the refugees would be fingerprinted and confined to the camp so that they did not mix with the local community. These measures, however, do not offer a long-term solution to the crisis, and Dhaka says it is getting little support from its neighbor, which has been accused of trying to engineer ethnic cleansing within its borders. Bangladesh officials said they had proposed joint patrolling along the border but did not receive a response from Myanmar. Earlier this week, Bangladesh lodged a protest after it said Myanmar had laid landmines near the border between the two countries. Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate, has come under pressure to halt violence against Rohingya. She has said that her government was doing its best to protect everyone in Rakhine but did not refer specifically to the Rohingya exodus. The solution lies in Myanmar. The UN hopes that Myanmar can address the root causes of the problem, said Shinji Kubo, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangladesh. Kubo said the Bangladesh government was doing its best by accepting the refugees instead of sending them back. Bangladesh officials are turning to the international community for help, claiming support from countries such as Turkey, which has promised aid. On Friday, a Malaysian coast guard official said the country will not turn away Rohingya Muslims and is willing to provide them temporary shelter. But any such voyage would be hazardous for the next few months, because of the annual monsoon. The world community must come forward to help them, not by putting pressure on Bangladesh but by putting pressure on Myanmar not to resort to these atrocities and violence, said H.T. Imam, a senior aide to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The only solution is to force Myanmar to take back their citizens through international pressure. And we are working with our partners on that, Imam said. Besides the creation of internationally-controlled safe zones in Rakhine state, Bangladesh has also mooted creating a buffer zone along the border, where the international community could set up camps and provide for the refugees, the officials said. Further details of the plan could not be learned. We will give aid agencies access. But we are not interested to give them shelter here. We are already overburdened, said Mostafa Kamal Uddin, Bangladesh s home secretary.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Thursday urged the Justice Department’s top antitrust official to recuse himself from an ongoing review of AT&T Inc’s planned $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc. She urged Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim, who was confirmed late last month, not to take part in the review because of his previous statement that the merger did not pose a “major antitrust problem.” “Your refusal to recuse yourself will undermine public confidence in the division’s ability to reach an unbiased final decision in the matter,” Warren wrote in the letter. Warren’s concern over the deal is based on the fact that AT&T already owns DirecTV, which means that the proposed transaction would combine the biggest pay TV provider with a major U.S. content provider. Time Warner’s stable of content includes the premium cable channel HBO, TNT and news channel CNN, among others. AT&T said last month it plans to reinvest more advertising revenue into content as it goes head-to-head with online streaming services such as Netflix Inc. AT&T declined to comment and has said it hopes to complete the transaction by the end of the year. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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CLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) - Some of his supporters fret that President Donald Trump is backing himself into a corner with promises that can’t be kept. Others lament he is not pulling America from international conflicts as he vowed – or say he should “get off of Twitter.” Those grumbles are early warning signs for Trump as he marks his 100th day in office on Saturday. They were heard in Reuters interviews with Trump supporters in “swing” counties that went for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but then flipped for Trump last year – a slice of the electorate dominated by white voters that is crucial to the Republican’s re-election hopes and that Democrats want to win back. Reuters visited the same four places - Pinellas County in Florida, Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania, Macomb County outside of Detroit, Michigan, and Gates County in rural North Carolina - right after the Nov. 8 election. What reporters found this time in more than two dozen interviews is that Trump voters are largely standing with their man but with signs of restlessness, mainly over foreign policy, concerns over getting legislation through Congress and some skepticism that he won’t be able to follow through with promises – from building a wall along the Mexican border to repealing Obama’s signature healthcare law. But rather than bash Trump, many largely blamed Democrats and Republicans alike, a fractured Congress, the federal judiciary, and what they see as a hostile news media.  They showed a willingness to trust the president almost implicitly, saw him as a tireless worker, and appreciated his efforts to secure the border and curb immigration. They had little interest in the in-fighting between his senior aides in the White House. “Maybe sometimes I question what’s going on,” said Karen Mayer, 47, an attorney in Clearwater, a west coast Florida city in Pinellas County, where the majority of its 500,000 voters went for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but then flipped for Trump last year. He prevailed over Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton by slightly more than 1 percent of the vote there. “But at the same time, I have faith that he has a strong team,” Mayer said. In a statement touting Trump’s record in the first 100 days, the White House highlighted, among other things, his attempts to streamline government by proposing a lean budget, and his aggressiveness in foreign affairs, particularly with regard to challenging Russia and Iran. If Trump has reason to worry about his re-election prospects, it should be because of supporters like Brian McCann, 48, who owns a real estate firm in Northampton, Pennsylvania. “I think he’s finding out that he can’t follow through on all his talk,” he said. “Internationally, I think he’s creating more tensions than solutions.” That was the main reason that Holly Peseski, 46, a legal assistant in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, graded Trump’s tenure as a “B-minus” so far. “I don’t like the recent bombings he’s done,” Peseski said, referring to U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian airfield and a huge bomb dropped on a militant hideout in Afghanistan. “He was a little too quick to act.” Peseski had another complaint about Trump: “I wish he’d get off of Twitter.”     The counties Reuters visited reflect the rural, suburban and largely white coalition that carried Trump to the White House. Trump was able to flip these counties and dozens more like them powered by an enthusiastic voter base that included many people who had not cast ballots in years, as well as some Democrats who crossed over largely because of their dislike of Clinton. An analysis of Reuters/Ipsos polling data shows slippage in Trump's approval ratings, with lower enthusiasm among white men without a college degree, the core of his political base. In comparing Trump’s approval rating in the first 20 days of his tenure to a 20-day period in April, Reuters also found a rise in disapproval among independents, college-educated adults, people with below-average incomes, white women and white Millennials. Those women voters were important to Trump’s victory. He beat Clinton 53 percent to 43 percent among white women, who comprise 37 percent of the electorate. In Pinellas County, for instance, white women are by far the largest demographic among its more than 275,000 registered voters. Trump beat Clinton there by a little more than 5,000 votes. David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who lost his Pinellas-based seat in November in part, he said, because of his criticism of Trump, has seen few signs that the president’s support is fading, but at the same time, “he’s not picking up new supporters.” Trump’s overall approval rating in Reuters/Ipsos polling has declined steadily over the past two weeks and is now at its lowest level since he took office, with 40 percent of Americans now approving of his performance in office. Some voters interviewed in the swing counties identified the struggling effort to replace Obama’s healthcare law as an early worry about Trump. Walter Watson, 62, a retired art teacher in Gatesville, a town of about 320 people in rural Gates County, North Carolina, said he did not like the way Trump and Republicans tried to rush through a new healthcare plan without giving it what he thought was proper consideration. “You got to be careful, because this is a life and death issue for a lot of people,” Watson said. His sparsely populated county backed Obama with 52 percent of the vote in 2012, but Trump won it with 53 percent in 2016. Congress is the biggest hindrance to Trump’s success, many of those interviewed said. “I don’t think he’s going to be able to do even half of what he claimed,” said Bob White, 71, a retired finance worker in Clinton Township in Michigan. “I don’t think Congress is going to go along with him.” But even as they express skepticism that Trump can achieve all of his campaign promises, his supporters are sticking with him for now. “I think he’s trying,” said Watson. “But he probably overstated what he could do, because even a president has limits.”

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NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - Two former associates of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were sentenced to federal prison on Wednesday for their part in the “Bridgegate” lane closure scandal that helped scuttle the Republican’s presidential bid. Bill Baroni, 45, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, will serve two years, while Bridget Kelly, 44, a former deputy chief of staff for Christie, received a sentence of 1-1/2 years. The defendants were found guilty in November of plotting to close down access lanes at the George Washington Bridge linking New York City and northern New Jersey, the world’s busiest span, for nearly a week in 2013 in an act of political retribution. Prosecutors said the resulting traffic jams in the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey, were intended to punish its Democratic mayor for refusing to back Christie’s re-election bid, as the governor’s aides tried to burnish his bipartisan credentials before his 2016 presidential campaign. Christie has denied any involvement and was not charged. But the scandal tarnished his national profile and contributed to record-low approval ratings in his home state. In an NBC interview before the hearing, Christie deflected questions about the appropriate penalty. A spokesman for the governor, Brian Murray, said Christie would have no comment on the sentences. U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton in Newark rejected defense pleas that she sentence Baroni and Kelly to probation rather than prison, citing “an outrageous display of abuse of power.” But she agreed with prosecutors that Kelly bore slightly less responsibility than Baroni, New Jersey’s highest-ranking Port Authority official. The agency oversees operations for major bridges, ports and airports in the New York City area and is run by officials appointed by New Jersey and New York state’s governors. Both defendants told Wigenton they felt remorse. “I respectfully ask that you allow me the opportunity to reconnect with my children and rebuild our lives,” said a tearful Kelly, a single mother of four. Baroni and Kelly will be allowed to remain free on bail while they appeal their convictions. Following the sentencings, Kelly struck a defiant note outside the courthouse. “This fight is far from over,” she said. “I will not allow myself to be the scapegoat in this case.” The plot to use the bridge to inflict political payback was “out of the playbook of some dictator of a banana republic,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes said in court. During the trial, Kelly and Baroni testified that another Port Authority executive, David Wildstein, convinced them the lane realignment was part of a legitimate traffic study. But Wildstein, who pleaded guilty and was the government’s star witness, told jurors the defendants were fully aware the study was a cover story. It was Kelly’s infamous email to Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” that set the plan in motion, prosecutors said. The three officials selected the first day of school to maximize gridlock and ignored increasingly desperate pleas for help from Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich. No other officials have been charged over Bridgegate, though evidence at trial suggested Christie and numerous members of his inner circle knew about the closures earlier than they had publicly acknowledged. “While a number of people outside of this courtroom were involved in what happened in Fort Lee that day, some charged, some not, that does not change the fact that I failed,” Baroni said in court. After his White House bid fizzled early in 2016, Christie became one of the staunchest supporters of his former rival, Donald Trump, who went on to win the presidency. Christie headed Trump’s transition team and was considered a candidate for a Cabinet post. But he was replaced as transition team chief soon after the election Nov. 8 and passed over for an administration job. State law bars the governor from running for a third term this year. The Bridgegate case indirectly led to one other conviction, after authorities investigating the plot uncovered an unrelated bribery scheme orchestrated by a Christie confidante, former Port Authority Chairman David Samson. Samson pleaded guilty to pressuring United Airlines into operating an unprofitable flight so he could visit a vacation home more easily.

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq won t be able to restore Kirkuk s oil output to last week s levels before Sunday because of missing equipment at two fields, an oil ministry official told Reuters on Thursday. The official accused the Kurdish authorities previously in control of Kirkuk of removing equipment at the Bai Hasan and Avana oil fields, north west of the city.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will make an announcement this week on an overall Iran strategy, including whether to decertify the international deal curbing Tehran s nuclear program, the White House said on Tuesday. He ll make that later this week, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters when asked about the certification decision and the administration s broader strategy on Iran. Trump, who has called the 2015 pact agreed between Iran and six world powers an embarrassment, is expected to announce that he will decertify the deal ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline, a senior administration official said last week. Trump is also expected to designate Iran s most powerful security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, as a terrorist organization as part of a new Iran strategy. The president has reached a decision on an overall Iran strategy and wants to make sure that we have a broad policy to deal with ... all of the problems of Iran being a bad actor, Sanders said. Trump accuses Iran of supporting terrorism and says the 2015 deal does not do enough to block its path to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran says it does not seek nuclear weapons and in turn blames the growth of militant groups such as Islamic State on the policies of the United States and its regional allies. The hawkish turn in U.S. policy toward Iran has alarmed many of its European allies. British Prime Minister Theresa May told Trump by phone on Tuesday that the deal was vitally important for regional security. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday urged the United States not to call into question such an important achievement that has improved our security. France voiced concern on Tuesday that designating the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group could exacerbate tensions in the region. If Trump declines to certify the Iran deal, U.S. congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the agreement. Iranian authorities, who have said Tehran would not be the first to violate the accord, have stepped up their rhetoric against the Trump administration over the possible terrorist designation of the Revolutionary Guards. The Americans have driven the world crazy by their behavior. It is time to teach them a new lesson, Iranian armed forces spokesman Masoud Jazayeri said on Tuesday.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said on Wednesday she hoped “cooler heads will prevail” over the vacancy on the Supreme Court, suggesting that Republicans should act on President Barack Obama’s nominee. Ginsburg’s comments at Georgetown Law Center came a day after Democrats in the Republican-controlled Senate renewed their push for a confirmation hearing for Obama’s pick, appeals court judge Merrick Garland. The nomination has been pending for 175 days without Senate action, the longest ever to the high court. Republicans have said the next president should get to make the appointment because the vacancy, created by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February, came in the final year of Obama’s presidency. “I do think that cooler heads will prevail, I hope sooner rather than later,” Ginsburg said. Ginsburg, 83, a liberal appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993, acknowledged that the Senate, which has the responsibility to confirm or reject judicial nominations, did not have to confirm the nominee. But she said it did have an obligation to at least consider Garland instead of taking no action at all. “The president is elected for four years, not three years,” she said in relation to the president’s authority to make appointments in the final year of a term. “Maybe some members of the Senate will wake up and appreciate that that’s how it should be.” Earlier on Wednesday, Democratic senators held a press conference outside the Supreme Court demanding action on the nomination. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far held firm to his pledge to take no action. The nine-seat court has been one justice short since Scalia’s death. With four liberals and four conservatives now on the bench, an appointment by a Democratic president could end decades of conservative domination on the court. Ginsburg has a long track record of making sometimes outspoken public remarks, in stark contrast to most of her colleagues. In July, she issued a statement in which she said she regretted comments she made in press interviews criticizing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In one CNN interview she described him as a “faker.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Labor Department will delay implementation of its “fiduciary” rule by 60 days while it undertakes a review on whether the rule may hinder Americans’ ability to get access to retirement investment advice, according to a filing in the Federal Register. The department’s rule, which requires brokers offering retirement investment advice to act in the best interest of their customers, has been heavily criticized by Republicans and Wall Street amid concerns it may make investment advice too costly. The delay of the rule, which was slated to take effect April 10, was prompted after President Donald Trump in February ordered the department to conduct the review on whether it should be revised or repealed. In order to delay the effective date, the department had to undertake a formal rule-making process. If the department ultimately decides on a repeal or change, it will need to undertake another rule-making process in the future. In addition to the 60-day delay, the department also said that other regulatory requirements in the rule for firms to provide disclosures and written representations of compliance to investors will not be mandated until Jan. 1, 2018. That date, the department added, is when it expects to complete its review. As of March 17, the department said it had received 15,000 comments in support of a delay, versus 178,000 comments opposing any delay. Despite the lop-sided results, the department said a delay is justified because time is needed to complete the presidentially mandated review. Rigid adherence to the original April 10 compliance deadline, the department said, could result in “an unduly chaotic transition to the new standards” and lead to “confusion, excessive costs, and needlessly restricted or reduced advisory services.”

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet in New York on Sunday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. State Department said in a brief statement. The State Department did not provide any details on what the two men would discuss during the 9 p.m. (0100 GMT on Monday) meeting. Possible topics include the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Syrian civil war and North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rex Tillerson’s job as chief U.S. diplomat became harder before it even began because of White House moves that have antagonized Muslim nations, European allies, Mexico and U.S. bureaucrats, current and former U.S. officials said. Hours after the Senate confirmed Tillerson as the 69th secretary of state by a 56-43 vote, the former Exxon Mobil Corp CEO was sworn in as the chief foreign affairs adviser to President Donald Trump. The Senate vote was largely along party lines, with all 52 Republicans voting in favor, along with three Democrats and one independent. Tillerson takes up his post at the State Department on Thursday morning when he will address staff. Under any circumstance, Tillerson would have inherited a messy globe with a civil war in Syria, nuclear-armed North Korea threatening to test an intercontinental ballistic missile and challenges from a rising China and an assertive Russia. In the 12 days since Trump’s inauguration, however, the White House has taken steps that foreign policy professionals view as self-inflicted wounds. “We’ve done a series of own goals,” said a senior U.S. official on condition of anonymity. “There are always mess-ups and friction with new administrations. That’s not new. This is worse than usual.” On Thursday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took the rare step of cancelling a Washington trip to meet Trump, who has repeatedly demanded Mexico pay for a wall on the U.S. border. On Friday, Trump signed an executive order imposing a four-month hold on refugees entering the United States and a temporary bar on most travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order has not only caused consternation for the nations involved but among other Muslim-majority countries, allies such as Germany and Britain and career State Department officials. About 900 department officials signed a memo dissenting from the policy, a source familiar with the document said, an unusual rebellion against a new president’s policies. As reports of the internal dissent spread on Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said career officials who disagreed should “get with the program or they can go.” The result has been that two constituencies Tillerson has to manage - foreign nations and the U.S. diplomatic corps - have already got their noses out of joint before his swearing-in. “He will start at a disadvantage and will have to play catch-up to build trust with his foreign counterparts and with State Department employees,” said John Bellinger, a State Department legal adviser under Republican President George W. Bush. “Tillerson walks into a situation where he has got an unhappy and suspicious White House and he has an unhappy and suspicious workforce,” said another former State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It would have been difficult enough given the chaos.” Several current and former U.S. officials said they were dismayed by the process that led to the executive order, with little evidence that there was broad consultation within the government, let alone with Congress or foreign allies. The secretary of homeland security, John Kelly, was reported to have been largely blindsided by the order. According to the New York Times, he was on a White House conference call getting his first full briefing on it when Trump signed the order. Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former national security council and Pentagon official, said the belief that Trump did not bring his top advisers into the discussion of the matter would itself handicap the new secretary of state. “The secretary of state’s power and his influence primarily derive from the idea that he speaks for the president,” said Schulman, now at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, saying it was an open secret the White House may not be consulting cabinet officials on such matters. “The fact that foreign audiences will realize that on day one is going to definitely weaken his hand,” she said.

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The number killed in twin bombings in the Somali capital Mogadishu last weekend has risen to 358, the government said late on Friday. As well as the confirmed death toll, 228 people were injured in what was the deadliest attack in the country s history, Somalia s news agency quoted the information and internal security ministers as saying.

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ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey wants to open a new border gate with Iraq in cooperation with the central government in Baghdad after it shuts down the existing gate in response to last week s Kurdish independence referendum, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. We have proposed opening the new Ovakoy gate, west of currently used Habur gate, to Baghdad and we are expecting their support. We will be happy to discuss this with (Iraqi Prime Minister Haider) al-Abadi, Yildirim told reporters, saying the timing of his visit to Baghdad was a work in progress. Yildirim also said he wanted to boost cooperation with central Iraqi government on economy, defense, security and political issues.

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HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama challenged Cuba’s Communist government with an impassioned call for democracy and economic reforms on Tuesday, addressing the Cuban people directly in a historic speech broadcast throughout the island. Taking the stage at Havana’s Grand Theater with President Raul Castro in attendance, Obama said he was in Cuba to extend a hand of friendship and “bury the last remnant” of the Cold War in the Americas. But he also pressed hard for economic and political reforms and greater openness in a one-party state where the government stifles dissent, Internet access is low and the media is in state hands. His speech was the high point of a 48-hour trip made possible by his agreement with Castro in December 2014 to cast aside decades of hostility that began soon after Cuba’s 1959 revolution, and work to normalize relations. Nonetheless, Obama threw down a very public gauntlet to Castro, saying Cubans cannot realize their full potential if his government does not allow change and relax its grip on Cuban politics and society. “I believe citizens should be free to speak their minds without fear,” Obama told the audience on the final day of his visit. “Voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections.” “Not everybody agrees with me on this, not everybody agrees with the American people on this but I believe those human rights are universal. I believe they’re the rights of the American people, the Cuban people and people around the world,” Obama said. The hand-picked audience cheered him repeatedly, especially when he criticized the longstanding U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, spoke glowingly of Cubans’ talents and praised the country’s achievements in healthcare and education. The spectacle of the leader of the United States, the superpower to the north for long reviled by Cuba’s government, standing in Havana and urging such changes in a speech broadcast into homes across the island would have been unthinkable before the two countries began their rapprochement 15 months ago. Since then, Obama has repeatedly used his executive powers to relax trade and travel restrictions, while also pushing Cuba to accelerate cautious market-style reforms introduced by Castro and allow greater political and economic freedom. Castro has welcomed Obama’s moves while insisting that a new relationship with the old enemy does not mean Cuba plans to change its political system. The audience of more than 1,000 people at Obama’s speech on Tuesday included officials and business people from both countries, U.S. lawmakers and members of Cuba’s cultural elite. Obama drew sustained applause when he reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to lift the embargo, which he called “an outdated burden on the Cuban people.” But the response was more muted when he challenged Castro to allow greater political liberties. Obama went straight from the speech to a private meeting with prominent dissidents on the island, a few of whom object to his engagement policy. “As far as I am concerned nothing has changed, the repression continues,” said Berta Soler from the Ladies in White group, who met Obama at the embassy. Cuba’s government dismisses the dissidents as mercenaries without public support but Obama applauded their work and “extraordinary courage.” Obama sees his dramatic shift away from a decades-old policy of trying to isolate and weaken Cuba as a success story and wants to make it an irreversible part of his legacy by the time he leaves office in January. Still, major obstacles remain to full normalization of ties, notably the differences over human rights, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress’ refusal to lift the embargo and Washington’s resistance to discussing the return of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama’s critics at home have criticized his visit to Cuba as a premature reward to the Communist government. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said on Tuesday the trip legitimizes what he called Castro’s “tyrannical dictatorship.” With his words carried live by Cuba’s state-run media, Obama sought to persuade ordinary Cubans that his new policy was focused primarily on helping them to improve their lives. Standing at a lectern flanked by U.S. and Cuban flags, he laid out a hopeful vision of future relations and told Cubans “it’s up to you” to take steps to change the country. Obama pointedly stopped short of what some of his critics had demanded – that he echo U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s famous exhortation in a 1987 speech in West Berlin for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. But he did encourage Cubans to embrace democracy, set up their own businesses and help improve Cuban society. “Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down. But I’m appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new,” he said. Some Cubans who saw the speech in their homes or local cafes were also impressed by his frank admission of America’s own failings. “He has been very honest in his statements,” said Santiago Rodriguez, 78, in his home in central Havana. “It is not only the blockade (embargo) that has overwhelmed us for years. This was a message full of suggestions and positive criticism for the future of Cuba.” Castro, an army general who took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008, was at the theater to greet Obama on arrival and sat in the audience for the speech. At the end, he lightly applauded from the balcony, then waved to the crowd. Later, the two leaders entered together to loud applause at Havana’s Latin American Stadium and sat side-by-side for a baseball game between Cuba’s much-loved national team and Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays. Castro was also on hand at the airport to bid Obama farewell, giving him an enthusiastic handshake at the bottom of Air Force One’s stairway and then exchanging waves once the U.S. leader reached the top. After the two men met on Monday, they aired some of the old grievances between their countries at a joint news conference, even as they sought to advance the diplomatic thaw. Obama’s administration is seeking to galvanize the Cuban people to help him pressure their government for reforms. But flashes of anger from Castro at the news conference illustrated how Washington runs the risk of being accused of meddling. Obama’s address on Tuesday was the first time a sitting U.S. president’s speech was broadcast to the Cuban people while on Cuban soil – although speeches by visiting popes have been carried live by state media. Jimmy Carter, traveling to Cuba in 2002 as the first former U.S. president to visit since the revolution, also called for political freedoms in a speech broadcast on live television.

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis canonized 35 new Roman Catholic saints on Sunday, including three indigenous children martyred in 16th century Mexico and considered the first Christians killed for their faith in the New World. Francis used the occasion to announce that he had decided to call a meeting of bishops, or synod, from countries in the Pan-Amazon region for October, 2019, to discuss the condition of the Church in the area and the plight of indigenous people. The region includes Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil. The three children the pope canonized before a crowd of tens of thousands in St. Peter s Square were of the Talaxcaltec people, an indigenous pre-Colombian group in what is now Mexico. The first child, Cristoforo, was converted to Christianity by Franciscan missionaries and was killed in 1527 by his own father, a tribal chief who spurned his son s attempts to convert him from paganism. The boy was beaten and thrown into a fire when he was 13. Two other indigenous children from the same area, Antonio and Juan, were killed by Indios in the village of Cuauhtinchan in 1529 as a result of their conversion. They are believed to have been 12 or 13 when they were beaten to death for helping Dominican missionaries. The pope also canonized 30 martyrs who were killed for their faith in Brazil in 1645. They included two Portuguese missionaries and 28 followers killed by Dutch colonial soldiers during a period of persecution of Catholics. In announcing the 2019 synod for bishops from the Amazon region, Francis said indigenous people there today were often abandoned and without the prospect of a bright future, even due to the crisis of the Amazon Forest, a lung of utmost importance for our planet . Francis, an Argentine and the first Latin American pope, has often linked his calls for social justice, particularly for indigenous people, to those for defense of the environment, saying the poor will suffer the most from the effects of climate change. In 2015 he wrote a landmark encyclical, or papal letter, on defense of the environment and he has called for special protection for the Amazon region because of its vital importance to the planet s ecosystem. In his comments on Sunday, the pope did not mention the role of the Church in suppressing native cultures in the New World. But during a visit to Bolivia in 2015, Francis said many grave sins were committed against the native people of America in the name of God . He asked forgiveness for the Church, for crimes committed against native peoples during the so-called conquest of America . On Sunday, Francis also canonized Father Faustino Miguez, a Spanish priest who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries, and Father Angelo d Acri, an Italian itinerant preacher who died in 1739 after serving in some of the most remote areas of mountainous southern Italy.

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YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Militants seeking independence for Cameroon s English-speaking regions killed four gendarmes on Monday, the government said, as disputes with the Francophone-dominated government degenerate into open warfare. Several separatists were killed by security forces in ensuing clashes, the government spokesman said. Repression by President Paul Biya s government against what began as peaceful protests a year ago by Anglophone activists over perceived social and economic marginalization has bolstered support for armed militants demanding a full break with Yaounde. The separatists have launched a series of deadly raids on government police and soldiers in recent weeks, leading authorities to escalate a crackdown that has killed dozens of civilians. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon s government spokesman, said the separatists had killed four gendarmes earlier on Monday in the town of Kembong in Southwest region s Manyu Division. The assailants, ensnared by the measures put in place by our defense and security forces, are now reduced to sporadic attacks carried out by hidden faces and using perfidy, Tchiroma said. A representative for the separatists could not be immediately reached for comment. Manyu, with its dense equatorial forests along the Nigerian border, has become the center of the insurgency from which the separatists have launched a series of attacks on security forces in villages. The violence there has fueled a mounting refugee crisis. At least 7,500 people have crossed into Nigeria since Oct. 1, when the secessionists declared an independent state called Ambazonia, and the U.N. refugee agency says it is bracing itself for as many as 40,000. Cameroon s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the German colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors. The English-speaking regions joined the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country s politics since. Tensions have long simmered but the recent violence is the most serious to date and has emerged as a serious challenge to Biya s 35-year rule. The 84-year-old is expected to seek a new term in an election next year.

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EAST CHICAGO, Ind. (Reuters) - The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) toured his first hazardous waste site on Tuesday amid proposed budget cuts that could devastate efforts to clean up contaminated land and water around the country. Scott Pruitt’s visit to East Chicago, Indiana, came a day after the agency denied a report that it was considering closing its Chicago office, which oversees regional environmental protection efforts, including the Flint, Michigan drinking water clean-up and Great Lakes restoration. “The reason I’m here is because it is important that we restore confidence to the people here in this community that we are going to get it right going forward,” Pruitt told the media after meeting with residents and lawmakers. Pruitt did not address the report of the possible office closure or how drastic budget cuts would impact the EPA’s operations. He toured a housing complex built on the Superfund site where around 1,000 residents had to leave their homes earlier this year due to lead contamination. Dozens of people held signs on Wednesday urging the EPA to continue clean-up efforts. The Superfund program was started in 1980 to clean up hazardous waste sites, which now number just over 1,300 around the country. The White House budget proposal submitted to Congress last month includes a 31 percent cut in spending for the EPA, including a similar reduction of the agency’s Hazardous Substance Superfund Account by $330 million to $762 million. Clean-up would continue in East Chicago, lawmakers said. Pruitt, “made commitments that we would have it right,” Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly said.” There is a budget that is sent over and then there is a real budget that is put together. And the real budget will provide the funds necessary to make sure East Chicago is right.” East Chicago, around 25 miles (40 km) outside of Chicago, was home to the now defunct U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery Inc which contaminated the facility and surrounding areas with lead and arsenic. Demetra Turner, 44, a resident of the West Calumet Housing Complex who has yet to leave, urged others to keep pressure on the EPA. “Keep fighting people, keep fighting, because that is what it takes,” she said.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s Defence Ministry denied on Monday that Russian war planes had carried out deadly air strikes on a village in Syria s Deir al-Zor province that had killed dozens of civilians, the Interfax news agency reported. Moscow was responding after the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 53 civilians, including children, had been killed in Russian air strikes in the eastern Syrian village of Al-Shafah.

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TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan families displaced from a town ransacked after the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 will be allowed to return home in February, the U.N.-backed government said on Tuesday after more than a year of negotiations. The deal, if implemented, would be a step toward reconciliation in the North African oil producing country, which is heavily divided between competing factions, communities, tribes and governments since 2011. Residents of the town of Tawergha were expelled by former anti-Gaddafi rebels in 2011 in retaliation for the strongman having used their settlement as a launch pad for attacks on the western city of Misrata during the uprising. They have been living in camps and makeshift settlements in poverty across Libya and were banned from returning home. They faced abuse and arbitrary arrest since videos surfaced purportedly showing some of them joining Gaddafi forces in 2011. Within the frame of achieving the national reconciliation ... as well as to develop the basics of state of law and institutions, I declare today the beginning of return of Tawergha families to their town on the first of February, the Tripoli-based Prime Minister Fayez Seraj said in a statement. The town, which is east of Misrata, has been a ghost town since it was looted by Misrata forces in 2011. Some 40,000 people were displaced, according to Human Rights Watch s website. The government will pay compensation to the relatives of those who were killed and to those who had been detained, wounded or whose homes were destroyed in the conflict, it said. A spokesman for the Misrata city council confirmed the deal, saying it was up to the government to implement it.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will strike 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 in a major reversal of U.S. policy. Trump s decision will not withdraw the United States from the agreement, which was negotiated by Washington and other world powers during the administration of former President Barack Obama. The move likely gives U.S. lawmakers 60 days to decide whether to bring back sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the deal. If Congress reimposes the sanctions, the United States would in effect be in violation of the terms of the nuclear deal and it would likely fall apart. If lawmakers do nothing, the deal remains in place. Here is a look at where key U.S. lawmakers stand on the deal: SENATE MAJORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL: Like every Republican in Congress, McConnell voted against the Iran nuclear agreement. He has not expressed a position on how he will respond to Trump s decertification, but has not yet broken from Trump on policy matters. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SPEAKER PAUL RYAN: Has not said where he stands. I don t want to get ahead of the president, he said last week. HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER KEVIN MCCARTHY: Has not said what he would do. SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN BOB CORKER: Repeatedly spoke out against the agreement and wrote legislation that gave Congress some say over it. While he has questioned Trump recently on some foreign policy issues - helping spark a Twitter feud - Corker has followed the administration line on most policy matters. Corker said on Friday he expected to introduce legislation to address flaws in the pact without violating it. HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ED ROYCE: Royce says As flawed as the deal is, I believe we must now enforce the hell out of it. It was not clear how he would respond to the legislation. SENATE MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: Opposed the deal two years ago but more recently says it should be left in place but strongly enforced with efforts to clamp down on other activities like Iran s ballistic missile program. HOUSE MINORITY LEADER NANCY PELOSI: Supported the original deal, still supports it. SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE TOP DEMOCRAT BEN CARDIN: Opposed the deal two years ago, but says U.S. should honor it now, while strictly enforcing it and clamping down on other Iranian activities detrimental to the interests of the United States and its allies. HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS TOP DEMOCRAT ELLIOT ENGEL: Opposed the deal two years ago but said killing it now would be a grave mistake. Still an Iran hawk on issues such as Tehran s ballistic missile program, human rights violations and its support for what Washington sees as terrorism.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved arms sales packages worth more than $3.8 billion to Bahrain including F-16 jets, upgrades, missiles and patrol boats, the Pentagon said on Friday. The approvals coincide with the State Department s notification to Congress, which had held up a similar arms deal last year over human rights concerns. The proposed sales include 19 F-16V jets made by Lockheed Martin Corp which could have a value of up to $2.7 billion, the Pentagon said. Other potential sales approved Friday include two 35 meter (114 feet) patrol boats with machine guns, 221 anti-tank missiles made by Raytheon Co and $1.8 billion worth of upgrades to Bahrain s existing fleet of F-16 jets, the Pentagon said in separate statements. In May, U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington s relations with Bahrain would improve, after meeting with the king of the Gulf Arab state during a visit to Saudi Arabia. However in June, U.S. Senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would block arms sales to members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Bahrain, until they made progress in resolving a simmering dispute with Qatar. But a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity earlier on Friday, said the proposed sales were cleared by the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees through the regular tiered review process which precedes this formal notification. The U.S. official also said the United States has regular discussions with Bahrain on human rights and political reform and continues to urge its government to pursue efforts that will enhance regional security.

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma reiterated a call on Monday for radical reforms to shift the balance of monopoly economic power away from whites who dominated under apartheid, saying without such change blacks would stay poor for a long time. He made the remarks, reiterating a staple criticism leveled by his ruling ANC about South Africa s economy, against the backdrop of widespread allegations of corruption against Zuma and his friends, the Indian-born Gupta brothers. Zuma was responding to a question about his role as an enemy of white capital , during an interview with the ANN7 news network, which was founded by the Guptas. Zuma and the Guptas have denied any wrongdoing. I don t know why there is a debate in fact. Because there is a monopoly capital and in South Africa it is white ... because of our history, it does have a color. It is white, Zuma, who steps down as head of the ANC in December but can remain head of state until elections due in 2019, said. Companies that dominate in the mines, there are not many ... You will find the same companies in charge. That means they are monopolizing the economy and they re not black, he said. The Chamber of Mines in the world s top platinum producer says that in 2016, 39 percent of the sector was owned by historically disadvantaged South Africans - meaning non-whites. Zuma said the policy of radical economic transformation, which has also seen moves to change the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land for redistribution to landless blacks, was needed to correct the past. The ANC must follow this policy because if you don t, we are going to stay in poverty, in inequality, for a long time. The frontrunners to replace Zuma at the helm of the ANC are Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a trade unionist who amassed a fortune in the world of business, and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former chair of the African Union and Zuma s ex-wife. Ramaphosa is viewed more favourably by foreign investors, who help cover the country s deficits. Many of them are unsettled by Dlamini-Zuma s calls to radically redistribute wealth and her perceived links to her former husband. In a separate interview on state broadcaster SABC, ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe said state capture is a reality, referring to allegations that the Guptas and others have undue political influence with access to state resources and contracts under Zuma. Mantashe is regarded as an ally of Ramaphosa with ties that go back to the 1980s when they were involved in the founding of the National Union of Mineworkers.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will be in the “front seat” to negotiate a new trade deal with the incoming administration of Donald Trump, a top Republican in the United States Senate said, the BBC reported. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said after meeting British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that a trade deal between the two countries would be a priority as Britain prepares to leave the European Union. Last year, ahead of the Brexit vote, President Barack Obama exhorted Britons to stay in the EU and warned that if they left they would be at “the back of the queue” for a U.S. trade deal. Corker said Johnson knows full well that “there is no way the United Kingdom is going to take a back seat”. “They will take a front seat and I think it will be our priority to make sure that we deal with them on a trade agreement initially but in all respects in a way that demonstrates the long-term friendship that we’ve had for so long,” Corker was quoted as saying by the BBC. Trump, while a candidate for the U.S. presidency, hailed Brexit as a “great thing” when visiting Scotland the day after the vote, though Britain cannot sign a trade deal until it leaves the EU which under current plans will likely be in 2019. After visits to see aides in Trump Tower in New York and meet members of Congress in Washington, Johnson said there had been a “huge fund of goodwill” towards Britain and a desire to move quickly on a trade deal. “They want to do it and they want to do it fast and that understanding was most vivid and most urgent on the part of the incoming administration,” he told parliament on Tuesday when asked about his trip. Speaking earlier, Johnson also described the incoming Trump administration as having a “very exciting agenda of change” and stressed that close relations between the two countries were not under threat. “We are America’s principal partner in working for global security and, of course, we are great campaigners for free trade,” Johnson was quoted as saying by the Guardian newspaper. “We hear that we are first in line to do a great free trade deal with the United States. So it’s going to be a very exciting year for both our countries.”

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ZURICH (Reuters) - More than one in three Swiss feel uncomfortable around people perceived to be different because of their nationality, religion, skin color or other factors, a government survey found. The poll released on Tuesday sought for the first time to gauge how people coexist in a country of 8.4 million residents, a quarter of them foreigners. Thirty-six percent said they felt uneasy in the presence of people they found outside the norm, particularly those who spoke a foreign language, or moved around. It did not give more details on the last category, but Roma and other itinerant groups have complained of discrimination in the mountainous state that has stayed outside the European Union. Sixteen percent of respondents went further and said they felt threatened by foreigners. Despite that, most were in favor of granting more rights to foreign nationals, the poll discovered. Two out of three said racism was a key social problem, and 56 percent believed the integration of migrants was working well. With four national languages and a decentralized system of government, traditionally Christian Switzerland is increasingly diverse. There are more than 10 main religious communities in a population made up of people with roots in 190 other countries. Right-wing parties have stoked anti-foreigner sentiment, pushing for a series of measures including a ban on the construction of new minarets on mosques that became law in 2009. But parliament last year watered down demands in a 2014 referendum to impose quotas on immigration from the European Union, the bloc that surrounds it and provides most of its trade.

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CARACAS (Reuters) - From his refuge at the Chilean ambassador s home, Venezuela s deputy congressional leader has defended civil disobedience against President Nicolas Maduro and urged demoralized opponents to unite and oust him in a presidential vote. All the focus of our struggle now is to have truly free presidential elections, opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara said in a video released overnight after he entered the Chilean diplomatic residence at the weekend. Venezuela is due to hold a presidential vote in 2018. But foes of Maduro are demanding that the pro-government election board first be reformed, charging the election will be rigged if it is not. Saying he should be tried for violence, authorities have revoked Guevara s parliamentary immunity and banned the 31-year-old leader of hardline Popular Will party from traveling. Guevara, who is vice president of the opposition-led National Assembly, was at the forefront of anti-Maduro street demonstrations between April and July in which at least 125 people died and thousands were injured. Opponents say Maduro s leftist government has run oil-rich Venezuela s economy into the ground and resorted to increasingly authoritarian tactics to retain power. The usurpers of the Supreme Court and State Prosecutor s Office accuse me of crimes I have not committed but based on events I do recognize, Guevara said in the video released via social media. Yes, I called protests and believe in civil disobedience. I organized them and will do it again. Never will they convince me, those who were in the street, nor the international community, that we are guilty when you murdered us. Chief prosecutor Tarek Saab, who recently replaced a dissident prosecutor, presented the case against Guevara to the pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly superbody, which has sidelined congress, in a session late on Monday. Saab blamed Guevara for the shooting, stoning and stabbing of security officials, paying adolescents to protest, and exhorting violence during the protests this year. He didn t care who died, Saab said. The U.S. State Department weighed in on the Guevara case on Tuesday, saying in a statement the government s moves against him were yet another extreme measure to close the democratic space in Venezuela, criminalize dissent and control information. Maduro, 54, has long had his sights on Guevara, nicknaming him Chucky in reference to a horror film s murderous doll. Popular Will founder Leopoldo Lopez is under house arrest, for his role in protests in 2014, and the party is under constant threat of being banned as officials accuse it of terrorism. Mr. Nicolas Maduro, sadly for you, we have taken the decision not to give you any more hostages, Guevara added in his video, explaining his decision to take refuge rather than face trial like Lopez did. Earlier this year the Chilean ambassador s opulent residence in the Country Club zone of Caracas took in five pro-opposition magistrates threatened with jail time. They eventually crossed the border secretly to Colombia before flying to Santiago to be received by President Michelle Bachelet s government, which has joined a chorus of major Latin American nations in denouncing Maduro for rights abuses. Critics say Maduro has turned the country into a dictatorship by twisting elections and detaining opponents. His supporters say Maduro, who inherited the socialist course of his predecessor the late Hugo Chavez, is resisting a U.S.-backed push for a coup, and insist Venezuela s election process is sound. In another overnight development, a local journalist missing since Saturday turned up at dawn wearing only his underwear on a motorway outside Caracas, he and authorities said. Jesus Medina, who works for the DolarToday currency and political website that virulently opposes Maduro, said he was kidnapped, tortured and threatened before being released. To inform is not a crime, Medina said in a video, showing injuries on his face. He declined to give more details of the alleged kidnapping, including the identity of his captors, because the incident was under investigation. The state prosecutor s office opened an investigation.

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MANILA (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte will ask Congress to extend martial law in the volatile southern island of Mindanao to quell an insurgency, cabinet officials said on Sunday. Duterte placed the restive region of 22 million people under military rule on May 23 after Islamist militants took over parts of the southern Marawi City in what was the Philippines biggest security crisis in years. Martial law is due to expire on Dec. 31. The Philippine leader will formally request on Monday a one-year extension of martial law, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea told reporters. The 23-member Senate and the 296-member House of Representatives will vote once they convene in joint session. Lawmakers are due to go on recess on from Dec. 16 to Jan. 14, 2018. Military rule should be extended in Mindanao given threats from Maoist guerrillas, Islamist militants and separatist groups, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said. Militants linked to Islamic State, which tried to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia by capturing parts of Marawi City, are strengthening their recruitment programs, Andanar said. There were intelligence reports saying they are planning to attack another city, Andanar told a radio interview. The request comes nearly two months after Duterte declared the liberation of Marawi City. More than 1,100 people - mostly militants - were killed and 350,000 displaced by the Marawi unrest. Continuing martial law beyond the initial 60-day limit requires lawmakers approval, but the constitution does not restrict how long it can be extended.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Saturday denied a report that said the Social Democrat, whose party has agreed to enter talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a coalition, was eyeing the post of finance minister. News magazine Der Spiegel reported that Gabriel had recently told senior members of his SPD party that he was interested in becoming German finance minister if the SPD agreed to a re-run of the current grand coalition with Merkel s conservatives. What Spiegel is writing is sheer nonsense, Gabriel told Deutschlandfunk radio. I m in a caretaker government and no one knows what the next government will look like. More than two months after a national election, Germany has not managed to form a new government, so the conservative coalition from the last legislative period is still in power. Merkel, who lost many supporters to the far-right in September s election, is banking on the SPD to extend her 12-year tenure after attempts to cobble together an awkward three-way alliance with the liberal Free Democrats and environmentalist Greens crumbled. If the SPD were to agree to another grand coalition - an option that the SPD says is by no means a foregone conclusion - and demand the finance ministry, it would likely result in changes to Germany s European policy such as more focus on spending and investment rather than austerity. Wolfgang Schaeuble, who was Germany s conservative finance minister until he took on the role of president in October, became unpopular among struggling euro zone states during his eight years in office due to his focus on austerity. SPD leader Martin Schulz said on Thursday that Europe could not afford to undergo another four years of the kind of European policy that Schaeuble had practiced.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Venezuela s former chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega met Mexico s attorney general on Thursday, a Mexican official said, weeks after she fled her homeland accusing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of involvement in corruption. Ortega, who was removed from her position earlier this month, said a week ago she had evidence that Maduro was involved in graft with construction company Odebrecht. The 59-year-old Ortega has said she would give details of the corruption cases to authorities in the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. Mexican attorney general Raul Cervantes met Ortega for around 10 minutes in Mexico City, an official at the attorney general s office said. He gave no further details of the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity. Late on Thursday, Ortega posted a picture on Twitter of herself with Cervantes in Mexico, saying the two had met to coordinate actions in the fight against corruption. Pictures posted on social media earlier on Thursday showed Ortega arriving at Mexico City airport. Ortega says she has been persecuted by opponents in an effort to hide details of high-level corruption and that she has proof of it. She was a key player in Venezuela s government before breaking with it in March. Ortega left Venezuela for Colombia and traveled to Brazil to meet prosecutors last week. Odebrecht admitted in a settlement with U.S. and Brazilian prosecutors to paying bribes across 12 countries to win contracts. According to a U.S. court ruling, Odebrecht paid about $788 million in bribes in countries including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela between 2001 and 2016. Mexico s government has been sharply critical of the Maduro administration, accusing it of undermining democracy.

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(Reuters) - Former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, 94, has been hospitalized since last week due to low blood pressure, his spokeswoman said on Friday. The former Senate majority leader was admitted to the Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Sept. 13, said his spokeswoman, Marion Watkins. “After a routine check-up it was determined that he had low blood pressure which they’re correcting with medication,” Watkins said. “Right now they hope to release him within a matter of days.” Watkins added that medical staff were hopeful for his recovery and that Dole, who is a special counsel at the Alston & Bird law firm in Washington, appreciated all the warm wishes he had received. “Thank you all for your prayers and well wishes,” Dole said on Twitter early on Friday, responding to a tweet from his wife Elizabeth Dole’s foundation. “I hope to be home sipping a cosmo in a few days.” His wife had tweeted from the Dole Foundation account saying she was “sorry to miss #InvictusGames2017,” a sports event that begins on Saturday in Toronto for wounded, injured or sick armed services personnel and other veterans. Dole, a decorated World War Two combat veteran, was seriously injured during the war. “I’m with my husband, @SenatorDole, at the hospital. Please pray for his speedy recovery,” she wrote online. After serving in the Kansas legislature, Dole was elected to the U.S House of Representatives in 1960 and then the Senate in 1968, where he was re-elected four times. Dole twice served as Senate Republican leader and earned a reputation as an effective legislator who was well liked among Democrats as well as Republicans for his ability to build coalitions. Dole was also part of four unsuccessful presidential campaigns. In 1976, he was President Gerald Ford’s vice presidential choice, but that ticket lost to Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Dole ran for president in 1980 but lost the Republican nomination to Ronald Reagan and eight years later Republicans chose George H.W. Bush over him. Dole won the Republican nomination in 1996 but was defeated by incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton.

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DHAKA (Reuters) - Hundreds of people rushed to a Bangladeshi community centre prayer meeting to get free food packets on Monday, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than 50 in the crush, police said. The family of a former mayor in the southern port city of Chittagong had organised a prayer meet and offered the food packets in his memory. We repeatedly announced on the loudspeaker that there are adequate stock of foods at the centre, but when the gate was opened, hundreds of people tried to enter at the same time, Devashis Paul, a local leader of the ruling Awami League party, said.

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COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish inventor Peter Madsen has admitted to dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on board his submarine in August and dumping her body parts in the sea, but he still denies killing her, police said on Monday. The police said in a statement Madsen had told them in an Oct. 14 interrogation that Wall, 30, had died from carbon monoxide poisoning inside the submarine, while he was on the deck of the vessel. The police would now gather additional information from coroners and submarine experts from the Danish defense command. In past court hearings, Madsen said that Wall had died accidentally after being hit by a heavy hatch cover on his UC3 Nautilus submarine. The police said they would now extend the charges against Madsen - which already include murder and mutilating Wall s body - to include sexual assault without intercourse, based on 14 interior and exterior stab wounds to the journalist s genitals. Kim Wall had suffered 14 stabs in and around the genitals and it is due to these stabs that we have said that there must have been a sexual motive, police spokesman Jens Moller Jensen told journalists in Copenhagen. Madsen denies the murder and sexual assault charges. The cause of death was still unknown, said Jensen. Wall, a freelance journalist who was researching a story on Madsen, went missing after he took her out to sea in the 17-metre (56-foot) submarine in August. On Aug. 23, police identified a headless female torso that washed ashore in Copenhagen as Wall s. Wall s arms as well as her and Madsen s mobile phones are still missing and the police are currently assessing if divers should continue the search for them. Earlier this month, police said they had also recovered Wall s head and legs. They said they found no skull fracture, despite Madsen s earlier account that she had been hit on the head by the hatch cover. The submarine is one of three that Madsen built, and one of the largest of its kind privately produced in the world. It could carry eight people and weighed 40 tonnes fully equipped. The case has been scheduled to run for eight days at Copenhagen s district court from March 8 2018.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is set to formally announce a review of vehicle fuel efficiency rules locked in at the end of the Obama administration when he meets with automaker chiefs this week, according to two sources briefed on the matter. The move by Trump would be a victory for automakers after months of pushing the new administration to reconsider the rules, which they say would be too expensive, could cost jobs and are out of step with vehicles consumers want to buy. Trump will visit an autonomous vehicle testing facility in a Detroit suburb on Wednesday and meet there with chief executives of several U.S. automakers. His administration has decided to review the feasibility of the vehicle emissions rules, which apply to the years 2022 through 2025, sources told Reuters last week. Former President Barack Obama moved to keep them in the final days of his administration. Reuters reported on the planned announcement on March 3. A formal notice by U.S. regulators to restart the review is expected to be made public on Wednesday. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday the trip is focused on “job creation and automobile manufacturing... highlighting the need to eliminate burdensome regulations that needlessly hinder meaningful job growth.” The chief executives of General Motors Co (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI) (FCAU.N) will meet with the president in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, along with senior officials from Japanese and German automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) and Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE). Trump will hold a roundtable with CEOs and then make a speech to autoworkers and others. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had until April 2018 to decide whether the standards were feasible under a “midterm review,” but moved up its decision to a week before Obama left office in January. Automakers argue the vehicle emissions rules, which would raise the fleet average fuel efficiency to more than 50 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025 from 27.5 mpg in 2010, will impose significant costs and are out of step with consumer preferences. They argue they need more flexibility to meet the rules amid low gas prices. Environmentalists, who favor the standards, say the rules will reduce fuel costs and greenhouse gases and have vowed to sue if the Trump administration weakens them. Trade groups representing automakers, including General Motors, Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and Toyota, have asked the EPA to withdraw the determination finalizing the rules, which stem from a 2011 deal the industry reached with the U.S. government. Changing the 2022-2025 fuel rules will require a lengthy regulatory process and environmentalists and Democratic state attorneys general are likely to sue if the Trump administration significantly weakens the requirements. The Obama administration said in 2011 the changes would boost fuel efficiency to a fleet-wide average of 54.5 mpg, save motorists $1.7 trillion in total fuel costs over the life of the vehicles and cost the auto industry about $200 billion over 13 years. The fuel standards were a central part of Obama’s legacy on addressing climate change. In July, the EPA estimated the fleet would average only 50.8 mpg to 52.6 mpg in 2025 under the rules because Americans were buying more sport utility vehicles and trucks and fewer cars. Automakers briefed on the meeting do not expect the EPA to take action this week to attempt to prevent California from setting its own vehicle emissions rules. A Trump administration official confirmed it does not intend to address California’s authority this week. Reuters reported last week the EPA is considering taking steps to reverse California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act that allows it to set its own vehicle greenhouse gas emissions standards. Trump has repeatedly met with automaker CEOs since taking office and made boosting employment, especially in the auto sector, a top priority.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice of Representative Mick Mulvaney to become White House budget director on Wednesday appeared to pick up enough Republican votes to vault him into the job. Republican Senator Thad Cochran, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, informed his staff that he intends to support Mulvaney’s confirmation, according to an aide. Earlier in the day an aide said Cochran had not yet decided whether to vote for Mulvaney. With Republican Senator John McCain announcing on the Senate floor that he would oppose Mulvaney, Cochran was seen as the potential 51st vote needed in the 100-member chamber for confirmation. McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee that oversees defense programs, blasted Mulvaney in a Senate floor speech, saying the nominee had pursued “reckless budget strategies” that led to a partial government shutdown in 2013. McCain also lashed out at Mulvaney’s efforts on military affairs, including a vote in 2011 that the Arizona senator said would have brought the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, ending a mission to prevent it from “becoming a safe haven for terrorists.” Without Cochran, Vice President Mike Pence would have been thrust into the spotlight and likely called upon to break a likely 50-50 tie that threatened to doom Mulvaney’s nomination. Pence was needed to break such a tie over Betsy DeVos to be education secretary. Some Senate Republicans have been worried Mulvaney might not go along with beefing up spending on military programs. A Senate vote on Mulvaney, a leading member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who represents a region of South Carolina, was expected on Thursday at 7 a.m. (1200 GMT). Any one of the 100 senators could still change their position on Mulvaney before the vote, but there were no fresh signs of that happening following Cochran’s decision. A Senate panel only narrowly backed the nominee this month in a party-line vote. Republicans have 52 of the 100 Senate seats and are able to approve Trump’s nominees if they can hold together a majority. Democrats have criticized Mulvaney for taking a hard line on popular social programs and for not paying more than $15,000 in taxes in relation to a household employee until after he was nominated. He has said he favors raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 and means-testing beneficiaries of the Medicare health care program. These positions have drawn the ire of Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and sought the party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - Global automakers reported a surge in China sales last year as consumers rushed to take advantage of a tax cut on small-engine cars, but cautioned 2017 would be tougher for the industry as the incentive is rolled back and the broader economy slows. Toyota Motor Corp, Ford Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co Ltd on Friday each reported sales growth of 8 percent or better for 2016, although Honda Motor Co Ltd led the pack with a 24 percent growth. Toyota, which reported an 8.2 percent rise in China sales last year, sees growth slowing in 2017 as slightly higher taxes keep some buyers away from the world’s biggest auto market. It expects to sell at least 1.2 million vehicles, steady from 2016. “We are not being strictly volume focused. We would like to do so (increase volumes) while boosting car quality and keep our customer base satisfied with our products and service,” a Beijing-based Toyota spokesman told Reuters. While Honda expects to sell more vehicles in China this year, it forecast a significantly slower growth rate of 7.4 percent, roughly in line with a slowing economy. Demand for cars in China got a shot in the arm in 2016 ahead of a planned expiry of lower taxes at year-end. Sales will come under pressure this year, but not fall sharply, given a decision to slowly roll back the incentive instead of abruptly ending it. The purchase tax on cars with engines of 1.6 litres or smaller in China, at 5 percent now, will rise to 7.5 percent this year before returning to 10 percent in 2018. Overall passenger car sales in China could have dropped 2 percent this year had the tax cut expired on Dec. 31, but are now expected to grow by 3-5 percent, consultancy Automotive Foresight said. Analysts, however, cautioned that car sales could fall in the first quarter as consumers fearing the policy would end in 2016 moved ahead their purchases instead of waiting until 2017. “In late 2016 we definitely saw pull forward effects in engines below 1.6 liter. This will effect the Q1 negatively,” a sales executive at a major foreign automaker told Reuters. Honda posted the biggest growth in China sales last year among automakers reporting Friday, powered by a steady stream of new models, mainly in the hot sport-utility vehicle segment. Vehicle sales by Honda rose to 1.25 million in 2016, while Ford reported a growth of 11.9 percent to 1.24 million vehicles. But with premium Lincoln brand car sales, which are not consistently included in monthly data releases, Ford’s sales totaled 1.27 million, giving it an edge over Toyota and Honda. All three, however, continued to lag Nissan Motor Co Ltd in China sales. Nissan’s sales grew 8.4 percent to 1.35 million vehicles in the country last year. General Motors Co and Volkswagen continue to be the market leaders in China. On Thursday, GM and its joint venture partners reported sales of 3.87 million vehicles in China for 2016, up 7.1 percent. The full-year figures come in spite of sales slipping for several brands in the final month, with GM, Honda and Toyota all reporting a year-on-year drop for December with news China was not completely ending its tax incentive making its impact felt.

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ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Turkish soldiers were not in Syria s Idlib yet, but that Free Syria Army was carrying out the operation, news channel NTV reported. Erdogan said in an earlier speech that a major military operation was underway in the Syria s northwest province of Idlib, which Free Syrian Army rebel groups said they were preparing to enter with Turkish backing. NTV reported that Erdogan told reporters after his speech that Russia was backing the operation from the air, while Turkish soldiers were supporting it from inside Turkish borders.

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LIMA (Reuters) - Indigenous villagers ended a 43-day protest that had halted production in Peru s largest oil block after signing a deal with the government, tribal leaders and officials said on Tuesday. As part of the agreement, the government of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski promised to apply an indigenous rights law before awarding any new, long-term oil drilling contract for Block 192 a chief demand of protesters, the energy and mines ministry said in a statement. Canadian Frontera Energy Corp operates Block 192 under a two-year contract but has not produced any oil from it since Achuar, Quechua and Kichwa indigenous tribes seized oil wells on Sept. 18. Protesters wanted the government to clean up oil pollution in the region and to commit to including tribes in talks on long-term oil drilling plans. The blockade was one of scores of conflicts that sometimes disrupt mining and energy operations in Peru, the world s second biggest copper producer and a relatively small oil producer. Talks between the government and Frontera over a long-term drilling contract ended with no deal, state-owned oil company Petroperu announced earlier this month. Aurelio Chino, a chieftain in the Pastaza River Basin, told Reuters that protesters were no longer occupying company installations. A statement by the leaders of 16 villages that took part in the protests said the protest would end. The government also promised villagers that it would start implementation of an emergency healthcare program in the next 10 days and would form a commission to direct environmental clean-ups in Block 192, the ministry said. Frontera will be summoned to take part in dialogue sessions with villagers to discuss their needs, it added. Frontera has said that the protest did not have a not a material impact for the company.

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ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish lender Aktif Bank said on Thursday it had not violated any U.S. or international sanctions, after it was mentioned in the U.S. case regarding Iran sanctions violations. Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is a witness, testified on Wednesday that he had initially handled Iranian transactions through Aktif Bank. He said Aktif Bank at first hesitated to open an account for him and it shut down the account after receiving a warning from the United States. No transaction violating U.S. or international sanctions has occurred on behalf of our bank, the lender said in a statement. We have and continue to cooperate with international and national institutions and the result of this case will not have negative impacts on us. Zarrab said he used Halkbank to continue his transactions with Iran after Aktif Bank stopped working with him. A Halkbank executive, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, is a defendant in the case. Atilla has pleaded not guilty.

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(Reuters) - Donald Trump was scheduled to hold additional meetings on Thursday and Friday as he forms his administration before taking over from Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20. The Republican president-elect has held more than 85 meetings so far, according to his transition team. Trump was to meet with the following people on Thursday and Friday, according to his team: * Retired U.S. Navy Admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University * Former CEO of Ford Motor Co, Sept 2006 to July 2014 * Director at Google since 2014 * U.S. Representative from Idaho, a Republican * Serves on House Judiciary and Natural Resources committees * U.S. Senator from West Virginia, a Democrat Trump has also invited technology industry leaders for a meeting on Dec. 14, according to media reports citing transition officials.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. B-1 bombers carried out a training exercise on Tuesday with Japanese and South Korean military aircraft in the vicinity of the Sea of Japan, the U.S. military said, amid growing tension over North Korea s missile and nuclear programs. It was first time U.S. Pacific Command B-1B Lancers have conducted combined training with Japanese and South Korean fighter aircraft at night, the U.S. military said in a statement.

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CAIRO (Reuters) - One of Egypt s top Muslim leaders, the Imam of Al Azhar mosque, rejected a meeting requested by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in protest against a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, Al Azhar said in a statement on Friday. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb had rejected a request from the United States for Pence to meet him on Dec. 20 at Al Azhar saying President Donald Trump must reverse his decision on Jerusalem.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran has made important progress in its effort to implement the international agreement to curtail its nuclear program, but its actions must still be independently verified, the White House said on Friday. “We want to make sure they don’t cut any corners,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a briefing. He said Iran would not receive sanctions relief until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirms it has complied with the agreement. Earnest said he had no update on the timing of the implementation of the nuclear deal.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump s Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of the peace process in the region. He said the decision had put back the peace process by decades, and had threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability. Lebanon s Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Twitter that Lebanon rejected the decision and had the utmost solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. The leader of Lebanon s Hezbollah movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, will speak on Thursday about the issue of Jerusalem, the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar TV station reported.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China has told the United States that it warned Pyongyang it would impose “sanctions actions on their own” against North Korea should it carry out another nuclear test, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday. Tillerson, speaking on Fox News, also said U.S. intelligence reports suggest that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was “not crazy,” indicating he might be a rational actor who could be negotiated with as the international community seeks to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. Tillerson’s comments suggest that efforts by President Donald Trump, who held a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month, may have yielded China’s toughest threat yet to take action against its defiant neighbor and ally, North Korea.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers have fired cruise missiles at Islamic State targets in Syria s Deir al-Zor and Idlib provinces, the RIA news agency quoted Russia s Defense Ministry as saying on Tuesday. The strikes were carried out at a safe distance from U.S. special forces and U.S.-backed militias, the ministry was cited as saying.

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli supporters of U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have opened a campaign office in the occupied West Bank, saying they hope to get as many American expatriates as possible to cast an absentee ballot for their candidate. There are about 300,000 U.S. citizens in Israel, according to the non-profit group Republican Overseas Israel, which opened the office in the Jewish settlement Karnei Shomron on Monday. It estimates as many as 80,000 of them live in the West Bank, though it is not clear how many are eligible voters. The initiative has no official ties to the Trump campaign or the Republican National Committee (RNC), and the Israeli group opened the West Bank office, and a handful of others throughout Israel, with its own funds, said co-chairman Marc Zell. “We are however in close coordination with the Trump campaign and RNC to the extent that it’s feasible,” said Zell. A poll of Jewish Israelis conducted in May found 40 percent of respondents backed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and 31 percent supported Trump. The poll did not specify whether those who responded were eligible to vote in the U.S. election. Trump has accused the administration of President Barack Obama of lacklustre support for Israel. He has also rejected last year’s nuclear deal with Iran, Israel’s arch-foe, and has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. The new office in the West Bank is not staffed full-time but will be used as a “logistical jumping-off point” for outreach activity, Zell said. Israel captured the West Bank, land where Palestinians hope to establish an independent state, in the 1967 Middle East war. Most countries view Israeli settlements built there as illegal and an obstacle for peace. Israel rejects this, saying Jews have been living in the territory for thousands of years. The U.S. presidential election takes place on Nov. 8.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has shown an affinity, and perhaps even a deference, to the generals he has surrounded himself with in his Cabinet and at the White House, save one exception: the war in Afghanistan. More than a dozen interviews with current and former U.S. officials familiar with the discussions reveal a president deeply frustrated with the lack of options to win the 16-year-old war, described internally as “an eroding stalemate.” The debate carries echoes of the same dilemma Barack Obama faced in 2009. Then, as now, odds are that Trump will ultimately send more troops, current and former officials say. “It’s the least worst option,” one former U.S. official familiar with the discussions said, speaking on condition of anonymity, while acknowledging that with Trump, a pullout cannot be completely ruled out. Trump’s defense secretary, retired Marine Corps General Jim Mattis, has had the authority for nearly two months to add thousands more troops to the roughly 8,400 there now (down from a peak of more than 100,000 in 2011). Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, requested the troops back in February. But officials say Mattis won’t use his authority until he has buy-in from Trump for a strategic vision for America’s longest war. Beyond more troops for Afghanistan, the strategy would aim to address militant safe havens across the border in Pakistan. That too has become a divisive issue, with several members of Trump’s inner circle split on how hard to press Islamabad. Sources say that the discussions - which included a high-level White House meeting on Thursday - could drag out for the rest of the summer, blowing past a mid-July deadline to present a war strategy to an increasingly impatient Congress. After Thursday’s meeting, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, people familiar with the deliberations told Reuters that a final decision did not appear imminent. Pentagon officials have declined to comment on internal deliberations. The White House has also declined to comment ahead of a decision on the strategy. While U.S.-backed fighters are rolling back Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the same cannot be said of the fight against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that the conditions in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through next year, even with a modest increase in military assistance from America and its allies. During a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, Trump said Mattis and Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might want to consider firing Nicholson, who was picked by Obama in 2016 to lead the war effort and has earned the respect of Afghan leaders. “We aren’t winning,” Trump told them, according to accounts of the conversation. But current and former officials say the frustration had been mounting for months. At least as far back as February, one former U.S. official said the internal deliberations about Afghanistan were not aimed at creating a broad set of options for Trump. Shortly before McMaster was due to present his plan to Trump for approval ahead of the May NATO summit, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declined to endorse it, saying Trump was not being presented with options, the former official and another current official said. “The lack of options meant that the only recommendation that was originally to be put forward to the president was essentially the status quo,” the former official said, discounting the troop increase as any serious shift in strategy. But in the months since, the possibility of a full pull-out has been repeatedly presented and refined along with a true “status-quo” option in which no new troops are sent to Afghanistan, but none are pulled out either. Still, U.S. defense leaders are not believed to be favoring those options. David Sedney, a former Pentagon policy advisor under the Obama administration, said failure to prioritize Afghanistan could replicate the mistakes by previous U.S. presidents. “We’ve been ambivalent about Afghanistan for the last 17 years and when you have an ambivalent policy, it fails,” said Sedney, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington. McMaster, Mattis, Tillerson, Dunford, Nicholson and some U.S. intelligence officials argue that refusing to commit more U.S. forces to train, equip and in some cases support the Afghan security forces would eventually result in the Taliban retaking most of the country from the U.S.-backed government in Kabul. Trump’s concerns about Afghanistan are shared by some senior officials close to the president, including chief strategist Steve Bannon, who, officials say, is skeptical about the need for an increase in troops in Afghanistan. Divisions have also emerged within Trump’s administration on how much to pressure Pakistan, and how quickly, in order to address militant safe havens blamed for helping prolong Afghanistan’s war. Nicholson, McMaster and Lisa Curtis, senior director for South and Central Asia at the National Security Council, favor taking a strong hand with Pakistan to deal with Taliban militants using that country as a base from which to plot attacks in Afghanistan, current and former officials say. On the other side are State Department officials and others at the Pentagon, including Dunford, who take a broader view of Pakistan’s strategic importance and are less convinced that harsh actions will secure more cooperation from Islamabad, they said. Pakistan fiercely denies allowing any militant safe havens on its territory. The Trump administration is exploring a new approach toward Pakistan, Reuters has reported. Potential responses under discussion include expanding U.S. drone strikes, redirecting aid to Pakistan and perhaps eventually downgrading Pakistan’s status as a major non-NATO ally.

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CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has arrested the state oil company s boss for the western region and eight other executives at PDVSA, according to an internal company memo and a half-dozen sources in the OPEC member s oil industry. It was not immediately clear why Gustavo Malave and the other employees were apprehended, though a series of corruption probes are under way at PDVSA and have entangled other employees. The sources said Malave was arrested on Monday in Zulia state, Venezuela s traditional oil-producing region near Colombia, in what would be one of the highest-profile detentions of a PDVSA executive. PDVSA, the prosecutor s office, and Malave did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Separately, Venezuela s new chief prosecutor Tarek Saab on Thursday announced he was investigating spectacular overpricing in a dozen contracts in the nation s Orinoco oil belt, on the other side of the country. The reputation of PDVSA - short for Petroleos de Venezuela SA - has been tarnished in recent years by graft investigations involving high-profile staff. The company has blamed the problems on a small group of employees and executives, and promised a war on corruption. Last year, the opposition-led congress said $11 billion was lost at PDVSA between 2004 and 2014, when Rafael Ramirez was in charge of the company. He denied the allegations. The Caracas-based company is the financial motor of leftist President Nicolas Maduro s government, but is reeling from low oil prices, mismanagement, and lack of investments.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters on Friday that Venezuela is having problems with fulfilling its obligations on its debt to Russia. We have a request from our colleagues in Venezuela to do a restructuring, Siluanov said. Venezuela owed Russia $2.84 billion as of September last year.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a gender distinction in U.S. immigration law that treats mothers and fathers differently when determining a child’s citizenship, calling such inequality “stunningly anachronistic.” The high court, in a 8-0 ruling authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, found that a provision in federal law that defines how people born overseas can be eligible for U.S. citizenship violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. The ruling, however, may not help the man who brought the case, New York resident Luis Morales-Santana, who was seeking to avoid deportation to the Dominican Republic after being convicted of several offenses. The law requires that unwed fathers who are American citizens spend at least five years living in the United States - a 2012 amendment reduced it from 10 years - before they can confer citizenship to a child born abroad, out of wedlock and to a partner who is not a U.S. citizen. For unwed U.S. mothers in the same situation, the requirement was only one year. In the ruling, the Supreme Court said that until Congress revises the law, both women and men will be covered by the five-year requirement. Ginsburg, known for her work on gender equality before she became a jurist, wrote for the court that in light of the Supreme Court’s various rulings regarding the equal protection guarantee since 1971, having separate “duration-of-residence requirements for unwed mothers and fathers who have accepted parental responsibility is stunningly anachronistic.” The arguments made in defense of the law by former President Barack Obama’s administration before he left office in January “cannot withstand inspection under a Constitution that requires the government to respect the equal dignity and stature of its male and female citizens,” Ginsburg wrote. Morales-Santana’s deceased father was an American citizen, while his mother was not. His father failed to meet the law’s five-year requirements by 20 days. His lawyer, Stephen Broome, said he is reviewing how the ruling affects his client. Morales-Santana, 54, was born in the Dominican Republican and has lived legally in the United States since 1975. He was convicted of several criminal offenses in 1995, including two counts of robbery and four counts of attempted murder. The U.S. government has sought to deport him since 2000. The high court split 4-4 on the same issue in 2011. In July 2015, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with Morales-Santana and struck down the law at issue, saying it applied “impermissible stereotyping” in imposing a tougher burden on fathers. The U.S. Justice Department sought to defend the law and asked the high court to take the case. The case is one of several with immigration-related themes that are before the justices at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration is pursing efforts to strengthen immigration enforcement.

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FORT PIERCE, Fla. (Reuters) - The photo from Omar Mateen’s high school yearbook is hardly remarkable - a toothy, dimpled smile with a peach-fuzz mustache below a mop of black hair. His transformation from high school football player to perpetrator of America’s worst mass shooting raises questions about whether red flags were missed over the depth of his apparent sympathies with Muslim extremists. As families of the victims grieved and the nation recoiled at the scale of yet another mass shooting, a picture began to emerge of the 29-year-old killer as a quiet, devout person who in recent years displayed a hateful and violent streak. Early on Sunday, he stormed a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, with a handgun and AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, fatally shooting 50 people before police killed him. Fifty-three others were wounded, many critically. His ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, described him as “bipolar,” and emotionally disturbed with a violent temper. She said she had been beaten and otherwise physically abused by Mateen during outbursts in which he would “express hatred towards everything”. She was “rescued” by family members just four months into a stormy marriage that began in 2009 and ended in divorce, she said. “He would often get into fights with his parents, but as I was the only one in his life most of the violence was directed towards me,” she told reporters in Boulder, Colorado outside a home where she was staying. She said he aspired to be a police officer and had worked as a correctional officer at a detention center for juvenile delinquents in Fort Pierce, Florida, and had once sought admission to a police academy. In Fort Pierce on Florida’s southeast coast, 120 miles (195 km) from the shooting, the imam at the mosque that Mateen attended for nearly 10 years described him as a regular worshipper who was quiet and rarely interacted with the congregation. “He hardly had any friends,” Syed Shafeeq Rahman, who heads the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, told Reuters. “He would come with his little son at night to pray and after he would leave.” Rahman said Mateen never approached him regarding any concerns about homosexuals. He usually prayed at the mosque a few times a week, mostly in evenings and as recently as Friday, but he didn’t display signs of radicalism, according to fellow worshippers interviewed by Reuters. Mateen was born in New York of Afghan descent but spent most of his life in Florida, attending Martin County High School in Stuart, a small city about a 20-minute drive from the Fort Pierce condominium where had most recently lived. A classmate described him as a typical teen who played football. A school yearbook image of Mateen was seen by Reuters. Samuel King, who was one year ahead of Mateen, said the two often spoke after Mateen graduated in 2004. King waited tables at Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant at Treasure Coast Square, a mall where Mateen worked at GNC, the nutrition store, he said. King, who is openly gay, said the Mateen he knew until 2009 did not appear to be anti-homosexual. “What is shocking to me is that the majority of the staff at Ruby Tuesday’s when I worked there were gay. He clearly was not anti-(gay) at least not back then. He did not show any hatred to any of us.” While at GNC, Mateen lifted weights and “got really buff,” King said, describing Mateen as gregarious and talkative in the immediate years after high school. “Something must have changed” since he last saw him, he added. Mateen’s father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News the massacre was not related to religion. He said his son turned angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago. The FBI twice interviewed Mateen for having suspected ties to Islamist militants. The first investigation took place in 2013 when Mateen made inflammatory comments to co-workers that indicated sympathy for militants, FBI special agent in charge Ron Hopper told a news conference in Orlando. At the time, Mateen worked as a security guard at G4S, a British-owned multinational company that is among the world’s largest private security firms. He joined G4S in September 2007, carried a gun as part of his duties and was employed with the company at the time of the shooting as an armed security officer, the company said. G4S provides security to federal buildings in Florida. Mateen was investigated and interviewed twice but the FBI was “unable to verify the substance of his comments,” Hopper said. Daniel Kime, a security guard employed along with Mateen by at G4S in the Fort Pierce area, said he met Mateen briefly three or four times. “Every time I saw him he never smiled. If you said good morning, he’d just walk right by you, like he had a chip on his shoulder,” Kime told Reuters. Daniel Gilroy, who said he was a co-worker of Mateen’s at G4S, said that Mateen’s anger was “constant.” “Any time a female or a black person would come by he would use horrible words,” he told Fox News. In 2014, Hopper said, Mateen was investigated and interviewed again, this time for suspected connections to Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American citizen who became a suicide bomber in Syria in 2014. Hopper said Mateen’s contact with Abu-Salha was minimal and it was deemed that “he did not constitute a substantive threat at that time.” Hopper said Mateen was not under investigation or surveillance at the time of Sunday’s attack. He said Mateen called during the massacre to pledge allegiance to Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which in recent years declared a caliphate over large swathes of Iraq and Syria. But the depth of that commitment is unclear. Mateen also mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers during the call, which he made 20 minutes into the shootings, authorities said. Mateen’s former wife said she met Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida to marry him, according to the Washington Post. “He was not a stable person,” she said. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.” Mateen had a Florida firearms license that expired in 2013 and a state permit to work as a security guard, according to public records. He was registered as a Democrat. City, state and federal officials were searching Mateen’s apartment in the Woodlands condominium building in Fort Pierce and had told other residents to evacuate. (This story has been refiled to correct headine in June 12 story to remove ‘worst’)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump took office, his presidency started generating controversy. Photographs showing that the crowd at Trump’s swearing-in was smaller than at Barack Obama’s first presidential inauguration in 2009 caused the first ruckus in his administration - but not the last. Trump’s first year in office was colored by an investigation into whether his campaign colluded with the Russian government to affect the election outcome, insults and threats of war with North Korea, and an effort to pass business-friendly legislation. From the start, the White House took a combative approach, accusing the media of framing photographs of the inauguration in a way that appeared to understate the crowd size. Press Secretary Sean Spicer argued that the images were not what they seemed and that crowds of historic size watched Trump take the oath of office. Protests would become a hallmark of Trump’s first year. On Jan. 21, the day after the inauguration, hundreds of thousands of women jammed the streets of Washington to demonstrate opposition to Trump. A week after taking office, the Republican president signed an executive order to prevent citizens of seven predominately-Muslim countries from traveling to the United States. Known by critics as the “Muslim ban,” protesters quickly demonstrated at airports in opposition. Trump would ignite protests again in August, when he was asked to respond to white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, including one who drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman. The president argued there were bad people “on both sides.” Following his remarks, business leaders resigned from Trump’s business councils and the panels were disbanded. A defining feature of Trump’s first year in office was the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia during the election. Trump ignited a political firestorm in May when he fired Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, who had been leading an investigation into possible collusion by the Trump 2016 presidential campaign with Russia to influence the election outcome. Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied any collusion. Soon afterward, the Justice Department named former FBI chief Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the investigation. Paul Manafort, who had briefly served as Trump’s campaign manager, and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted by Mueller’s team in October, accused of illegally lobbying on behalf of foreign governments. A month later, Michael Flynn, who briefly served under Trump as U.S. national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations last December with Russia’s then-ambassador in Washington just weeks before Trump took office. Trump has also found himself embroiled in a war of words with North Korea over its missile program, exchanging insults and threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At home, Trump has struggled to enact sweeping changes he promised on the campaign trail. He threatened to withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but business lobbyists persuaded him to renegotiate it. Trump signed an executive order setting up talks on the trilateral trade deal, which has hit roadblocks with Mexico and Canada. Trump’s team also failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare despite Republican control of the White House and Congress. It was not until December that Trump made headway on major legislative change as both chambers of Congress passed a sweeping tax overhaul. The bill must be reconciled with a different version approved by the House of Representatives, but the Senate bill is expected to remain largely intact. (Click on reut.rs/2Asabau to see a related photo essay)

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CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced ousted president Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood to 25 years in prison in a final ruling over a case accusing him of spying for Qatar, judicial sources said. Mursi, democratically elected after Egypt s 2011 revolution, was overthrown in mid-2013 by then-general Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, now the president, following mass protests against his rule. He was immediately arrested. Egypt s Court of Cassation reduced Mursi s sentence in the Qatar case to 25 years in its final ruling, from an original 40 years. Mursi is already serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted for the killing of protesters during demonstrations in 2012. Since toppling Mursi, Sisi has clamped down on dissent. Mass trials have been held for thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, and hundreds have received death sentences or lengthy prison terms. In 2014, Egypt charged Mursi and nine others with endangering national security by leaking state secrets and sensitive documents to Qatar. Egypt s relations with Doha were already troubled by Qatar s backing of Mursi. Egypt is one of four Arab nations in a Saudi-led bloc that cut relations with the Gulf state on June 5, accusing it of backing militant groups and cooperating with their arch-foe Iran, allegations Doha denies.

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HARARE (Reuters) - Two armoured personnel carriers were positioned on the outskirts of Zimbabwe s capital late on Tuesday and soldiers were directing traffic, a Reuters witness said, a day after the head of the army threatened to intervene in politics. The soldiers deployed on Harare Drive, a major thoroughfare, ordered passing cars to keep their windows up and not ask questions. Don t try anything funny, just go, one soldier said to a Reuters reporter.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has told visitors that his Mar-a-Lago retreat is set up perfectly for foreign visits, but the Chinese side was initially hesitant when word came that Trump would like to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping there, according to administration officials. Even after seeing images of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s back-slapping sessions with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in February, Chinese officials thought the oceanfront, Spanish-style club in Palm Beach, Florida, lacked the symbolic significance of the White House itself. “They thought, no, it has to be the White House, the symbolism of that,” a senior administration official told Reuters. “They were ultimately convinced that this was worth doing. It’s unusual because most foreigners realize that being invited to the president’s personal place is a big deal.” Trump and Xi are to hold their first summit encounter beginning on Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, a property that original owner Marjorie Merriweather Post’s estate willed to the U.S. government for use as a diplomatic and presidential retreat after her death in 1973. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing that the Chinese side was fine with having the meeting there. “President Trump, after taking office, announced that Mar-a-Lago would be the winter White House. The U.S. proposal to hold the U.S.-China heads of state meeting there, I think, represents the importance that the U.S. side places on this meeting. China respects the U.S. side’s arrangements,” she said. No matter where the heads of state meet, “the most important thing is to develop China-U.S. relations and make contributions to both countries and the world,” she said. Topping the agenda at Mar-a-Lago will be U.S.-China trade ties and U.S. requests for China to help rein in its nuclear-armed neighbor North Korea. Trump bought the estate in 1985 and turned it into an exclusive club, which now boasts a membership fee of $200,000 and is a haven for the tony Palm Beach set who pull up to the gate in Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. “It’s a place where he feels comfortable and at home, and where he can break the ice with Xi Jinping without the formality, really, of a Washington meet-up,” said another senior White House official. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, will join Trump and his wife, Melania, for dinner on Thursday night then Trump and Xi will have a series of meetings there on Friday. The entire visit will last less than 24 hours. “What matters is that the two of them get together for a successful summit, even if it’s on the moon,” said former U.S. ambassador to China, Max Baucus. “However, I do think that Mar-a-lago will probably help enhance conversation between the two of them. President Trump can show President Xi around, show him the digs. Trump is very proud of that, and President Xi will be interested in seeing all of that.” The two leaders are not expected to make public appearances but there are likely to be occasions for a pool of the news media to see them. No joint news conference was expected. Past U.S. presidents have often turned to settings away from the trappings of Washington to conduct delicate diplomacy. George H.W. Bush had his seaside estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, and George W. Bush frequently played host to foreign leaders at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, used the Sunnylands retreat in Rancho Mirage, California, as a site for an informal summit with Xi in 2013. While Trump treated Abe to golf, no such outing is planned for the leader of China. Mar-a-Lago has already been the scene of some controversy for Trump. When a North Korean missile test disrupted Abe’s visit there, Trump and the Japanese leader were seen at a dinner table on the terrace discussing how to respond, as club members looked on from nearby tables.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A secret meeting at a neighbor’s house, a drive through a back country road, and a clandestine flight on a military jet marked Judge Neil Gorsuch’s journey to the White House this week after U.S. President Donald Trump chose him as his Supreme Court nominee. Trump, who took office on January 20, called Gorsuch on Monday to inform him that he had prevailed among a handful of finalists to succeed deceased Justice Antonin Scalia on the high court. That decision set off a rapid and secretive process to get Gorsuch to Washington without alerting journalists and other Supreme Court watchers of the president’s selection. After Trump called the Colorado-based judge, a team from the White House counsel’s office flew to Denver and then drove to Boulder, roughly 45 minutes away, to meet with Gorsuch and his family. They met at a neighbor’s house to avoid detection. Then the White House staff spirited him though a “back farm road” to a waiting military plane to transport him to Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday night in the White House East Room. Gorsuch stayed at a friend’s residence before being brought to the White House for the Tuesday evening announcement. The secrecy continued up until the last minute. When Trump, a former reality television star, entered the East Room, he came alone, addressing the cameras and the waiting crowd, which included Scalia’s widow, at a podium before calling on Gorsuch and his wife to come in. Trump’s decision came after he narrowed a list of 21 candidates down to six, including Thomas Hardiman, William Pryor, Amul Thapar, Diane Sykes, and Don Willett. Then President-elect Trump interviewed Gorsuch, Hardiman and Pryor on Jan. 14 in his New York residence. He also interviewed Thapar. “He finalized the decision recently,” after considering all 21 candidates “very deeply,” said Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser and counselor to the president. White House counsel Don McGahn informed Hardiman, Pryor and Thapar that they had not been chosen, Spicer said. The White House was determined to keep the president’s Supreme Court selection a secret and make the announcement of his choice a success after the botched rollout of his refugee executive order contributed to confusion and worldwide criticism last weekend. The strategy to get Gorsuch confirmed will kick off right away, Spicer said, with former Senator Kelly Ayotte serving as the “sherpa” to help steer the nominee through the Senate confirmation process.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he had all grounds to believe that Moscow, along with Damascus, would soon defeat terrorists in Syria. He said that the Syrian peace process was developing in a positive way, though there were still problems. He said there was a proposal to hold a Congress of Syrian peoples, bringing together representatives of all ethnic groups in Syria.

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GENEVA (Reuters) - A European and African deal to stem the flow of migrants coming through Libya to Europe fails to tackle the abuses they face, the top U.N. human rights official wrote on Friday. The 28-nation European Union has long struggled to reach a coherent answer to the influx of migrants fleeing war, poverty and political upheaval in the Middle East and Africa, and the crisis is testing cooperation between member states. On Aug. 28, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Chad, Niger and Libya agreed a plan to tackle illegal human trafficking and support nations struggling to contain the flow of people across the desert and Mediterranean sea. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein said it was significant that the agreement they struck in Paris recognized that a comprehensive response was needed. But it is very thin on the protection of the human rights of migrants inside Libya and on the boats, and silent on the urgent need for alternatives to the arbitrary detention of vulnerable people, he wrote in an article published by the United Nations. Zeid s office published a report last December on abuses faced by migrants in detention centres in Libya, but memories are short when facts are inconvenient , he wrote. Since then the situation had worsened, with far too many allegations to verify and reports of bodies in the desert, in the forest, on the beaches . Libya s morgues were overflowing, he said. Apart from the families awaiting word from missing relatives, hardly anybody seemed to care, Zeid wrote. The EU faces a moral and legal dilemma because it relies on cooperation with Libyan coastguards and plays down their abuses, which include shooting at aid workers trying to rescue migrants, Zeid said. A coastguard that sometimes rescues migrants in distress but sometimes chooses not to. Like the militias onshore, coastguards also sometimes beat, rob and even shoot the migrants they intercept, he said. Zeid said he agreed with a letter to European leaders from Joanne Liu, the head of Medecins Sans Frontieres, a charity that has sent aid workers to rescue migrants. The letter, entitled European governments are feeding the business of suffering , asked: Is allowing people to be pushed into rape, torture and slavery via criminal pay-offs a price European governments are willing to pay? I fully support her analysis, and share her disgust at this situation, Zeid wrote.

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MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump predicted that the United States is on course for a “very massive recession,” warning that a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump. “I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble,” the billionaire businessman said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday. Coming off a tough week on the campaign trail in which he made a series of missteps, Trump’s latest comments bring him back into the limelight ahead of Tuesday’s important primary in Wisconsin where he trails in the polls. The former reality TV star said that the real U.S. jobless figure is much higher than five percent number released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “We’re not at 5 percent unemployment,” Trump said. “We’re at a number that’s probably into the twenties if you look at the real number,” he said, adding that the official jobless figure is “statistically devised to make politicians — and in particular presidents — look good.” Trump said “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, offering a more bleak view of the U.S. economy than that held by many mainstream economists. The interview was bylined by the Post’s Robert Costa and famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward. A real estate magnate, Trump has made appealing to blue-collar workers a hallmark of his bid for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, often blaming unemployment on the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and facilities to countries such as China and Mexico. Trump vowed in the interview to wipe out the more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years,” helped by a renegotiation of trade deals. “I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on,” he said. After making controversial statements about abortion last week, Trump has shown little sign of heeding calls from fellow Republicans to adopt a more presidential tone so as to avoid alienating voters in the November general election if he wins the nomination. On Saturday, he questioned close U. S. ties to Saudi Arabia and again accused U.S. allies of not pulling their weight in the NATO military alliance. Trump told a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin that partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “are not paying their fair share” and called the 28-nation alliance “obsolete.” “Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” Trump said. Tuesday’s Wisconsin nominating contest could be a turning point in the Republican race. Trump, 69, trails his leading rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, 45, of Texas in the state. A Cruz win would make it harder for Trump to reach the number of 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the Republican national convention in July. The winner will get to claim all of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates.

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