Google has become the latest firm to change its gun emoji to resemble a water pistol, falling in line with most other platforms, including Apple, Samsung, WhatsApp and Twitter.Amid a particularly fervent period in the US anti-gun movement, led by the Floridian students of Stoneman Douglas high school caught up in a mass shooting earlier this year, users of Google-owned products and services will soon see the gun emoji rendered as a bright orange water pistol. That includes smartphones updated to the upcoming Android 9.0 “P” due for release in May.Apple first transformed its gun emoji from a realistic looking silver revolver into a green water pistol in 2016 after a succession of high-profile US shootings and pressure from activists, to a mostly positive response (“not political correctness gone mad; smart”, was one Guardian writer’s opinion).However, users also pointed out that the unilateral change could cause problematic confusion when Apple’s iOS users sent a water-pistol emoji, which when viewed by other mobile users would still appear as a lifelike gun. The problem was exacerbated when, at the same time as Apple’s water pistol was introduced, Microsoft moved in the opposite direction, changing its zap-gun style into a realistic revolver. At the time the company said: “Our intent with every glyph is to align with the global Unicode standard, and the previous design did not map to industry designs or our customers’ expectations of the emoji definition.”Speaking on the Emoji Wrap podcast in 2016, Google’s product manager Agustin Fonts was also hesitant about shifting to a water pistol to remain “as compatible with other systems as possible”.Emojis are approved by the Unicode Consortium, the industry body which oversees software standards and developments, but tech platforms are at liberty to introduce their own designs of approved glyphs.Apple’s standalone shift has become less problematic however, with WhatsApp following its lead in 2017 and swapping the gun for a toy rendition, and Samsung and Twitter making the change in 2018. Facebook has announced that it will also make the switch across the remainder of its products soon.In 2016, a hunting rifle emoji proposed by the Unicode Consortium as part of an Olympic Games set was shot down, with efforts led by Apple and Microsoft. Unicode Consortium president Mark Davis said that “there was consensus to remove them”, while a Gun Control Network spokesperson said: “All those who have been traumatised by gun threats and gun violence will be grateful for this significant gesture of respect and support.”Despite its opposition to the rifle emoji however, Microsoft remains the most prominent mainstream tech company to have not changed the revolver to a water-pistol emoji, nor commented on any plans to. A bomb, knife and swords remain part of current emoji sets. Topics Emojis Smartphones Google Android Alphabet Software Mobile phones news

Even before the release of his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” the White House, working in concert with the Republican National Committee, began an all-out campaign to besmirch “Lyin’ Comey” — the name of a website the party created to make the case — as dishonest, self-serving and driven by partisanship. But with his one-liners and cutting asides about the president, Mr. Comey only appeared to play into the hands of allies of Mr. Trump, who are eager to paint the former F.B.I. director as just another figure working for the president’s defeat.And Mr. Comey has drawn bipartisan criticism with his latest efforts to explain — and, to some degree, recast — his much-criticized handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Mark Mellman, a longtime Democratic pollster, said Mr. Comey’s standing had been undermined by the one-two punch of liberal attacks over his role in the 2016 election and the more recent assault led by Mr. Trump and his Republican allies.“Trump has tried to define him as a bad operator, and the problem for Comey is that you can quote a lot of Democrats saying the same,” Mr. Mellman said.At this point, it seems unlikely that Mr. Comey’s book or his performance in interviews to promote it will sway public opinion in a country that is already intensely polarized along partisan lines. Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have been similar for months, and the roughly 40 percent of Americans who support him have proven remarkably unshakable, while the 56 percent who disapprove will probably not change their views on Mr. Comey's account.While Mr. Comey is sure to captivate the public for a few days with his biting descriptions of the president and dramatic of interactions with him, the combination of the supercharged news cycle and the looming — and far more consequential — investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel probing Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, is sure to eventually overshadow his memoir.“It keeps the story of cover-ups and corruption on the public radar while Mueller is doing his investigation, but Comey is just a pit stop along the way of that,” said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist. “Much to Comey’s chagrin, his moment has passed. There’s nothing in this book we don’t already know. He just adds one more hole to a ship that’s already sinking.”Mr. Comey plainly considers himself to be a figure who is above the political fray, driven and guided solely by facts. His friends and advisers say he wants the book to stir a conversation about the value of honesty.

Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell is under investigation over allegations that she tried to force players to compete despite serious injuries and made a series of racially insensitive remarks, including telling her players they would be “hanged from trees with nooses” if they didn’t improve, according to a Washington Post report published on Thursday citing seven people with knowledge of the probe.Hatchell’s attorney, Wade Smith, said on Thursday that players misconstrued comments she made as racist and that she wouldn’t try to force someone to play without clearance from medical staff.The school placed Hatchell and her coaching staff on paid administrative leave Monday amid player concerns while a law firm conducts a review of the program. The Post, citing six unnamed parents of players, said complaints were about inappropriate racial comments and players being pushed to play while hurt.In a statement to the Associated Press, Smith says Hatchell “does not have a racist bone in her body” and “cares deeply about (players’) health and well-being”.School spokesman Steve Kirschner said Monday in a statement that the review is “due to issues raised by student-athletes and others”. He did not specify what those issues were.He said the university has hired a Charlotte-based law firm to conduct the review and “assess the culture” of the program. He said there was no timetable but added the review will be “thorough and prompt”.In a statement on Monday, Hatchell said she will cooperate fully with the review.“I’ve had the privilege of coaching more than 200 young women during my 44 years in basketball,” Hatchell said. “My goal has always been to help them become the very best people they can be, on the basketball court and in life.“I love each and every one of the players I’ve coached and would do anything to encourage and support them. They are like family to me. I love them all.”Hatchell, a 2013 Hall of Fame inductee, is the winningest women’s basketball coach in Atlantic Coast Conference history. She has a career record of 1,023-405 and is 751-325 mark in 33 years at UNC with a national title in 1994.The 67-year-old icon became the third women’s coach in Division I with 1,000 career victories in 2017, made her 23rd career NCAA tournament appearance last month and is the only coach with national championships at three levels – AIAW, NAIA and NCAA.She was diagnosed with leukemia in 2013, underwent chemotherapy through March 2014 and returned the following season to lead the Tar Heels to a 26-9 finish. The program also spent several seasons under the shadow of the school’s multi-year NCAA academic case dealing with irregular courses featuring significant athlete enrollments across numerous sports, a case that reached a no-penalty conclusion in October 2017.Hatchell received a contract extension in September 2016 that runs through the end of next season.North Carolina went 18-15 this season with upsets of top-10 teams North Carolina State and defending national champions Notre Dame, who are playing in this weekend’s Final Four. The Tar Heels lost to California in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the first trip there since 2015. Topics College basketball North Carolina College sports US sports Basketball

Over the next couple of days, Mr. Trump pestered Mr. McGahn about the firing, but Mr. McGahn would not tell Mr. Rosenstein. The badgering by the president got so bad that Mr. McGahn wrote a resignation letter and was prepared to quit. It was only after Mr. McGahn made it known to senior White House officials that he was going to resign that Mr. Trump backed down.The articles that provoked Mr. Trump’s anger in December — which were published by Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters — said one of Mr. Mueller’s subpoenas had targeted Mr. Trump’s and his family’s banking records at Deutsche Bank. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who have studied Mr. Trump’s bank accounts, did not believe the articles were accurate because Mr. Trump did not have his money there.The lawyers were also able to learn that federal prosecutors in a different inquiry had issued a subpoena for entities connected to the family business of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The news outlets later clarified the articles, saying that the subpoena to Deutsche Bank pertained to people affiliated with Mr. Trump, who was satisfied with the explanation and dropped his push to fire Mr. Mueller.The White House did not respond to an email seeking comment.Acutely conscious of the threat Mr. Mueller’s investigation poses, Mr. Trump has openly discussed ways to shut it down. Each time, he has been convinced by his lawyers and advisers that taking the step would only exacerbate his problems. In some cases, they have explained to Mr. Trump how anything that causes him to lose support from congressional Republicans could further imperil his presidency.But Mr. Trump’s statements to his advisers have been significant enough to attract attention from Mr. Mueller himself. Mr. Mueller’s investigators have interviewed current and former White House officials and have requested documents to understand whether these efforts show evidence the president is trying to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Trump’s frustrations have tended to flare up in response to developments in the news, especially accounts of appearances of witnesses, whom Mr. Trump feels were unfairly and aggressively approached by investigators. They include his former communications director, Hope Hicks, and his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.The venting has usually been dismissed by his advisers, many of whom insist they have come to see the statements less as direct orders than as simply how the president talks, and that he often does not follow up on his outbursts.One former adviser said that people had become conditioned to wait until Mr. Trump had raised an issue at least three times before acting on it. The president’s diatribes about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Mr. Rosenstein and the existence of the special counsel have, for most of the White House aides, become a dependable part of the fabric of life working for this president.

As the 2020 election approaches, it appears likely that we won’t get to see President Donald Trump’s tax returns anytime soon.House Democrats are becoming increasingly resigned to the idea that the battle over the president’s taxes will be a long slog, according to a report from Jeff Stein, Rachael Bade, and Jacqueline Alemany at the Washington Post. The White House has signaled it’s prepared to fight back at every turn. The court battle over Trump’s federal returns, even if Democrats do prevail, will probably drag on for months. And Democrats haven’t even asked for the president’s state tax returns from New York, which in July passed a law that would allow three congressional tax committees to request them.How to go about getting Trump’s tax returns — and whether House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-MA), who is leading such efforts, is doing enough — has been a matter of debate on the left for months. It is emblematic of a growing feeling among some progressives that Democrats have been too hesitant to take Trump to task since taking back the House in the 2018 midterm elections. The White House’s resistance efforts have worked better than expected, and the Democrats’ strategy has not.Trump’s tax returns have been treated as a Holy Grail that would unlock the secrets of his wealth and, depending on where you fall on the political spectrum, potentially reveal him as a fraud or as having unsavory ties to foreign interests. If that were the case, it could be an important weapon again him in his reelection campaign — but it looks like Democrats aren’t going to have it.On the federal level, Democrats have invoked Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, a statute dating back to 1924, to try to get the president’s returns. It authorizes a handful of congressional committees, including Ways and Means, to get the tax return information of any taxpayer from the Treasury Department. That, conceivably, means the president’s as well. There’s debate about whether those returns could then be made public, but the committees, at least, are supposed to be allowed to request and access them. (I have a full explainer on the legal plan and how it’s supposed to work.)Democrats asked the IRS for the president’s tax returns in April and in the months leading up to that spent time trying to build a case that leadership says they believe will have a better chance of standing up in court. They want to show that they are requesting the tax returns out of legitimate legislative and oversight duties, not as part of some partisan fishing expedition. As expected, the Treasury Department has declined Democrats’ request, and in July, they sued to get them. As the Post notes, the judge currently assigned the case is a Trump appointee, which might not bode well for the Democrats’ case.“The law doesn’t leave any wiggle room, so if the judge does his job, he can resolve the thing in a minute and give Congress the returns. If the judge is a shameless political hack, then it’s another story,” one Democratic aide told Vox.Whatever decision comes down will likely be appealed, possibly up to the Supreme Court.On the matter of the state tax returns, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that would let Ways and Means and two other congressional tax committees request someone’s state tax returns from the New York State Commissioner of the Department of Taxation and Finance. Trump subsequently filed a lawsuit to block New York from releasing his tax returns. But here’s the thing: House Democrats never asked for them in the first place. Neal has been criticized for moving slowly on trying to get Trump’s federal tax returns, and there’s been some head-scratching around his decision not to pursue the state ones at all. The Massachusetts Democrat told Bloomberg in June that his committee doesn’t “have jurisdiction over New York taxes.” He appears to be worried that going after the state taxes would make the federal request look too partisan and potentially weaken his case. Some Democrats have backed his prudent approach. Others are encouraging him to move faster, including Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), an early proponent of going after Trump’s tax returns. “The American people deserve to know if their president is a crook,” he said in a statement after the New York law was passed in July. Neal has also attracted a primary challenger for his 2020 reelection, 30-year-old Holyoke, Massachusetts, Mayor Alex Morse. “[Neal is] the one person that has the authority in Washington to get Trump’s state tax returns from New York, and he’s the one person standing in the way,” Morse recently told me.Neal’s office did not return a request for comment in this story.Beyond the ins and outs of the specific battle over the president’s tax returns, the broader question is that of expectation versus reality when it comes to what Democrats can and will accomplish in terms of investigations, subpoenas, and even impeachment now that they’re in control of the House. The White House has stonewalled many efforts to request documents and interviews, and Democrats have been slower than anticipated to launch probes in the first place. Impeachment has become an especially contentious topic in the wake of the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation. More than half of House Democrats now support opening an impeachment inquiry into the president, but members of leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have been hesitant to move forward and warned that such a move could backfire.Complicating matters more are comments from House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in early August that impeachment proceedings were already underway. “The fact is we are doing an investigation. We are investigating the facts. We’re investigating the evidence,” Nadler said in an interview on CNN. (As Vox’s Andrew Prokop explained, it’s not clear anything materially different is happening on impeachment than there was before.)House Democrats are in a tough spot when it comes to holding Trump accountable. They were propelled back into power, in large part, on hopes that they would be able to take the president to task. Doing so has proven easier said than done for a number of reasons. Democrats waiting for a treasure trove of information they believe will be in the president’s tax returns might be waiting a long time, even forever.

Enlarge this image James Comey at NPR's New York bureau. Elias Williams for NPR hide caption toggle caption Elias Williams for NPR James Comey at NPR's New York bureau. Elias Williams for NPR Nearly a year after President Trump fired James Comey, the former FBI director is out with a new memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, And Leadership. Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep and NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson talked to Comey about his book, his role in shaping the outcome of the 2016 election and where the FBI's credibility stands. Here's the full transcript of their conversation.Steve Inskeep: You recount a number of instances in your career where it could be said that you were effectively paying lip service to what your bosses wanted while subtly trying to do something else. Is that the essence of the job in law enforcement as you see it right now?You have to give me particulars, since I don't see the pattern that you see.Inskeep: You don't see — well let's talk about the pattern. 2004, very famous case — John Ashcroft was the attorney general, you're the deputy attorney general, and you have an effort by the White House to get Ashcroft to sign a surveillance order and your role was effectively to prevent that from happening. You were doing something other than what the White House would have wanted. We could discuss — and we are going to discuss — when you were serving under the attorney general of President Obama, Loretta Lynch. So that's why I asked that question, is that a big part of the job as you see it? The reason I'm confused I don't get your reference to lip service. In 2004 it was about leading the Justice Department when it was saying that we couldn't certify to the legality of particular surveillance activities, and then defending that judgment.Inskeep: But the White House wanted you to do that. That's why I'm --Sure, they'd have probably been happier if I had paid lip service, but no, that was about trying to --Inskeep: You disagree with the way I phrased it, but have I gotten something there? Part of your job as a senior law enforcement official is not always to do what you're asked to do. I think that's right. I think that's fair and it's to represent the values of the institution that you work in and that you lead.Inskeep: Well, let's talk about that incident in 2004, since it is well-known. An incident in which there was pressure for a surveillance order to be signed, and you were among those that didn't want it to be signed. Who were you standing up for, or what were you standing up for in that instance? Standing up most immediately for the Justice Department, and in a broader sense for the rule of law. The Justice Department's role there was to say what the law was and what it could reasonably support with respect to the surveillance activities, and some very smart lawyers in the Justice Department had taken a look at this activity and concluded they couldn't advance reasonable legal bases for a big part of it. And so my job was to represent that view, the department and the law.Inskeep: So you're thinking about the law but also thinking about the institution, protecting the institution that you work for. Correct. Correct. And in that instance it's the Justice Department and so the rule of law and the Justice Department are inextricably bound up.Inskeep: You were praised a lot when that incident came to light years ago for taking the stand that you did. Do you feel you did as well in sticking up for the law and for your institution when it came to the Hillary Clinton email case and the Trump and Russia case? Politics James Comey Says FBI 'Would Be Worse Today' If Not For His Actions Book Reviews In 'A Higher Loyalty,' James Comey Describes An 'Unethical, And Untethered' President Politics The James Comey Saga, In Timeline Form I think so. I think those were more no-win situations. In a way that the 2004 was to my mind — and to the mind of the other lawyers at Justice — pretty clear-cut; simply couldn't find a legal basis to advance, and so it was a much easier question. In the email investigation, in particular, there was never a circumstance where there was a clear good option, there were just bad options and you were choosing between them. So in a way 2004 was easier.Inskeep: Was easier than these cases? You find these to be more complicated. Yeah, yeah.Carrie Johnson: You talk about getting hatred or vitriol from all sides now of the political spectrum, and trying to tune out a lot of those people. But there are people whom you respect who have leveled criticism. People like Jamie Gorelick, a Democrat Justice Department veteran, Larry Thompson, Republican Justice Department veteran, who after your decision to give that news conference in July 2016 wrote that you were damaging the democracy, that the department is an institution, not a person. How do you respond to that? Those feelings have not gone away, in fact, they may have hardened since then.Yeah. And so I try to listen to it, because I could be wrong. I could be reasoning poorly, I could be seeing facts poorly and so I really try. And it's a balance, right? You don't want to listen to all criticism or you'll be overwhelmed and you'll be crushed like a grape. But you want to listen to people that you know to be thoughtful and experienced, and so I've tried to listen to it. I disagree with that, and I hope very much that those people read the book which is — wasn't the purpose I wrote the book, but in telling the stories to try and illustrate the challenges of trying to make decisions in a good way, I'm able for the first time to tell the full story about why I made the decisions I did. And I think if they look at it in an open-minded way, they may come away with a different view.Johnson: The other thing I'm hearing from inside and outside the Justice Department now is that Jim Comey was a pretty darn good prosecutor in his day. If he were a prosecutor now, and one of the people he was likely to use as a witness was out writing books and on a media tour, that would raise a lot of questions about inconsistencies and challenges to the case itself. Why are you talking now?I think that's reasonable. And what I'd say in response is normally, you don't want your witnesses out talking if they're going to have to testify later, and I don't know whether I'll have to testify later — but if I did the advantage in my circumstance is that my testimony is locked down. I testified in front of Congress extensively. I wrote memos, I wrote written testimony, and so long as I continue to tell the truth and don't start making stuff up that's inconsistent with that testimony, I don't see an issue. Again, I don't know whether there's going to be a future proceeding or I'll be needed. But if there is, I think the prosecutors will be OK with me.Inskeep: Let me circle back to the Hillary Clinton case and the decisions that you made there. You mentioned it was a no-win situation. What would you say was your greatest concern when it became clear to you that that email case was going to at some point come down to a decision by you?My greatest concern towards the end of that email investigation — it lasted about a year — towards the end was how does the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, credibly close this investigation without charges and maximize public confidence that it was done in a just way. If it ends without charges. Because by the spring, if it continued on the same course and speed it was on, it looked to me like it was going to end without charges. And the credibility of the institution is important even in ordinary times. But all the more so when you're investigating one of the two candidates for president of the United States. How are you able to maintain public confidence that you're not a partisan, it's not the Obama Justice Department trying to give a break to Hillary Clinton.Inskeep: That's your concern. And so that I guess was behind your decision to make a public statement about the case. Just so the people understand, how would you have closed that case in the ordinary way? Suppose it was an ordinary investigation, you weren't concerned about perceptions of the FBI or the Justice Department, what would the FBI normally have done at the end of this case? In the ordinary case, we would most likely in writing prepare some sort of summary of what our investigation had determined and then send it over to the Justice Department, and they would in the ordinary case either say nothing, which is the most common case, or at most issue a letter to the target saying, or the subject saying it's over, or some minimal statement about it.Inskeep: So you decided to take another path, and decided independently of the attorney general to take another path, to speak in public about it. That's right. By the end of — by the beginning of July I made a decision that to protect the institutions — both the justice institutions, both the Justice Department and the FBI — the least bad alternative was to announce — the attorney general having said she would accept my recommendation rather than recuse herself — announce that recommendation and show transparency to the American people, to try to show them this was done in an independent, honest and competent way, rather than just do it in the normal fashion and just send it over to Justice.Inskeep: Here's the thing that's on my mind, director. You were hoping to demonstrate that the FBI was above political influence. Did you, in your course of action actually allow yourself to be politically influenced? Because you write first that you were concerned about criticism — essentially conspiracy theorizing — about the FBI, from Republicans that President Obama's candidate for president would be cut a break. Later on you talk about this meeting between the Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Clinton. And you say you had no thought that there was any conspiracy there, but after it became a big thing on cable TV, it changed your mind. Were you actually being influenced by cable TV pundits in what you decided to do? Yeah, that's a reasonable question, Steve. I don't think so, and here's why I say that: Even if cable TV punditry had never been born and there were no such thing, there would be intense public interest in a criminal investigation of one of the two candidates for president of the United States. So even if there weren't wings in our politics, which there always have been, but even if there wasn't that punditry, I think it would be an intense interest in knowing that this had been done in an honest, competent, independent way. And a number of things that occurred in the lead-up to that first week in July that led me to conclude, and reasonable people can disagree about this, but led me conclude that the best way to foster that confidence of an intensely interested public was to show transparency and do it separate from the attorney general.Inskeep: Was to not do what the ordinary course of action would be, and not do what your boss wanted? Correct. And what I would say is there wasn't anything ordinary at all about this. The FBI is criminally investigating one of the two candidates for president of the United States in the middle of an election year. I don't think it's ever happened, I pray it never happens again. But anyhow, I saw this as a 500-year flood. And so where's the manual? What do I do? So what I did was looked at the values we're trying to serve — public confidence in the work — and say the best way to protect that, given this unusual collection of circumstances, is to make that announcement, that transparency separately.Inskeep: But this is, and Carrie will have a question here in a moment I believe, but this is a thing that has on my mind based on what you write. You write that you thought it was ridiculous, that's your word, that Bill Clinton would walk across an airplane tarmac to say hi to Loretta Lynch in order to influence the investigation in some way — but that you changed your view after cable TV pundits made a big deal out of it and that that was part of your thinking. Would it perhaps have been a better course of action to resist all that shouting out there and do something closer to what you would normally do?Look, I meant what I said earlier — a reasonable person might have done that. I think that would have been a mistake, because again it wasn't just what had happened that last week of June, it was a collection of things that led me to conclude that the general public would have serious doubts about the integrity of the Obama administration's decision to close an investigation of Hillary Clinton without transparency, given those things that had happened.Johnson: With respect sir, was that your job? Was it your job to worry about those things?Oh, I think so. As the director of the FBI I think my job is to worry about how — despite what your mother told you about not caring what other people think — as the director of the FBI, the public trust is all you have in that institution. And so yes, worrying about that had to be part of the job description of the Department of Justice — I mean, of the leader of the FBI. And a fair criticism is, "so why were you worried about the Department of Justice?" Because we're part of the Department of Justice. And I see that as the institutions of justice, so I do — I probably wouldn't have answered this way, being able to see the future five years ago, but yeah, I do think it was part of my job.Johnson: Well, some people are arguing now that your decision to speak three times last year has produced a situation in which not just the president of the United States but a lot of other people in the country have a lack of confidence in the FBI and the Justice Department, and that it contributed to the sense of politicization and name calling that we're undergoing right now as a country. And I get that. Look, part of the problem is you can't go back and live imaginary lives. I believe, even in hindsight, as painful as this has been even in hindsight, the course we chose was the one best calculated to protect the institutions and the values they stood for. But maybe that's wrong. You can't go back and relive it. I think the institutions would have been in worse shape had we done the normal thing as Steve was asking in July, and certainly if I had chosen not to speak in October.Inskeep: Let me ask about another factor in your thinking as you describe it. You write in the book that there was classified information that you received about your boss, the attorney general, that made you concerned about involving her in your decisions. That that was a factor. You haven't said what the information is. The Washington Post has reported that there was an email connected to Russia somehow about Attorney General Lynch that is believed to be fictitious. And I think you said you investigated and didn't find anything there. But it was a factor in your thinking at the time. Looking back, do you feel that you were played by the Russians there? No. I know that I was not. I can't say more than that. The material that I was concerned about was genuine. But I have no reason to believe the content of it was true. That is, I have no reason to believe — I don't believe that Loretta Lynch did anything improper. My concern was the material will be released that would allow people to reasonably argue that she was compromised. Another brick in the load of my concern about the ability of the department to credibly close that investigation with the confidence of the American people.Inskeep: Your concern was that even if this email was fake it would go out into the public somehow. This information would go out into the public and affect the public's view of the FBI. Yeah — my challenge is I'm leaning as far forward as I can, given the FBI reviewed my book, and I've said as much as I can say.Inskeep: Let's go back and say that classified information, rather than email — you were concerned that even if that classified information was disproven, that it could somehow be leaked and that it would be damaging to the FBI. Yes, that it would allow people to reasonably question whether the investigation was being conducted in a competent, honest and independent way. And that's the challenge again. Just one more brick in the load of the things that led me to believe, "You know, I have to do something unusual here." It's the least bad alternative is to do something separate on July the 5th.Johnson: You memorably lampooned and befriended and spent a great deal of time with David Margolis, a famous Justice Department institution in and of itself, also called the Yoda of the Justice Department. He sadly died in 2016. Before his death, did you seek his counsel on any of these things? Did you seek his counsel before you decided to speak for the Justice Department? What did he tell you, if anything? I'm trying to remember what David's health was come July. I don't remember talking to him about — I have to be careful here. I remember talking to him or having my folks talk to him about certain aspects of this. I did not talk to David about the decision to make the announcement in July.Johnson: What do you think he would have told you?"You're totally screwed, brother." I think that's what he would have said.Inskeep: Why don't you explain who Margolis was. Margolis was the senior career official at the Department of Justice. A lifelong curmudgeon and source of wisdom, who had been on my staff when I was the deputy attorney general, and was the person people went to with hard decisions, to ask them for guidance. And I think he would have said, "You're screwed no matter what you do. In both of these instances you're going to be criticized." And I think he would have heard me out, my thinking. And honestly — it's easy to say because he's not here — but I honestly think he would have said "I think you have reasonable arguments to do what you're doing." Even if he did — he might have said yeah you should do that. But at a minimum he would have said "I get it. I get what you're doing. You're going to the daylights beat out of you."Johnson: You say in this book that on a couple of occasions the Justice Department advised you it was a bad idea to do something, but didn't order you not to, and that you would have followed orders. What kind of confidence, if you were Loretta Lynch or Sally Yates, would you have that you would have followed orders given that you decided to go your own way so many times in 2016 and before? Well twice with the announcement on July the 5th. So it really only once. By the time they're thinking about it in October when I to offer them the opportunity to weigh in. And they decided not to, but not to tell me not to do it. And so I don't know that they look at it and say, "he has a track record of not obeying" — in fact, the one time I was given a direction in connection with this investigation, I obeyed it. I was told call it a "matter."Inskeep: Don't call it a "criminal investigation," call it a "matter." And I did. And I did because it didn't make sense to battle about that. But I think you could look at the track record and say "actually, the guy does what we tell him to do.Inskeep: So you've made it clear that one of your goals was to protect the integrity of the FBI and the Justice Department. Did you? I think so. Better than the alternative. Yes.Inskeep: Do you think the FBI's credibility is better or worse than it was a couple of years ago? It's worse. But again people can disagree about this. And people I respect will. But my judgment is it would be worse today had we not picked the least bad alternatives.Inskeep: You're saying it could have been worse, but that it's nevertheless gone down. I think the decisions that we had to make and lots of other follow-ons, sure, the Department of Justice's and the FBI's reputation has been hurt. It's under daily siege from the current president — so, sure.Inskeep: Can I ask you to parse something that might be really difficult to think about — but you think really, really hard about your decisions so you may have given it some consideration. In addition to your concern about the institution, how much in these decisions were you concerned about your own personal reputation for integrity? That's a great question as well. I've thought about that a ton because one of the questions I would constantly ask myself is, "are you doing this because of you and not the organization?" And the answer is again, how well does do any of us know ourselves especially under pressure? I don't think so. In fact, I could see the future so, so could my wife, and I knew this was going to be very bad for me. This has been bad for me. My reputation has been hurt among people who are Justice Department veterans. And so the honest answer is I don't think so. And the only reason I hesitate is, who really knows themselves that well — but certainly not consciously, and I remember asking the question.Inskeep: But there is that alternative which prosecutors would ordinarily take, of "I'm just going to silently take whatever criticism there is, and people are going to think whatever they think of me and I'm just going to do my job."Oh sure. But you would then, I assume embedded in your question, is "I will not do the thing that I think is best calculated to protect the institution." I think that would be an act of selfishness. To say, "I'm just going to do my job and I'll be silent." Had I been silent, or had I decided in late October I'm not going to speak, I believe I would have done grievous damage to the — would have been better for me personally — probably would have done grievous damage to the institutions.Inskeep: Let me ask a question that plenty of people have posed since 2016, just to hear your answer to it. What is the difference between Clinton email revelations in October just before the election, which you talked about, and the Trump and Russia investigation of the same period, which you chose not to talk about in any way before the election?It's a great question and a totally reasonable question. And the answer is complicated but I'll try and be as tight as I can about it. The policy with respect to investigations is, we don't comment about pending investigations. We don't even confirm their existence unless there is an overriding public interest, and there will not be jeopardy to our investigation from abiding that public interest and making a comment. And so I think the Russia counterintelligence investigations and the Clinton investigation illustrate the rule, believe it or not. The Clinton investigation began in the summer of 2015 with a public referral to the FBI.Inskeep: It was known.Right. There was a public announcement by the inspector general, "I'm giving this to the FBI." Still, we refused to confirm its existence until October the 1st. And we confirmed its existence on October the 1st because there was a great public clamor — including in Congress — to know that the FBI was doing something, and the whole world already knew that we were doing something. And Secretary Clinton was the subject of that investigation, and nothing would be jeopardized by revealing that. That investigation was then announced as closed and completed, by me and by the attorney general, in July of the next year.The Russia investigation — there's two different investigations, there's the intelligence community's effort to understand, in the middle of 2016, what are Russians up to, and how are they trying to mess with our elections? Then there's a separate investigation, begun by the FBI in late July, that's a counterintelligence investigation focused on a small group of Americans, trying to figure out, are they helping the Russians in any way? And one of those Americans was not Donald Trump. He was not the subject of an investigation. And so in late July, we'd just opened that investigation. We were not in a position to say anything about that investigation for many, many months, for two reasons: We didn't know what we had. When people say, "you should have said more about the counterintelligence investigations, what exactly would we say? And second, we did not want to tip off these Americans that we might be onto something, trying to figure out whether they were connected to the Russians. You're going to interrupt, Steve Inskeep.Inskeep: I'm about to interrupt, I suppose, on two counts, one of them being that when it came to Hillary Clinton's emails, the discovery of more emails, possibly, on Anthony Weiner's computer, which led to the public statement there, you also didn't know what you had.Correct.Inskeep: And on the counterintelligence side, there was a public statement about that, and so that was in the public eye, and still you didn't talk about it.No. Well — let me take it backwards. You're mixing, you're mixing two --Inskeep: OK, let's talk about, so, but anyway, you didn't know what you had, but made a statement. But on the other case, you didn't know what you had, and didn't make a statement.Sure, I've lost my "didn'ts."Inskeep: I've lost it too. That's OK.But I think I can answer it. There was great discussion — there was never any serious given consideration by anyone to saying something about the counterintelligence investigations of Americans, not Donald Trump, that started in late July. There was lots of discussion of whether to say something, and what to say, about the broader intelligence community look at what the Russians are doing to mess with our elections. And that debate continued throughout the summer. In August I offered to speak about it, and to tell the American people, "here's what the Russians are up to." Not to talk about the Americans we were trying to figure out whether they were connected to, but the broader Russian assault on our election. And the administration didn't make a decision, didn't make a decision, and then finally in October, decided that they would make a statement about that. Hillary Clinton's emails.Inskeep: You didn't know what you had. That part, yet.I didn't know what I had, except I did know this from the investigative team. It's October the 28th. There are hundreds of thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop, for reasons I couldn't imagine at the time. And not just that, there are thousands of emails from her blackberry.net email domain, which was the domain she used at the beginning, first three months as Secretary of State. We never found any of those emails, and you'll remember, a central issue in the case was intent. I saw no evidence of criminal intent, no intention, no knowledge of wrongdoing, but if it existed, it would likely exist at the beginning, when she started the conduct. And so, we're standing there about to get a search warrant, which the Justice Department agreed we needed to get, for hundreds of thousands of emails, including emails that may change the case. You have announced publicly — and whether or not I had a press conference, this would have been done — you have told the American people you are done in the summer of 2016. That is not true anymore. And so what are your options?Our tradition, our norm — and I keep hearing people talk about our rules, there are no rules on this, but there's an important norm. We take no action if we can avoid it in the run-up to an election if it might have an impact. I've lived that way my entire Justice Department career. So where's the door labeled "no action?" As I saw it — and again, people can disagree — but as I saw it, there were two doors, and they were both actions. Do I speak about this, or do I conceal it? If I speak about it, it'll be really bad. It could have an impact on the election. What's that other option? Conceal it. In my view, it would be catastrophic. That the FBI restarted an investigation that the FBI director and the attorney general told the American people was done and done well, "you can move on, American people, there's no there there," and that's not true anymore, and we don't tell anybody. So which do you choose? And reasonable people can disagree with me about this, but I actually don't think that's that close a call, at least, it wasn't to me. You have to speak. You can't choose the catastrophic option. And so — I'm sorry to run on so long, Steve, but that's how those fit together, and it is a circumstance I never would have imagined. Anthony Weiner's laptop brings back the Clinton case, after we've told the American people it's over? That was a no-win situation where we chose the least bad option.Johnson: If the polls had been closer, or if the people in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia that you came across every day in the newspapers you read and the television reports you saw had characterized the presidential race as much tighter, would you have made a different decision?I don't think so. I don't think so. Because I don't remember consciously thinking about, this is a decision we have to make because of where the polls sit. I don't. In fact, I tried very hard to push away the impact it might have on either of the candidates, because I didn't think that was legitimate for us. But what I've said in the book, which has been much misunderstood, is I'm trying to be introspective and cross-examine myself, because I'm looking back and saying, "you were sitting in an environment where all the polls showed that Hillary Clinton was going to win, could that have influenced you?" And my answer is, of course it could have. But I don't think it would have changed the decision. Catastrophic, conceal, really bad, speak; would have been the case regardless of what the polls say. You could make an argument, I suppose, that if Donald Trump had been up by 30 points, the catastrophic would have been way less. I still think it would have outweighed — the badness in that would have outweighed the badness in the speak option, but the answer is, I don't know for sure, I don't remember thinking about that, and I think I would have made the same decision either way.Johnson: You've written that your wife and your daughters were Hillary Clinton supporters, and in fact, some of them marched the day after the inauguration. What was election night like in your house as the polls came in, as the votes came in and Donald Trump appeared to be the winner of the election?I don't think we talked about it, because my wife knew that I was trying to push away politics. If you were to interview her, and maybe you will at some point, she would say it was kind of bizarre that her husband was trying not to follow the political race.Inskeep: You didn't have the television on, the radio?I think the television was on. I actually think my family was in Connecticut, and I was in my bachelor house in Northern Virginia, so we must have had some communication. But we didn't talk about it a lot, because I knew how passionate she was about wanting the first female president, wanting it to be Hillary Clinton, and so there was nothing good for our marriage in talking about the decisions I'd had to make.Johnson: Yeah, but that was the biggest political upset in modern history, how could you not have talked about that?I'm sure I talked about it. I don't remember talking about it with my wife that night; I'm sure we talked about it at some point, probably that night. But anyway, I remember watching TV, I just don't remember, as I sit here, talking to my wife about it — that could be because she was on the phone in Connecticut, not taking my calls.Johnson: So what did you think when you watched TV?I was surprised that Donald Trump was elected president.Johnson: Did you think maybe the FBI had something to do with that?I hope not. And I still feel that way. I read people arguing that we did, and I sure hope not. It doesn't change how I think about the decision, but it makes it all the more painful. I once said, testifying, that it made me mildly nauseous — to which my daughter said, it should have been "mildly nauseated" — but it makes me sick to my stomach to think that the institution I led and loved, because it has no involvement in politics, might have made a difference. To my mind, it illustrates the no-win nature of the situation, because it wouldn't change my view of the decision.Inskeep: Mr. Comey, you write about the way that you ran the various offices that you supervised, that you encouraged people around you to speak truth to power, so to speak. And you write, "speaking uphill takes courage." Speaking to your boss some uncomfortable truth takes courage. Do you feel that you always spoke uphill in the right way to the new president, once he took office?I think so. There's probably a couple of incidents where I've asked myself, probably I've asked myself publicly, whether I should have been more direct and stronger. And people who love me say I've been too tough on myself. But maybe in one or two instances, with the loyalty pledge --Inskeep: "Honest loyalty" was what you said you would give the president when he asked for loyalty.Yeah. That one I'm not so tough on myself, because his first request for loyalty stunned me, and so all I thought to do was just not move, not even blink, and then by the time he brought it back in the dinner, I'd already given him a couple of interjected little speeches about the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI, and the importance of that distance, and so by the time we had this awkward exchange where he said again he needs loyalty, and I said "you'll always get honesty," and he said, "honest loyalty?" And I made that, sort of to get out of the conversation, said "that's what you'll have from me." I think he fairly understood what I meant, because I'd given him those little lectures in between.Johnson: You know, you write in this book that you have little confidence in the current Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who's overmatched for the job in your view, and you have some very harsh words for the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and that extends in some part to the Russia probe. Is it time for a change in leadership over there? I can't speak to the A.G. because I worked with him. I mean, that was my impression — I'm trying to be honest in the book — that was my impression of him in the, I forget what it was, three weeks, four weeks we worked together. With respect to the deputy attorney general, I think it's very important that he stay, because I do think he has conducted himself honorably with respect to his appointment of a special counsel and his assertion of the importance of that special counsel's work to the rule of law. And so I really do think it would be an attack on the rule of law for him to be fired, or for the special counsel to be fired.Johnson: Speaking of the special counsel, he had a couple of jobs --or at least one job — that you had. In these moments you write about so vividly in the book, the hospital bed standoff in 2004, the fight over enhanced interrogation, harsh interrogation of detainees, torture, Robert Mueller made different decisions than you did often. He decided not to speak. Or when he spoke, to not say as much as you did publicly. And I wonder how you think about that now, given that in those situations he was the FBI director. You were at the Justice Department. You made a different choice when you were at the FBI and somebody else was at the Justice Department. Yeah, that's right, although the situations are very different. The two you're talking about from 2004 and 2005 didn't involve any public speaking at all by anybody. There were struggles within the government. And Bob Mueller was involved in one of them, and met alone with the president and told him he was going to quit. And so I think he spoke very strongly. But all of that was secret. But look, as I try to make clear in the book, reasonable people — including Bob Mueller — might have made different decisions in 2016 about speaking. Different decisions than I, and still made them in a responsible way.Johnson: He still doesn't speak about that stuff, though. You testified on Capitol Hill about it. You've done interviews about it. He still refuses to answer questions about those episodes. Oh, OK, I didn't know that. Is that right? I know his notes from that time, he took extensive personal notes in connection with the hospital incident and the NSA surveillance program which were made public. But I take you at your word.Inskeep: Mr. Comey, I want to ask a little more about some of your meetings with President Trump. After you were fired, of course you testified before Congress about them, and some of the commentary about your testimony said, "Comey has just laid out the case for obstruction of justice. He's put out all of the evidence and the predicates for obstruction of justice." In your book, you describe the meetings again — but then offer your own judgment, which is that this may not amount to obstruction of justice. Why did you go there? Because I don't know the answer. And I don't think — I hope I didn't testify publicly that it was obstruction of justice.Inskeep: You didn't say obstruction of justice. People just felt you were laying out the evidence for it.Oh, I see.Inskeep: But you look at that same evidence and don't see obstruction.Well, because I can't see all of it. And it could be obstruction of justice. It would depend upon what the full scope of the evidence is with respect to intent, because obstruction of justice requires a demonstration of corrupt intent. And I'm just a witness when it comes to that particular incident, the February 14th incident. And so I don't know what the evidence is that the prosecutor and investigators have gathered with respect to intent. It maybe there, it may not be. I just — it doesn't make sense, and I can't responsibly offer an opinion from my vantage pointInskeep: If you were the special counsel, or if you were just a prosecutor as you once were, would it complicate your job if a very prominent, very knowledgeable witness said, "having experienced these events, I'm not sure they are obstruction of justice?"Not necessarily, if he said it. And I think I've said it here, and said it very carefully in the book: I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying I'm a witness, and I see this conduct, it could be obstruction of justice, but I don't know and can't say without a full piece of the picture. So I think my reaction as a prosecutor would be, "that's fine." I wouldn't expect — in fact it will be worse if my witnesses are out there saying "I think" and thinking beyond what their factual experiences.Inskeep: You think you've done better by kind of allowing for both possibilities. Well I think I've been truthful and not tried to overreach. I think it would be an overreach for someone on my part to say, "I know what the evidence is." How would I possibly know what the evidence is? I don't know what communications President Trump's staff were having with him. I don't know what he said to others. I have no visibility into that. So it would be irresponsible to say that. But I also don't want to be a weasel and say, "I don't see any evidence of obstruction of justice," because I do. That conversation is potential evidence.Johnson: Director Comey, can a sitting president be indicted by the Justice Department or a special counsel?I don't know the answer to that. My understanding — and this is just from reading blogs and articles in the media — is that there's an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that's currently alive and well that says that a sitting president can't be. But I don't know enough to give you a view on whether that's a good opinion or not.Inskeep: A couple of other things to ask about, Director Comey. One has been in the news, your former deputy Andrew McCabe, as you know, was fired after an inspector general report found that he authorized communications with a Wall Street Journal reporter in a way that he shouldn't have. McCabe said you gave him permission to do that. Did you? No. I don't think McCabe even says that. I think what McCabe says, because I've read the report, is that he thinks he told me he had done it after he had done it.Inskeep: You have no recollection even of that.No. And I'm quite confident that didn't happen, as is the inspector general.Inskeep: Is it appropriate then that he was fired? That's a judgment I can't make. What is appropriate is that the inspector general did the kind of investigation that that organization did. This is what an organization, an institution committed to the truth, looks like. This is what accountability looks like. There is indications that someone made a false statement. It's pursued, it's investigated and if the inspector general concludes the evidence is sufficient and the leadership does, that person is held accountable. That's what it looks like. The problem with this whole situation is the president's stained those institutions, the entire Department of Justice and the inspector general, by doing something wildly inappropriate, which is calling for Andy McCabe's head. What that did was — and it might be that the president can't imagine an institution that holds people accountable like this — that called into question the entire process. So even if the process was sound, and I've no doubt it was sound given the nature of the people involved in the inspector general's office, there's corrosive doubt about whether it's a political fix to get Andy McCabe somehow. And that's a wound that was inflicted by the president's actions on the Department of Justice.Johnson: I've got a question for you. Oh the last few days of your book tour, some people have argued that you've been stained by your interactions with the president. They don't understand why you engaged in some name-calling of the president and making fun of his appearance and the like in your book, and to them that makes some of the more high-minded points you are trying to convey in the book less powerful. Yeah, they should read the book. Because I'm not making fun of the president. I'm trying to be an author, which I've never been before in my life. But while I'm typing, I can hear my editor's voice ringing in my head, "bring the reader with you. Show them inside your head. Bring them with you."Inskeep: "Describe the president's hands." Can you hear the editor saying that?No, but that was on my mind. And by the way, not that this matters, but I found his hands to be above average in size, and so I'm not making fun of the man, I'm trying to tell the reader what's in my head. And the reason I say I read the whole book is, I hope you will see that richness of detail when I talk about the hospital scene, when I talk about terrible tragedy when my wife and I lost our son Collin. When I talk about President Obama, I talk about how skinny he struck me, as — I'm not trying to make fun of President Obama. I'm trying to show the reader this is how I was experiencing the world, and bring them into those rooms with me. And so I really do think the folks who are picking up on that, it's just a sign to me they haven't read the book.Inskeep: If you were still overseeing the investigation of the president or the people around the president or however we should currently phrase it, what questions would be on your mind?I don't think that I can answer that, because I've been careful in my book not to reveal any details from the investigation. And so I don't want to start framing questions without thinking about it very carefully, Steve.Inskeep: I can give you a moment, it's fine.Yeah, I bet you can!Inskeep: No, seriously, I mean, you're out of it now. You've pointed out that you don't know all the evidence anymore. Maybe there never was a time that you knew all the evidence, because it wasn't your day to day job. What do you wonder about? Well the reason that's so hard is, I would just want to know, do I have quality people and am I aggressively pursuing all logical leads? And I don't have any idea what Bob Mueller's team has found in the last year, and so you need to know that to know what questions you would need to ask next, if that makes sense. And so it's very hard for me to answer in the abstract.Johnson: Some of those members of the team have been getting a bad rap from the president and his allies for almost a year. You've worked with some of those people. What's your impression of their skill and their nonpartisan — or less so — behavior?Bob Mueller has put together an all-star team. An all-star team. And I've read stuff in the paper about some of them have contributed Democrats and some to Republicans, OK. Lots of people in the Department of Justice have political preferences and they even vote — which I didn't do — they even vote. But what they train themselves to do, and been trained to do is they check that at the door. And so I think the American people can have high confidence, if Bob Mueller's team is allowed to do its work, they will find the truth. I don't know what the truth will be. I don't actually care what the truth is, so long as they find it and they're allowed to find it. And he has the talent and the drive to do that.Inskeep: Why have you focused in some of your comments on what you view as the moral fitness of the president to be president?Because I'm very worried. And one of the ways I hope to be useful is having people realize that there's something above our normal fights. We fight like crazy in this country about guns and about social issues and taxes and immigration, and that's as it should be, and it's always been that way. But there's something we all have in common, which is a core set of values that is us as America. Like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, rule of law, equal protection of the laws, the truth. We hold these truths to be self-evident. It's the fourth word of that sentence. So there's a thing, a set of values, that's above our normal fights. And what I'm worried about with this president is, he threatens those. And if we lose those, if those norms are degraded, those values are degraded, what are we exactly? And so I'm hoping that I can be useful in saying to people, it doesn't matter whether the Republican or Democrat or neither. We need to think and talk about those values. And there's a danger.President Trump, I don't follow him on Twitter but I get to see his tweets tweeted, I don't know how many, but some tweets this past couple of days that I should be in jail. The president of the United States just said that a private citizen should be jailed. And I think the reaction of most of us was, "meh, that's another one of those things." This is not normal. This is not OK. There's a danger that we will become numb to it, and we will stop noticing the threats to our norms. The threats to the rule of law and the threats most of all to the truth. And so the reason I'm talking in terms of morality is, those are the things that matter most to this country. And there's a great danger we'll be numbed into forgetting that, and then only a fool would be consoled by some policy victory.Inskeep: Can you state it even more plainly, because there are many people on the other side of the divide here. What's wrong with the president saying you should be in jail? The rule of law involves the apolitical administration of justice. This is not some tin pot dictatorship where the leader of the country gets to say "the people I don't like go to jail." Our Lady Justice wears a blindfold. And the reason all those statues all over the country have a blindfold is, that's the way it has to be. Lady Justice can't be peeking under the blindfold to see if Donald Trump wants her to convict so-and-so and not convict so-and-so. If we lose that, we've lost the rule of law, and so there's great danger in the president of the United States saying "you should be in jail."Inskeep: And speak, if you could, to people on the other side of the divide here. You write in the book, of the president of the United States, "I see no evidence that a lie ever caused Trump pain, or that he ever recoiled from causing another person pain." As a general rule, that sounds pretty awful. And yet in interviewing voters over the past few years it's clear to me that some people look at those qualities and see strength. They want someone who is ruthless. They want someone who is tough. They feel he's on their side. What do you say to people who feel that way about the very same qualities you criticize?I would ask them to reflect on what it is their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought and died for. So many people who passionately support Donald Trump have proud and wonderful histories of service in their families. What did they fight and die for? Did they fight and die for an immigration policy? Did they fight and die for a ruthlessness in our leaders? No, they fought and died for that core set of values. They fought and died for equal protection of the laws. Justice. The truth. They fought and died for a collection of ideas that is all we have.And so I'd ask them — I get why people are frustrated in all different parts of the country, but we have to step back and say, "so what is it we are as a country?" And we are a set of ideas. We are a set of aspirations. We can't lose those. We can't sacrifice those because we're angry about other things. And so I'd ask them to say, "look I know you're fired up. Think about your grandfather. Think about your great grandfather. So what was it they were risking their lives or losing their lives for?"Johnson: Couple of things. Kellyanne Conway, presidential counselor to Donald Trump, was on television today saying you seemed to be perfectly happy to go to the White House a number of times after the election, because you appear to like it there and like the shrimp scampi dinner, and it's only after the fact that you raise questions about independence and the president's alleged misbehavior and leaning on you to close investigations — how do you respond to that?You really need to respond to that? That doesn't make any sense to me.Inskeep: How is the dinner? How is the shrimp scampi?It was OK. I'm used to having something else on the shrimp scampi — it was just shrimp and nothing else.Johnson: Last year, when you emerged publicly on Twitter, there was a photo of you in running shoes. On a road in Iowa. Which led a lot of people to think — as some of your friends have long thought — that a political race was in your future. What's next for you there? Never. I will never run for office. Not even a close call. What's next for me is, I've signed up to teach. I taught this year at Howard University. I'm going to teach next year at my alma mater William and Mary. I'm going to teach about leadership and ethics, and so I'm going to be a professor, which is exciting, and speak about leadership. Travel around and speak about it. And I think by doing those things I can be useful. I'm going to use my book in the class and I'm going to buy it for the students, because I'm not going to be one of those professors.Inskeep: That makes people buy their books.Yeah, heck yeah. I've always hated that.Inskeep: Has this experience cost you a lot of friends?Not a lot of close friends. I don't have a lot of close friends, but not them. I think it has caused some estrangement with people who were kind of in an outer circle of friends, who have decided they know my heart and my head in ways they can't possibly. And so it's not in the — I hate to put my friends in circles — but not in the close friends that I see all the time and know and love well. But some in the outer circles.Inskeep: Two or three circles out there might be some.I don't know that I have three circles but OK.Inskeep: I was thinking like, Dante or something. People on the right as well as the left you've lost. Yeah I think that's right. Yeah, I think people's disdain for me is in a way bipartisan, which I never imagined I could achieve. I knew I was going to anger at least one part of the political spectrum with whatever decision we made in the Hillary Clinton email case. I managed to piss off partisans on both sides. That's OK. That's OK. I can't do anything about that.Johnson: Director Comey, did you move up the publication date of your book to get out in front of this massive inspector general report we're waiting to see, about the Justice Department and the FBI's handling of the 2016 investigations? No. No way. I thought it be out already. My publisher moved up the publication of the book because they thought people would be interested in it.Johnson: Are you concerned at all about what's going to be in that IG report for you and others?Not concerned. I'm interested. I encouraged that and pushed for that investigation, and cooperated even after I left government, and maybe they'll criticize me. That's OK. What I wanted was a full accounting of the decisions we made, the policies at issue and all the rest of it, so that it was looked at by someone other than me or people with an ax to grind.Inskeep: This is maybe my final question unless you have anything else, Carrie, and we can let this gentleman go. You have recounted for us a series of decisions that you made in which you often felt you had to pick the best of bad options, but you still feel it was the best option. Looking back, is there any significant choice that you've made over the last couple of years that you regret?Oh sure, yeah. Maybe not as significant as these, but I did a number of things that were mistakes in my view. Carrie Johnson may remember one — I carelessly said things in a speech I gave about the Holocaust that caused a major row with the Polish government, and I should have been more deliberate and thoughtful there. I think I entered the debate about encryption in a thoughtless way. I acted impulsively and commented at a brown bag lunch about how bugged I was by an Apple advertisement, and that was kind of stupid. I should have entered in a more thoughtful way. If you give me more time I'm sure I can come up with others. But yeah, I am a person, I make mistakes all the time, which is why I worked hard to surround myself with people at the Department and the FBI who would bang on me, who would talk to me, who would tell me what they thought — speak uphill. And I think we did that when making the hardest decisions of all, when there was no good option.Inskeep: When you conclude you've made a mistake, do you have sleepless nights about it?Sometimes. But normally I just come clean with myself and those around me and say, "I totally screwed that up," and then I ask the whys. "So why did you do that? What was the reason for that?" Then once I've gone through that process, I sleep like a baby. It's where my sleep is disturbed is wrestling with things where I can't find a good option. And there's — I recount in the book, the torture struggle haunted me and I couldn't sleep. And once I make a decision, and if I've made it — and I always tried to — in a thoughtful way, even if I've made a decision I made a mistake, I'm OK. I'm sleeping well.Inskeep: Was there any decision relating to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump that cost you a night of sleep before or after? Well as I said, I woke up in the middle of the night after Donald Trump tweeted at me about tapes. I didn't sleep much that night thinking through what should I do.Inskeep: You ended up tweeting back at him, as I recall. No, I ended up asking a friend of mine who was also my lawyer to put out an unclassified memo content about our February 14th encounter in the Oval Office. But I'm sure — I don't remember sitting here waking up in the middle of the night other than that time. I was working very hard during that time, and trying to make sure I got sleep and exercise, though, because when you're tired and you're sluggy, you're not going to make sound decisions. But sitting here, Steve, I can't remember a particular night otherwise.Johnson: You spent most of your life in the Justice Department or the FBI. What are your concerns for those institutions now? And do they have the strength to withstand the stress that they're under? The institutions have the strength because it's the people. And the people are incredible ballast for those institutions. They're committed, they're apolitical, all the things you'd want them to be. My worry is, I said earlier in response to one of Steve's questions, that you're in the public trust business when you're the FBI, the Department of Justice. When you rise in a courtroom, people can't see you as a Republican or Democrat, they have to see you as the good people just trying to figure out what's true. These attacks, especially now, coming from this administration, risk undermining that, so that the FBI — which is not politicized internally — becomes politically attacked and doubt creeps in in those courtrooms and on those doorsteps on the street corners. We will all be sorry if that happens.And I've been particularly disappointed at the quietude among Republicans on Capitol Hill. They know better. They know this nation needs the FBI the way it really is. And they also know what the FBI is really like. It's not a political organization. But we need the American people to know that, and have faith and confidence because someday the worm will turn and you will need the FBI to investigate credibly a Democratic administration or an Independent administration, and you will be sorry if that organization is seen as just another part of the partisan tribal networkInskeep: Director Comey, thanks very much. Thanks for the conversation.Inskeep: This is great. Appreciate it. Did we miss anything important that you wanted to talk about, or get anything wildly wrong other than whatever you may have already disputed?No, I don't think so, and I think your questions — one of the things I've been worried about with my work this week is that people think it's a book about Donald Trump, and it's not. It's a book about ethical leadership. I tried to tell stories to interest people, but I hope without even knowing it they're learning things about making hard decisions. But I couldn't write about ethical leadership without including those stories about Donald Trump. But I hope that people will find useful the entire thing. And I suppose after initial period of focus on President Trump, maybe we can get people to think about it in the way you did, right? The hospital story. Torture. Barack Obama. George Bush, all those things. I think those stories will be useful to people.Johnson: The Washington Post had kind of a tough book review on you, examining whether you stood up in your book to the principles you set out. And one of the things that's come out is that the former Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, "listen, he never spoke to me about some of these concerns." Did you live up to your principles in this book? I sure think so. I didn't read the Post review. I don't read reviews because I don't want to over index, fall in love with the positive or be very depressed by the negative. But I think so. And I don't hear Loretta Lynch, who I meant when I said I like and respect, I don't hear her to be saying anything different than that. And so I think so. I've tried in this book to be transparent, honest and complete and show people where I've fallen short, what I worry about with myself, and give them a window into how we made decisions. And I think if you read the whole book, I think fair minded people will come away — they may still think I'm an idiot, but I think they'll come away saying, "kind of a thoughtful idiot, and tried his best to make the least bad decision in all these circumstances."

A recent disclosure that Trump’s campaign chairman and a key Russian business associate discussed a Ukraine peace plan in mid-2016 could signal more scrutiny of a powerful Russian oligarch by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, former prosecutors and intelligence officials told the Guardian.The timing of the talks between Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, a veteran political consultant, and Konstantin Kilimnik, his longtime aide who allegedly had ties to Russian intelligence in 2016, occurred in New York on 2 August.The meeting came just days after Kilimnik met in Moscow with Oleg Deripaska, a powerful oligarch and close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Deripaska had been a major client of Manafort but had sued him over a failed business deal in Ukraine and was seeking to recoup almost $25m.The Trump administration announced late last year it intended to lift sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, despite strong opposition from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress. The treasury department had imposed the sanctions on Deripaska and several of his companies in tandem with seven Russian oligarchs, 12 companies they owned or controlled, and 17 Russian government officials, for “malign activity” which included “attempting to subvert western democracies, and malicious cyber-activities”.The talks in New York, revealed in a recent court filing from Mueller’s office, came soon after Kilimnik emailed Manafort that he needed to brief him on his Deripaska meeting. Kilimnik, who worked for a decade with Manafort when he was a political consultant making tens of millions representing Deripaska and pro-Moscow Ukrainian political parties, emailed Manafort in late July that he had just spent hours with the man “who gave you your biggest jar of black caviar several years ago”, referring to Deripaska.Kilimnik’s email to Manafort said that Deripaska asked him to convey “several important messages from him to you”.Mueller’s new mid-January court filing was the first evidence that Manafort and Kilimnik had talked about Ukraine peace plans. The filing also stated they discussed such proposals on “more than one occasion”.The ex-officials say the Mueller filing may signal a growing interest in Deripaska’s involvement with Manafort and Kilimnik.“This raises the question as to whether Mueller has an ongoing interest in Deripaska in his investigation,” said Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in money laundering enforcement.Some pro-Moscow peace plans for Ukraine have been “proxies” for ending the painful sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 after it invaded eastern Ukraine and Crimea, a major Kremlin goal, Zeldin noted.Similarly, Nick Akerman, a former assistant Watergate prosecutor, said: “It seems quite likely that Mueller would be focused on Deripaska too as he examines Manafort and Kilimnik.”Intelligence veterans say Kremlin linkages could have been at play in the back-to-back talks in Moscow and New York.“Deripaska is a key lieutenant and a significant oligarch in Putin’s oligarch system,” said Steven Hall, a retired CIA chief of Russia operations.“Deripaska would get his marching orders from the Kremlin about what Russia wanted, including lifting of sanctions and a resolution of the situation in Ukraine that favored Russia,” Hall said. “It seems likely the chain of communication would have been Putin to Deripaska to Kilimnik to Manafort.”“The Manafort connection to Deripaska is essential,” Hall added. “I think people really need to focus on the Manafort-Deripaska relationship. It’s essentially a Trump-Putin connection.”Mueller’s revelation about the initial peace plan chat came in a heavily redacted filing documenting five alleged lies by Manafort in violation of a plea agreement to cooperate fully, after he had been convicted on multiple charges including bank and tax fraud and pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts.A Manafort spokesperson declined comment.Neither Kilimnik nor Deripaska responded to emails seeking comment.During the 2016 election season when the FBI began looking into Russian meddling Deripaska was at least briefly turned to for help.In September 2016 during a Deripaska trip to New York, FBI agents paid a surprise visit on the oligarch in an unsuccessful effort to get him to cooperate in their inquiries into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, the New York Times reported.Soon after Trump hired Manafort – originally to help secure the delegates to grab the GOP presidential nomination – the latter emailed Kilimnik to ensure that Deripaska was in the loop about Manafort’s role with the campaign.In emails first reported by the Washington Post, Manafort proposed giving Deripaska “private briefings” on the Trump campaign, and told Kilimnik to pass the idea on to the oligarch, apparently an effort to win his favor and settle the lawsuit that Deripaska had brought against him. Manafort, Kilimnik and Deripaska have said no formal proposal was ever made and nothing came of the idea.In his July emails to Manafort, which the Atlantic first reported, Kilimnik said he told Deripaska he had to “run it by you first”, but could come quickly “provided that he buys me a ticket”. Kilimnik called Deripaska’s ideas about his country’s future “quite interesting”.Manafort replied that Tuesday 2 August would work, and the two men reportedly met that day at the Grand Havana Room, a cigar bar in midtown Manhattan.Kilimnik, an elusive 48-year-old with a background of training at a military intelligence school who now lives in Moscow after years in Kiev, was charged, along with Manafort, in 2018 by Mueller with witness tampering. Another Kilimnik business partner has been charged with illegally funneling $50,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch into Trump’s inauguration fund.Last year, the special counsel also stated in a court document that Kilimnik had ties to Russian intelligence during 2016, an allegation that Kilimnik has denied. Topics Oleg Deripaska Paul Manafort Trump-Russia investigation Ukraine Russia news

WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s progress in the 7-year-old civil war. The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities, including a research and development center in Damascus’ Barzeh district and two installations near Homs. The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his superpower ally Russia, but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war. The air attack, denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression, was unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war that has killed at least half a million people. U.S. President Donald Trump called the operation a success. He proclaimed on Twitter: “Mission accomplished,” echoing former President George W. Bush, whose use of the same phrase in 2003 to describe the U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely ridiculed as violence there dragged on for years. “We believe that by hitting Barzeh, in particular, we’ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program,” U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon. However, McKenzie acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, “The United States is locked and loaded.” The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people. They blame Assad’s government for the attack. In Washington, a senior administration official said on Saturday that “while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use, we do have significant information that also points to sarin use” in the attack. Speaking at a summit in Peru, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence seemed less sure of the use of sarin, saying that Washington may well determine that it was used along with chlorine. Related CoverageSyria's Assad tells Russian lawmakers Western strikes were act of aggressionBritain to study options if Syria's Assad uses chemical weapons again -foreign ministerTen hours after the missiles hit, smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh, where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption “Morning of resilience”. Late on Saturday Syria time, a large explosion was heard in a Syrian government-controlled area in a rural region south of Aleppo, according to the Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory said the cause of the explosion was unknown, as well as its target. Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him. The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group. But they have refrained from targeting Assad’s government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year. Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him. Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a one-off, unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad. A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes were “unacceptable and lawless.” Syrian state media called them a “flagrant violation of international law,” while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals. Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally, but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used. Syria fired 40 unguided surface-to-air missiles - but only after the Western strikes had ended, the Pentagon said. “We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets,” McKenzie said. A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer, deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, launches a strike as part of the multinational response to Syria's use of chemical weapons is seen in this image from Al Udeid Air Base, Doha, Qatar released on April 14, 2018. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERSBritish Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as “limited and targeted,” with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war. Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons; a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs; and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post. The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets, and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria’s ability to produce such weapons. Trump spoke to May and French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss results of the strikes, the leaders’ offices said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria, but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation. In Sydney, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urged Russia to drop its “pretence” that Syria was not behind the chemical attack on Douma and use its influence to force the Assad government to destroy its chemical weapons. “Russia has used its position as a member of the United Nations Security Council to veto resolutions designed to ensure that this chemical weapons crime is thoroughly investigated and cannot be repeated,” he told a news conference on Sunday. “It should stop all the denial and the pretence that it wasn’t an action by the Syrian government and ensure that the chemical weapons are destroyed, that the ability of the regime to use chemical weapons is eliminated and that this type of criminal conduct does not occur again.” Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings. Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria. The Western countries took precautions to avoid unexpected conflict with Russia. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said Russians was warned beforehand to avert conflict. Dmitry Belik, a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes, told Reuters: “The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical. Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages.” In Douma, site of the suspected gas attack, the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad’s government of the war. Slideshow (18 Images)The Western assault involved more missiles than a U.S. attack last year but struck targets limited to Syria’s chemical weapons facilities. The U.S. intervention last year had effectively no impact on the war. Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad’s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although, unlike nerve agents, chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week. Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Matt Spetalnick and Joel Schectman in Washington; Michelle Nichols in New York; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clercq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow; Alison Bevege in Sydney; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Yara Bayoumy, Alistair Bell and Clarence FernandezOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

At close to 90 years old, Brazil’s most venerated indigenous leader, Raoni Metuktire, has returned to the spotlight to challenge the man he calls the worst president of his lifetime, Jair Bolsonaro.In an interview with the Guardian, the Kayapó chief said he wanted to speak out about the far-right administration’s plans to allow mining in indigenous territory and he warned that Brazil’s Amazon policies threatened global efforts to protect nature and address the climate emergency.“Ï have seen many presidents come and go, but none spoke so badly of indigenous people or threatened us and the forest like this,” he said. “Since he [Bolsonaro] became president, he has been the worst for us.”Raoni has lived through 24 administrations since first making contact with the world outside his rainforest home, and is at the forefront of a reinvigorated indigenous movement in South America’s biggest nation.Along with Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, he is leading the resistance against government plans to open up the rainforest to land speculators, cattle ranchers, loggers and gold miners.With his lip disc, beads, earrings and flowing grey hair, Raoni is probably the best-known Amazonian in the world. But he spent the first 18 or so years of his life unknown to anyone outside his forest community.Raoni was a young, jenipapo-painted warrior when his tribe, the Metuktire Kayapó, was first contacted by non-indigenous invaders in the early 1950s, according to a new book by the veteran British explorer John Hemming. The intruders brought gifts of metal blades and beads but left behind European diseases such as malaria, influenza and measles that decimated the population.In the 1970s and 1980s, Raoni was among the leaders of the often deadly fight against the BR-080 road, cattle ranchers and the Belo Monte dam. He rose to international prominence thanks to his friendship with the rock star Sting.In the years that followed, he was feted by world leaders and met the pope, gaining a level of prestige and leverage that challenged the prejudices of the many Brazilians who see indigenous people as poor and uneducated. This helped the Kayapó to secure government recognition of their territorial rights across a vast chain of reserves, which formed the spine of a north-south firewall against deforestation.“From many years ago, I fought in campaigns and appeared in the media. Then, when we won the victory of having our lands demarcated, I stopped because everything seemed fine, everything was tranquil,” he recalled. “But the new president threatens indigenous people, so I came back to fight again.”Recent government figures show Amazon deforestation has surged to the highest level in a decade. Farmers and land-grabbers have started more fires to clear land, which is pumping huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, disrupting the water cycle and destroying the world’s most biodiverse land habitat. They have been emboldened by a government that has spent its first year weakening environmental protections, encouraging loggers and heaping scorn on conservation groups and forest dwellers.Even before entering office, Bolsonaro frequently abused indigenous groups as an obstacle to economic development. “It’s a shame the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the (North) Americans who exterminated the Indians,” he said in 1998. Now in power, he has promised to halt demarcation of new reserves and to open up territories to mining and agriculture businesses. Anthropologists have warned these actions will result in the genocide of uncontacted tribes.Among the greatest threats is encroachment and environmental destruction by Brazil’s tens of thousands of garimpeiros (artisanal gold miners). Almost all are illegal, but Bolsonaro has expressed far more support for this group than previous state leaders. For him it is partly a personal issue. Bolsonaro’s father was a part-time gold miner, and the president has said he himself panned for gold while serving in the army.“Bolsonaro is a garimpeiro. It explains the way he thinks, always trying to explore more land,” said Davi Kopenawa Yanomami. “He has a sickness in his head. He doesn’t think about others, or about the future.”An author, shaman and environmentalist, Kopenawa is arguably the most prominent intellectual voice of the more than 300 different indigenous groups in Brazil. His book The Falling Sky outlines the very different cosmology of traditional forest peoples and warns that humankind is breaking the forest pillars that hold up the sky – an allusion that stretches beyond the climate crisis.He said that in the past year Yanomami lands (which stretch across Brazil’s border with Venezuela) had been invaded by the biggest wave of illegal miners since the 1980s. “They are poisoning our rivers, killing our fish, and our people are starting to get sick with malaria again,” he told the Guardian.Quietly spoken but defiant, Kopenawa said the problem was greater than Bolsonaro. Although the president had made matters worse, he said, mining companies from Canada, China and Japan were behind the push for resources. “Our politicians are selling our wealth. This brings no benefit to our people, just destruction. Who is getting rich? It’s the foreigners. The big companies are behind this.”The threats are not just to the forest. Raoni has two bodyguards and is a target for attention-seeking nationalists who are trying to ingratiate themselves with Bolsonaro.At a recent gathering of forest defenders in Altamira, a small group of land grabbers and farmers attempted to disrupt proceedings by surging towards the top table, prodding and shouting in the face of a young indigenous woman who was speaking about the killings of her people. Raoni wagged his finger reprovingly, a sign for half a dozen Kayapó warriors to push the intruders back to their seats.The scuffle prompted exaggerated claims on rightwing social media that Raoni had “ordered an attack”. In fact, it was a defence – and a reminder of what has been happening across the Amazon for decades.The jostling is now in the courts. The academic who organised the disruption has filed a criminal accusation against the Kayapó chief. The organisers of the event had already lodged a complaint against the protest organisers for making threats. Raoni said the fracas should not distract from the more important issue of how to save the Amazon.“I was very sad at what happened. The people who want to destroy the forest came to disrupt things. I felt it was important to talk so I asked people to hold them back.”The landowners were much quieter from that moment on. Civil society organisers claimed this as a victory for the majority in Brazil who want to protect the rainforest. They hope to build alliances across the Amazon and throughout the world to counter the threat posed by Bolsonaro and extractive industries.There are signs this may be happening under the leadership of Raoni, Kopenawa and others. Indigenous tribes once fought each other as well as riverine settlers and quilombolas (descendants of runaway slaves who moved into the forest). Today, however, many of these different groups are allied against tree-clearing and river-poisoning intruders.Raoni invited people across the world to join a peaceful resistance against the forces threatening indigenous territory, the Amazon and the world.“They have the money and the guns. We don’t have that. I don’t have that,” he said after the interview. But with temperatures climbing and the forest under increasing threat, he said, it was necessary to act to help Brazil and avert a grimmer future for people around the globe.“Nature is essential for us to breathe,” he said. “I hope people, not just in Brazil, will take my hand and join our forces to save nature, the forest and everything inside it, including the animals and the people.” Topics Brazil Indigenous peoples Jair Bolsonaro Amazon rainforest Deforestation Climate change Conservation news

The music streaming service Spotify has told investors it can become profitable and fend off bigger rivals such as Apple and Amazon, as it announced its shares will begin trading on the New York stock exchange on 3 April. Executives of the 12-year-old company said it had a user base of more than 100 million, with a higher percentage of paid subscribers than “freemium” listeners, who get music streamed free with ads, which is helping to drive more revenue to performers and copyright holders.Spotify’s co-founder and CEO, Daniel Ek, framed the launch as an attempt to save the music business from the effects of piracy as users increasingly use curated services like Spotify as a way not just to sample music but to discover it.Spotify said subscriber growth gave the company a clear path to profitability as revenue grew 39% to €4.09bn ($5.03bn, £3.61bn) in 2017 from €2.95bn ($3.63bn, £2.6bn) in 2016. But net financing costs of €855m ($1.05bn, £755m) pushed up operating losses to €378m ($465m, £334m) from €349m ($429m, £308m). Ek made a direct pitch to retail investors during a public webcast that stood in place of a traditional closed-door “road show” typically used to woo institutional investors in initial public offerings (IPOs). The Stockholm-based company’s stock will be available to investors via an unusual direct listing without traditional underwriters. Ek said he would not be ringing the bell or standing on the floor of the New York stock exchange giving interviews when Spotify’s shares start trading.“It’s not about the pomp and circumstance,” he said. “I think the traditional model of taking a company public isn’t a good fit for us.”Because the company will not issue any new shares, it did not specify a listing price. Based on private transactions, it is valued at roughly $19bn, according to Reuters calculations.Ek conceded that Spotify could have done a better job explaining what the company was trying to do with music streaming, after the company found itself harshly criticized for returning minimal sums to performers and copyright holders.He said it was not Spotify’s mission to disrupt the music industry or replace anyone. Ek cited statistics that showed music industry revenues had fallen 40% between 1999 and 2014 but rebounded somewhat between 2014 and 2016 as Spotify grew its user base. Topics Spotify Music industry Stock markets news

The decade is almost over -- and one incredibly volatile investment stood out from all the rest as the best of the 2010s.Want to guess what it was? Bitcoin. From a report: According to a recent report by Bank of America Securities, if you invested $1 in bitcoin at the start of the decade, it would now be worth more than $90,000. A bitcoin (XBT) is currently valued at about $7,000. While that's still significantly below its peak price of just under $20,000 two years ago, it's substantially higher than the fractions of a penny that one bitcoin cost at the beginning of the Twenty-Teens. Bitcoin remains a highly speculative investment, but it has soared during the past decade as it emerged as the most-popular and widely accepted cryptocurrency. More retailers are accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, and several investment firms and exchanges have launched futures trading for bitcoin, a move that helped legitimize it.

“O.S.C.’s guidance was not intended to prevent all discussions of impeachment in the federal workplace,” the revised guidance said, adding: “Merely discussing impeachment, without advocating for or against its use against such a candidate, is not political activity. For example, two employees may discuss whether reported conduct by the president warrants impeachment and express an opinion about whether the president should be impeached without engaging in political activity.”However, it said, employees may not display in their offices posters that call for the impeachment of Mr. Trump, or place a “Don’t Impeach Trump” bumper sticker on a government-owned vehicle.The revised guidance also said that some uses of the “resist” slogan remained permissible, so long as it was being used in relation to an issue rather than to Mr. Trump. It offered, as acceptable uses of the slogan because the context was not a political campaign, the examples #ResistHate and #ResistKavanaugh.The clarification came as the agency issued findings that six members of the Trump administration had violated the Hatch Act for using Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan in Twitter posts, based on its reasoning that the slogan amounted to endorsing his campaign. At the same time, the office cleared Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, for using the term “MAGAnomics” in an opinion column, ruling that its context was Mr. Trump’s economic program rather than his 2020 re-election effort.Against that backdrop, not all critics of the guidance initially issued this week were mollified. Among them, Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said in a statement that the rules remained unclear and called on the office to withdraw all the guidance and start over.

It would, if we are honest, have been a remarkable achievement for Bert van Marwijk to steer Australia through the first round six months after taking charge, and the final Group C standings offer an accurate reflection of where they currently are. They made a game of things on a muggy early evening in Sochi, just as they had in their previous meetings with France and Denmark, but few sides at this World Cup have looked as woefully short in attack and until players of the right ilk are produced it is hard to see exactly how their position can improve.That gloomy conclusion was cast into stark relief by a Peru team whose struggles in front of goal had brought their own early elimination. This time Peru were a less swashbuckling version of the unit that has won hearts over the past fortnight but they were infinitely more clinical and showed Australia up with two goals to remember. The first, a fizzing volley from the Watford winger André Carrillo, was heartbreaking in the sense that similar heroics earlier in the tournament would probably have taken one of its most vibrant participants through; the second, taken neatly by the captain Paolo Guerrero, was a storybook ending to their adventure and underlined the gulf in quality on show.“We were at least equal with France and against Denmark we were even better,” Van Marwijk reflected of Australia’s campaign, which would have ended regardless of the outcome after their group rivals’ tame draw. “Today I had the same feeling but in all three games we didn’t make the difference with goals and that’s something this squad misses at this level.”Australia were definitely competitive in each game but the dearth of quality is glaring. Tim Cahill’s introduction after Guerrero had scored early in the second half – surely the 38‑year‑old’s last competitive cap – may have sated the romantics but his presence told a tale. He charged around, had a shot blocked and snarled at Aziz Behich when the left-back miscued a potential assist, but his presence did nothing for their cohesion. Australia need a better plan B than just dialling back half a decade.It was hardly as if they had missed a glut of chances before Peru pulled clear, even if they had controlled possession and territory. Tom Rogic was, in the first half, somewhere near his best and was behind their most lucid work, drawing a save from Pedro Gallese after a slaloming run and starting a move that saw Anderson Santamaría deny Mathew Leckie with a brilliant challenge.Had either episode borne fruit then Australia would have been level at half-time; they could have equalised shortly after it if Tomi Juric, a game but limited centre-forward, had brought down Aaron Mooy’s imaginative pass, but he fluffed his lines and Guerrero scored moments later.“The players made a huge effort from all points from all points of view,” Peru’s manager, Ricardo Gareca, said. “We lost two matches and returned to winning ways, which is no small feat, but we did expect greater things.”Peru contrived an opening goal that their fans, a speckled red and white mass who virtually filled the stadium, richly deserved. Australia felt that Guerrero was offside when he latched on to a ball down the left channel that Trent Sainsbury had been unable to clear. Replays showed it was tight; play continued in any case and Guerrero, his head up, aimed for Carillo towards the right corner of the penalty area. The delivery was perfect; the shot, firm and low, was an exhibition of technique and it was probably not the time to remind anyone that Peru had wasted far easier chances in games of greater consequence.Guerrero’s own special moment arrived after Christian Cueva had weaved towards the box and attempted a through ball that ricocheted off Mile Jedinak. The spin and finish from a player whose extrication from a doping ban became a pre-tournament cause celebre were first rate; Peru as a whole do not look far short of being that but Gareca was reluctant to say whether he will be around to carry them forward.“I need to give it some time to think things over with a cool head,” he said, and it is impossible to see the Argentinian lacking suitors. Van Marwijk’s position is rather more clear cut: his was only ever a short-term appointment, with Graham Arnold due to take over for the longer term, and it would be a harsh judge who assessed that he has underachieved with a squad caught between eras, styles and generations.“Not a success but also not a failure,” was his own verdict. “I think everyone saw that we got a lot of compliments for the way we play, only you don’t win games with compliments.” In truth this was an evening when nobody needed to go overboard with the praise. Topics World Cup 2018 Australia Peru World Cup Australia sport match reports

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:In response to the new allegations, Corellium CEO Amanda Gortonsaid"Apple's latest filing against Corellium should give all security researchers, app developers, and jailbreakers reason to be concerned."Corellium is "deeply disappointed by Apple's persistent demonization of jailbreaking," with Gorton writing that "developers and researchers rely on jailbreaks to test the security of both their own apps and third-party apps." Apple's filing, according to Corellium, essentially "assert[s] that anyone who provides a tool that allows other people to jailbreak, and anyone who assists in creating such a tool, is violating the DMCA." Apple, Gorton wrote, "is using this case as a trial balloon in a new angle to crack down on jailbreaking" and "is seeking to set a precedent to eliminate public jailbreaks."

"Shares of Apple gained 86.2% in 2019, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence," reports the Motley Fool:The tech stock's share price tracked relatively closely with momentum for the broader market for much of the year and then dramatically outperformed from September through December thanks to strong performance for its wearables products. iPhone Sales were down from 2018, but they still came in ahead of expectations, and the company's business was lifted by strong performance for its wearables segment... Growth for Apple's services segment (which includes revenue generated from the company's mobile app store and subscription-based offerings like Apple Music) also slowed in the year. However, explosive growth for AirPods, promising momentum for the Apple Watch, and the promise of a bigger tech and feature leap for the iPhone line in 2020 powered a great year for Apple stock. Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, estimates that AirPod sales came in at roughly $6 billion in 2019 and nearly doubled compared to 2018. The Bernstein analyst projects that AirPod revenue will hit $15 billion in 2020.

Pop quiz: Name the giant store whose customers scoff at whatever goes on sale, but flock to buy whatever costs the most.It isn’t a supermarket. It’s the stock market—especially over the past decade, when value stocks have moldered in the bargain bin. Such companies, trading at low prices relative to their earnings, net assets or other measures, have underperformed pricier growth stocks by one of the longest and widest margins on record....

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his gun-loving sons have hogged the headlines during his first year in power with their incendiary declarations, social media meltdowns and scandal-hit lives.But the lower ranks of Brazil’s government apparatus are also being populated with less well-known characters who trumpet white supremacist slogans and rage against the left.“Say whatever you like about Bolsonaro, one has to recognize his rare talent of … choosing the most unqualified, lunatic and/or dangerous people for jobs,” the journalist Mauro Ventura wrote earlier this month.“As someone said, they seem to have been picked for their IQ: that’s to say their quotient of imbecility, inability, idiocy, incompetence, ineptitude or impiety.”Brazil specialist Monica de Bolle said the hiring of such figures reflected the “totally nuts” nature of Bolsonaro’s “fundamentalist” administration.“They are not looking for people who have knowledge but people who are loyal,” said De Bolle, from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.“I hate the Trump comparisons because Brazil is Brazil and the US is the US. But it’s just like Trump has surrounded himself with yes men. They are all yes men - and for the most part they are all men.”Here are four Bolsonaro underlings you may never have heard of:Foreign policy adviser to the presidentBefore this year Martins, 31, had almost no foreign policy experience. Yet his close ties to two of Bolsonaro’s sons have helped transform him into one of Brazil’s most influential men and landed him an office just metres from Bolsonaro’s.Like Bolsonaro’s sons, Martins is a disciple of the US-based writer and conspiracy theorist Olavo de Carvalho and revels in bashing leftists, feminists, “globalists” and journalists on social media. He is also a Steve Bannon fan, nicknamed “Sorocabannon” thanks to his origins in the Brazilian city of Sorocaba and admiration for Trump’s ex-strategist.As with many Bolsonaristas, Martins basks in controversy, using alt-right catchphrases such as “Deus Vult” and General Franco-era slogans to bait critics. After Brazil’s footballers lost to Belgium in the 2018 World Cup, the man who now helps run Brazilian foreign policy branded the European country “a modern-day Babel”.Martins also enjoys conspiracy, last year accusing CNN and the New York Times of complicity in a “social engineering” campaign to promote paedophilia.Special secretary for cultureA dramatist by trade, Alvim once received an award for a production of Harold Pinter’s The Room. But before being named culture secretary in November the 46-year-old director was best known for insulting the grande dame of Brazilian theatre, the Oscar-nominated actor Fernanda Montenegro, as a “sordid” leftist.That attack enraged Brazilian thespians but earned him Bolsonaro’s affections – and a job as Brazil’s culture chief.An online biography makes unusual reading. Aged 22, Alvim ditched a budding directing career to undergo “a process of inner discovery through meditation practices”. He ended up in a hut in north-eastern Brazil and depriving himself of food, water and human contact for 21 days.Alvim returned to theatre before reportedly finding God in 2017 after a supposedly miraculous cure for near-fatal cancer. “It was a direct intervention from our Lord Jesus Christ,” he recently claimed.Alvim has said his newfound faith converted him into a hardcore Bolsonarista. In recent Facebook posts he has savaged his leader’s opponents as lefty “cockroaches”, railed against the “bastards” from Greenpeace and accused Brazil’s “rotten” and “demonic” art world of unfairly demonizing Bolsonaro.Fundação Cultural PalmaresThe man chosen to run the government foundation promoting black culture has called for Brazil’s Black Consciousness Day to be scrapped and has branded many of Brazil’s best-known black celebrities and artists “parasites of the black race”.Most notoriously, he once called one of Brazil’s most celebrated samba composers, Martinho da Vila, a “bum” who should “be sent to the Congo”.Camargo, who is himself black, has also found targets for his insults beyond Brazil’s borders, including the American civil rights activist Angela Davis, whom he called a “minger” and “hag”.On social media, Camargo describes himself as a “rightwing black” who opposes “victimhood and the politically correct”. “Slavery was terrible, but beneficial for the descendants”, he recently claimed.After public outrage and a legal challenge, Camargo’s appointment was suspended. But Bolsonaro has said he hopes that decision can be overturned, calling Camargo an “excellent” person.Head of the National Arts FoundationThe hard-right classical conductor and YouTuber presiding over the government body in charge of policy for visual arts, music and dance has claimed the Soviet Union infiltrated the CIA to distribute LSD at Woodstock. “Rock activates drugs which activate sex which activates the abortion industry,” Mantovani alleged, noting that John Lennon had said he made a pact with the devil.Mantovani has said Metallica was good for keeping drivers awake but called Brazilian greats Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and pop star Anitta “aberrations” for depicting Brazil as a “type of brothel”. Taking office, he claimed Brazil owed its culture to Portugal which “civilised” rather than “colonised” his homeland. Topics Brazil Americas The far right features

Brazil’s stretch of the Amazon lost more than 1,330 square miles of forest cover during the first seven months of the year, a 39 percent increase over the same period last year.Experts say that spike appears to be the main driver of the fires in the Amazon this year.The number of fires in the Amazon so far this year, 40,341, is the highest since 2010, and roughly 35 percent higher than the average for the first eight months of the year, according to Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research agency, which tracks deforestation and forest fires using satellite images.Most of the fires are set intentionally to clear land for agriculture and cattle grazing. But the fire season got off to an early start this year, and blazes set along the edges of the rain forest are unusually potent, raising the risk that some will spread beyond the intended areas, according to Doug Morton, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who tracks deforestation and fires in the Amazon.“This is a critical time,” he said in an interview. “Part of the international attention to what is going on comes from the fact that Brazil has been such a pioneer and leader on environmental protection and it has shown the world it’s possible to have economic development while protecting the rain forest.”That hard-earned reputation has been crumbling in the Bolsonaro era.Global outrage over the fires has spurred calls to boycott Brazilian products and led European leaders to threaten to walk away from a trade agreement that the European Union struck with Brazil and a handful of neighboring countries in June.In what has become an unusually nasty exchange among leaders of major democracies, President Emmanuel Macron of France went so far as to accuse Mr. Bolsonaro of lying about being committed to fighting climate change and protecting the Amazon. “Our house is burning. Literally.” Mr. Macron wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

PARIS — Travel was upended, schools were closed and tens of thousands of people took to the streets across France on Thursday as railway workers, teachers, students and air traffic controllers went on strike to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s economic and social policies.The protests are a new challenge for Mr. Macron’s government as it gears up to overhaul France’s rail system and promises changes to unemployment benefits and the pension system. Railway workers are already planning rolling strikes in April and May.“This is a wake-up call for the government,” said Laurent Berger, the secretary general of the second-largest railway union. He said the government needed to have real discussions with the unions before “everything falls apart.”More than 200,000 workers and students joined in protests around the country, about 48,000 of them in Paris, according to a consortium of journalism organizations that hired a company to estimate crowd sizes to avoid relying on police estimates.The student presence in Thursday’s strike was an echo of France’s historic protests of 1968, which were led by students and began on the same day, March 22, 50 years ago. Those strikes started in French universities and were quickly joined by union members and others, bringing the country to a standstill and forcing reforms in many sectors.This time, the unions have complained that the Macron government has moved ahead with its plans without true consultation or compromise.“We are obviously keeping a listening attitude, but also a very big determination to pursue the transformation,” said Benjamin Griveaux, a government spokesman, after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.One poll this week painted a conflicted picture of public opinion, with most people supporting the demonstrations but also favoring the government’s reform projects. Another found that nearly three of every four people in France believed that the Macron government’s policy overhauls were unjust, but that almost half saw the overhaul of the railway system as warranted.Official estimates on Thursday said the strikes affected 40 percent of intercity trains and 30 percent of flights.The protests on Thursday were initially scheduled by civil servants angered by salary freezes and by Mr. Macron’s pledge to cut 120,000 jobs, as well as by government plans to introduce merit-based pay and use more private contractors. However, after elements of the proposed railway overhaul became clear, the unions decided to join.While the largest protests were in Paris, there were also large turnouts in Marseille, Nantes, Lyon and other cities.In Paris, public workers converged with railway workers at the Place de la Bastille, the traditional gathering site for political protests. There were minor skirmishes mostly involving masked protesters, who often represent anarchist groups and who on Thursday threw projectiles at the police.The rail workers’ mood seemed at once boisterous and bleak. They played loud music, sang protest songs and set off so many smoke bombs that it was hard to see at times. Still, several said they had little hope that the government would pay attention, and many said Mr. Macron did not care about them.“This is a message for Monsieur Macron: Keep the public services,” said Christian Boumard, 57, who came to the protest from Nantes, a union stronghold on the Atlantic coast.“The railroads are a public service. When you attack the rail workers, you are attacking a public service,” said Mr. Boumard, who has worked for the rail company, known as the SNCF, for 37 years.“The rich do not give to the poor, but public services give something back to them,” Mr. Boumard said. “This is a political battle: It is not to gain some small benefit, it is public services he is attacking.”Laurence Michel, 48, joined the SNCF in 2008 through a program she said could well disappear with the government overhaul. When her husband, a rail worker, died, the company hired her as part of a support policy for its families.“Our job isn’t attractive to young people anymore,” said Ms. Michel, from Rennes. “We have night shifts and work during weekends. We keep hearing that we are privileged, but I’d like Mr. Macron to come and see if he finds privileges in our everyday job.”“Pass the reform, and the SNCF will slowly die,” she said.

But the realities in Europe were changing by the time he won the Czech presidency in 2013.The global financial crisis had tested Europe’s unity. Refugees from Syria had begun to arrive, fueling nativist sentiment and pitting local politicians against the bloc’s leaders. Western Europe no longer seemed to be the only option.At the time, Beijing was beginning to pour money and political capital into Eastern and Central Europe as part of a broad bid to increase its heft in Europe. China’s leaders see the region as potentially fertile ground. While Britain, France and Germany welcomed greater investments from Beijing, they still bucked China’s stances on issues like human rights and its claim to control almost all of the South China Sea. Eastern and Central Europe didn’t have the same qualms.Looking for further inroads, China started what came to be called the 16+1 initiative, an effort to expand cooperation with more than a dozen Eastern and Central European nations. It became a forum for China to show off what it could offer the region, like access to technology for a high-speed rail system. Mr. Xi later included Eastern and Central Europe in his Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious plan to develop economic and diplomatic ties through infrastructure projects around the world.China’s influence in Europe is already apparent. Greece last year blocked a European Union statement in the United Nations criticizing China’s human rights record. Greece and Hungary worked to water down a 2016 European Union statement regarding the South China Sea.For Mr. Zeman, the courtship basically had to start from scratch.The former Czechoslovakia recognized the Communist-led China in 1949, but a rift between Moscow and Beijing kept them apart. The post-Soviet Czech Republic, remembering the brutal 1968 Soviet crackdown on reform efforts in Prague and subsequent Communist domination, found common cause with Beijing’s critics.Vaclav Havel, the anti-Communist activist and the country’s first leader after the fall of the Berlin Wall, invited the Dalai Lama to a state visit in 1990, angering Beijing. He had stern words for China. “Intimidation, propaganda campaigns, and repression,” he wrote, “are no substitute for reasoned dialogue.”