McClatchy
NRA lawyer said to have had concerns about group’s ties to Russia
Congressional investigators have learned that a longtime attorney for the National Rifle Association expressed concerns about the group’s ties to Russia and possible involvement in channeling Russian money into the 2016 elections to help Donald Trump, two sources familiar with the matter say.
Cleta Mitchell, a former NRA board member who has done legal work for the organization, is on a newly disclosed list of people whom Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are seeking to interview. Democratic investigators for that committee’s Senate counterpart also are interested in what she may know about relationships between the NRA or its allies and wealthy Russians, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The sources declined to detail the specific nature of the information prompting investigators’ interest in Mitchell, a prominent gun rights champion, election law specialist and veteran conservative operative.
Mitchell told McClatchy in an email that any suggestion she has concerns about the NRA's Russia connections is a "complete fabrication."
As U.S. indicts foreign hackers, American cyber spies fear arrests in tit-for-tat action
Federal prosecutors call it a “naming and shaming” strategy against hackers working for adversary nations, but former U.S. cyber spies worry they will be the ones ending up in a foreign prison.
Repeatedly in recent years, U.S. prosecutors have filed criminal charges against hackers working for foreign governments, saying that even if the hackers never get hauled into a U.S. courtroom, the indictments serve as a warning shot across the bow of nations like China, Iran and Russia.
Now, a handful of former employees of the National Security Agency say they worry about retaliatory action. They say foreign nations may charge U.S. cyber warriors with crimes.
The Washington Post
Trump decides to remove national security adviser, and others may follow
Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.
Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said.
The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration by Trump that is likely to include senior officials at the White House, where staffers are gripped by fear and uncertainty as they await the next move from an impulsive president who enjoys stoking conflict.
Thousands of people streamed out of the Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus on Thursday in the first exodus from that besieged enclave, after Syrian forces stormed a town in the biggest remaining rebel stronghold near the capital.
The throngs swarming out of the town of Hammouriya foreshadowed the chaos that may lie ahead as loyalist forces advance into the remaining rebel-held areas, home to an estimated 393,000 people, according to the United Nations.
The departures came after an overnight blitz of airstrikes that left civilians and fighters scrambling to escape, residents and human rights monitors reported. Syrian state television said 10,000 people had fled to government-held territory by midafternoon. An equal number of people fled in the other direction, racing across fields to remain behind rebel lines because they feared being detained by the government, residents said.
House Democrats say they have proof State Dept. staff was pushed out over disloyalty to Trump
Two top House Democrats said Thursday that they have proof the Trump administration engaged in an intentional effort to rid the State Department of career officials they suspected of being “disloyal” to President Trump, citing documents a whistleblower gave to the panel.
The ranking Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Government Reform committees sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, writing that they received documents “indicating that high-level officials at the White House and State Department worked with a network of conservative activists to conduct a ‘cleaning’ of employees they believed were not sufficiently ‘supportive’ of President Trump’s agenda.”
The Guardian
Allies back UK to condemn Russia over Salisbury nerve agent attack
International pressure on Russia following the Salisbury nerve agent attack has been strongly ratcheted up, with Britain, the US, France and Germany jointly condemning an “assault on UK sovereignty”, as Washington boosted its own sanctions on Moscow.
With Russia still promising retaliation to the expulsion of 23 of its diplomats from the UK, Theresa May’s frantic telephone diplomacy in the wake of the attack seemed to have coalesced the UK’s allies into a united response.
The joint statement from May, Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel dispensed with any earlier equivocation to say there was “no plausible alternative explanation” for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, other than Russian action.
Who owns water? The US landowners putting barbed wire across rivers
As Scott Carpenter and a few friends paddled down the Pecos river in New Mexico last May, taking advantage of spring run-off, the lead boater yelled out and made a swirling hand motion over his head in the universal signal to pull over to shore. The paddlers eddied out in time to avoid running straight through three strings of barbed wire obstructing the river.
Swinging in the wind, the sign hanging from the fence read “PRIVATE PROPERTY: No Trespassing”.
One member of their party waded into the swift water to lift the wire with a paddle for the others to float under. As they continued downstream, Carpenter, a recreational boater from Albuquerque, looked over his shoulder a see a figure standing outside the big ranch house up the hill. He offered a wave, but received nothing in return.
It’s a scene playing out with increasing frequency in New Mexico, where a recent bid to legally privatize streams has public users like Carpenter more than a little alarmed, not least for the precedent it might set beyond the borders of this western state.
Trump Organization 'negotiated with sanctioned Russian bank in 2016'
Donald Trump’s private company was “actively negotiating” a business deal in Moscow with a sanctioned Russian bank during the 2016 election campaign, according to a memo by Democratic lawmakers investigating possible collusion between the campaign and the Kremlin.
The statement by Democrats on the House intelligence committee, who have had access to internal Trump Organization documents and interviewed key witnesses, raises new questions about the Trump Organization’s financial ties to Russia and its possible willingness to deal with a bank that had been placed under US sanctions.
Trump has personally denied that he ever had business dealings with Russia. In a tweet that was published shortly before his 2016 inauguration, he said he had “nothing to do with Russia – no deals, no loans, no nothing”.
Los Angeles Times
California considers lower taxes on pot to help new legal industry compete with black market
Alarmed that California's fledgling legal marijuana industry is being undercut by the black market, a group of lawmakers proposed Thursday to reduce state taxes for three years on growing and selling cannabis to allow licensed sellers to get on their feet.
With many California license holders claiming they can't compete because of high state and local taxes, the new legislation would cut the state excise tax from 15% to 11% and suspend a cultivation tax that charges $148 per pound.
Mueller seeks documents from Trump Organization, signaling possible scrutiny of the president's business dealings
The Russia investigation has landed squarely in the sleek black Manhattan skyscraper where President Trump made his mark as a freewheeling real estate developer more than three decades ago.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III reportedly issued a subpoena to the Trump Organization in recent weeks, seeking an array of documents, including some related to Russia. […]
Mueller is seeking to determine if anyone from Trump's team cooperated with Russian efforts to meddle in the presidential race, and his investigators have asked witnesses about a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 between a Kremlin-backed lawyer and three of Trump's top aides — his eldest son Donald Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
Reuters
U.S. accuses Iran of trying to influence Iraq's election
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis accused Iran on Thursday of “mucking around” in Iraq’s May parliamentary election, in which Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is seeking another term after a successful, U.S.-backed war against Islamic State militants.
The ballot will decide Iraq’s leader for the next four years, when Baghdad will be faced with rebuilding cities and towns seized from Islamic State, preventing the militants’ return and addressing the sectarian and economic divisions that fueled the conflict.
Among Abadi’s challengers are former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Hadi al-Amiri, a former transportation minister – both of whom are among Iran’s closest allies in neighboring Iraq.
U.S. military discloses firefight in Niger in December
U.S. and Niger troops killed 11 Islamist militants from a Boko Haram splinter group in a firefight in December, the U.S. military said on Thursday, publicly acknowledging a previously unreported incident.
The fight took place two months after four American and four local soldiers were killed in Niger, and could prompt further questions about the extent of the little-reported U.S. mission in West Africa.
“During a mission in the Lake Chad Basin region the morning of Dec. 6, a combined force of Nigerien and U.S. military members came under fire from a formation of violent extremists,” United States Africa Command (Africom) said in a statement.
U.S. sanctions Russians for meddling, but not Putin's oligarchs
The United States slapped sanctions on Russian individuals and entities for U.S. election meddling and cyber attacks but put off targeting oligarchs and government officials close to President Vladimir Putin, prompting lawmakers in both parties to say… Donald Trump needs to do much more. […]
Along with imposing sanctions on 19 individuals and five entities including Russian intelligence services, the Trump administration publicly blamed Moscow for the first time for a campaign of cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the U.S. power grid including nuclear facilities. […]
But congressional critics called the administration’s action a woefully inadequate retaliation for Russia interference in the 2016 U.S. election and other actions.
Deutsche Welle
Ukraine accuses war hero lawmaker of planning attack on parliament
Ukrainian General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko on Thursday accused a lawmaker who became a national hero after being released from Russian jail of planning a terrorist attack targeting parliament.
"The investigation has irrefutable proof that Nadiya Savchenko … personally planned, personally recruited, personally gave instructions about how to commit a terrorist act here, in this chamber," Lutsenko told parliamentarians.
He claimed that Savchenko planned to use grenades and mortar launchers to destroy parliament and "finish off the survivors with automatic rifles."
Savchenko welcomed the allegations, saying she supports a military coup against President Petro Poroshenko and his government.
Lessons for the US from My Lai, 50 years after the massacre
On March 16, 1968, a young company of soldiers dropped in on a densely populated area on the northeastern coast of South Vietnam with instructions to launch an assault against Viet Cong fighters. Instead, they found civilians. The US troops butchered women, elderly men and children, cutting off hands, slitting throats and murdering villagers with gunfire and grenades.
The US Army covered up the killings and painted the event as a victory. The American public only learned of the event more than a year later when freelance reporter Seymour Hersh blew the lid off the story and the My Lai massacre became a byword for American atrocities abroad. […]
In the end, six of the men from the company were court-martialed and only one — Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr. — was convicted of personally murdering 22 people. The official Vietnamese count of the dead in My Lai and neighboring hamlets is inscribed on a black marble wall at the site with the names of 504 people, ranging in age from infants to people in their 80s.
The Telegraph
Suitcase spy poisoning plot: nerve agent 'was planted in luggage of Sergei Skripal's daughter'
The nerve agent that poisoned the Russian spy Sergei Skripal was planted in his daughter’s suitcase before she left Moscow, intelligence agencies now believe.
Senior sources have told the Telegraph they are convinced the Novichok nerve agent was hidden in the luggage of Yulia Skripal, the double agent’s 33-year-old daughter.
They are working on the theory that the toxin was impregnated in an item of clothing or cosmetics or else in a gift that was opened in his house in Salisbury, meaning Miss Skripal was deliberately targeted to get at her father.
Deal to prevent post-Brexit grounding of US flights possible by end of month
A deal to prevent a post-Brexit grounding of flights to the US could be struck as early as this month in a major breakthrough for the aviation industry.
Fears had been stoked in reports last week that American negotiators were putting unnecessary hurdles in the way of an agreement which would allow UK airlines to keep flying to the US once Brexit takes effect.
But Nick Calio, the chief executive of Airlines for America, whose members represent more than 90pc of US airline passenger and cargo traffic, rubbished the claims and added a deal was imminent.
The Sydney Morning Herald
'Game changer': New vulnerability to climate change in ocean food chain
Excessive rates of carbon dioxide affects the health of key micro-organisms in the oceans, potentially undermining the base of critical marine food chains, according to new research by US scientists.
A team of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) applied techniques from the emerging field of synthetic biology to understand how ocean acidification from the absorption of CO2 is affecting tiny plants known as phytoplankton.
Phytoplankton are not only a key food source for global fisheries, they are also important to the removal of CO2, much like how trees absorb the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. […]
“Ultimately our study reveals the possibility of a ‘feedback mechanism’ operating in parts of the ocean where iron already constrains the growth of phytoplankton,”said Jeff McQuaid, lead author of the study who made the discoveries as a PhD student at Scripps Oceanography.
Warmer Arctic winters linked to more 'Snowzillas' in US north-east
The warming Arctic Ocean is linked to a two-to four-fold increase in the frequency of severe winter storms in the eastern US, according to a new study by American scientists.
The massive storms regularly get dubbed evocative names such as "Snowzilla" or "Snowcopalypse" when they hit populated regions such as New York, stirring debate over the role of climate change.
The new study, published Wednesday in Nature Communications, noted human-induced global warming was "widely expected to increase certain weather extremes, including more intense and frequent heat waves and droughts".
"Surprisingly, however, over the past two or three decades, the increase in extreme weather has included more (not fewer) severe cold-air outbreaks and heavy snowfalls observed both in North America and Eurasia," the paper said.
Xinhua
China hopes to constructively address trade disputes with America: FM
China hopes to address bilateral trade issues with the United States in a constructive manner and by way of making a bigger cake of cooperation, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
Spokesman Lu Kang made the remarks when asked for comment on the latest announcement of the U.S., which pressed China to cut its trade surplus with the U. S. by 100 billion dollars.
"We will never accept those rules unilaterally imposed by any country," said Lu, adding that China has always abided by the rule-based multilateral trading system with WTO at its core and has complied with bilateral and multilateral trade and investment arrangements reached with relevant countries.
The Globe and Mail
Zimbabwe’s Mugabe complains coup was ‘illegal’ and a ‘disgrace’
A bitter and defiant Robert Mugabe, admitting he has fallen into isolation since he was toppled from power in Zimbabwe’s military coup, has hinted that he might support an opposition party in an election this year.
The 94-year-old former dictator, speaking to the media for the first time since the military takeover in November, was a frail and lonely figure in his luxurious mansion as he complained that the coup was “illegal” and a “disgrace.”
Mr. Mugabe said he was betrayed by his long-time comrade, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who won the support of the military and swiftly ascended to the presidency after the coup.
B.C. launches study to measure impact of natural gas fracking
The B.C. government has launched a long-awaited scientific review of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, with the Energy Minister saying she wants “to get to the truth of the matter” of issues surrounding the controversial practice.
But the NDP’s partners in government, the BC Green Party, immediately denounced the effort as a waste of time and a substitute for “appropriate action” to deal with concerns that the practice may be linked to earthquakes in province.
In fracking, fluids are injected deep underground to shatter rock and release trapped oil and natural gas. While a boon for the energy sector, it has raised fears about groundwater contamination and increased seismic activity.
Ars Technica
Modern humans interbred with Denisovans more than once
For a brief period in our species’ history, we shared our world with other sapient humans, closely related to us but distinct. We don’t know much about how our ancestors interacted with these other now-extinct hominins, but we know that at least some of those interactions were pretty intimate, because many modern humans now carry traces of DNA from Neanderthals and another ancient hominin group called Denisovans.
Most modern people of European and Asian descent carry between one- and three-percent Neanderthal DNA, and most people of Asian and Oceanian descent carry about one- to five-percent Denisovan DNA. Because Neanderthals and Denisovans arose outside Africa, the ancestors of modern African people would never have encountered them, although researchers have suggested that a so-far unidentified hominin species in Africa mingled with our ancestors there, so all of us may carry traces of that distant relative as well.
These weren’t isolated incidents. The genetic legacy that many of us now carry is probably the mark of years of sustained contact between two groups. Consistent with that, it now turns out that humans may have had contact with Denisovans not just at one place and time, but two.
Research hints at tipping point in the Atlantic’s currents
All of the world's oceans have a similar pattern of currents. Surface waters warm near the equator, then flow toward the poles, where they cool and sink. The cold, dense bottom water makes its way back to restart the cycle. This pattern has particular significance in the North Atlantic, where the flow of warm surface water helps moderate the climate of Northern Europe, parts of which might otherwise resemble Greenland.
A lot of people have pondered whether the warming induced by climate change could interfere with this conveyor belt, preventing the water that nears the Arctic from cooling and sinking. Most analyses, however, suggest that this could only happen after the world had warmed enough that Europe wouldn't need the currents to moderate its temperature.
A new study, however, suggests that there's a tipping point for the Atlantic conveyor that could be reached much sooner. It only relies indirectly on warm temperatures; instead, it is driven by the melting of the Greenland Icecap. And the new research suggests we've already gone nearly halfway to the tipping point.