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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Saturday called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the Kingdom s modernization plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen. Lebanon was thrust back onto the frontline of a regional power tussle this month between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The two regional powers back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, the last of which has become a central arena of the proxy battle. A settlement at minimum with the Islamic Republic (of Iran) gives us in Lebanon more strength and determination to cooperate to enforce the policy of disassociation, Jumblatt wrote in a Tweet on Saturday. Disassociation is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts, which Hariri has been stressing since his resignation, a reference to Hezbollah whose regional military role is a source of deep concern in Saudi Arabia Saudi policy of confronting Iran more aggressively around the region has been spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also attempting to push through difficult and extensive internal reforms. Saudi Arabia has played an important role in Lebanon in the past, helping to broker the end of its civil war in 1990 and contributing to reconstruction afterwards. But the extent of its role in the Nov. 4 resignation announcement by Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has been widely debated in Lebanon and led some Lebanese to fear that Riyadh sought to destabilize their country. Addressing Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Jumblatt said: The challenges are tremendous and the modernization of the Kingdom is an Islamic and Arabic necessity but this mission cannot be successful while the Yemen war continues. The Druze are a minority religious sect present in Syria, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon. The Saudi-led coalition has been targeting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement since 2015, after the Houthis seized parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee. On Wednesday, the coalition said it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as U.N. flights to Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country. Enough of the destruction and siege in Yemen and enough of the human and material drain on the Kingdom s people and resources, Jumblatt said. Let the Yemeni people choose who it wants and you, Your Excellency the Prince, be the judge, the reformer, and the big brother as your ancestors were. Jumblatt also said it is very difficult to stop the war unless issues are overcome and discussions are held with Iranians. On Friday, Jumblatt criticized the way Hariri had been treated by some Saudi circles , the first time he has appeared to direct blame at Riyadh over Hariri s resignation this month. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia put Hariri under effective house arrest in Riyadh and forced him to declare his resignation on Nov. 4. Saudi Arabia has denied holding Hariri against his will or forcing him to resign.

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BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - A federal judge in Argentina indicted former President Cristina Fernandez for treason and asked for her arrest for allegedly covering up Iran s possible role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people, a court ruling said. As Fernandez is a senator, Congress would first have to vote to strip her of parliamentary immunity for an arrest to occur. The judge, Claudio Bonadio, also indicted and ordered house arrest for Fernandez s Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, the 491-page ruling said. Fernandez called a news conference in Congress to deny wrongdoing and accuse Bonadio and President Mauricio Macri of degrading the judiciary. It is an invented case about facts that did not exist, she said, dressed in white. Timerman s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. While removing immunity from lawmakers is rare in Argentina, Congress voted on Oct. 25 to do so for Fernandez s former planning minister Julio De Vido and he was arrested the same day. De Vido is accused of fraud and corruption, which he denies. Argentina s legislature has entered a period of judicial recess until March but can be convened for urgent matters. Fernandez and her allies have been the focus of several high profile cases with arrests and indictments since center-right Mauricio Macri defeated her chosen successor and was elected president in late 2015. Fernandez left office just a few months before the Congress in neighboring Brazil impeached another leftist female leader, Dilma Rousseff for breaking budget laws. The cover-up allegations against Fernandez gained international attention in January 2015, when the prosecutor who initially made them, Alberto Nisman, was found shot dead in the bathroom of his Buenos Aires apartment. An Argentine appeals court a year ago ordered the re-opening of the investigation. Nisman s death was classified as a suicide, though an official investigating the case has said the shooting appeared to be a homicide. Nisman s body was discovered hours before he was to brief Congress on the bombing of the AMIA center. GRAINS-FOR-OIL Nisman said Fernandez worked behind the scenes to clear Iran and normalize relations to clinch a grains-for-oil deal with Tehran that was signed in 2013. The agreement created a joint commission to investigate the AMIA bombing that critics said was really a means to absolve Iran. Argentine, Israeli and U.S. officials have long blamed the AMIA attack on Hezbollah guerrillas backed by Iran. Tehran has denied links to the attack. Earlier on Thursday, two lower level allies of Fernandez were arrested based on the same ruling from judge Bonadio: Carlos Zannini, a legal adviser, and Luis D Elia, the leader of a group of protesters supporting her government. Zannini s lawyer, Alejandro Baldin, told local media the detention was arbitrary, illegal and ran over constitutional and individual rights, after leaving a police station in Rio Gallegos, where Zannini was held. D Elia s lawyer, Adrian Albor, told radio Del Plata that Bonadio had no respect for the law, rights, justice. They are coming for everyone in the previous government. Bonadio wrote in his ruling that evidence showed Iran, with the help of Argentine citizens, had appeared to achieve its goal of avoiding being declared a terrorist state by Argentina. The crime of treason is punishable by 10 to 25 years in prison, Argentina s maximum sentence. The next step in the case would be an oral trial and sentences can be appealed on first instance, which could be a long process. Macri s leader in the Senate, Federico Pinedo, said on Twitter that Congress would analyze the request to strip immunity with sincerity and responsibility. Macri s coalition performed better than expected in Oct. 22 mid-term elections, gaining seats in Congress, but it is not clear if lawmakers will vote to strip Fernandez s immunity. Fernandez, who governed from 2007 to 2015, finished second to a Macri ally in the Buenos Aires province Senate race but won a seat under Argentina s list system. She was sworn in last week. She was also indicted in late 2016 on charges she ran a corruption scheme with her public works secretary. Fernandez has admitted there may have been corruption in her government but personally denies wrongdoing.

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HAVANA (Reuters) - A fireworks explosion injured 39 people, including six children between the ages of 11 and 15, during a popular Cuban carnival on Christmas Eve, state-run media reported on Monday. The centuries-old Parrandas festival in the central town of Remedios takes place every Dec. 24 and draws thousands of Cubans and some tourists. An unfortunate accident with fireworks occurred last night in Remedios, the government s Cubadebate internet news service reported. Among the more than 20 seriously injured, according to Cubadebate, health authorities said some were in very grave, some less grave, and others in critical and very critical condition. All the injured appeared to be local residents, and the report did not mention that any tourists were hurt. Remedios is located in Villa Clara province on the northern coast of the island. Two of the town s neighborhoods compete on Christmas Eve each year to put on the most spectacular show with floats and fireworks amidst a carnival atmosphere. The cause of the explosion was under investigation, according to official media.

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NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - In early September, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a senior Iranian official and cleric, flew to the holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq. His entourage included a sizable security detail and the former head of the Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military force in the Islamic Republic. Shahroudi, 69, spent several days on a charm offensive meeting officials, clerics and seminary students at his office near the golden dome shrine of Imam Ali, one of the world s holiest Shi ite sites. His aim was to raise his profile as a replacement for the top Shi ite cleric and most powerful man in Iraq: the 87-year old Ayatollah Ali Sistani, according to current and former Iraqi officials. While attention has focused on Iraq s battle against Islamic State, the country s future could equally hinge on what is happening in Najaf. With Sistani s advanced age and persistent rumors about his health, the question of his replacement has become more pointed. Iraqi Shi ite factions are jockeying to influence who replaces Sistani. Iran, whose population is mostly Shi ite, backs Shahroudi. Shahroudi could prove a controversial replacement for Sistani. Senior clergy in Najaf are wary of Iran trying to expand its influence and Shahroudi is viewed with some suspicion, although he could still build support among students. Since Sistani has distanced himself from Iranian politics some of his followers may not want a replacement who is close to Tehran. Sources in Najaf were unwilling to go on the record on a matter as sensitive as Sistani s successor, but a former senior Iraqi official told Reuters: The Iranians will try their best. It s not just religious, politics have become part of it. It will decide the fate of Iraq, the official said. Iran has already expanded its influence in Iraq by helping the Shi ite-led government in Baghdad retake disputed areas from the Kurds. The head of the branch of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for operations outside Iran, Qassem Soleimani, personally convinced some Kurdish leaders to abandon their claim to contested towns, like the oil-rich Kirkuk. Attempts to reach Shahroudi and the Revolutionary Guards media office were unsuccessful, as were attempts to reach Sistani s office for comment. If Iran can influence who becomes the next top Shi ite cleric in Iraq, it could tighten its grip on power within the country for years. A senior cleric in Najaf who is sympathetic to the interests of Iran would also eliminate a rival to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who claims to be the leader of Shi ite Muslims worldwide. For years, Sistani, who has endorsed a religious and political viewpoint independent of Iran, has been Khamenei s top challenger for the leadership of the global Shi ite community. Sistani is rarely seen in public but his decrees are sacrosanct to his millions of Shi ite followers. Sistani s fatwa to rise up against the Sunni militants of Islamic State thwarted the group s push toward Baghdad in 2014. The cleric has also used his decrees to reduce sectarian violence in the country. Sistani opposed the secession of the Kurdish region after the referendum on independence in September but then urged Baghdad to protect Kurds after reports of abuses surfaced last month. Without Sistani s restraining influence, clashes are likely to break out between sects as well as among rival Shi ite groups, Iraqi officials and observers say. Sistani is not just a poor guy sitting in a house. He can control millions of people, the Iraqi former senior official said. It will be a very bloody struggle after Sistani passes away. Sources in Najaf expect Sistani to remain in his post until his death. There is no clear succession process, but Shahroudi would need to obtain the support of a large number of ordinary Shi ites, seminary students and other clerics. Shahroudi is no stranger to Najaf: he was born in the city to Iranian parents. In the 1970s he was jailed and tortured by Saddam Hussein s security forces because of his political activities. He moved to Iran after the Islamic revolution and has been promoted to top posts since Khamenei became supreme leader in 1989. Shahroudi was head of the Iranian judiciary for a decade and is currently the head of the Expediency Council, a body intended to resolve disputes between parliament and a hardline watchdog body, the Guardian Council. In public, Shahroudi is often seen sitting next to Khamenei. Shahroudi s visit is only one sign of how Tehran is trying to rally support for its candidate to replace Sistani. A company linked to the Revolutionary Guards is involved in a $300 million project to expand the Imam Ali shrine, making it the second largest Muslim holy site after Mecca in Saudi Arabia. These projects create a state of dependency between recipients of aid and Tehran since they integrate the Iraqi infrastructure into the Iranian infrastructure network, said Ali Alfoneh, an expert on the Guards at the Atlantic Council. Furthermore, such activities provide a cover for the Islamic Republic s intelligence networks operating in Iraq. In 2011, Shahroudi opened an office in Najaf and began paying clerical students stipends, which observers say was an attempt by Iran to increase its influence. It was a provocative move, said an Iraqi analyst familiar with the Shi ite clergy who asked not to be identified. Shahroudi subsequently opened offices in Baghdad and Karbala. He pays stipends to thousands of seminary students, according to Iraqi officials and clerical sources in Najaf. Clerics often pay stipends to students to gather support, raise their profile and perhaps become accepted as a marja, or top cleric, observers say. Iran is trying to influence the process of who comes after Sistani through the students, said a Western diplomat in Iraq who did not have permission to speak on the record. Sistani is now the main sponsor of Shi ite clerical students, paying millions of dollars in Iraq and elsewhere. His son Mohammed Ridha oversees the financial and administrative work of his office. Follow the dollars to see what will happen next, said an Iraqi senior official familiar with the clerical politics of Najaf. Mohammed Ridha Sistani controls all the cash. Mohammed Ridha s work could position him to replace his father, observers say, though passing the religious mantle within a family would be unprecedented in Shi ite custom. Top contenders to replace Sistani in Najaf include three other marjas but they are old and there is no clear front-runner, according to clerical sources and Iraqi officials. Nothing is fixed to make a decision for this procedure, said Sheikh Ali Najafi, son of one of the top Najaf marjas. While in Iraq, Shahroudi visited prime minister Haidar al Abadi in Baghdad. Iraqi officials said Sistani refused to see him in Najaf, but they do not expect the Iranians to give up.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States was making progress on the North Korean issue, ahead of an expected sanctions announcement by Washington over Pyongyang s ballistic and nuclear weapons program. I think we re making a lot of progress in a lot of ways, Trump said before going into a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said on Friday she was reassured during meetings with President Donald Trump’s administration that it was committed to full implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. In her first visit to Washington since Trump took power, Mogherini came to present the European Union as a valuable friend to the United States with common priorities. In a nod to Trump’s preferred style of diplomacy, she said that the European Union could adopt a more formal “transactional approach” on some issues to appeal to the new administration. Mogherini, who met this week with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Trump’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner and members of Congress, said her main intention in Washington was to discuss the nuclear accord, which granted Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear program. Her visit suggests concern among European and other countries, including Russia and China, that the Trump administration may withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal. There have been increasing concerns since the White House put Iran “on notice” for test-firing a ballistic missile. Days later, Washington tightened sanctions against Iran by imposing measures against 25 individuals and entities for the missile test. “I was reassured by what I heard in the meetings on the intention to stick to the full implementation of the agreement,” Mogherini told reporters. Mogherini said she won assurances from members of the Trump administration that they believe Russia should abide by the terms of the 2015 Minsk agreement to end fighting in eastern Ukraine. Mogherini said she and Tillerson discussed how the Minsk agreement might be fully implemented. But Mogherini also signaled doubt about Trump’s commitment to U.S. policy towards Russia. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have expressed concern that Trump will be too conciliatory towards Moscow, perhaps by granting Russia relief from sanctions on its energy, defense and finance industries. “We agreed that as long as the Minsk agreements are not fully implemented, sanctions would remain in place,” Mogherini said later on Friday at a Washington think tank. “But I don’t know if this is going to be the consolidated policy ... I was not in the Oval Office when President Trump called President (Vladimir) Putin.” Mogherini avoided directly criticizing Trump, but said European history showed that blocking the movement of people is doomed to fail. Trump has vowed to build a wall along the U.S. southern border to block illegal immigration from Mexico. He has also issued an executive order barring people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days, except refugees from Syria, who are banned indefinitely. “We tend to celebrate when walls come down,” Mogherini said. “America has always been great because it has been made up of many people coming from different places.”

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SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he would not call a general election after a citizenship crisis claimed another member of parliament on Saturday, leaving his government clinging to power with the support of two independents. Australia s constitution bars dual nationals from parliament, and Turnbull s centre-right coalition government was thrown into disarray last month by a High Court ruling that five of them were ineligible to be lawmakers. Earlier on Saturday, Conservative Liberal party MP John Alexander told reporters in Sydney he was no longer certain that he was solely Australian, and that meant he had to resign. Turnbull will deal with issues such as a no-confidence motion when they arise, he told a televised news conference in Vietnam s central city of Danang, where he is attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders. We have the support of the crossbench on matters of confidence and supply. There is no question of that happening, Turnbull added, ruling out the possibility of a no-confidence motion. His centre-right coalition government must rely on the two independents to vote with it to safeguard its position and block the passage of legislation it opposes. Turnbull said he expected a Dec. 2 by-election would return Barnaby Joyce both to parliament and to his former position as deputy prime minister, thus bolstering the government. He ruled out an early return to Australia following Alexander s resignation. It is my obligation that I must resign, Alexander told a news conference. That s what I will do. I think there is a great need for certainty, to clarify the situation and to do so as expeditiously as possible. Alexander had been waiting for Britain s Home Office to clarify whether he held British citizenship by descent. It is not known whether they responded. He would have to confirm sole Australian citizenship before fighting a by-election to regain his seat. Alexander said he planned to contest the by-election which The Sydney Morning Herald said must be announced no later than Monday, to allow the minimum 33-day campaign required to hold the poll on December 16. Only the two independents now guarantee Turnbull s position after the High Court ruling expelled three members of the Liberal-National coalition government from parliament, with a fourth resigning days later, after confirming his dual nationality.

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia rejected on Tuesday a report by an international inquiry blaming the Syrian government for a deadly toxic gas attack, casting doubt on whether the U.N. Security Council can agree to extend the investigation s mandate before it expires next week. Russia vetoed an initial U.S. bid to renew the joint inquiry by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Oct. 24, saying it wanted to wait for the release of the investigation s report two days later. It has since proposed its own rival draft resolution, which deputy Russian U.N. Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said on Tuesday aimed to enhance the effectiveness of the inquiry and correct errors and systemic problems. Without a comprehensive change it will become a tool to settle accounts with the Syrian authorities, Safronkov told the 15-member Security Council on Tuesday during a meeting on the report by the U.N./OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM). The report found the Syrian government was responsible for an April 4 attack using the banned nerve agent sarin in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing dozens of people. The Syrian government has denied using chemical weapons. The chemical weapons attack prompted a U.S. missile strike just days later against a Syrian air base. Russia is trying to shoot the messenger to cover up for the crimes of the Syrian regime, Deputy British U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Allen told the Security Council. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said there could be no higher priority for the Security Council than renewing the JIM mandate. Diplomats said the United States had amended its draft resolution in a bid to win Russian support. Anyone who prevents us from achieving this goal is aiding and abetting those who have been using chemical weapons, Haley said. They are helping to ensure, not just that more women and children will die, but that those women and children will die in one of the cruelest, most painful ways possible. A resolution must get nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France to pass. Allen told reporters the Russian draft resolution has very little if any support in the council and no realistic prospects of success. The JIM had previously found that Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State militants used mustard gas. Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.

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(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will name former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue as his nominee for secretary of agriculture on Thursday, a senior transition official said on Wednesday. Here is a list of Republican Trump’s selections for top jobs in his administration. NOTE: Senate confirmation is required for all the posts except national security adviser and White House posts. Tillerson, 64, has spent his entire career at Exxon Mobil Corp, where he rose to chairman and chief executive officer in 2006. A civil engineer by training, the Texan joined the world’s largest publicly traded energy company in 1975 and led several of its operations in the United States as well as in Yemen, Thailand and Russia. As Exxon’s chief executive, he maintained close ties with Moscow and opposed U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea. Mnuchin, 54, is a successful private equity investor, hedge fund manager and Hollywood financier who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc before leaving the investment bank in 2002. He assembled an investor group to buy a failed California mortgage lender in 2009, rebranded it as OneWest Bank and built it into Southern California’s largest bank. Housing advocacy groups criticized OneWest for its foreclosure practices, accusing it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. Mattis is a retired Marine general known for his tough talk, distrust of Iran and battlefield experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. A former leader of Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and South Asia, Mattis, 66, is known by many U.S. forces by his nickname, “Mad Dog.” He was rebuked in 2005 for saying: “It’s fun to shoot some people.” Sessions, 70, was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump’s presidential bid and has been a close ally since. Son of a country store owner, the lawmaker from Alabama and former federal prosecutor has long taken a tough stance on illegal immigration, opposing any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Coats, 73, served as U.S. senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999 and again from 2011 to 2017, and was U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005. He previously served as U.S. representative from Indiana’s 4th Congressional District. Zinke, 55, a first-term Republican U.S. representative from Montana and a member of the House subcommittee on natural resources, has voted for legislation that would weaken environmental safeguards on public lands. He has taken stances favoring the coal industry, which suffered during the Obama administration. The League of Conservation Voters, which ranks lawmakers on their environmental record, gave Zinke an extremely low lifetime score of 3 percent. Ross, 79, heads the private equity firm WL Ross & Co. Forbes has pegged his net worth at about $2.9 billion. A staunch supporter of Trump, Ross helped shape the Trump campaign’s views on trade policy. He blames massive U.S. factory job losses on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, which went into force in 1994, and the 2001 entry of China into the World Trade Organization. Lighthizer, 69, served as deputy U.S. trade representative during the Reagan administration in the 1980s and has since spent nearly three decades as a lawyer representing U.S. companies in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases, currently with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. A harsh critic of China’s trade practices, Lighthizer in 2010 told Congress that U.S. policymakers should take a more aggressive approach in dealing with the Asian country. Puzder, chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants Inc [APOLOT.UL], which runs the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast-food chains, has been a vociferous critic of government regulation of the workplace and the National Labor Relations Board. Puzder, 66, has argued that higher minimum wages would hurt workers by forcing restaurants to close and praises the benefits of automation, so his appointment is likely to antagonize organized labor. U.S. Representative Price, 62, is an orthopedic surgeon who heads the House Budget Committee. A representative from Georgia since 2005, Price has criticized Obamacare and has championed a plan of tax credits, expanded health savings accounts and lawsuit reforms to replace it. He is against abortion. Former Georgia Governor Perdue, 70, served on Trump’s agricultural advisory committee during the campaign. Perdue, a Republican, was elected to two terms as governor, serving from 2003 to 2011. Before that, he served in the state Senate representing a rural swath of the state about 100 miles (160 km) south of Atlanta. After finishing his second term as governor, Perdue founded Perdue Partners, a global trading firm that consults and provides services for companies looking to export products. Shulkin, 57, currently is under secretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, putting him in charge of the country’s largest healthcare system. Shulkin, a physician, was chosen by Democratic President Barack Obama for the under secretary post in 2015. He has spearheaded an effort to cut waiting times for care at VA medical centers. Trump promised during the campaign to improve medical care for veterans. Shulkin would be the first VA secretary who had not served in the military. Carson, 65, is a retired neurosurgeon who dropped out of the Republican presidential nominating race in March and threw his support to Trump. A popular writer and speaker in conservative circles, Carson had been reluctant to take a position in the incoming administration because of his lack of experience in the federal government. He is the first African-American picked for a Cabinet spot by Trump. Chao, 63, was labor secretary under President George W. Bush for eight years and the first Asian-American woman to hold a Cabinet position. She is a director at Ingersoll Rand Plc, News Corp and Vulcan Materials Co. She is married to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky. Perry, 66, is an addition to the list of oil drilling advocates skeptical about climate change who have been picked for senior positions in Trump’s Cabinet. The selections have worried environmentalists but cheered an oil and gas industry eager for expansion. Perry, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and also briefly ran for president in 2016, would be responsible for U.S. energy policy and oversee the nation’s nuclear weapons program. DeVos, 59, is a billionaire Republican donor, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and an advocate for the privatization of education. As chair of the American Federation for Children, she has pushed at the state level for vouchers that families can use to send their children to private schools and for expansion of charter schools. The final leadership role of Kelly’s 45-year military career was head of the U.S. Southern Command, responsible for U.S. military activities and relationships in Latin America and the Caribbean. The 66-year-old retired Marine general differed with Obama on key issues and has warned of vulnerabilities along the United States’ southern border with Mexico. Priebus recently was re-elected to serve as Republican National Committee chairman but will give up that job to join Trump in the White House, where the low-key Washington operative could help forge ties with Congress to advance Trump’s agenda. Priebus, 44, was a steadfast supporter of Trump during the presidential campaign even as the party fractured amid the choice. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ADMINISTRATOR: SCOTT PRUITT An ardent opponent of Obama’s measures to stem climate change, Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt, 48, has enraged environmental activists. But he fits in with the president-elect’s promise to cut the agency back and eliminate regulation that he says is stifling oil and gas drilling. Pruitt became the top state prosecutor for Oklahoma, which has extensive oil reserves, in 2011 and has challenged the EPA multiple times since. U.S. Representative Mick Mulvaney, 49, a South Carolina Republican, is a fiscal conservative. He was an outspoken critic of former House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who resigned in 2015 amid opposition from fellow Republicans who were members of the House Freedom Caucus. Mulvaney was first elected to Congress in 2010. Haley, 44, has been the Republican governor of South Carolina since 2011 and has little experience in foreign policy or the federal government. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she led a successful push last year to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol after the killing of nine black churchgoers in Charleston by a white gunman. McMahon, 68, is a co-founder and former chief executive of the professional wrestling franchise WWE, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut. She ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012 and was an early supporter of Trump’s presidential campaign. U.S. Representative Pompeo, 53, is a third-term congressman from Kansas who serves on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, which oversees the CIA, National Security Agency and cyber security. A retired Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate, Pompeo supports the U.S. government’s sweeping collection of Americans’ communications data and wants to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. Walter “Jay” Clayton is a New York-based attorney who advises clients on major Wall Street deals, specializing in public and private mergers and acquisitions and capital-raising efforts. His past clients have included Alibaba Group Holding Company, Oaktree Capital Group and big banks. Retired Lieutenant General Flynn, 58, was an early Trump supporter and serves as vice chairman on his transition team. He began his Army career in 1981 and was deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Flynn became head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012 under Obama but retired a year earlier than expected, according to media reports, and became a fierce critic of Obama’s foreign policy. Tom Bossert, 41, who worked as deputy homeland security adviser to former President George W. Bush, will serve as the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. He currently runs a risk management consulting firm and has a cyber risk fellowship with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. Cohn, 56, president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, had widely been considered heir apparent to Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of the Wall Street firm. Trump hammered Goldman and Blankfein during the presidential campaign, releasing a television ad that called Blankfein part of a “global power structure” that had robbed America’s working class. Navarro, 67, has suggested a stepped-up engagement with Taiwan, including assistance with a submarine development program. A professor at the University of California, Irvine, who advised Trump during the campaign, Navarro argued that Washington should stop referring to the “one China” policy, but stopped short of suggesting it should recognize Taipei: “There is no need to unnecessarily poke the Panda.” Viola, 60, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a U.S. Army veteran who served in the famed 101st Airborne Division. He founded high-frequency trading firm Virtu Financial Inc and served as chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he began his financial services career. After the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, Viola helped found the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He is an owner of the Florida Panthers ice hockey team. CHIEF WHITE HOUSE STRATEGIST, SENIOR COUNSELOR: STEVE BANNON The former head of the conservative website Breitbart News came aboard as Trump’s campaign chairman in August. A rabble-rousing conservative media figure, he helped shift Breitbart into a forum for the alt-right, a loose confederation of those who reject mainstream politics and includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites. His hiring signals Trump’s dedication to operating outside the norms of Washington. As White House chief of staff, Bannon, 63, will serve as Trump’s gatekeeper and agenda-setter.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice to lead an important health agency said on Thursday that the way pharmaceutical companies classify products as generic or branded needs to be reviewed in order to help hold down government spending, as she cited Mylan NV’s EpiPen emergency allergy treatment. Seema Verma, Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), did not answer questions about whether the U.S. government should negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. “I think what happened with ... the EpiPen issue is very disturbing,” Verma said at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. “The idea that perhaps Medicaid programs, which are struggling to pay for those programs, that they could have potentially received rebates is disturbing to me.” Mylan has been criticized for listing EpiPen with Medicaid as a generic product even though it listed it with the Food and Drug Administration as a branded product. The classification led to Mylan’s paying significantly smaller rebates to the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor than if EpiPen were classified as branded. “I would like to review the processes in place there, in terms of the classifications, in terms of brand and generic, to ensure that type of thing doesn’t happen again,” Verma said. CMS said last year that it had “expressly advised” Mylan that the drugmaker had improperly classified EpiPen. Mylan said last month that U.S. antitrust authorities had launched an investigation into EpiPen. The company said suggestions it took any inappropriate or unlawful actions to prevent generic competition was “without merit.” Mylan has also come under fire for raising the price of a two-pack of EpiPens to $600 last summer from $100 in 2008. Mylan began selling a generic version of EpiPen for $300 per two-pack in December. Verma also said she would produce records of communication between the agency and Mylan, when questioned by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. A statement from Grassley’s office said Mylan had overcharged states and taxpayers by “potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.” Democrats were not pleased with Verma’s sidestepping a question from Senator Debbie Stabenow about whether she agreed with Trump that the government should negotiate with drug companies over prices of drugs covered by the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly and disabled. “I don’t think that’s a simple yes or no answer,” Verma said. “The goal is to make sure that we’re getting affordable prices for our seniors.”

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(Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday while on a trip to Puerto Rico to observe hurricane recovery efforts that the island s massive debt will have to be wiped out. They owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street and we re going to have to wipe that out. You re going to say goodbye to that, I don t know if it s Goldman Sachs but whoever it is you can wave goodbye to that, Trump said in an interview with Fox News. Puerto Rico, which earlier this year filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. municipal history, is struggling to regain economic stability in the face of a $72 billion debt load and near-insolvent public health and pension systems.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been cleared by U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts to oversee an investigation into possible collusion between then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The department appointed Mueller special counsel last week to ensure an independent probe, but an ethics rule limiting government attorneys from investigating people their former law firm represented raised questions over how Mueller would be allowed to operate. Mueller’s former law firm, WilmerHale, represents President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who met with a Russian bank executive in December, and the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is a subject of a federal investigation. Kushner is now a White House adviser. Manafort quit the campaign last August, months before the Nov. 8 election. “Under the Rules of Professional Responsibility, Mr. Mueller is permitted to participate in matters involving his former firm’s clients so long as he has no confidential information about the client and did not participate in the representation,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement. Although Mueller has now been cleared by the Justice Department, the White House may still use his former law firm’s connection to Manafort and Kushner to undermine the findings of his investigation, according to two sources close to the White House.

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FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German explosives experts defused a massive World War Two bomb in the financial capital of Frankfurt on Sunday after tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes. The compulsory evacuation of 60,000 people was Germany s biggest such maneuver since the war, with more than a thousand emergency service workers helping to clear the area around the bomb, which was discovered on a building site last week. The evacuation area included two hospitals, care homes, the Opera House and Germany s central bank, the Bundesbank, where $70 billion in gold reserves are stored underground. Police maintained security at the building. The all-day effort took longer than planned but officials expressed relief that residents would start returning home before sundown and that the operation wouldn t disrupt business on Monday. The work by bomb technicians started later than scheduled because some residents refused to leave the evacuation area despite fire chiefs warning that an uncontrolled explosion would be big enough to flatten a city block. Police said they took stragglers into custody to secure the area. More than 2,000 tonnes of live bombs and munitions are discovered each year in Germany, more than 70 years after the end of the war. British and American warplanes pummeled the country with 1.5 million tonnes of bombs that killed 600,000 people. Officials estimate that 15 percent of the bombs failed to explode, some burrowing six meters (20 feet) deep. Residents were instructed to leave their homes by 8 a.m. local time [0600 GMT], and more than a thousand emergency service workers helped to clear the area. Police set up cordons at a 1.5 km (roughly a mile) radius around the device. Many residents left town. Others spent time in cafes on the edge of the evacuation zone. Museums were free, and many hotels offered discounts. The city set up a temporary shelter at Frankfurt s trade fair site, serving bananas and beverages. The device was found last week in the city s leafy Westend neighborhood, home to many wealthy bankers. Premature babies and intensive care patients had to be evacuated along with everyone else from two hospitals and rescue workers helped about 500 elderly people leave residences and care homes. Bomb disposal experts used a special system to try and unscrew the fuses attached to the HC 4,000 bomb from a safe distance. If that had failed, a water jet would have been used to cut the fuses. The bomb was dropped by Britain s Royal Air Force during the 1939-45 war, city officials said. In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys. Three police explosives experts in Goettingen were killed in 2010 while preparing to defuse a 1,000 lb (450 kg) bomb.

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HONOLULU (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver a farewell address on Jan. 10 to reflect on his time in office and say thank you to his supporters, he said in an email statement released on Monday. Obama, noting that the first president of the United States, George Washington, had penned a farewell address in 1796, said he would deliver his speech in his hometown of Chicago. “I’m thinking about (the remarks) as a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey, to celebrate the ways you’ve changed this country for the better these past eight years, and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here,” he said. Republican Donald Trump will be sworn in to office on Jan. 20. During his campaign for the White House, Trump pledged to undo many of Obama’s signature policy measures, including his healthcare law. Obama, who campaigned hard for Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, has sought to ensure a smooth transition of power despite major policy differences with his successor. He also leaves his party without a clear figurehead as he leaves the White House. “Since 2009, we’ve faced our fair share of challenges, and come through them stronger,” Obama said in the email, likely foreshadowing a theme for his speech. “That’s because we have never let go of a belief that has guided us ever since our founding - our conviction that, together, we can change this country for the better.”

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday that Russia was closely monitoring any signals from the team of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump regarding its future foreign policy, RIA news agency reported. Trump is expected to name Rex Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon Mobil XOM.N, as Washington’s top diplomat, a source familiar with the situation said on Saturday. The appointment would add another figure in Trump’s cabinet with close ties to Russia.

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HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela s former ambassador to the United Nations, Rafael Ramirez, has left the United States after being forced to resign by President Nicolas Maduro s government, according to a source with knowledge of his travel plan. Ramirez, who for more than a decade ran OPEC member Venezuela s massive oil industry, said earlier on Tuesday he was removed because of his opinions.

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KOSAMBI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Two explosions tore through a fireworks factory on the outskirts of Indonesia s capital on Thursday, killing at least 47 people and injuring dozens. It was one of Indonesia s worst industrial disasters and is likely to cast a new spotlight on lax safety standards in the Southeast Asian country, where rules are often ignored or weakly enforced. Workers had no time to escape from the plant in Tangerang, an industrial and manufacturing hub to the west of Jakarta, after the explosions that one neighbor described as a roar that could be heard miles away. A video of the scene inside the warehouse, widely shared on social media, showed charred bodies sprawled about the burnt-out factory, and Reuters reporters at the scene saw grass scorched over an area about 10 meters (33 feet) from the site. People were burned so badly you couldn t see their faces ... It was really bad, said search and rescue official Deden Nurjaman, who expected the death toll to climb as more bodies were found inside the factory. Fireworks are frequently used in Indonesia for religious and other celebrations, and are widely available. There have been a series of major fires in Indonesia this year, including one that engulfed one of Jakarta s main markets. Thick, dark plumes of smoke billowed from the factory through the afternoon as an inferno took hold. As night fell, the PT Panca Buana Cahaya Sukses warehouse was still smoldering and there was a stench of chemicals and burning plastic. Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono told Metro Television that 47 bodies had been discovered, 46 people were injured and 10 people were unaccounted for. He said the missing might have left with light injuries or not have been working at the time. One of the first policemen on the scene, Raymond Masengi, told Metro TV that he and other officers had to smash holes in the factory wall to help the injured escape. Fiza, a doctor in the emergency unit at Tangerang General Hospital, said he was treating seven people, some of them with burns to more than 80 percent of their bodies. Three were in critical condition. A nearby mosque held prayers for the victims. Forensic police worked in fading light to examine the debris, setting up a few floodlights to try and establish the cause of the blaze. Yuwono said police were looking into the permit of the factory, which was close to a school and housing and - according to media reports - had been operating for only two months. A witness who lives around the corner from the factory said she heard an explosion like a roar . I dressed and stepped outside the house, and saw the flames, they were almost in my face. The smoke, the heat was in my face. I panicked, I was scared, I picked up my son and ran away from the fire, said Kartini, 40, who uses one name, like many Indonesians. Hundreds of children at a school just 100 meters (yards) from the factory jumped in terror over a wall as the explosions boomed, dropping books and bags in their haste to get away. Science teacher Asep Mahmud, 47, said: There were several small explosions and then one really big one that shook our buildings and desks. (This story has been refiled to correct typo in second paragraph)

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SYDNEY (Reuters) - A ninth Australian lawmaker quit parliament on Wednesday after discovering she was a dual national, the latest casualty in a widening constitutional crisis that has already cost the government its majority. The resignation of Skye Kakoschke-Moore, one of three senators in the center-right Nick Xenophon Team, over the surprise revelation that she was a British citizen by descent, does not affect the government s position in the upper house. Their advice was extremely surprising to me, Kakoschke-Moore told reporters in Adelaide, after having learnt from Britain s Home Office that her mother s birth in then-colonial Singapore in 1957 made her British by descent. Australia s 116-year-old constitution bans dual citizens from holding national office, in a bid to prevent split allegiances. The crisis, which is likely to ripple even wider in coming weeks as lawmakers are required to prove their status, has already cut a swath through Australia s parliament. The ruling center-right coalition lost its one-seat majority in the lower house after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was found ineligible for office and expelled by the High Court. Another resignation has since weakened it further. Adherence to the dual-citizenship rule, in a country where more than half the population of 24 million were either themselves, or have a parent, born overseas, has only recently come under the spotlight, with the High Court adopting a strict interpretation of the law. In response, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ordered all lawmakers to prove they comply with the laws by Dec. 5, and at least one lawmaker besides those who have quit has raised the possibility that she is ineligible. Senate votes from 2016 will be recounted to decide on a replacement for Kakoschke-Moore. By-elections set for Dec. 2 and Dec. 16, to replace Joyce and a lower-house government lawmaker who resigned on discovering he was British, are shaping as crucial for the government s survival. Joyce is expected to retain his seat, internal party polling published by the Australian newspaper showed, but former tennis champion John Alexander must contend with a high-profile rival in former New South Wales state Premier Kristina Keneally. The government would be reduced to minority rule if Alexander lost, forcing it to depend on a handful of independent lawmakers to retain power and pass laws.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump laid out a U.S. military policy on Tuesday that would avoid interventions in foreign conflicts and instead focus heavily on defeating the Islamic State militancy. In the latest stop on a “thank you” tour of states critical to his Nov. 8 election win, Trump introduced his choice for defense secretary, General James Mattis, to a large crowd in this city near the Fort Bragg military base, which has deployed soldiers to 90 countries around the world. “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” Trump said. “Instead, our focus must be on defeating terrorism and destroying ISIS, and we will.” Trump’s rhetoric was similar to what he said during the election campaign when he railed against the war in Iraq. In Fayetteville, he vowed a strong rebuilding of the U.S. military, which he suggested has been stretched too thin. Instead of investing in wars, he said, he would spend money to build up America’s aging roads, bridges and airports. Even so, Trump said he wants to boost spending on the military. To help pay for his buildup, Trump pledged to seek congressional approval for lifting caps on defense spending that were part of “sequestration” legislation that imposed cut spending across the board. “We don’t want to have a depleted military because we’re all over the place fighting in areas that we shouldn’t be fighting in. It’s not going to be depleted any longer,” he said. Trump said any nation that shares these goals will be considered a U.S. partner. “We don’t forget. We want to strengthen old friendships and seek out new friendships,” he said. He said the policy of “intervention and chaos” must come to an end. While U.S. armed forces are deployed in far-flung places around the globe, they are only involved currently in active combat in the Middle East, specifically Iraq and Syria for the most part. “We will build up our military not as an act of aggression, but as an act of prevention,” he said. “In short, we seek peace through strength.” Trump described Mattis as the right person for the job and urged Congress to approve a waiver to let him take on the civilian position. Under U.S. law a military leader must be retired for seven years before becoming eligible to become defense secretary. Speaking to the crowed, Mattis said, “I look forward to being the civilian leader as long as the Congress gives me the waiver and the Senate votes to consent.” “We’re going to get you that waiver,” Trump said, returning to the microphone. “If you don’t get that waiver there are going to be a lot of angry people.”

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was set to win an election in Prime Minister Narendra Modi s home state on Monday, the vote count showed, but with a reduced margin, which will be a boost for the opposition. A combined opposition led by the Congress party had mounted a tough challenge in the western state of Gujarat, hoping to weaken Modi in his home base by exploiting discontent over a lack of jobs and a national sales tax that hit business. The BJP won more than 100 seats in the 182-member state assembly, projections by India Today, CNN News18 and TimesNow showed. A party needs 92 seats to rule the state. Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, who formally took over as party president at the weekend, was set to win more than 70 seats, far better than it had done in the past. A relieved BJP said Modi s popularity remained intact. There is no other leader close, said Shyam Jaju, party vice president. The mood in the BJP headquarters in New Delhi and in Gujarat s main city Ahmedabad was initially tense as early trends showed a close fight. But later workers gathered to shout slogans and cheer victory. Modi s party was also ahead in Himachal Pradesh, the Himalayan state in the north also voting for a new state assembly. Modi faces a general election in 2019, but before then, the opposition aims to slow down Modi s momentum in state elections, with two more next year. Businesses across India have been struggling with the poor implementation of a goods and services tax that aims to harmonize an array of state and federal taxes but entangled them in cumbersome procedures. Modi s shock ban of high-value currency notes in November last year, as part of his fight against corruption, also disrupted small business that forms the bedrock of his support base. Indian stock markets opened weaker, with the 50-share NSE index down almost 2 percent as early trends showed a close contest in Gujarat. But stocks reversed the losses later - the 50-share NSE index was trading up 0.7 percent at 0455 GMT. The partially convertible rupee was trading at 64.32/33 to the dollar versus its previous close of 64.04. The rupee had dropped to a low of 64.74 in early trade. Almost all pre-vote and exit polls had predicted a comfortable victory, but the polls have often gone wrong in the past. To ensure his party s prospects, Modi addressed dozens of rallies during his campaign in Gujarat, performed rituals and even waved from a seaplane on his last day on the campaign trail. If they had lost Gujarat, the BJP would have collapsed like a pack of cards, said Congress member Sharmistha Mukherjee. This is their citadel, they threw everything at it. In the Congress party office in Ahmedabad, posters of Rahul Gandhi were being pasted on the wall. Rahul Gandhi s hard work has paid off in the state and it proves that Modi s governance is not making anyone happy, said a Congress leader, Shaktisinh Gohil.

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - China s foreign minister on Thursday called on North Korea not to go further in a dangerous direction with its nuclear program and said negotiations were the only way out of the crisis over Pyongyang s weapons development. Wang Yi also told the annual U.N. General Assembly China was committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and there should be no new nuclear weapons north or south of the border, or elsewhere in Northeast Asia. He urged the United States to honor its four no commitment, an apparent reference to an Aug. 1 statement by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in which he said Washington did not seek the collapse or change of the North Korean government, accelerated reunification of the peninsula, or to send its military north of the border. We urge the DPRK not to go further along a dangerous direction, Wang said, referring to North Korea by the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. And we call upon all parties to play a constructive role in easing tensions. There is still hope for peace and we must not give up. Negotiation is the only way out, which deserves every effort. Parties should meet each other half way, by addressing each other s legitimate concerns. Wang made no mention in his speech of U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement of new sanctions on Thursday that open the door wider to blacklisting people and entities doing business with North Korea, including its shipping and trade networks. China, North Korea s main trading partner, has backed successive rounds of United Nations sanctions over North Korean nuclear bomb tests, but has repeatedly said it is opposed to unilateral sanctions and especially long-arm jurisdiction over Chinese entities and individuals.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - An executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration will not undermine two data transfer agreements between the United States and the EU, Washington wrote in a letter to allay European concerns. An executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 25 aiming to toughen enforcement of U.S. immigration law rattled the European Union as it appeared to suggest Europeans would not be given the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens. The order directs U.S. agencies to “exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.” Securing equal treatment of EU citizens was key to agreeing the Umbrella Agreement which protects law enforcement data shared between the United States and the EU. And the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield - which makes possible about $260 billion of trade in digital services - was only clinched after Washington agreed to protect the data from excessive surveillance and misuse by companies. In the first written confirmation since the executive order stoked uncertainty over transatlantic data flows, the U.S. Department of Justice said the executive order did not affect either the Umbrella Agreement or the Privacy Shield. “Section 14 of the Executive Order does not affect the privacy rights extended by the Judicial Redress Act to Europeans. Nor does Section 14 affect the commitments the United States has made under the DPPA (Umbrella Agreement) or the Privacy Shield,” Bruce Swartz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, wrote to the European Commission in a letter seen by Reuters. EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, who will travel to the United States at the end of March, said she was “not worried” but remained vigilant. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is used by almost 2,000 companies including Google (GOOGL.O), Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) to store data about EU citizens on U.S. servers. Its predecessor was struck down in 2015 by the EU’s top court for allowing U.S. agents unfettered access to Europeans’ data, forcing an acceleration of difficult talks to find a replacement.

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COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A 17-year-old Danish girl who offered to fight for Islamic State was found guilty on Friday of planning bomb attacks at two schools, one of them Jewish, state broadcaster DR reported. The High Court ruling upholds a ruling in the Holbaek district court in May that found the girl - who was not named - guilty of attempted terrorism. The girl was arrested at her home in January last year, when she was aged 15, and charged with planning the attacks after acquiring chemicals for making bombs.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation that would grant U.S. privacy rights to Europeans is being delayed in the U.S. Senate, which may complicate negotiations over a broader trans-Atlantic data transfer pact that faces a January deadline for completion, sources said on Wednesday. The Judicial Redress Act, which would allow citizens of European allied countries to sue over data privacy in the United States, is “likely to be held” from a scheduled vote on Thursday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, a panel aide said. Passage of the legislation is viewed as an important step toward securing a new “Safe Harbor” framework after the previous one was struck down by a top European Union court last year amid concerns about U.S. surveillance. More than 4,000 firms, including tech behemoths such as Google and IBM, have been relying on the 15-year-old Safe Harbor framework to freely transfer data between the United States and Europe, which has far stricter rules on the privacy of personal information. But that deal was ruled invalid last October by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which cited revelations about U.S. mass surveillance by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. European Union data protection authorities have given Brussels and Washington until the end of January to strike a new Safe Harbor agreement for transferring personal data. Industry executives are growing increasingly alarmed that the new Safe Harbor agreement will not be completed in time. The Information Technology Industry Council, a Washington-based trade organization that represents Apple, Microsoft and other major tech companies, sent some of its executives to Europe on Wednesday to press for a quick resolution. A spokesman for the organization, which warned of “enormous” consequences in a letter this week to President Barack Obama and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker if a pact is not forged soon, said its leaders are meeting with government and data protection authorities in several cities, including Dublin, Amsterdam, Berlin and London, ahead of the deadline. EU privacy regulators are due to meet on Feb. 2 to decide if they should begin enforcement action against companies if they determine all transfer mechanisms violate EU law and there is no new framework in place.

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KIEV/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Cyber attacks using malware called BadRabbit hit Russia and other nations on Tuesday, affecting Russian Interfax news agency and causing flight delays at Ukraine s Odessa airport. While no major outages were reported, the U.S. government issued a warning on the attack, which followed campaigns in May and June that used similar malware and resulted in what some economists estimated are billions of dollars in losses. The attacks are disturbing because attackers quickly infected critical infrastructure, including transportation operators, indicating it was a well-coordinated campaign, said Robert Lipovsky, a researcher with cyber firm ESET. More than half the victims were in Russia, followed by Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey and Japan, according to ESET. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a warning on the BadRabbit ransomware, a type of virus that locks up infected computers and asks victims to pay a ransom to restore access. It did not identify any U.S. victims but advised the public to refrain from paying ransoms and report any infections to the Federal Bureau of Investigation through the government s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Ransomware infections have the potential to halt activity at targeted organizations. The May WannaCry ransomware shuttered hospitals, factories and other facilities around the globe for days. Interfax, one of Russia s largest news agencies, said some of its services were hit by the attack but expected them to be back online by the end of Tuesday. An Odessa airport spokesman said a few flights were delayed because workers had to process passenger data manually. Kiev s metro system reported a hack on its payment system but said trains were running normally. Ukraine s cyber police chief told Reuters the country was barely affected. Russian cyber-security firm Kaspersky Lab said BadRabbit appeared to spread through a mechanism similar to June s destructive NotPetya virus, which took down many Ukrainian government agencies and businesses. It then spread across corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe. Kaspersky said it was investigating to see whether BadRabbit was related to NotPetya. Ukrainian banking services, which have been hit by previous attacks, were unaffected, according to the nation s central bank.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missile programs a “grave threat” to global peace, the White House said in a statement after a meeting of the two leaders on Monday. Trump and Modi pledged to work together to counter North Korea’s “weapons of mass destruction” programs and vowed to hold “all parties” that support these programs accountable, the White House statement said.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Most of an Islamic State evacuation convoy stuck in east Syria has crossed out of government territory and is no longer the responsibility of the Syrian government or its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi ite group said on Saturday. A U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State has been using warplanes to prevent the convoy from entering territory held by the jihadists in east Syria. Hezbollah and the Syrian army had escorted it from west Syria as part of a truce deal. The Syrian state and Hezbollah have fulfilled their obligations to transfer buses out of the area of Syrian government control without exposing them, the statement said. Hezbollah said in a statement that the U.S.-led jets were still blocking the convoy of fighters and their families, which was stuck in the desert, and were also stopping any aid from reaching it. Six buses remain in government-held territory under the protection and care of the Syrian state and Hezbollah, the statement said. There were originally 17 buses in the convoy. Hezbollah said there were old people, casualties and pregnant women in the buses stranded outside Syrian government control in the desert and called on the international community to step in to prevent them coming to harm. About 300 lightly armed fighters were traveling on the buses, having surrendered their enclave straddling Syria s border with Lebanon on Monday under a deal which allowed them to join their jihadist comrades on the other side of the country. It angered both the U.S.-led coalition, which does not want more battle-hardened militants in an area where it is operating, and Iraq, which sees them as a threat because the convoy s proposed destination of Al-Bukamal is close to its own border. The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, helped by Russia and Iran-backed militias including Hezbollah, is fighting Islamic State as it pushes eastwards across the desert. A commander in the pro-Assad military alliance said earlier on Saturday that Hezbollah and the Syrian army were seeking an alternative way for the convoy to cross into Islamic State territory, having already tried two other routes. Work is under way to change the course of the convoy for a second time, the commander said. The coalition has vowed to continue monitoring the convoy and disrupting any effort it makes to cross into jihadist territory but said it would not bomb it directly because it contains about 300 civilian family members of the fighters. It has asked Russia to tell the Syrian government that it will not allow the convoy to move further east towards the Iraqi border, according to a statement issued late on Friday. On Wednesday, the coalition said its jets had cratered a road and destroyed a bridge to stop the convoy progressing, and had bombed some of the jihadists comrades coming the other way to meet it. Hezbollah and the Syrian army on Thursday changed the route of the convoy from Humeima, a hamlet deep in the southeast desert, to a location further north, but coalition jets again struck near that route, the commander said. It was considered a threat, meaning there was no passage that way, the commander said. On Friday coalition jets made mock air raids over the convoy, the commander added. It caused panic among the Daeshis. The militants are scared the convoy will be bombarded as soon as it enters Deir al-Zor, the commander said, using a plural form of the Arabic acronym for Islamic state to refer to its fighters.

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ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece has won an appeal over objections from forestry officials to a major tourism project in Athens that forms part of its third international bailout, overcoming one of the obstacles to turning the site into one of Europe s biggest coastal resorts. The 8 billion euro ($9.39 billion) project to develop the disused Hellenikon airport site is being closely watched by Greece s European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders and potential investors in the crisis-hit country. The project features prominently among privatization targets in the country s 86 billion euro aid package, the third since the crisis began in 2010. Greek developer Lamda signed a 99-year lease with the state in 2014 for the 620-hectare (1,530-acre) area, once the site of Athens airport. But the project has faced delays, partly over a long-running row between developers and those who fear it will destroy the environment. Forestry authorities in May declared 3.7 hectares (9 acres) of the estate as protected woodland, on a spot developers said was integral to the project. Greece s privatization agency, which is in charge of concluding the deal with Lamda, appealed the decision. A four-member panel of the country s forestry department ruled on Monday that the plot was not forest. The agency s appeal ... was upheld by a 3-to-2 majority, the committee s president, Christos Antonellis, told Reuters, adding that the decision was expected to be published by Wednesday. The decision is subject to appeal. The privatization agency s chief, Lila Tsitsogiannopoulou, said the decision was positive and that the agency s appeal had strong legal grounds. Separately, the government s top advisory body on the protection of antiquities recommended on Tuesday that only 30 hectares (74 acres) of the 620-hectare plot under the project be declared an archaeological site, according to sources close to the process. Government officials said the decision was a big step for the development of the investment, in line with Greek law and the protection of cultural heritage . Lamda was not immediately available for comment. The recommendation is not binding, but the culture ministry always respects the body s decisions. Backed by Chinese and Gulf investors, Lamda submitted its detailed development plan for Hellenikon in July. The Central Archaeological Council was still discussing the issue and had yet to approve the investment plan, one of the sources said. The council has held three inconclusive meetings on this issue this month. [L8N1M7372] The Hellenikon project has become a major political issue in Greece, which is slowly emerging from a multi-year debt crisis. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose leftist party strongly opposed it before coming to power in 2015, is now seen as keen to implement the deal to help boost economic activity and reduce unemployment, the euro zone s highest. ($1 = 0.8522 euro)

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GARNER, Iowa/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Farmers in the U.S. agricultural heartland that helped elect Donald Trump are now pushing his administration to avoid a trade dispute with Mexico, fearing retaliatory tariffs that could hit over $3 billion in U.S. exports. The value of exports at risk is based on a Reuters analysis of a tariff list which Mexico used in a trucking dispute six years ago and which Mexican officials have said could serve as a model if President Trump sets new barriers to Mexican goods. Pork producers contacted Trump’s transition team soon after the Nov. 8 election to stress that tariff-free access to Mexico has made it their top export market by volume, said John Weber, president of the National Pork Producers Council. The council has sent the administration multiple letters, including one signed in January by 133 agricultural organizations, and is arranging for several hog farmers to fly to Washington next month to talk to officials. “We just keep pounding them on how critical trade is to us,” said Weber, who fears Mexico could revive the list of mostly agricultural products it successfully used to push Washington into letting Mexican truckers on U.S. highways in 2011. Pork products topped that list and, if revived, the tariffs would apply to over $800 million of annual pork exports, according to data compiled by IHS Markit’s Global Trade Atlas. “We’ll be the first to take the hit,” Weber said. The lobbying effort by U.S. businesses which rely on the Mexican market shows how Mexico can press its case in Washington despite having an economy 1/17 the size of America’s and relying on the U.S. market for nearly 80 percent if its exports. In Iowa, where pigs outnumber people seven to one, hog and grain farmer Jamie Schmidt voted for Trump in part on his promise to cut regulatory burdens for businesses. Now he and others who farm the flat, rich land around Garner, Iowa, worry about trade. Schmidt gets about half of his income from hogs, earning $4-5 for each of the 425 pigs he sells per week, usually to a Tyson Foods (TSN.N) packing plant in nearby Perry, Iowa. Tariffs from Mexico could depress U.S. wholesale prices and wipe out his profits, Schmidt said. “It would be devastating.” In December, after fears of a trade dispute fueled a deep peso MXN= slump, Mexico started mapping out U.S. states that are most reliant on its market, replicating the strategy it used in the trucking dispute, said two senior Mexican officials. Mexican officials also prepared briefs, seen by Reuters, on Mexico’s own risks in a dispute, including losing much of its cost advantage in building cars, such as the Ford Fusion (F.N) made in Hermosillo, Mexico. Reuters could not verify a complete list of products and states Mexico considered targeting this time around. But the country’s foreign minister said last month tariffs could target Iowa, which raises a third of U.S. hogs and exports about a quarter of its pork production, $100 million of which went to Mexico last year. The minister also said tariffs could aim at Wisconsin, the center of U.S. cheese production, and has singled out Texas for its “notable” trade surplus with Mexico. All three states voted for Trump in the 2016 election, with the president taking Iowa and Wisconsin by slim margins. Trump has accused Mexico of destroying U.S. jobs and has vowed to leave the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico if he cannot renegotiate better terms with Mexico. United States went from running a small trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63 billion deficit in 2016. Besides pork, cheese was also a top target in the trucking dispute in which Mexico retaliated with tariffs against rules that banned its trucks from U.S. roads. Some $200 million in current annual exports of cheese would be targeted if the tariff list were revived, according to the IHS database, which the U.S. government uses to measure the impact of trade disputes. The full tariff list would apply to $3.25 billion in current U.S. exports. John Holevoet, the director of government affairs at Wisconsin’s Dairy Business Association, said he has attended multiple meetings with Wisconsin federal lawmakers this year where risks of Mexican trade were discussed. Weber of the pork producers group said he believed the Trump administration “gets it” when it comes to the vulnerability of U.S. farm exports. Republican Congressman Steve King, who represents Iowa’s agriculture-focused fourth district, also pointed out that Iowa’s role as the first state to hold presidential primaries helps keep farm interests in Washington’s view. But King told Reuters he was worried the White House is still not taking trade risks seriously enough. A possible 20 percent tax on Mexican imports, which White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said could also pay for Trump’s proposed border wall, would cause a trade war, he said. King said he has been in contact with the White House on the matter but has yet to secure a one-on-one meeting with the president. “I’m making sure that here in Washington they know what this means.”

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(Reuters) - British police said they have released two men arrested as part of the investigation into last week s Tube attack in Parsons Green, London, which injured 30 people. A 21-year-old man arrested in Hounslow on Sept. 16 and a 48-year-old man arrested in Newport on Sept. 20 were released by the police with no further action, the police said in a statement on late Thursday. bit.ly/2hnqiem We have four males in custody and searches are continuing at four addresses. Detectives are carrying out extensive inquiries to determine the full facts behind the attack, the police said. A home-made bomb went off on Sept. 15 during the morning rush hour on a packed underground Tube train at Parsons Green station, sending flames through the carriage, although it appeared that the device did not fully explode. It was the fifth major militant incident in Britain this year. The Islamic State militant group, which had said it was behind several attacks on Western cities in recent years, including two attacks in London and one in Manchester this year, claimed responsibility for the latest attack.

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(Reuters) - The White House has assured the Renewable Fuels Association that any executive orders changing the U.S. Renewable Fuels Program would include measures to support use of ethanol and biodiesel, according to a source familiar with the discussions between the White House and the trade group. The source, who requested anonymity, said the group was told the executive order could include a long-awaited waiver that would allow E15 gasoline to be sold more easily during summertime months, a review of how the Environmental Protection Agency estimates emissions impacts of biofuels, and support for a congressional tax credit for domestic producers of biodiesel. A White House official did not respond to a request for comment.

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CLEVELAND (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s wife was escorted off the floor of the Republican convention on Wednesday night as delegates booed her husband’s refusal to endorse Donald Trump in his speech to delegates. Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia and a supporter of Cruz, who finished a distant second to Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, told Reuters he escorted Heidi Cruz off the convention floor for her own safety.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Secret Service said on Saturday night an incident at a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Reno, Nevada, began when someone shouted “gun” but no weapon was found. “Immediately in front of the stage, an unidentified individual shouted ‘gun.’ Secret Service agents and Reno Police Officers immediately apprehended the subject. Upon a thorough search of the subject and the surrounding area, no weapon was found,” the Secret Service said in a statement. “A thorough investigation is ongoing at this time by the U.S. Secret Service and the Reno Police Department,” it said.

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Washington (Reuters) - Republican senators trying to repeal Obamacare are forming consensus to keep some of the U.S. healthcare law’s taxes they long criticized, in hopes of delaying more drastic funding cuts, particularly to the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled. First proposed by moderate Republicans, the idea is gaining traction among party members, according to five sources involved in or briefed on internal discussions. While no final decisions have been made, a sense of urgency has increased as Republicans draft a replacement bill to former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law before Congress goes on recess on June 30. But keeping some of the taxes in the Senate bill risks alienating conservatives. On Tuesday, 45 conservative groups and activists sent a letter to Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, urging the Senate to repeal all Obamacare taxes. One cornerstone tax that could remain is the net investment income tax, which imposes a 3.8 percent surtax on capital gains, dividends and interest, the sources said. The taxes most likely to be abolished directly impact consumers and the health industry, including a tax on health insurance premiums, the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost employer-provided insurance and the medical device tax. Another proposal being floated is to keep all the taxes from the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, but to scale them back. A group of 13 Republican senators led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not completed a full draft of the bill, but is sending pieces to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to assess the impact of various provisions. The CBO’s assessment will help determine which taxes the Senate needs in order to pay for its replacement bill. It is not clear whether McConnell, or more conservative party members such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, are receptive to keeping some of the taxes. “I think most of the taxes are going to go away,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate’s No. 3-ranking Republican, said on Tuesday. “Our members are still having a conversation about if we want to make changes that are in the end going to require some additional revenue.” Spokesmen for McConnell and Cruz declined to comment. A spokesman for Lee said he wants Republicans to abolish every tax that was included in a 2015 Obamacare repeal bill that Obama vetoed. Since Obamacare became law in 2010, Republicans have campaigned on repealing the program that extended insurance coverage to 20 million additional Americans through both subsidized private insurance and an expansion of Medicaid. They have argued that the law is too costly and represents undue government interference in Americans’ healthcare. President Donald Trump promised to eliminate the law on his first day in office, but Republicans, who control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, have struggled to coalesce around a single plan. Under Senate rules, their bill must replicate the $133 billion in savings projected by preliminary legislation that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last month. That bill would end Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid in 2020, slash its federal funding by more than $800 billion over 10 years and eliminate most of the law’s taxes. Moderate Republican senators from states that expanded Medicaid, including Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Dean Heller of Nevada, have proposed phasing out the expansion over a seven-year period, from 2020 to 2027, to give state governors more time to cut program costs. That timeframe also prevents senators, who serve six-year terms, from having to run for re-election when Medicaid cuts have been implemented, two former Republican Senate aides said. Some of Obamacare’s taxes could also be repealed later when Congress tackles new legislation overhauling the U.S. tax code, two current Senate aides said. “There’s no question that the current debate is not centered on eliminating all the taxes in Obamacare right now,” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said last week. Under a process called reconciliation, the bill needs at least 50 votes to pass, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote if needed. In an interview with Reuters last month, McConnell said he did not yet know how he would get enough votes for an Obamacare repeal. “Think of me with a Rubik’s cube, sitting there trying to think about what combination will get you to 50,” McConnell said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call. When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said. MORE TOP STORIES Japan's love of tiny cars a sore spot for Trump Trump changes tack, backs 'one China' policy Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said. The White House declined to comment on the details of the call. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump knew what the New START treaty is but had turned to his aides for an opinion during the call with Putin. He said the notes from the call would not have conveyed that. “I would say they had a very productive call,” Spicer told reporters. He added, “It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was being said. He wanted an opinion on something.” It has not been previously reported that Trump had conveyed his doubt about New START to Putin in the hour-long call. New START gives both countries until February 2018 to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades. It also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers. During a debate in the 2016 presidential election, Trump said Russia had “outsmarted” the United States with the treaty, which he called “START-Up.” He asserted incorrectly then that it had allowed Russia to continue to produce nuclear warheads while the United States could not. DON’T MISS UAW confirms workers at Tesla have approached the union Trump's Mexican wall just got $9.6 billion more expensive Two Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senators Jeanne Shaheen and Edward J. Markey, criticized Trump for deriding what they called a key nuclear arms control accord. “It’s impossible to overstate the negligence of the president of the United States not knowing basic facts about nuclear policy and arms control,” Shaheen said in a statement. “New START has unquestionably made our country safer, an opinion widely shared by national security experts on both sides of the aisle.” Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said: “Unfortunately, Mr. Trump appears to be clueless about the value of this key nuclear risk reduction treaty and the unique dangers of nuclear weapons.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he supported the treaty during his Senate confirmation hearings. During the hearings Tillerson said it was important for the United States to “stay engaged with Russia, hold them accountable to commitments made under the New START and also ensure our accountability as well.” Two of the people who described the conversation were briefed by current administration officials who read detailed notes taken during the call. One of the two was shown portions of the notes. A third source was also briefed on the call. Reuters has not reviewed the notes taken of the call, which are classified. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The phone call with Putin has added to concerns that Trump is not adequately prepared for discussions with foreign leaders. Typically, before a telephone call with a foreign leader, a president receives a written in-depth briefing paper drafted by National Security Council staff after consultations with the relevant agencies, including the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies, two former senior officials said. Just before the call, the president also usually receives an oral “pre-briefing” from his national security adviser and top subject-matter aide, they said. Trump did not receive a briefing from Russia experts with the NSC and intelligence agencies before the Putin call, two of the sources said. Reuters was unable to determine if Trump received a briefing from his national security adviser Michael Flynn. In the phone call, the Russian leader raised the possibility of reviving talks on a range of disputes and suggested extending New START, the sources said. New START can be extended for another five years, beyond 2021, by mutual agreement. Unless they agree to do that or negotiate new cuts, the world’s two biggest nuclear powers would be freed from the treaty’s limits, potentially setting the stage for a new arms race. New START was ratified by the U.S. Senate in December 2010 by a vote of 71 to 26. Thirteen Republican senators joined all of the Senate’s Democrats in voting for the treaty, although Republican opponents derided it as naive. The call with Putin was one of several with foreign leaders where Trump has turned to denounce deals negotiated by previous administrations on trade, acceptance of refugees and arms control. In a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump questioned an agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept 1,250 refugees now being held by Australia in offshore detention centers.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian government is open to negotiations with Kurds over their demand for autonomy within Syria s borders, the foreign minister has said, striking a conciliatory tone as military tensions worsen between the sides in eastern Syria. Walid al-Moualem said the government could discuss the Kurdish demand once Islamic State is defeated, state news agency SANA reported, citing an interview with Russia Today. This topic is open to negotiation and discussion and when we are done eliminating Daesh (Islamic State), we can sit with our Kurdish sons and reach an understanding on a formula for the future, Moualem said. The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia controls a swathe of northern Syria where the main Kurdish party, the PYD, and its allies have established autonomy since the start of the Syrian war in 2011. Syrian Kurds say their aim is to preserve that autonomy as part of a decentralized Syria, and they do not aim to follow the path of Kurds in Iraq who held an independence referendum on Monday. Moualem reiterated his government s rejection of that referendum, saying Damascus supported Iraqi unity, but he noted that Syria s Kurds want a form of autonomy within the borders of the Syrian Arab Republic . Kurdish-led authorities in northern Syria held elections last week to choose local community leaders, the first stage of a three-phase process that will culminate in January with the election of a parliament. The YPG has been a major partner for the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in eastern and northern Syria, fighting as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance (SDF). While the YPG and Damascus have mostly avoided confrontation, tensions have flared as the U.S.-backed SDF and the Russian-backed Syrian army wage separate campaigns against Islamic State in Deir al-Zor province. The SDF accused the Syrian government and its Russian ally of striking its fighters on Monday, something Moscow denied. Earlier this year, Moualem characterized the Syrian Kurdish battle against Islamic State as legitimate and suggested an accommodation could be reached with the Syrian Kurds. President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to take back the whole of Syria.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As a teenager in the early 1970s retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward played football and basketball, was popular with classmates and, like many American high school students, was known for partying. But Harward, to whom President Donald Trump has offered the post of U.S. national security adviser, to succeed Michael Flynn, spent his teenage years not in his native Rhode Island, but in pre-revolutionary Iran, where his father, a Navy captain, advised the Iranian military. During his teenage years, Harward lived in an Iranian neighborhood, attended school with Iranian-American students and played sports against Iranian teams. Those experiences gave him an unusual familiarity with Iran’s culture and people in the years before the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the pro-American Shah. “During very formative years of his life, he was exposed to everything that was Iran,” said Joseph Condrill, who knew Harward, known by his classmates as Bobby, when they were students at the Tehran American School. “Iran was one of our homes, and we got to know the Iranian people very well, in a very intimate way.” The Trump administration has offered Harward the job of national security adviser, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if Harward had accepted, the sources said. A White House spokesperson had no immediate comment. Harward would carry his experience into the Trump White House, charged with coordinating national security policy and responding to threats including Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for militant groups in the Middle East. While Flynn put Iran “on notice,” and Trump has tweeted that Iran is “playing with fire,” Harward’s experience with Iran is more personal. The revolution that brought Iran’s theocratic government to power forced the closure of the Tehran American School and cut short the tours of American families living in Iran. Rather than being isolated on a military base, Harward and other Americans at that time lived among Iranians, rode local buses, and were exposed to Iran’s attractions through field trips, his classmates said. “It was not a completely isolated culture for us,” said John Martin, 61, of Reston, Virginia, who was in Harward’s high school class and attended the U.S. Naval Academy with him. Harward even picked up fluent Persian while he was in Iran, Martin said. “For those of us that had once lived in Iran, there’s an after-effect, the effect of the Islamic Revolution,” Condrill said. “There is definitely a sense of suspicion, if you will ... based upon that experience of the Iran that we once knew.” It is not clear, however, how Harward’s memories might influence U.S. policy, because the national security adviser’s job is to coordinate, not make, policy. In addition, administration officials said, Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller have closer ties to the president than Harward would have and would present a rival power center. In 2012, as deputy head of the U.S. Central Command, he told a conference that “Iran’s well-established past pattern of deceit and reckless behavior have progressively increased the potential for miscalculation that could spark a regional, if not a global conflict.” At the same event, he recalled with some wistfulness his own experience living in the region. “I think back to the days when I graduated from the Tehran American School in 1974, where as a Westerner I could freely travel through Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other countries in the region and be greeted, and welcomed, because of the policies and strategy the West employed in the region,” he said. “Yet I look today, we are in a much different world.” Harward did not respond to a request for comment and officials at Lockheed Martin, where he is a top executive, declined to comment. After graduating from high school in 1974, Harward returned to the United States, joined the Navy, became an elite SEAL and rose through the ranks, eventually serving as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East. He served there under General Jim Mattis, now the U.S. defense secretary. Earlier in his career, Harward worked on counterterrorism as a military officer on the National Security Council, an assignment seen as a marker of a rising star. Several former U.S. officials who worked with Harward described him as experienced and smart, but not known for his personal experience with Iran. He is well-liked and respected and seen as unpretentious despite his distinguished military service, according to people who have worked with him. “He was a very good and effective bureaucratic player,” said Derek Chollet, an assistant secretary of defense under the Obama administration. “He understands the role the military plays within the broader tool set of American policy.” When Harward was a commanding officer in Afghanistan, he was known for making his rounds without full body armor to send a message that Afghanistan was safe, said a U.S. official who worked under Harward there. “He had no ego,” the official said, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak.

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KIEV (Reuters) - Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said on Monday that he hoped and believed a regional election in Catalonia would result in the territory remaining part of Spain. We hope, with the help of these elections, to restore legal governance and rule of law in Catalonia, Dastis said, speaking through an interpreter during a briefing in Kiev. We hope and believe that after these elections, Catalonia will again be the same society it was before: open and integrated. he said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on Wednesday that Russians had hacked into Republican National Committee computers, but the RNC denied it and McCaul later told CNN he misspoke. “The Russians ... basically have hacked into both parties at the national level. And that gives us all concern about what their motivations are,” McCaul told CNN in an interview. The Republican National Committee’s communications director, Sean Spicer, quickly pushed back on McCaul’s comments, saying on Twitter that “there has been no known” breach of Republican networks. Shortly thereafter, CNN.com posted a statement from McCaul clarifying his remarks. “I misspoke by asserting that the RNC was hacked. What I had intended to say was that in addition to the DNC hack, Republican political operatives have also been hacked,” said McCaul, a U.S representative from Texas. Reuters reported last month that hackers had targeted the computer systems of Republican Party organizations and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The head of the Democratic National Committee, Donna Brazile, said on Tuesday the organization had been hacked by Russian state-sponsored agents who were trying to influence the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chair on the eve of July’s Democratic National Convention after WikiLeaks published a trove of hacked DNC emails that showed party officials favoring eventual nominee Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders during the party’s nominating contests.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Friday it had no fresh comment on Catalonia after the region s parliament declared independence from Spain. We have nothing to add to what we said at (the regular) midday (briefing for journalists, Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said. At the briefing, she referred reporters to earlier comments by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who has repeatedly said that the debate on Catalonia s independence was an internal Spanish issue.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three Republican senators, hoping to speed the hiring of law enforcement agents on U.S. borders, on Friday introduced legislation waiving lie detector tests for job applicants who already serve in law enforcement or have done military service. The “Boots on the Border Act” was backed by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, Senator John McCain, a member of that panel, and Senator Jeff Flake, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration policy. Flake, in a statement, noted that long screening procedures have resulted in 1,768 Border Patrol positions and 1,046 Customs and Border Protection jobs remaining unfilled. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security has plans to add more than 5,000 border enforcement agents to the current force. The legislation, which would have to go through several steps in the Senate and House of Representatives before it could become law, comes as the Trump administration is stepping up deportations of illegal immigrants. It also is moving to restrict travel in the United States for people from six predominately Muslim countries, a move that faces legal challenges. Under the Senate bill, CBP could waive current polygraph requirements for applicants who have been working in federal, state and local law enforcement for the past three years, have clean employment records and have successfully completed polygraph and other background investigations. The bill also would cover U.S. armed forces personnel and veterans. “This legislation would address CBP’s chronic staffing shortage by streamlining background tests for qualified veterans, military service members, and law enforcement officers in good standing,” McCain said in a statement.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday the United States should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless it were proven that Tehran was not abiding by the agreement or that it was not in the U.S. national interest to do so. Although Mattis said he supported President Donald Trump s review of the agreement curbing Iran s nuclear program, the defense secretary s view was far more positive than that of Trump, who has called the deal agreed between Iran and six world powers in 2015 an embarrassment. Trump is weighing whether the pact serves U.S. security interests as he faces an Oct. 15 deadline for certifying that Iran is complying, a decision that could sink an agreement strongly supported by the other world powers that negotiated it. If we can confirm that Iran is living by the agreement, if we can determine that this is in our best interest, then clearly we should stay with it, Mattis told a Senate hearing. I believe ..., absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with, Mattis added. Earlier, when Mattis was asked whether he thought staying in the deal was in the U.S. national security interest, he replied: Yes, senator, I do. The White House had no immediate comment on Mattis remarks, which once again highlighted the range of views on major policy issues within the Trump administration. If Trump does not recertify by Oct. 15 that Iran is in compliance, congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the accord. That would let Congress, controlled by Trump s fellow Republicans, effectively decide whether to kill the deal. Although congressional leaders have declined to say whether they would seek to reimpose sanctions, Republican lawmakers were united in their opposition to the agreement reached by Democratic former President Barack Obama. Senator Tom Cotton, a long-time skeptic about the Iran deal, backed decertification in order to threaten Iran with more sanctions or military action. One thing I learned in the Army is that when you have your opponent on his knees, you drive him to the ground and choke him out, Cotton said in a speech on Tuesday to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. In a House of Representatives hearing on Tuesday, Mattis said Iran was fundamentally in compliance with the nuclear deal. There have been certainly some areas where they were not temporarily in that regard, but overall our intelligence community believes that they have been compliant and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) also says so, Mattis said. Last month, Iran s President Hassan Rouhani said the accord cannot be renegotiated. Trump has said he has made a decision on what to do about the agreement but has not said what he has decided. The prospect of Washington reneging on the agreement has worried some U.S. partners that helped negotiate it, especially as the world grapples with North Korea s nuclear and ballistic missile development. Backers of the pact say its collapse could trigger a regional arms race, worsen Middle East tensions and discourage countries like North Korea from trusting Washington to keep its word. The deal was signed by Britain, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Iran, Russia and the United States. White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster has defended Trump s criticism of the nuclear agreement, saying it had the fatal flaw of a sunset clause, under which some restrictions on Iran s nuclear program expire from 2025. European ambassadors speaking in Washington last week said they would do everything possible to protect companies based in Europe and that continue to do business with Iran from reimposed U.S. sanctions. French Ambassador Gerard Araud noted that the other countries that signed the pact had made clear they do not support renegotiating it. J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, said Trump did not have legitimate grounds to decertify the deal. If he chooses to do so anyway, he will be acting purely based on divisive politics and dangerous ideology, and endangering the security of the U.S. and our allies, Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs for the group, said in a statement.

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CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s opposition received a European Union prize for human rights on Wednesday and urged the world to keep a close eye on an upcoming presidential election where it aspires to end two decades of socialist rule in the OPEC nation. Foes of President Nicolas Maduro failed to dislodge him during months of street protests this year that turned violent killing more than 125 people, and have been dismayed to see him consolidate his power in recent months. But they hope a presidential vote due in 2018 will galvanize exhausted and despondent supporters, and want foreign pressure for reforms to an election system they say is at the service of Maduro s dictatorship . In the next few months, there should be a presidential election and we ask Europe and the free world to pay full attention, Julio Borges, head of the opposition-led National Assembly, said, receiving the Sakharov Prize. The regime has kidnapped democracy, and installed hunger and misery, he added during the ceremony at the EU parliament in Strasbourg. The prize, named after Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was awarded this year to Venezuela s National Assembly and all political prisoners , according to the citation. Venezuela s opposition won National Assembly elections in 2015, but the legislature has been sidelined by verdicts from the pro-government Supreme Court and the controversial election this year of a pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly superbody. Another opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, who recently escaped house arrest in Venezuela and fled to Spain, said the EU prize ceremony was a painful moment because of the scores of opposition activists still jailed. I cannot be happy receiving this prize knowing that in the dungeons of Venezuela there remain, unjustly deprived of liberty, more than 300 political prisoners, he said. Maduro, the 55-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez who has ruled Venezuela since 2013, denies the existence of political prisoners, saying all activists in detention are there for legitimate charges such as coup-plotting and violence. Favorite to be the Socialist Party s candidate for the presidential vote, Maduro says he has faced down a U.S.-backed coup attempt by opponents this year. He frequently mocks both Borges and Ledezma in public speeches. The opposition has a dilemma in choosing its candidate for the 2018 race, given that its most popular figures cannot run: Leopoldo Lopez is under house arrest, while Henrique Capriles is prohibited from holding office. The European Union last month imposed an arms embargo on Venezuela, adding it to a list that includes North Korea and Syria.

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COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark passed a law on Thursday that could allow it to ban Russia s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from going through its waters on grounds of security or foreign policy. The measure amends Denmark s regulatory framework to allow the authorities to cite security or foreign policy as reasons to block a pipeline. Previously these were not valid grounds for objection. Denmark has been caught in a geopolitical conflict as Russia s Gazprom and its European partners have sought to build Nord Stream 2, a giant pipeline to pump natural gas to Germany through the Baltic Sea, bypassing existing land routes over Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. The proposed route goes through Danish waters, but the pipeline consortium is investigating an alternative route north of the Danish island Bornholm which would run in international waters and therefore not be impacted by a potential Danish ban. Nord Stream 2 has already applied for permission in Denmark and its application is being assessed at the Danish Energy Agency. The change to the law will take effect from Jan. 1 but apply to applications that have already been submitted. In June, Danish energy and climate minister Lars Christian Lilleholt said he expected the agency to have completed its assessment during early 2018.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Elon Musk, the chairman and chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla as well as Uber Technologies CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick and PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi have joined U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s advisory council, Trump’s transition team said on Wednesday. The group, which includes numerous other top business leaders, aims to give industry input on the private sector to Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said on Friday the United States was approaching the limit of what sanctions and diplomacy can accomplish in terms of reigning in North Korea s weapons program. For those ... who have been commenting on a lack of a military option, there is a military option, McMaster told reporters at the White House, adding that it would not be the Trump administration s preferred choice.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries temporarily barred from the United States by President Donald Trump’s executive order may be blocked indefinitely, and others might be added to the list, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Tuesday. Under the order released on Friday, travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen may not enter the country for at least 90 days while Kelly and others determine whether there is enough information available to screen them. “Some of those countries that are currently on the list may not be taken off the list anytime soon, if they are countries that are in various states of collapse, as an example,” Kelly told a press conference. Kelly said others may be added if it is determined they “could tighten up their procedures” to ensure more secure vetting. Several lawsuits have been filed blocking portions of the order, which drew harsh criticism from some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, Democrats, human rights organizations and some Western U.S. allies. Vice President Mike Pence was closely questioned about the order by Republican senators during their weekly caucus lunch. “Obviously what happened Friday, they have to understand, was not well done,” Republican Senator Bob Corker told reporters. “... There are a lot of issues here that I don’t think were well thought through.” Confusion mounted during the weekend as U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, rushed to brief airlines and customs agents about how to implement Trump’s order. The executive action was not explicit about how to handle a wide range of people trying to enter the United States, including permanent residents, students and even Iraqi pilots training to protect U.S. troops. Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters he had briefed appropriate parties “within two hours” of the order. Kelly said he knew the order was coming and “had people involved in the general drafting of it.” But a Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Customs and Border Protection officers had no advance notice of the order or how to respond. Some issues were addressed on Tuesday. Kelly said people from the seven targeted nations who hold dual citizenship would be allowed to enter the United States on the passport of a non-restricted nation, which had been uncertain. The executive order also stopped the resettlement of refugees for 120 days. But the administration granted waivers to 872 “in transit” who will be arriving this week. Kelly came to the U.S. Capitol later on Tuesday to brief congressional leaders and the heads of national security committees about the order. He was peppered with questions from both Republicans and Democrats concerned about the lack of planning. Senator Claire McCaskill, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said Kelly made clear the White House is happy with the order, and that the administration had not wanted to wait to address details about its implementation. “It was pretty clear that the president wanted this executive order put in place, and he wanted it implemented immediately. And it’s not going anywhere,” she told reporters. Since the order, 721 travelers with visas from the seven countries were denied boarding U.S.-bound flights, according to McAleenan. The department has also processed 1,060 waivers for legal permanent residents, such as green card holders. Kelly said immigration and customs officials were in compliance with court orders and no agent knowingly or intentionally violated them. The Trump administration also sought to clarify on Tuesday that citizens of U.S. ally Israel who were born in Arab countries would be allowed into the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv said a valid U.S. visa in an Israeli passport would still be valid even if the passport holder was born in one of the seven countries.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia opposes a draft U.N. resolution to extend the mandate of an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday. Ryabkov s comments came hours after Russia rejected a report by the international inquiry blaming the Syrian government for a deadly toxic gas attack, casting doubt on the U.N. Security Council s ability to extend the investigation s mandate before it expires next week. Russia last month cast a veto at the United Nations Security Council against renewing the investigation s mandate. I stress that we are in no way raising the question of ending this structure s activities, RIA state news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying. We are in favor of its maintenance, but on a different basis. The draft U.N. resolution by the United States says Syria must not develop or produce chemical weapons, and it calls on all parties in Syria to provide full cooperation with the international probe. The investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) was unanimously created by the 15-member Security Council in 2015 and renewed in 2016 for another year. Its mandate is due to expire in mid-November. The investigation found that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government was to blame for a chemical attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people in April, according to a report sent to the Security Council on Oct. 26. Russia, whose air force and special forces have bolstered the Syrian army, has said there is no evidence to show Damascus was responsible for the attack. Moscow maintains that the chemicals that killed civilians belonged to rebels, not Assad s government.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - An air strike carried out by an unidentified warplane killed seven Hezbollah fighters in eastern Syria, three sources familiar with the incident told Reuters on Monday. The identity of the warplane was not confirmed, but the sources did not rule out the possibility that it was Russian friendly fire . The sources did not say when the air strike happened. The air strike struck a Hezbollah position in eastern Homs province, where the Iran-backed Lebanese group is fighting Islamic State alongside the Syrian and Russian militaries. Asked about a report that a U.S. drone carried out the strike, the spokesman of the U.S.-led Coalition said the location was outside its area of operations. The coalition is also conducting air strikes in Syria against Islamic State in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias.

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan region on Monday to resolve their conflict over Kurdish self-determination and disputed territories through dialogue. Tillerson laid out his position at the start of a meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who in turn defended the role of an Iraqi paramilitary force backed by Iran against criticism the secretary of state made on Sunday. “We are concerned and a bit sad,” Tillerson said in his opening remarks. “We have friends in Baghdad and friends in Erbil and we encourage all parties to enter into discussion ... and all differences can be addressed,” he said, referring to the Iraqi and Kurdistan region capitals. The U.S. administration sided with Abadi in rejecting the validity of the referendum held last month in the Kurdish region, which produced an overwhelming yes for Kurdish independence. The administration also called on the two sides to avoid further escalation, after Abadi retaliated against the vote by isolating the Kurdistan region and ordering his troops to seize the oil city of Kirkuk from Kurdish fighters. “We don’t want to enter into any battle against any Iraqi component,” Abadi said. “When we entered Kirkuk we sent a clear message that the citizens of Kirkuk are important to us.” It was Tillerson’s second meeting with Abadi in as many days. After Sunday’s meeting, alongside Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, Tillerson said it was time for Iranian-backed militias that had helped Baghdad defeat Islamic State to “go home”. Abadi told Tillerson the paramilitary force called Popular Mobilisation “is part of the Iraqi institutions,” rejecting accusations that it is acting as Iran’s proxies. “Popular Mobilisation fighters should be encouraged because they will be the hope of country and the region,” he said. A few hours earlier, Abadi’s office published a statement rejecting Tillerson’s comments. “No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters,” it said [nL8N1MY1UJ]. Washington, which also backed Baghdad against Islamic State, is concerned Iran will use its increased presence in Iraq, and in Syria where it supports President Bashar al-Assad, to expand its influence in the region. Shi’ite Muslim Iran’s influence in Iraq, where the population is also predominantly Shi’ite, has grown since the U.S. invasion of 2003 that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. Iraq’s Sunni Muslim neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, share Washington’s concern about rising Iranian influence. Tehran has trained and armed the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation forces that have fought, often alongside Iraqi government units, against Islamic State, which was effectively defeated in July when a U.S.-backed offensive captured its stronghold, Mosul. The United States has over 5,000 troops deployed in Iraq and provided critical air and ground support in the offensive on Islamic State. It is also the main backer of the Kurdish-led Syrian coalition that captured the IS stronghold of Raqqa earlier this month. Of the closest groups to Iran within Popular Mobilisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, reacted to Tillerson’s comment by saying it would be the Americans who will be forced to leave Iraq. “Your forces should get ready to get out of our country once the excuse of Daesh’s presence is over,” said Asaib’s leader, Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, according to the group’s TV channel, al-Aahd.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed legislation on Thursday that would impose new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile development, support for Islamist militant groups, weapons transfers and human rights violations. The vote was 18-3 in favor of the legislation, paving the way for its consideration by the full Senate. Lawmakers who backed the bill said they do not believe that its passage, which would require support by the House of Representatives and President Donald Trump to become law, would violate terms of the international nuclear agreement with Iran reached in 2015. Both Republicans and Democrats have been clamoring for a response to Iran’s ballistic missiles development and other activities. But the foreign relations committee waited to take up the bill until after Iran’s election on Friday, when President Hassan Rouhani was re-elected with 57 percent of the vote. Rouhani broke the taboo of holding direct talks with the United States and reached the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions. Trump has criticized the nuclear deal, which was opposed by every Republican in Congress and several Democrats. But he has so far not moved to pull the United States out. Instead, his administration has said it would closely police Iran’s compliance with the bill and review it, with an eye toward possibly modifying it to make it stronger.

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(Reuters) - Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said on Thursday she was open to working in the incoming Trump administration, saying she wanted to do whatever she could to help roll back regulations that are hurting U.S. businesses. “My interest is in helping the Trump administration,” Rutledge told reporters as she arrived for meetings at Trump Tower in New York. “Whether that’s continuing on as the attorney general of Arkansas or (working) in the administration, then my ears are open.” She declined to say who she was scheduled to meet with.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Wednesday traces of radioactive xenon gas were confirmed to be from a North Korean nuclear test earlier this month, but it was unable to conclude whether the test had been a hydrogen bomb as Pyongyang claimed. North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3, prompting the U.N. Security Council to step up sanctions with a ban on the reclusive regime s textile exports and a cap on fuel supplies. The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) said its land-based xenon detector in the northeastern part of the country found traces of xenon-133 isotope on nine occasions, while its mobile equipment off the country s east coast detected traces of the isotope four times. It was difficult to find out how powerful the nuclear test was with the amount of xenon detected, but we can say the xenon was from North Korea, Choi Jongbae, executive commissioner, told a news conference in Seoul. The commission could not confirm what kind of nuclear test the North conducted, he added. Xenon is a naturally occurring, colorless gas that is used in manufacturing of some sorts of lights. But the detected xenon-133 is a radioactive isotope that does not occur naturally and which has been linked to North Korea s nuclear tests in the past. The NSSC also said the xenon traces detected had no impact on South Korea s environment and population. (Story refiles to correct typo in last paragraph.)

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(Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is careening toward major deadlines on a Republican tax bill, the budget and other policies. Here is the outlook for what promises to be a sprint to the end of 2017. TUESDAY, NOV 28: The Senate Budget Committee voted on Tuesday to send Republican tax-cut legislation to the Senate floor for a vote, possibly as soon as Thursday, with 51 votes needed for passage. THURSDAY, NOV. 30, or FRIDAY, DEC. 1: Possible final Senate vote on tax bill, although delay was possible. Ahead of a floor vote, several Republican senators were making demands for possible changes to the legislation. If the Senate approves the bill, a conference would begin to reconcile differences between the Senate and House of Representatives tax measures. A compromise bill would need to be approved before going to President Donald Trump for enactment. FRIDAY, DEC. 8: Expiration date for funding needed to keep the U.S. government open. Congress has three choices: approve a massive bill for more than $1 trillion to keep the government operating through Sept. 30, 2018; pass a shorter extension of current funding to buy more time; or fail to pass anything and risk a partial government shutdown, stalling the tax effort. U.S. Treasury hits its limit on borrowing, but takes steps to postpone any need for action by Congress, eliminating any need for a debt limit increase in an end-of-year catch-all bill. TUESDAY, DEC. 12: Special U.S. Senate election in Alabama pits Republican Roy Moore, a conservative firebrand accused of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls, against Democrat Doug Jones. The election could mean trouble for the tax overhaul effort. Moore, a critic of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, could cause turmoil if elected. A win by Jones would shrink even more Republicans’ narrow margin of Senate control. THURSDAY, DEC. 14: House’s last scheduled session of 2017. FRIDAY, DEC. 15: Senate’s last scheduled session of 2017. FRIDAY, DEC. 22: The last weekday before Christmas and a potential deadline for sending tax legislation to Trump. DISASTER AID: On Nov. 17, the White House asked Congress to approve $44 billion in more aid for disaster-hit Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Texas, Florida and other states. If approved, as expected, aid would total nearly $96 billion. Additional requests are expected. DREAMERS: Trump has threatened to end an Obama-era program that helped “Dreamers,” people brought illegally into the United States when they were children. Trump gave Congress until early March to come up with a replacement program, but Democrats and some Republicans want to do this in December. CHIP: The Children’s Health Insurance Program, which helps millions of lower-income pregnant women and children, is running out of money. Congress has struggled to approve a five-year renewal for the program that normally enjoys bipartisan support.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is considering refitting the Izumo helicopter carrier so that it can land U.S. Marines F-35B stealth fighters, government sources said on Tuesday, as Tokyo faces China s maritime expansion and North Korea s missile and nuclear development. Japan has not had fully fledged aircraft carriers since its World War Two defeat in 1945. Any refit of the Izumo would be aimed at preparing for a scenario in which runways in Japan had been destroyed by missile attacks, and at bolstering defense around Japan s southwestern islands, where China s maritime activity has increased. Three government sources close to the matter said the Japanese government was keeping in sight the possible future procurement of F-35B fighter jets, which can take off and land vertically, as it looks into the remodeling of the Izumo. The 248-metre (814-feet) Izumo, Japan s largest warship equipped with a flat flight deck, was designed with an eye to hosting F-35B fighters. Its elevator connecting the deck with the hangar can carry the aircraft, the sources said. Possible refitting measures included adding a curved ramp at the end of the flight deck, improving the deck s heat resistance against jet burners, and reinforcing the ship s air traffic control capability, they said. However, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said the government was not taking any concrete steps towards refitting the Izumo. Regarding our defense posture, we are constantly conducting various examinations. But no concrete examination is under way on the introduction of F-35B or remodeling of Izumo-class destroyers, Onodera told reporters on Tuesday. The Izumo has a sister ship called the Kaga. Japan has frequently conducted joint drills with U.S. aircraft carriers in recent months to boost deterrence against North Korea. One of the three government sources called such exercises a great opportunity to see with our own eyes how the U.S. military operates their aircraft carriers as Japan looks into the possible conversion of the Izumo into an aircraft carrier. Regional tension has soared since North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test in September. Pyongyang said a month later it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach all of the U.S. mainland. Japan is also wary of China s long-range missiles, and would like to secure measures to launch fighters from aircraft carriers in case runways operated by U.S. forces in Japan or by Japan s Air Self-Defence Force were destroyed by missiles. Article 9 of Japan s pacifist constitution, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. However, Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defense. Owning an aircraft carrier could raise a question of constitutionality, the sources said, so the government is set to address the issue in its new National Defence Programme Guidelines to be compiled by the end of 2018.

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YANGON (Reuters) - Turkey s state broadcaster said a team of journalists filming a documentary in Myanmar had told the government of their plans before they were detained for attempting to fly a drone near the country s parliament. The journalists, Lau Hon Meng from Singapore and Mok Choy Lin from Malaysia, have been held since Friday in the capital Naypyitaw, along with their Myanmar interpreter Aung Naing Soe and driver Hla Tin. Police have said they are investigating the four for bringing the drone into Myanmar in violation of an import-export rule that carries a penalty of up to three years in jail. The two foreign nationals had obtained official journalist visas before they entered Myanmar on Oct. 21, TRT World, the English-language subsidiary of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, said in a statement late on Tuesday. They shot in various locations with conventional cameras as well as with a drone, up until October 27, the broadcaster said. The Myanmar Information Ministry was previously informed about all filming activities and the filming schedule. The broadcaster did not say if the reporters had specifically sought permission to operate a drone near the parliament building. They had interviewed a lawmaker and were about to film the parliament with a drone when they were detained, it said. Myint Kyaw, an information ministry official in charge of journalist visas, told Reuters that TRT World had only made a broad request to the ministry to film in Yangon and the troubled western state of Rakhine. The letter they sent was not their schedule. They didn t even mention in their letter about visiting Naypyitaw, he said, adding that the letter did not mention a drone. Last week s arrests came amid tension between Turkey and Myanmar over treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine. In early September, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said security operations targeting the Rohingya constituted genocide , a charge Myanmar denies. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled majority-Buddhist Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh since security forces launched a counter-insurgency operation in response to Rohingya militants attacks on Aug. 25. The families of the two Myanmar nationals and a lawyer hired on their behalf have not been allowed to visit them, family members and police said. On Friday about 25 police raided the Yangon house of their interpreter Aung Naing Soe, a freelance reporter, seizing his computer memory sticks and searching documents. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for the immediate and unconditional release of all four. These arrests and the raid of Aung Naing Soe s home speak to the continuing deterioration of conditions for the press in Myanmar, Shawn Crispin, CPJ s senior Southeast Asia representative, said in a statement on Monday.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea is considering scrapping a regular military exercise with U.S. forces next year to minimize the risk of an aggressive North Korean reaction during the Winter Olympics in the South, the Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday. North Korea denounces regular military exercises between South Korean and U.S. forces as preparations to invade it, and it has at times conducted missile tests or taken other aggressive action in response. The Winter Olympics will be held in South Korea from Feb. 9 to Feb. 25, with the Paralympics on March 8-18. The South s Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified South Korean presidential office official, said the option of scrapping the exercise had been considered for a very long time . The Blue House presidential office said in a statement no decision has been made on the exercise. Officials at the defense ministry declined to comment. The South Korean and U.S. militaries usually hold a military exercise in March and April called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which involves about 17,000 U.S. troops and more than 300,000 South Koreans. South Korea is hopeful that North Korean participation in the games could help improve their fraught relations. The South has said any North Korean athletes who are eligible for the competition would be welcome. A North Korean figure skating pair has qualified to compete but their participation has not been confirmed. Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for the past year with North Korea developing its nuclear weapons and missiles in defiance of international condemnation and U.N. sanctions. While North Korea has not conducted any tests over the past two months, it has repeatedly vowed to never give up the weapons it deems it needs to protect itself against what it sees as U.S. aggression.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top two Republicans in the U.S. Congress said if leading Democrats want to reach an agreement with Republicans on a must-pass government funding bill, they need to attend a planned meet with President Donald Trump later on Tuesday. “We have important work to do, and Democratic leaders have continually found new excuses not to meet with the administration to discuss these issues,” House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a joint statement. The statement came after Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said they would not attend a planned meeting with Trump at the White House after the president said he did not think he could reach a deal with them.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The former head of Catalonia is on his way to Brussels to see lawyers, Belgian state broadcaster VRT said on Monday. Carles Puigdemont is almost certainly coming to Brussels and is said to be on the way, VRT said on its website. Puigdemont will meet lawyers and political representatives here.

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DOHA (Reuters) - Qatar has agreed to strengthen counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States to crack down on illicit financing of militant groups, a joint Qatari-U.S. statement said on Monday following a visit by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin s visit to Doha marked the end of a week-long trip aimed at curbing terrorist financing. There were earlier stops in Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, where the U.S. in May announced the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, a U.S.-Gulf initiative to stem finance to militant groups. Following talks with Qatari officials in Doha, Mnuchen said the two countries had agreed to substantially increasing the sharing of information on terrorist financiers, with greater emphasis on charitable and money service business sectors in Qatar, according to the statement. Qatar is keen to show it is cooperating on counter terrorism nearly five months after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt began a diplomatic and trade boycott of the gas-rich state, accusing it of financing extremist groups and allying with their arch-foe Iran, allegations Doha denies. Qatar in July signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States to increase cooperation on fighting terrorism finance and was one of six Gulf nations last week to announce sanctions on 13 individuals said to be al Qaeda and Islamic State militants. Qatar hosts Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East, from which U.S.-led coalition aircraft stage sorties against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pastor Marks Burns, a prominent supporter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, apologized on Tuesday for sending out a tweet that showed a cartoon image of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in blackface. Burns, an African-American who is frequently one of the warmup speakers at Trump rallies, sent out the tweet on Monday to bolster the Trump campaign’s contention that Clinton is pandering for the black vote but will ignore the community if elected on Nov. 8. “I ain’t no ways pandering to African Americans,” the cartoon image says. The tweet emerged at a time when Trump has been trying to broaden his appeal to African-American voters by saying he wants to create more jobs and make black neighborhoods safe so people can walk down the street without getting shot. After Burns began taking fire for the tweet, he deleted it and apologized for the image but not his message. “I’m so sorry for the offensive #Blackface image of @HillaryClinton but stand by the message that we Blacks ARE being Used by #Dems for VOTES,” Burns said.

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OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has made gender equality a priority, on Thursday said empowering women would be one of the main themes when Canada takes over the presidency of the Group of Seven next year. Trudeau, whose first act after taking power in 2015 was to appoint a cabinet with an equal number of women and men, told an event broadcast on Facebook that ending inequalities between the sexes was the right thing to do and would benefit the economy. Advancing gender equality and women s empowerment will be a part of every ministerial meeting, it will be part of the broader G7 agenda, and it will be considered every step of the way as we plan out all of our events, said Trudeau. The G7 groups some of the world s leading industrialized nations. Leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, will gather for a summit on June 8-9 in the Quebec region of Charlevoix. Trudeau said the other main themes for Canada s presidency were investing in growth that worked for everyone, preparing for jobs of the future, climate change and building a more peaceful and secure world.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday that Japan would seek the United States’ understanding of the strategic and economic benefits of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, after President Donald Trump formally withdrew from the free-trade pact. Aso told reporters after a cabinet meeting that arrangements were being made for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to visit the United States and meet Trump, but that it was undecided who would accompany the premier. Fulfilling a campaign pledge to end American involvement in the 2015 pact, Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office pulling the United States out of the 12-nation TPP, which includes Japan.

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BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - President Donald Trump can return to the United States claiming to have snagged over $250 billion in deals from his maiden trip to Beijing. Whether those deals live up to the lofty price tag is another question altogether. Watched by Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at a signing ceremony in Beijing, U.S. planemaker Boeing Co, General Electric Co and chip giant Qualcomm Inc sealed lucrative multi-billion dollar deals. “This is truly a miracle,” China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said at a briefing in Beijing. The quarter of a trillion dollar haul underscores how Trump is keen to be seen to address a trade deficit with the world’s second-largest economy that he has long railed against and called “shockingly high” on Thursday. But U.S. businesses still have many long-standing concerns to complain about, including unfettered access to the China market, cybersecurity and the growing presence of China’s ruling Communist Party inside foreign firms. William Zarit, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said the deals pointed to “a strong, vibrant bilateral economic relationship” between the two countries. “Yet we still need to focus on leveling the playing field, because U.S. companies continue to be disadvantaged doing business in China.” U.S. tech companies like Facebook Inc and Google are mostly blocked in China. Automakers Ford Motor Co and General Motors must operate through joint ventures, while Hollywood movies face a strict quota system. “(These deals) allow Trump to portray himself as a master dealmaker, while distracting from a lack of progress on structural reforms to the bilateral trade relationship,” Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said in a note. Some huge deals were announced. Among them is a 20-year $83.7 billion investment by China Energy Investment Corp in shale gas developments and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia, a major energy producing state that voted heavily for Trump in the 2016 election. [ “The massive size of this energy undertaking and level of collaboration between our two countries is unprecedented,” West Virginia Secretary of Commerce H. Wood Thrasher said in a statement. It marks the first major overseas investment for the newly founded China Energy, which formed from the merger of China Shenhua Group, the country’s largest coal producer and China Guodian Corp, one of China’s top five utilities. However, as is often the case during state visits, many of the deals were packaged as “non-binding” agreements, gave scant details or rolled over existing tie-ups, helping pump up the headline figure. “I am somewhat skeptical of such a large number,” Alex Wolf, senior emerging markets economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum, adding that the overall tone of the visit so far had been “positive”. “I suspect they might be primarily MOUs (memorandum of understandings) instead of actual contracts and the actual contract amount may be substantially less.” Qualcomm signed non-binding agreements worth $12 billion with Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo, three Chinese handset makers that the firm said it had “longstanding relationships” with. Qualcomm already earns more than half of its revenues in China. Boeing announced a deal with state-run China Aviation Suppliers Holding Co to sell 300 Boeing jets with a valuation of $37 billion at list prices, though analysts said it was unclear how many of these were new orders. “Interesting to see how many of those are past agreements/purchase orders repackaged. Beijing is a master of selling the same agreement 10 times,” former Mexican ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo posted on Twitter. Speaking alongside Trump in Beijing as they announced the deals, Xi said the Chinese economy would become increasingly open and transparent to foreign firms, including those from the United States, and welcomed U.S. companies to participate in his ambitious “Belt and Road” infrastructure-led initiative. Trump made clear he blamed his predecessors, not China, for allowing the U.s. trade deficit to get “out of kilter”, and repeatedly praised Xi, calling him “a very special man”. “But we will make it fair and it will be tremendous for both of us,” Trump said. Xi smiled widely when Trump said he does not blame China for the deficit. Asked whether the big package of deals would go some way towards helping fix American trade concerns in China, executives were cautiously optimistic. “Generally the sense was that this is all a good thing, and that’s great,” said Gentry Sayad, a Shanghai-based lawyer who attended the trade delegation event in Beijing. “Now let’s see what really happens and whether or not the agreements signed during this trip can become a basis for a better bilateral trade relationship going forward.”

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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has made substantive changes to its proposed text for a deal with the European Union, the leader of Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party said on Friday as Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in Brussels to present the deal. We re pleased to see those change because for me it means there s no red line down the Irish Sea and we have the very clear confirmation that the entirety of the United Kingdom is leaving the European union, leaving the single market, leaving the customs union, Arlene Foster told Sky News. There are still matters there that we would have liked to have seen clarified, we ran out of time essentially, we think that we needed to go back again and talk about those matters but the prime minister has decided to go to Brussels in relation to this text.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican front-runner for next year s election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, formalized his bid for the presidency on Tuesday and promised his government would spend on the young, elderly and farmers. Left-winger Lopez Obrador, who had a 12-point lead in one recent poll, wants to significantly change Mexico s approach to the economy, security and education, vowing more support for the poorest but without new taxes or higher debt levels. He promised cheap fertilizer and fixed produce prices for farmers with a goal of making Mexico self-sufficient in food. He also offered paid apprenticeships for unemployed youth, grants for students and higher pensions for the elderly - expanding on popular welfare programs introduced when he governed Mexico City. A win by the 64-year-old self-declared nationalist on July 1 could reverse a Latin American trend toward right-leaning governments and set the stage for friction with U.S. President Donald Trump over his anti-migrant language and policies. Lopez Obrador promised friendly ties with the U.S. government but said he would not accept racist, hegemonic or arrogant attitudes. He also proposed a shakeup of government, saying he would move more than a dozen ministries and federal bodies including state oil company Pemex from the capital to regional towns. The federal government will be decentralized, Lopez Obrador said, in a speech in the capital after registering his intention to run for his National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party. He also promised not to increase fuel prices. In the clearest language yet, he repeated his intention to consult with victims of drug crime about the possibility of offering amnesty to criminals who commit to rehabilitation. The only aim, there is no other, is to explore all the possibilities to curb the violence and guarantee peace for the people of Mexico, he said. A poll this week found that two-thirds of Mexicans rejected the idea of amnesty, in a country on track for its deadliest year in modern history with nearly 21,000 murders through October. Lopez Obrador, who has unsuccessfully run for the presidency twice before, will likely face Jose Antonio Meade, running for the ruling party, and Ricardo Anaya, who heads a left-right coalition of opposition parties. He did not say how he would finance his spending plans, but in the past has said all new spending would be funded by ending government corruption and waste. (This story has been refiled to add Meade s full name, paragraph 11)

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(Reuters) - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s acting director on Tuesday said that he will be leaving his post, two months after he criticized Republican President Donald Trump for telling law enforcement officers not to be “too nice” to suspects. Acting Director Chuck Rosenberg, a holdover from Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration, told the agency’s staff in an internal email that he will be leaving his position effective Oct. 1. “This is a remarkable agency - full of remarkable people - and I am honored to have been a small part of it,” Rosenberg said in the message, which was reviewed by Reuters. It was unclear who would replace Rosenberg. The news was first reported by The Washington Post. A spokesman for the DEA confirmed Rosenberg’s resignation. Rosenberg had been leading the DEA in an acting capacity since 2015. Before joining the agency, he served as chief of staff to former FBI director James Comey, who Trump fired in May. Rosenberg generated headlines earlier this year after he wrote an agency-wide email in late July challenging comments by Trump suggesting officers do away with practices like protecting the head of a suspect being put into a patrol car. Citing “an obligation to speak out when something is wrong,” Rosenberg said Trump’s remarks, delivered in New York the previous day, “condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement.” He leaves the agency at a time when the DEA is grappling with the ongoing opioid drug epidemic, which has become a major law enforcement focus of the U.S. Justice Department. Opioids, including prescription painkillers and heroin, killed more than 33,000 people in the United States in 2015, more than any year on record, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Opioids such as heroin and fentanyl - and diverted prescription pain pills - are killing people in this country at a horrifying rate,” Rosenberg said in December. “We face a public health crisis of historic proportions.”

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ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The United States is considering how to pressure South Sudan s President Salva Kiir into peace, but withdrawing aid may not work, U.S. envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley said ahead of a visit to South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia on Tuesday. Haley plans to visit Gambella in western Ethiopia, where nearly 350,000 refugees have flooded across the border from South Sudan since the country spiraled into civil war in 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan. You have to really think hard before you pull U.S. aid because President Kiir doesn t care, Haley said. He doesn t care if his people suffer and that s the concern we have as we don t know that will make a difference. That s a conversation we will have and we will try and see exactly what will move President Kiir so that he does ... start to really look at creating a safe position for his people, she told reporters in Addis Ababa late on Monday. Haley will this week be the most senior member of U.S. President Donald Trump s administration to visit South Sudan, where she is due to meet with Kiir. But first, she will see how the conflict has threatened to spillover through deadly cross-border raids into Gambella, Ethiopia by gunmen from South Sudan. Trump s new aid administrator, Mark Green, visited South Sudan last month, telling Kiir that Washington was reviewing its policy toward his government. He called on Kiir to end the violence and implement a real ceasefire. The war in South Sudan was sparked by a feud between Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar. It has plunged parts of the world s youngest nation into famine and forced a third of the population - some 4 million people - to flee their homes. Machar fled and is now being held in South Africa to stop him stirring up trouble, sources told Reuters in December. A fragile peace deal broke down last year amid gun battles between soldiers and rebels in the capital Juba. International efforts to bring warring sides to new talks have not succeeded. We can t see any more deaths, we can t see anymore famine, we ve got to start seeing the situation start to get better and I think that the pressure is only going to continue until President Kiir makes a difference, Haley said. The Trump administration last month imposed sanctions on two senior South Sudanese officials and the former army chief for their role in the conflict, atrocities against civilians and attacks against international missions in South Sudan.

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The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They... [0819 EDT] - ...didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess! [0825 EDT] - The Fake News is now complaining about my different types of back to back speeches. Well, there was Afghanistan (somber), the big Rally..... [0907 EDT] - ..(enthusiastic, dynamic and fun) and the American Legion - V.A. (respectful and strong). Too bad the Dems have no one who can change tones! [0915 EDT] - James Clapper, who famously got caught lying to Congress, is now an authority on Donald Trump. Will he show you his beautiful letter to me? [0915 EDT] - The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed!That should NEVER have happened! [0942 EDT] - On Tuesday, I visited with the incredible men & women of @ICEgov & @DHSgov Border Patrol in Yuma, AZ. Thank you. We respect & cherish you! [1313 EDT] - As #HurricaneHarvey intensifies - remember to #PlanAhead. ☑️(link: www.hurricanes.gov) hurricanes.gov ☑️(link: www.ready.gov) ready.gov ☑️(link: www.fema.gov) fema.gov [1531 EDT] - A GREAT HONOR to spend time with our BRAVE HEROES at the @USMC Air Station Yuma. THANK YOU for your service to the United States of America! [2021 EDT] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States was deeply disturbed by, and closely monitoring, violence in South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo. He told a lunch with African leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly that he would send his U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to Africa to discuss conflict prevention.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. senators have been informed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that a vote on a Republican repeal and replacement of Obamacare might not be held in the House of Representatives before Monday, according to a senior Senate aide. The House had hoped to vote on Thursday on the controversial measure, but has lacked the votes for passage. Meanwhile, another aide said House leaders might still try to schedule a House floor vote very early Friday. House Republicans are scheduled to meet in a closed-door meeting at 7 p.m. (2300 GMT) to assess the situation, according to an aide.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met Costa Rica’s President Luis Guillermo Solis on Monday to discuss Central America and new steps to improve security and governance and protect vulnerable migrants, the White House said. The two U.S. leaders commended Costa Rica for its leadership in setting up a “protective transfer arrangement” in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to provide temporary safe haven for up to 200 migrants at a time from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the White House said in a statement. The three leaders met in the White House.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on Tuesday said his panel’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election would continue to move forward. Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Nunes was asked if asked if he would recuse himself from panel’s probe but he declined to answer directly. “The investigation continues,” Nunes told CNN, NBC and other media outlets.

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MANHEIM, Pa. (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump closed out a rough week for his campaign on Saturday by escalating personal attacks on Democrat Hillary Clinton, questioning her stamina and saying she should be in prison for her handling of classified emails. After a week in which he drew wide criticism for a public feud with a former beauty queen, Trump sought to rebound with a highly negative attack on his opponent in the Nov. 8 election, with a second presidential debate against her looming in a week. At the same time, the New York Times reported it had obtained records showing Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a deduction so large that it may have allowed him to avoid paying any federal income taxes for years. Trump has refused to release his tax records, saying he is under a federal audit. At a rally in Manheim, Pennsylvania, Trump said he did not believe Clinton, who suffered a bout of pneumonia last month, was up to the task of being president. He tried to resurrect a tactic he employed against former Republican rival Jeb Bush, who Trump had derided as “low energy.” Clinton kept her pneumonia diagnosis private until she was seen nearly collapsing while getting into her vehicle at a ceremony marking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York. Ticking off a list of world problems, Trump said, “She’s supposed to fight all of these things and she can’t make it 15 feet to her car. Give me a break.” “Folks, we need stamina, we need energy, we need people who are going to turn deals around,” Trump said. Trump has often told crowds who chant “lock her up” over her use of a private email server as U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 to instead help him defeat her. But on Saturday, Trump told thousands of supporters that Clinton’s handling of classified emails and destroying of 33,000 emails that she had deemed of a personal nature meant that “she should be in prison, let me tell you.” Trump did not stop there. He said he did not believe Clinton would be loyal to her supporters and chuckled, “I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, to tell you the truth. And why should she be, right? Why should she be?” In 1998, Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, was caught up in a sex scandal involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Trump was widely seen as having lost his first presidential debate with Clinton last Monday although he cites online polls showing he won. In the days since the debate, Trump has been struggling to regain his footing, getting caught up in a back-and-forth with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who Trump had criticized for gaining weight.

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ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A delegation from the Kurdistan Regional Government held talks with the Iraqi ruling Shi ite coalition in Baghdad on Saturday, two days before a planned referendum on secession from Iraq. The delegation will discuss the referendum but the referendum is still happening, Hoshiyar Zebari, a top adviser to Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, told Reuters. We said we would talk to Baghdad before, during and after the referendum. The KRG has said the vote is intended to give its autonomous territory a legitimate mandate to achieve independence from Iraq through dialogue with Baghdad and neighboring powers Turkey and Iran. Ankara and Tehran are worried that the vote could revive the separatist aspirations of their own Kurdish populations. The Kurdish delegation met with representatives of the Shi ite ruling coalition in Baghdad, and with the Iraqi president, Fuad Masum, himself a Kurd, whose role is largely ceremonial. Executive powers are concentrated in the hands of the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, a Shi ite. Abadi s office said he didn t meet the delegation. Hemin Hawrami, an assistant to Barzani, tweeted: Our delegation in Baghdad to deliver a message: We re ready for talks after 25/9. Turkey said on Saturday it would take security and other steps in response to the planned referendum, which it called a terrible mistake . The Turkish parliament convened for a debate and vote on extending a mandate that authorizes Turkish troop deployments to Iraq and Syria, and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim alluded to possible military moves. The United States has urged the KRG to cancel the vote, while the U.N. Security Council warned in a statement of its potentially destabilizing impact on Iraq. Washington and other Western powers say the vote distracts from the fight against the Islamic State militant group. The KRG counters that its Peshmerga fighters have made a crucial contribution to that fight. (This version of the story corrects to say meeting was with the Iraqi ruling Shi te coalition in Baghdad, not with the government in Baghdad)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After days of chaos at airports and confusion over details of President Donald Trump’s immigration executive order, some of his fellow Republicans joined Democrats in saying Congress might need to consider legislation to address his new policies. Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said it was too early to know all the implications of Trump’s order banning travel into the United States by citizens of seven majority-Muslim nations, but lawmakers might eventually need to step in to modify it. “Seriously, we still don’t know all the implications of what happened. I don’t think they (the Trump administration) know all the implications of what happened,” he told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “There may well need to be a legislative fix.” Under the executive order Trump released on Friday, travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen may not enter the United States for at least 90 days while Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and others determine whether there is enough information available to screen them. Democrats in both the Senate and House of Representatives have introduced bills to rescind Trump’s order, but those measures are not expected to go anywhere in the Republican-led Congress. Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has criticized the order, saying it could weaken U.S. counterterrorism efforts. He blasted barring Iraqis who risked their lives to work as interpreters for U.S. forces, who have already undergone extensive screening. McCain and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen led a push to pass legislation last year to provide visas to those Iraqis. McCain said he thought Iraq should not be on Trump’s list. He said it could invite retaliation by Baghdad and said that Iraq should not be lumped in with frequent U.S. nemesis Iran. “There’s no comparison. There’s thousands of Americans fighting in Iraq as we speak. And what if the Iraqis decided, OK, we’re not going to let all these contractors (working with U.S. forces) ... have visas to come into our country?” McCain asked. Iraq’s prime minister on Tuesday said the country would not retaliate to Trump’s travel ban against Iraqi nationals because it did not want to lose Washington’s cooperation in the war on Islamic State. McCain said whether legislation was needed would depend on how the executive order was implemented over time. “Let’s see what they do,” McCain said. “General Kelly today made some very significant changes to what was initially publicized. So let’s see what they do.”

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ERBIL Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani departed office on Wednesday, leaving his nephew to reconcile with the central government in Baghdad, with regional neighbors and with rival Kurdish parties after a failed referendum on independence. Nechirvan Barzani, who has served alongside his uncle as prime minister, will now be the main authority figure in the executive of the Kurdish autonomous region, following Masoud Barzani s departure as president, Kurdish officials said. The prime minister will be the key person during this transitional period, said Hoshyar Zebari, a former Iraqi foreign minister, now advisor to the Kurdish government and senior member of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The elder Barzani, a 71-year-old veteran guerrilla leader, had run the Kurdish autonomous region with a firm hand since 2005, during which it prospered while the rest of Iraq was mired in civil war. But he announced his resignation on Sunday, effective on Nov. 1, after a Sept. 25 referendum on independence backfired, prompting the central government to send troops to recapture territory held by the Kurds outside their autonomous region. The referendum and government backlash have also revealed deep divisions among the Kurds themselves. During his resignation speech, Masoud Barzani accused his political rivals of high treason for yielding territory without a fight. His nephew Nechirvan, 51, who has served as prime minister for all but three years since 2006, is seen in Kurdish politics as a less polarising figure, having warmer relations than his uncle with rival Kurdish parties. He also has a close working relationship with Turkey s President Tayyip Erdogan, who has backed Baghdad in the central government s dispute with the Kurds since the referendum. The Kurdish regional parliament voted on Sunday to divide the president s powers among parliament, the judiciary and the cabinet, until parliamentary and presidential elections are next held. The elections were originally scheduled for Nov. 1 but postponed last month until next year. Before the referendum, Barzani s son Masrour was seen as his likely successor, but he has been damaged by his backing of the secession vote, which soured relationships with Baghdad and regional powers who opposed it. On Monday, the United States commended Masoud Barzani for stepping down and said it would actively engage with Nechirvan Barzani and his deputy, Qubad Talabani, a member of the rival political faction with whom he maintains a good relationship. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also spoke with Nechirvan Barzani on Monday to encourage dialogue with Baghdad. He also met with met with the French and Germany ambassadors to Iraq, Bruno Aubert and Cyrill Nunn, on Tuesday. As prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani has been central to brokering the semi-autonomous region s oil dealings, now in jeopardy following Iraq s recapture of disputed territories on Oct. 16, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Despite no longer being president, Masoud Barzani will not be retreating from public life, government officials said. In his televised address on Sunday announcing the end of his presidency, Barzani said that he would remain a Peshmerga, or Kurdish fighter, and will continue to battle for his people s lifelong dream of independence. He will also remain head of the ruling party and will still sit on the High Political Council, a non-governmental body which emerged after the referendum. Kurdish politics have been dominated for decades by the KDP, led by three generations of the Barzani family, and its main rivals the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by the family of Jalal Talabani, who died in October. The two parties fought a civil war against each other in the 1990s, but maintained an outward appearance of unity after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, with Jalal Talabani serving as Iraq s ceremonial president in Baghdad from 2005-2014 while Masoud Barzani ran the Kurdish autonomous region.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea welcomed on Tuesday a new U.N. Security Council resolution imposing additional sanctions on North Korea over its sixth nuclear test and said the only way for Pyongyang to escape isolation and economic hardship is to end its nuclear program. North Korea needs to realize that a reckless challenge against international peace will only bring about even stronger international sanctions against it, the South s presidential Blue House said.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s liberal Free Democrats (FDP) set the stage for tough coalition talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and the Greens, saying they would not agree to a deal that did not promise a change in the German government s direction. It is not up to us to form a Jamaica coalition at any price, deputy party leader Wolfgang Kubicki told journalists on Monday, after Sunday s national election pointed to a three-way tie-up as the most straightforward possibility for a coalition. FDP party leader Christian Lindner said that changes were needed in Germany s energy policy and its stance on euro zone fiscal policy.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City has quietly begun removing some of the corroding yellow nuclear fallout shelter signs that were appended to thousands of buildings in the 1960s, saying many are misleading Cold War relics that no longer denote functional shelters. The small metal signs are a remnant of the anxieties over the nuclear arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, which prompted U.S. President John F. Kennedy to create the shelter program in 1961 in cities across the nation. The signs, with their simple design of three joined triangles inside a circle, became an emblem of the era. While some New Yorkers may barely notice them today, to others they can be an uneasy reminder that the threat may have altered and diminished, but it has not vanished. Although the Cold War era has long ended, North Korea continues working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States amid bellicose rhetoric from Washington and Pyongyang. A nuclear explosion is now seen as even less likely than during the Cold War. But should catastrophe ever strike, the signs, which still linger in their thousands, would be best ignored, city officials and disaster preparedness experts say. In the aftermath of a nearby nuclear explosion, any survivors counting on the signs to lead them to safety from radioactive fallout after needlessly dashing outside would likely find themselves rattling locked doors or perhaps breaking into what is now a building s laundry room or bike-storage area. Maintenance of the shelter system, which once entailed federal funding to stock shelters with food and water, ended decades ago. The removal of some of the signs from public school buildings, which has not previously been reported, is intended to partly reduce this potential confusion, according to the city s Department of Education. Michael Aciman, a department spokesman, confirmed that any designated fallout shelters created in the city s schools are no longer active and said that the department is aiming to finish unscrewing the signs from school walls by roughly Jan. 1. Although some of the tens of thousands of fallout shelter signs placed around the city by the federal government s Office of Civil Defense have vanished as old buildings have been renovated or demolished, city officials say this is the first coordinated effort to remove them. The Office of Civil Defense was eventually abolished in the 1970s, subsumed into the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Aciman declined to say whether, given the signs are technically federal property, the U.S. government was consulted. But FEMA said it did not mind anyway. FEMA does not have a position regarding the signs, Jenny Burke, a FEMA spokeswoman, wrote in an email on Tuesday. Although the agency does not maintain lists of the old shelter locations, she added, as a part of an ongoing planning effort, the agency is conducting research to retrieve Office of Civilian Defense records. The city s removal appeared somewhat haphazard: on one Brooklyn street, a sign on a school photographed by Reuters this month was subsequently removed, while a second school a few blocks away still had its sign attached, albeit with a screw missing. As a history buff, Jeff Schlegelmilch is fond enough of the signs that he stuck a replica on his office door at Columbia University s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, where he is deputy director. I love seeing the signs, but, as a disaster planner, they have to come down, he said. At best, they are ignored, at worst, they re misleading and are going to cost people s lives. The consensus now, from the federal government downward, was that designated shelters were an outmoded concept, and updated contingency plans have been widely adopted since al Qaeda s attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Schlegelmilch said. Were a nuclear explosion ever to happen, those far enough from the blast center to survive would do well to head to the lower interiors of any standard residential or commercial building, ideally a windowless basement, to shelter from radioactive particles outside, which can burn skin and cause serious illness and death. Cars, on the other hand, are terrible, Schlegelmilch said: the particles sail right through a vehicle s thin exterior. NYC Emergency Management, the agency that runs the city s disaster preparations, was not involved in the decision but staff there welcomed the signs removal. Nancy Silvestri, the agency s press secretary, said even once the signs are gone from schools, many would remain on apartment buildings and other structures. City officials are uncertain who has jurisdiction over those, she said. Eliot Calhoun, the agency s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives Planner, sees the signs as unhelpfully muddying the waters. He has spent years endlessly finessing a message, designed to flash as an alert on cellphones, that he hopes he will never have to send. In the nerve center of the agency s Brooklyn headquarters, he called up onto a screen its current form: Nuclear explosion reported. Shelter in basement/center of building, close windows/doors. Every single time I look at it I change it a little bit, he said. When you only have 90 characters and you re trying to save lives you can really think too much about it.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a blow to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, a U.S. judge on Thursday upheld a Pennsylvania state law that could make it difficult for his supporters to monitor Election Day activity in Democratic-leaning areas. Trump has repeatedly said Tuesday’s presidential election may be rigged, without providing scant evidence, and has urged supporters to keep an eye out for signs of voting fraud in Philadelphia and other heavily Democratic areas. Democrats worry that could encourage Trump supporters to harass minority voters in a state that could determine whether Trump or his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, wins the presidency. Voting-rights advocates said they are already receiving reports of harassment. Democrats have launched a legal blitz of their own in an attempt to shut down Trump’s poll-watching efforts in Pennsylvania and three other battleground states, arguing in lawsuits that Republican monitoring efforts amount to “vigilante voter intimidation” that violates federal law. They filed a fourth lawsuit in North Carolina on Thursday. Democrats are also trying to stop the Republican National Committee from supporting the poll-watching efforts of the Trump campaign or state parties. Those cases have not yet been resolved. The RNC has said in legal motions that it is not involved in poll watching, which would violate a long-standing court order. State parties have argued that they are engaged in legitimate efforts to make sure the election is conducted accurately, while Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, and his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said they misspoke when they told media outlets that the campaign was working with the RNC on poll-watching efforts. In Pennsylvania, Trump’s poll-monitoring plan faces a significant hurdle because state law requires partisan poll watchers to perform their duties in the county in which they are registered to vote. That could make it difficult to recruit monitors in places like Philadelphia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a ratio of eight to one. The city has 120,000 registered Republicans and 1,685 voting locations. The Pennsylvania Republican Party sought to suspend that requirement so that poll monitors could come from anywhere in the state, which would enable them to bring in supporters from suburban and rural areas where Trump has stronger support. But U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert said that would be too disruptive to change the law less than a week before Tuesday’s vote. The Republican Party of Pennsylvania did not respond to a request for comment. Republican training materials submitted as evidence in several cases show the party is instructing poll monitors not to interact directly with voters, but to contact officials if they see a problem. That appeared to be the message in southern Ohio as well, where Trump supporter Becky Covey said the observers she had recruited were told not to interfere with voting activity. “People think they’re going to be a watchdog, but that’s not their job,” Covey said. Those guidelines could have little influence on Trump supporters who decide to engage in anti-fraud efforts of their own on Election Day. The Oath Keepers, a paramilitary group, plans an undercover effort to monitor voting locations, while Trump ally Roger Stone is mobilizing supporters to conduct an exit poll to double-check election results. One right-wing group told the news website Politico that it has already installed hidden cameras in Philadelphia polling stations. With early voting underway, civil rights advocates said they were already receiving reports of intimidation and harassment. Palm Beach County, Florida, plans to station law enforcement officers at an early-voting site through Election Day after fielding complaints about bullhorn-wielding Trump supporters getting too close, according to ProPublica. Democrats in Nevada alleged that Trump supporters have yelled at voters and tried to block them from entering early-voting sites, while civil-rights groups in North Carolina and Texas said they have received reports of intimidating behavior at early voting sites. “We are seeing an uptick in the number of complaints compared to 2012,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a watchdog group.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Florida man pleaded guilty in a case stemming from an attempted hacking of the Clinton Foundation on Thursday, months after he was sentenced to 42 years in prison in the wake of child pornography discovered on his computers during the probe. Timothy Sedlak, 43, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to attempting to access protected computers without authorization. Prosecutors accused him of trying to gain access to an unnamed New York-based charitable organization’s network. “I knew that what I was doing was wrong,” Sedlak said in court. Neither prosecutors nor Sedlak named the organization from which he tried to get access to emails. In a court filing obtained by Reuters that summarized a U.S. Secret Service interview in 2015 with Sedlak, an agent said he was questioned about notes they found referencing former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton. Sedlak, who called himself a private investigator, told the agents he was researching whether charities were unintentionally providing funding to Islamic militant groups, and said the Clintons “came up in his research,” the filing said. The filing’s description of the Clintons matched prosecutors’ descriptions of two previously unnamed individuals who were said to be executives at the charity and an “individual who has been publicly affiliated” with it. Chelsea Clinton is the vice chair of the foundation, which was started by her father, former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Its full name is the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The filing was downloaded by Reuters on Feb. 3. It was later replaced by a redacted version removing the Clintons’ names. Clinton Foundation representatives did not respond to requests for comment. The investigation into Sedlak, of Ocoee, Florida, predated probes into cyber attacks on Democrats during the 2016 presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies in January released an assessment indicating that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered cyber attacks to help Republican Donald Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting Clinton. Sedlak launched about 390,000 unsuccessful attempts to gain unauthorized access to the charitable organization’s computer network, according to prosecutors. Following his arrest in 2015, authorities discovered files on his computers containing child pornography, including images depicting Sedlak sexually abusing a toddler, prosecutors said. Sedlak was separately charged in Florida, where a federal jury in Orlando in May found him guilty of charges he produced and possessed child pornography. He was sentenced in August to 42 years in prison.

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq s Supreme Justice Council ordered on Thursday the arrest of Kurdistan Regional Government Vice President Kosrat Rasul for allegedly saying Iraqi troops which took over the city of Kirkuk were occupying forces.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has personally overseen the launch of four nuclear-capable ballistic missiles as part of a training exercise for Russia s strategic nuclear forces, the Kremlin said on Friday, the Interfax news agency reported. The test launches, conducted on Thursday, involved land, air, and submarine-based ballistic missiles, Russia s defense ministry said in a separate statement. The ministry said a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile had been test fired from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia, hitting a target at the Kura military testing range on the Kamchatka Peninsula thousands of kilometers (miles) away.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. internet companies including Facebook Inc and Amazon Inc have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, which includes promoting strong encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from content that users share on their platforms. The letter sent on Monday by the Internet Association, a trade group whose 40 members also include Alphabet’s Google, Uber and Twitter, represents an early effort to repair the relationship between the technology sector and Trump, who was almost universally disliked and at times denounced in Silicon Valley during the presidential campaign. “The internet industry looks forward to engaging in an open and productive dialogue,” reads the letter, signed by Michael Beckerman, president of the Internet Association, and seen by Reuters. Some of the policy goals stated in the letter may align with Trump’s priorities, including easing regulation on the sharing economy, lowering taxes on profits made from intellectual property and applying pressure on Europe to not erect too many barriers that restrict U.S. internet companies from growing in that market. Other goals are likely to clash with Trump, who offered numerous broadsides against the tech sector during his campaign. They include supporting strong encryption in products against efforts by law enforcement agencies to mandate access to data for criminal investigations, upholding recent reforms to U.S. government surveillance programs that ended the bulk collection of call data by the National Security Agency, and maintaining net neutrality rules that require internet service providers to treat web traffic equally. The association seeks immigration reform to support more high-skilled workers staying in the United States. Though Trump made tougher immigration policies a central theme of his campaign, he has at times shied away from arguing against more H-1B visas for skilled workers, saying in a March debate he was “softening the position because we need to have talented people in this country.” While urging support for trade agreements, the letter does not mention the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Trump has repeatedly assailed with claims it was poorly negotiated and would take jobs away from U.S. workers. The technology sector supported the deal, but members of Congress have conceded since the election it is not going to be enacted. Trump’s often-shifting policy proposals on the campaign trail frequently alarmed tech companies and sometimes elicited public mockery, such as when Trump called for closing off parts of the internet to limit militant Islamist propaganda. Trump has also urged a boycott of Apple Inc products over the company’s refusal to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock an iPhone associated with last year’s San Bernardino, California, shootings, threatened antitrust action against Amazon, and demanded that tech companies such as Apple manufacture their products in the United States. In a statement, Beckerman said the internet industry looked forward to working closely with Trump and lawmakers in Congress to “cement the internet’s role as a driver of economic and social progress for future generations.”

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SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis flew into Seoul on Friday for annual defense talks as tensions with North Korea climb ahead of a visit to the region next month by President Donald Trump. Mattis has emphasized diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis during his week-long trip to Asia, even as North Korea’s weapons tests and bellicose verbal exchanges between Pyongyang and Washington stoke fears of an armed confrontation. “I carried the message that the more we do together today the greater the chance for enduring peace in the future,” Mattis said earlier this week, looking back at three days of meetings with Asian defense chiefs in the Philippines. “That’s really what it was all about – to keep the (North Korea) effort firmly in the diplomatic lane for resolution.” Even before landing in Seoul, Mattis held a meeting in the Philippines on Monday with his South Korea and Japanese counterparts, where they agreed to keep bolstering intelligence sharing about North Korea and enhance exercises. “Now we got to do the ‘roll up our sleeves’ (work) and do the pragmatic planning and coordination,” he told reporters. Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera warned the threat from North Korea has grown to a “critical and imminent level”. CIA chief Mike Pompeo said last week North Korea could be only months away from developing the ability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons, a scenario Trump has vowed to prevent. U.S. intelligence experts say Pyongyang believes it needs the weapons to ensure its survival and have been skeptical about diplomatic efforts, focusing on sanctions, to get Pyongyang to denuclearize. The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on seven North Korean individuals and three entities for “flagrant” human rights abuses, including killings, torture, forced labor and the hunting down of asylum seekers abroad. Mattis is expected to meet South Korean leaders on Friday before he joins the top U.S. military officer, Marine General Joseph Dunford, at the annual “Security Consultative Meeting” with South Korea’s military on Saturday. The visit comes just before Trump’s departs on Nov. 3 to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, a trip which is expected to be dominated by the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea. Trump, in a speech last month at the United Nations, threatened to destroy North Korea if necessary to defend itself and allies. Kim has blasted Trump as “mentally deranged.” Despite the rhetoric, White House officials say Trump is looking for a peaceful resolution of the standoff. But all options, including military ones, are on the table. Mattis, for his part, dismissed the idea that U.S. allies were confused about the U.S. approach, noting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent trip to Beijing to get China to do more to pressure Pyongyang. China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner. “Do we have military options in defense for attack, if our allies are attacked? Of course we do. But everyone is out for a peaceful resolution,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him earlier this week. “No one’s rushing for war.”

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CASPER, Wyo. (Reuters) - Republican U.S. presidential hopeful Ted Cruz won all 14 delegates at stake on Saturday in Wyoming, besting rival Donald Trump, who made little effort to win the rural state, and further narrowing the gap in the race for the party’s nomination. Cruz is trying to prevent Trump from obtaining the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination at the July convention in Cleveland. By continuing to rack up small wins, Cruz is gaining ground on the New York real estate mogul, who has thus far failed to shift his focus on the local-level campaigning necessary to win delegates. Trump has been critical of the process, again on Saturday calling it “rigged” while speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York. He has repeatedly complained about Colorado, which awarded all 34 of its delegates to Cruz despite not holding a popular vote. Trump said his supporters are becoming increasingly angry with states such as Wyoming and Colorado. “They’re going nuts out there; they’re angry,” Trump said in Syracuse. “The bosses took away their vote, and I wasn’t going to send big teams of people three, four months ago, have them out there.” While Trump has won 21 state nominating contests to Cruz’s 10, the billionaire leads the Texas senator by only 196 delegates (755-559). That means he must win nearly 60 percent of those remaining before the party’s political convention in July. Wyoming does not hold a primary vote. Instead, 475 party activists convened in Casper on Saturday to hold a state convention and award 14 delegates. Previously, 12 other delegates had been designated at county-level conventions. Cruz won 10 of those, with one going to Trump and another being elected as “unbound.” Cruz spoke at the convention, capping off a months-long effort to organize support in the state. Trump had originally planned to send former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who remains popular among conservatives, as a surrogate, but she canceled at the last minute. Cruz spoke about local issues in Wyoming, the largest coal-producing state. He discussed the Democratic “attack” on the fossil fuel, saying President Barack Obama has tried to put the coal industry out of business through government regulations targeting air pollution. “America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and we are going to develop our industry,” Cruz said. At the same time, Trump was speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York, ahead of the state’s Republican primary on Tuesday.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Mexico is preparing to discuss changes to trade rules about a product’s country of origin to try to avoid a disruptive fight with the United States over commerce. As the two countries begin a difficult new relationship, Mexico sees possible common ground with Trump on the “rules of origin” of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that binds the two countries and Canada, several sources said. Rules of origin are regulations setting out where trade products are sourced from. Although formal negotiations about NAFTA have not begun, the rules could eventually be altered to favor U.S. industry over competitors from outside North America, particularly in Asia. Changes to those rules could help align Mexico with Trump’s industrial strategy of boosting U.S. manufacturing jobs and dovetail with the Mexican government’s calls to strengthen North American competitiveness. It could also help pave the way for a broader deal with Trump over border security and immigration, Mexican officials believe. Talks about NAFTA rules of origin will be a “very important” point of discussion between the two countries now that Trump is in office, a Mexican official said. A White House official said: “As a general rule, it is in the best interests of the U.S. to insist on strong rules of origin provisions in pursuing bilateral negotiations. Lax rules of origin in proposed treaties like the now defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership shrink and weaken our supply chain and contribute to the offshoring of American jobs.” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray and Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo will hold talks with top Trump officials in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday, where security, migration and trade will be discussed. Fears of economic disaster have haunted Mexico since Trump won the presidency in November threatening to tear up NAFTA, impose protectionist tariffs and build a wall on the United States’ southern border to halt illegal immigration. While Mexico is reluctant to alter the 1994 trade accord, officials concede that some changes may be necessary to help keep trade open with the United States, which absorbs 80 percent of its exports. “What we want is to maintain free access for Mexican products, without restrictions, without tariffs and quotas,” Videgaray, the spearhead of the government’s outreach to Trump, said on Monday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, two Mexican government officials and four other people familiar with ongoing discussions said Mexico saw rules of origin as an important avenue to brokering a deal with Trump, provided a fair compromise can be reached. In trade agreements, content rules or rules of origin are often used to determine import duties. Under NAFTA, 62.5 percent of the material in a car or light truck made in Mexico must be from North America to be able to enter the United States tariff free. If the countries agree in negotiations, that percentage could be increased, potentially giving an advantage to U.S. industry at the expense of Asian competitors. For Mexico, changing the rules of origin could be a lesser evil than Trump’s threat to impose a 35 percent tax on certain goods made by foreign companies in Mexico for sale in the United States. Trump’s pressure on U.S. automakers such as Ford to build more cars at home worries Mexico, where the industry has been one of the main drivers of growth and accounted for 18.5 percent of manufacturing GDP in 2015. Trump on Tuesday told the chief executives of the Big Three U.S. automakers - General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler - that he wants to see more auto plants in the United States. Mexico warned it could pull out of NAFTA if a renegotiation of the pact does not benefit it. Trump’s team is behind the push for changes in the origin rules, seeing it as a means of reducing imports from China, two of the Mexican sources familiar with the matter said. Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, spoke of the importance of content rules in protecting the automotive industry during Senate hearings last week, and Canadian media reported that Ross had told Canada rules of origin would be central to NAFTA talks. NAFTA rules of origin apply to goods made in any of the three countries. Two Mexican sources said the Trump administration could push for national content requirements that would ensure that the United States benefits from changes in rules of origin, and not just the NAFTA region as a whole. However, that would be more complex to manage, they added. So as not to hurt companies, any changes would need to be phased in gradually, and the more items that were targeted, the trickier negotiations would be, one of the sources said. Any deal would need to ensure rules changes applied to all countries, not just to Mexico, one Mexican official said. Of the foreign carmakers in Mexico, Toyota might be able to handle a higher NAFTA content ratio better than others. Its Camry car, for example, has very high North American and U.S. content. Other Japanese automakers such as Mazda have a larger proportional reliance on Asia-based suppliers. Kristin Dziczek, a labor analyst at the Center of Automotive Research, said deepening rules of origin could have some impact on U.S. jobs and would hit some foreign automakers harder - especially those that produce more parts and vehicles outside North America. The NAFTA rules are in place to prevent China or other lower wage countries from being able to produce the majority of content in a vehicle and export it to another country to assemble it without paying tariffs. U.S. automakers have not backed tougher rules of origin previously because they wanted flexibility on sourcing parts.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that a senior diplomat traveling to North Korea as a special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping will exchange views on matters between the two countries and parties. Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang made the comment at a daily news briefing, adding that he was not aware of specific arrangements on who the Chinese envoy, Song Tao, will meet while in the North. He did not specify what matters would be discussed. The official Xinhua news agency earlier said Song, who heads the ruling Communist Party s external affairs department, would leave for North Korea on Friday.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog s chief said on Friday North Korea s sixth nuclear test conducted on Sept. 3 showed the isolated country has made rapid progress on weapons development that posed a new, global threat. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have increased markedly since the test, which led to a new round of sanctions against the North after a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution. (The) yield is much bigger than the previous test, and it means North Korea made very rapid progress, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Yukiya Amano told reporters in Seoul. Combined with other elements, this is a new threat and this is a global threat, he said after a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. Amano said the IAEA did not have the capacity to determine whether the North had tested a hydrogen bomb, as Pyongyang has claimed. What is most important for now is for the international community to unite, Amano said. Tensions had already flared after North Korea tested two more intercontinental ballistic missiles and other launches as it pursues its nuclear and missile programs in defiance of international pressure. South Korea said on Thursday the North could engage in more provocations near the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean communist party and China s all-important Communist Party Congress. Insults and threats hurled between the North s leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump have aggravated the situation further. Members of the international community have urged both countries to resolve matters peacefully while boosting pressure on Pyongyang to curb its weapons programs. A U.S. State Department official said on Thursday China was making progress in enforcing sanctions imposed on North Korea, and urged skeptical members of Congress not to rush to enact new measures before giving Beijing s efforts a chance to take effect.

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SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Monday Russia s work with Turkey and Iran was producing concrete results in Syria and creating conditions for a dialogue there. Speaking alongside Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Putin said Russia would continue to work with Turkey to help resolve the Syria crisis.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Omarosa Manigault, best-known for repeatedly being fired on the TV show “The Apprentice,” is being considered for a job in Donald Trump’s White House, a member of the president-elect’s transition team said on Tuesday. A lecturer on branding and marketing at Howard University and a former Mrs. America pageant contestant, Manigault, 42, was one of Trump’s more visible African-American supporters during his successful election bid. The Youngstown, Ohio, native also worked at the White House during the Clinton administration, in Vice President Al Gore’s office. Trump won national attention by hosting the first 14 seasons of the NBC TV game show “The Apprentice,” in which contestants vied to demonstrate their business skills and win a job running one of his companies. Typically, Trump would eliminate one hopeful each week with his trademark phrase, “You’re fired.”

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese police have broken up a secret banking operation used to transfer assets abroad, the official China Daily reported on Tuesday. The underground bank, hidden in a food market in the southern city of Guangzhou, is suspected of being involved in cross-border transactions worth more than $70 million in the past month alone, the paper said, citing a statement from Guangzhou s public security bureau. China is cracking down on underground banks and other foreign exchange violations in a bid to prevent and resolve risks from cross-border capital flows and bolster the yuan, the country s forex regulator said in July. Last year, Chinese police busted more than 380 underground banks, involving more than 900 billion yuan ($135.97 billion), and arrested more than 800 suspects, according to the Ministry of Public Security. Guangdong province busted three large underground banks earlier this year involving cross-border transactions worth 3 billion yuan and resulting in the detention of 30 suspects, China Daily said.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - An election analysis conducted in the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project shows that the race has tightened considerably over the past few weeks, with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump projected to win Florida, an essential battleground state, if the election were held today. The project, which is based on a weekly tracking poll of more than 15,000 Americans, shows that the 2016 presidential race could end in a photo finish on Nov. 8, with the major-party candidates running nearly even in the Electoral College, the body that ultimately selects the president. The States of the Nation project, which delivers a weekly tally of support for the candidates in every state, shows that the race has tightened in several traditional battlegrounds. Pennsylvania has been moved from a likely win for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to a tossup; Ohio has been moved from a tossup to a likely win for Clinton. And Florida is now considered a likely win for the Republican nominee, with 50 percent support for Trump to 46 percent support for Clinton. If the election were held today, the project estimates that Clinton has a 60 percent chance of winning by 18 electoral votes. Last week, the project estimated that Clinton had a 83 percent chance of winning the election. In a separate national Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, Clinton continues to lead Trump by 4 percentage points, and her recent bout with pneumonia doesn’t appear to have scared away her supporters. The national Sept. 9-15 tracking poll showed that 42 percent of likely voters supported Clinton while 38 percent backed Trump. Clinton, who has mostly led Trump in the poll since the Democratic and Republican national conventions ended in July, regained the advantage this week after her lead briefly faded in late August. Clinton has an advantage among minorities, women, people who make more than $75,000 a year, and those with moderate political leanings. Trump has an advantage with whites, men, avid churchgoers, and people who are nearing retirement age. Overall, Americans appear to be relatively uninspired by their choices for president with less than eight weeks to go before the election. One out of every five likely voters said they do not support Clinton or Trump for president. In comparison, about one out of every 10 likely voters wouldn’t support Obama or Republican challenger Mitt Romney at a similar point in the 2012 presidential campaign. Respondents took the survey after video surfaced of Clinton nearly collapsing at a Sept. 11 memorial in New York on Sunday. Her campaign later said she had a non-contagious, bacterial form of pneumonia. The video sparked a renewed discussion about the health of both candidates. Trump, 70, would be the oldest president to take office, while Clinton, 68, would be the second oldest. Clinton and Trump candidates have since released details of their personal health. Clinton’s doctors said her physical exam was normal, apart from the pneumonia, and that she was in excellent mental condition. Trump released a note from his doctor saying that he was in “excellent physical health.” Americans do not appear to be overly concerned with the health of either candidate. According to a separate question in the poll conducted this week, most American adults said the issue would make “no difference” to how they voted. A negligible percentage of Clinton supporters said concerns about her health made them “less likely” to vote for her. Clinton led all candidates in a four-way poll of likely voters that included Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. Seven percent of respondents supported Johnson, and 2 percent backed Stein. The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English in all 50 states. The latest horserace poll surveyed 1,579 likely voters over the past week. The question on the candidates’ health surveyed 1,179 American adults from Sept. 12-16. Both polls had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points. National polls have produced varying measurements of support during the 2016 campaign for Clinton and Trump. The differences are partly due to the fact that some polls, like Reuters/Ipsos, try to include only likely voters, while others include all registered voters. The Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll gathers responses every day and reports results twice a week, so it often detects trends in sentiment before most other polls. Polling aggregators, which calculate averages of major polls, have shown that Clinton’s lead over Trump has been shrinking this month. The most recent individual polls put Clinton’s advantage at 1 or 2 percentage points.

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Five suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in drone strikes on two villages in Yemen s al Baida governorate on Saturday, a local official and residents said. The strikes targeted two villages where al Qaeda is known to be active, a local official said, adding that a total of five were killed in the strikes in central Yemen. Residents said two suspected militants were killed when a drone targeted the car they were traveling in. Three people were injured in the strikes, they said. Yemen s al Qaeda branch, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has taken advantage of a more than two-year-old civil war between the Iran-aligned Houthi group and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi s Saudi-backed government to strengthen its position in the impoverished country. The United States has repeatedly attacked AQAP with aircraft and unmanned drones in what U.S. officials say is a campaign to wear down the group s ability to coordinate attacks abroad.

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CAIRO (Reuters) - Militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack outside the offices of the Yemeni finance ministry in the southern port city of Aden, the group s news agency Amaq said on Wednesday. Hospital officials said at least two people were killed in the explosion.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Manafort, who served last year as U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign manager, is planning to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent, his spokesman said on Wednesday. Manafort’s lobbying for a foreign client ended before he began working on Trump’s presidential campaign “and was not conducted on behalf of the Russian government,” spokesman Jason Maloni said in a statement. Manafort’s ties to Russia are part of probes underway by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional intelligence committees into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to reports by the New York Times and other media. Manafort has denied any impropriety and has volunteered to be interviewed by the House intelligence committee. Russia has denied interfering in the election. “Since before the 2016 election, Mr. Manafort has been in discussions with federal authorities about the advisability of registering under FARA for some of his past political work,” Mr. Maloni said, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “Mr. Manafort received formal guidance recently from the authorities and he is taking appropriate steps in response to the guidance. The work in question was widely known,” Maloni said. He declined to be more specific. Manafort previously worked on behalf of the political party of Viktor Yanukovich, the former Kremlin-backed leader of Ukraine. Manafort resigned from Trump’s campaign last August, days after documents surfaced in Kiev suggesting he had received millions in undisclosed payments from Yanukovich’s party. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that it had obtained financial records confirming that at least $1.2 million in payments were received by Manafort’s consulting firm in the United States in 2007 and 2009. “Any wire transactions received by my company are legitimate payments for political consulting work that was provided. I invoiced my clients and they paid via wire transfer, which I received through a U.S. bank,” Manafort told the AP.

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PARIS/GENEVA (Reuters) - Switzerland is sending a Tunisian couple who include the brother of a man presumed to have killed two people in a knife attack at a French train station back to their home country for security reasons, Swiss federal police said on Tuesday. The couple were arrested in the Swiss town of Chiasso near the Swiss-Italian border on Sunday night where they sought asylum. They will detained pending their expulsion, Swiss federal police said, giving no date. The man is known to foreign police services for his links with the jihadist terrorist movement. For now his role in the Marseille attack, if any, is not clear, Swiss federal police said in a statement giving no names or ages for the couple. Earlier a source close to the investigation said on Tuesday that Swiss had detained two Tunisians wanted in connection with a deadly knife attack at Marseille train station on Oct. 1. Swiss police confirmed that one of the two detained is a brother of 29-year-old Ahmed Hannachi, who was shot dead by a French soldier after killing two young women outside the station in southern France. Authorities are investigating the attack as a probable terrorist act. Hannachi s younger brother, Anis, was arrested in Italy earlier this month. More than 240 people have been killed in France since 2015 in attacks by assailants who pledged allegiance to, or said they were inspired by, the Islamic State group. Earlier this month, the French parliament adopted counter-terrorism legislation to increase police surveillance powers and make it easier to close mosques suspected of preaching hatred - a law which civil rights groups said would infringe on personal freedoms.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly approved a bill to repeal Obamacare, handing Republican President Donald Trump a victory that could prove short-lived as the healthcare legislation heads into a likely tough battle in the Senate. The vote to repeal former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, which enabled 20 million more Americans to get health insurance, was Trump’s biggest legislative win since he took office in January, putting him on a path to fulfilling one of his key campaign promises as well as a seven-year quest by Republican lawmakers. It marked a reversal of fortune for the Republican president who suffered a stunning defeat in late March when House Republican leaders pulled legislation to scrap Obamacare after they and the White House could not resolve the clashing interests of Republican moderates and the party’s most conservative lawmakers. Trump has called Obamacare a “disaster” and congressional Republicans have long targeted the 2010 law, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, calling it government overreach. But despite holding the White House and controlling both houses of Congress, Republicans have found overturning Obamacare politically perilous, partly because of voter fears, loudly expressed at constituents’ town-hall meetings, that many people would lose their health insurance as a result. With Thursday’s 217-213 vote, Republicans obtained just enough support to push the legislation through the House, sending it to the Senate for consideration. No Democratic House members voted for the bill. Democrats say it would make insurance unaffordable for those who need it most and leave millions more uninsured. They accuse Republicans of seeking tax cuts for the rich, partly paid for by cutting health benefits. The legislation, called the American Health Care Act, is by no means a sure thing in the Senate, where the Republicans hold a slender 52-48 majority in the 100-seat chamber and where only a few Republican defections could sink it. As Republicans crossed over the vote threshold to pass the bill, Democrats in the House began singing “Na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye,” a rowdy suggestion that Republicans will lose seats in the 2018 congressional elections because of their vote. Within an hour of the vote, Trump celebrated with House lawmakers in the White House Rose Garden. “I went through two years of campaigning and I’m telling you, no matter where I went, people were suffering so badly with the ravages of Obamacare,” Trump said. “We are going to get this passed through the Senate. I am so confident.” PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS The treatment of people with “pre-existing” conditions was one of the central issues in the House debate on the bill and is sure to resurface in the Senate. Obamacare prevented insurers from charging those with pre-existing conditions higher rates, a common practice before its implementation. It also required them to cover 10 essential health benefits such as maternity care and prescription drugs. The Republican bill passed on Thursday would allow states to opt out of those provisions. While insurers could not deny people insurance because of pre-existing conditions, they would be allowed to charge them as much as they want. In an analysis released on Thursday, healthcare consultancy and research firm Avalere Health said the Republican bill would cover only 5 percent of enrollees with pre-existing conditions in the individual insurance markets. Republicans have argued that their bill would give people more choice and reduce the role of government. In a push to pass the bill before members leave on Friday for a week in their home districts, the House voted before the bill was assessed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimates its cost and effect on insurance rolls. Republicans have said the bill will be scored by the CBO and other fixes will be made before the Senate votes. Health insurers, such as Anthem Inc, UnitedHealth Group Inc, Aetna Inc and Cigna Corp, have faced months of uncertainty over healthcare’s future. So have hospital companies, such as HCA Holdings Inc and Tenet Healthcare Corp. Obamacare expanded Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, provided income-based tax credits to help the poor buy insurance on individual insurance markets set up by the law, and required everyone to buy insurance or pay a penalty. The Republican bill would repeal most Obamacare taxes, which paid for the law, roll back the Medicaid expansion and slash the program’s funding, repeal the penalty for not purchasing insurance and replace the law’s tax credits with flat age-based credits. In a sign of the challenges ahead for the legislation, nearly every major medical group, including the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association, and the AARP advocacy group for older Americans, strongly opposed the Republican bill. Many said last-minute amendments further eroded protection for the most vulnerable groups, including the sick and elderly. “I’ve already made clear that I don’t support the House bill as currently constructed because I continue to have concerns that this bill does not do enough to protect Ohio’s Medicaid expansion population,” said Republican Senator Rob Portman. While the bill’s fate in the Senate is uncertain, its House passage could boost Trump’s hopes of pushing through other big-ticket items on his agenda, such as tax reform. The previous failure to overhaul healthcare legislation had raised questions about how much Republicans could work together to help Trump fulfill his campaign pledges. “Anything that they (the Republicans) get done, that they accomplish, popular or unpopular, will show that they have the ability to make progress and to get things done and work together,” said Randy Frederick, vice president trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas. “This puts the idea of tax reform a little bit closer to reality, simply because it’s shown that they have figured out a way to negotiate and work together,” he added.

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CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has called for an urgent meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo next week to discuss Iran s intervention in the region, an official league source told Egypt s MENA state news agency on Sunday. The call came after the resignation of Lebanon s prime minister pushed Beirut back into the center of a rivalry between Sunni kingdom Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran and heightened regional tensions.

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