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HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong court on Tuesday found nine leaders of the 2014 pro-democracy “Occupy” movement guilty of public nuisance during the mass protests, in a landmark verdict as freedoms in the city ruled by mainland China come under strain. Scores of supporters applauded the defendants, who included a law professor, two legislators and former student activists, after a trial that critics said highlighted the decline of political freedoms in the former British colony. Law professor Benny Tai, 54, retired sociologist Chan Kin-man, 60, and retired pastor Chu Yiu-ming, 75 were found guilty of conspiracy to commit public nuisance over their leading role in planning and mobilizing supporters during the 79-day protest. The trio had pleaded not guilty to all charges, which carry a maximum jail term of seven years each. The judge did not immediately hand down sentences, and the defendants have not said if they planned to appeal. “I am determined to fight for Hong Kong with one last effort, and to walk with Hong Kong people one step further,” Chu said in a passionate final speech in court, despite being in poor health. “We have no regrets ... we have not given up,” he said, moving some witnesses to tears, and spurring sustained applause from supporters. Outside the court, some punched their fists in the air and shouted, “We want universal suffrage.” Others sobbed as supporters called them “fearless and invincible”. The concept of civil disobedience is “recognized in Hong Kong”, Justice Johnny Chan said in a summary of his judgment, but it was not a defense against a criminal charge. “The offense of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance does not have the undesirable effect of curtailing or suppressing civil disobedience at its formation stage or suppressing human rights as the defendants contended,” it read. Since the city returned to Chinese rule in 1997, critics say Beijing has reneged on its commitment to maintain Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and freedoms under a co-called “one country, two systems” arrangement. Pro-China supporters hold a Chinese national flag and a picture of Occupy Central founders Benny Tai and Chu Yiu-ming, outside the court in Hong Kong, China April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone SiuChris Patten, Hong Kong’s last colonial governor, called the verdict “appallingly divisive”, and a “vengeful pursuit” of past political events. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news briefing that criticizing the verdict as indicative of shrinking freedoms in the city was “illogical and baseless”. The central government supported the move “to punish, according to law, the main ... plotters of the illegal Occupy (movement),” Lu added. In the nearly five years since the Occupy protests, democracy activists, diplomats and business leaders have expressed grave concern over what they call Beijing’s tightening grip on the city’s freedoms. Pro-democracy lawmakers have been kicked out of the legislature, a pro-independence party banned, and democracy advocates jailed and barred from contesting local elections. The six other defendants were pro-democracy legislators Tanya Chan and Shiu Ka-chun, two former student leaders Eason Chung and Tommy Cheung, activist Raphael Wong, and veteran democrat Lee Wing-tat. They were each found guilty of at least one public nuisance charge. All nine were accused of inciting and mobilizing protesters during the demonstrations that sought to pressure Beijing to allow full democracy. Hundreds of thousands of people blocked major roads in several parts of the global financial hub for 79 straight days in late 2014, in one of the boldest populist challenges against Beijing in decades. The demonstrators were finally cleared away by police, having won no concessions. Tai, Chan and Chu were the main conspirators who planned the protests a year in advance, said David Leung, the director of public prosecutions, adding that they caused “unreasonable” public disruptions. Slideshow (11 Images)About 87 percent of roughly 1,200 protesters polled during the demonstrations said they had participated to “protect Hong Kong’s liberty”, a public opinion poll by the Chinese University of Hong Kong cited in court showed. But in his 268-page judgment, Chan said, “It is naive to suggest that a concession to introduce the form of universal suffrage ... could be made by the government overnight with a click of the fingers.” Reporting by James Pomfret and Jessie Pang, additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Clarence FernandezOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Hong Kong police are facing accusations of failing to protect pro-democracy activists who were attacked by unidentified assailants on Sunday.Opposition lawmakers say police inaction allowed criminals to beat up peaceful demonstrators after a rally.Dozens were injured when they were set upon by masked men wielding sticks.Police say their forces were stretched during another day of unrest. Hong Kong has been rocked by weeks of protests sparked by an extradition bill. Late on Sunday video footage showed groups of men - dressed in white shirts and suspected to be triad gangsters - beating passengers with rods at a train station in the Yuen Long area.Who were the white T-shirt attackers?There is speculation that the attackers have links with criminal gangs, known as triads. Forty-five people were injured, with one person in critical condition.Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam described the attacks as "shocking". She also condemned protesters for defacing China's main representative office in the city earlier in the day.One of the pro-democracy lawmakers injured in the attack, Lam Cheuk-ting, criticised the police response and suggested the assailants were linked to gangs."Is Hong Kong now allowing triads to do what they want, beating up people on the street with weapons?" he told reporters.Another pro-democracy legislator, Ray Chan, tweeted: "Hong Kong has 1 of the world's highest cop to population ratio. Where were @hkpoliceforce?"Alvin Yeung, who leads the Civic Party, said: "This is triad gangs beating up Hong Kong people. Yet you pretend nothing had happened?"Hong Kong police chief Stephen Lo defended his forces, saying his officers were busy dealing with violent anti-government protests elsewhere."Our manpower is stretched," he said. Mr Lo called suggestions that police had colluded with triads a "smear", adding his officers would pursue the attackers.Late on Monday night police said six men had been arrested for unlawful assembly in Yuen Long.Pro-democracy protesters were attacked as they travelled back from a rally in the centre of Hong Kong, where riot police had fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters.The masked men stormed Yuen Long MTR station at about 22:30 local time (14:30 GMT).Local media said they were targeting people dressed in black - the colour most protesters were wearing. What are the protests about? Profile: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam One journalist, Gwyneth Ho, was attacked while she was in the middle of live streaming for news website Stand News. She is currently in hospital. One witness - Galileo Cheng, 34 - told the BBC that he had suffered several blows to his back and arms when he stepped in to try to help her.The Hong Kong Journalist Association said some reporters on the scene had equipment seized. Police arrived at the station after 23:00, by which time most assailants had left.Mass protests have been held for weeks, initially over an extradition deal with mainland China, which the Hong Kong government has since suspended.Critics said it would undermine the territory's judicial independence and could be used to target those who spoke out against the Chinese government.The unrest has now spread to cover broader demands for democratic reform and reflect concerns that freedoms are being eroded.Sunday's rally drew more than 430,000 people, but police put the figure at 138,000.In a rare act, protesters defaced the liaison office, China's central government building. One of the graffiti slogans read: "You taught us peaceful marches are useless."Ms Lam strongly condemned the vandalism by "radical demonstrators", saying they had acted "maliciously" and "challenged the nation's sovereignty". On Saturday a counter-rally, in support of the police and against protest violence, drew 300,000 people according to organisers and 103,000 people according to police.Hong Kong is part of China but run under a "one country, two systems" arrangement that guarantees it a level of autonomy. It has its own judiciary, and a legal system that is independent from mainland China.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - Attorneys for Paul Manafort rested their case on Tuesday without calling any witnesses, including the former Trump campaign chairman himself, who told the judge he did not want to testify in his own defense against bank and tax fraud charges. The defense attorneys’ decision means that the closely watched case is expected to go to the 12-person jury late Wednesday, after prosecutors and Manafort’s lawyers make their closing arguments and instructions are issued to the jury. Manafort’s trial is the first courtroom test for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who indicted him as part of an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. A Manafort conviction would undermine efforts by President Donald Trump and some Republican lawmakers to paint Mueller’s inquiry as a political witch hunt, while an acquittal would be a setback for the special counsel. Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing said Manafort’s legal team chose not to mount a defense because U.S. prosecutors had not met the legal bar needed to prove their case. “We’ve rested because Mr. Manafort and his legal team do not think the government has met its proof,” Downing told Reuters. Manafort, who has watched silently as the case against him was argued in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, was asked by Judge T.S. Ellis whether he wanted to testify. “No, sir,” he replied. Asked whether he was satisfied with the advice he’d received from his attorneys, Manafort said, “I am, your honor.” That exchange took place without jurors in the courtroom. On Tuesday afternoon, the jurors were called to hear of the defense team’s decision, and then dismissed for the day. Manafort made millions of dollars working for pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians before he took an unpaid position with Trump’s campaign that lasted five months. The charges against him involve activities that predate his tenure with the Trump campaign. Manafort has been charged with tax and bank fraud as well as failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. If found guilty on all charges, he could face eight to 10 years in prison, according to sentencing expert Justin Paperny. U.S. prosecutors on Monday rested their case against Manafort after 10 days of testimony. Manafort’s lawyers then sought to have all the charges dismissed, in part arguing the prosecution had not proven he willingly committed crimes. The motion was a standard defense request viewed by legal experts as unlikely to succeed. “They are all jury issues,” Ellis said on Tuesday, explaining that he believed it should be up to the jury to decide. With the jurors sent home, Ellis met with the lawyers in open court to decide on jury instructions. The prosecution pressed Ellis to alter instructions about comments the judge had made to emphasize that they should not be considered by the jury. Ellis eventually made changes that appeased the prosecution, but the back and forth highlighted the tense relationship between the government and Ellis throughout the trial. Greg Andres, a prosecutor on Mueller’s team, pointed to an instance during the testimony of Rick Gates where Ellis questioned whether Gates was being sincere, a comment that was criticized by legal experts as inappropriate. FILE PHOTO: Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is shown in this booking photo in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., July 12, 2018. Alexandria Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS/ File Photo When confronted by Andres about the comment, Ellis responded in a sarcastic tone, “That really hurt the government, didn’t it?” Gates, Manafort’s right-hand man, was the government’s star witness, while Manafort’s lawyers have put attacking his credibility at the heart of their defense. The court was closed to the public for most of the morning on Tuesday to discuss a sealed motion. While the contents of the motion are unknown, legal experts have speculated it relates to jury misconduct, but noted that the trial resumed. Reporting by Nathan Layne, Karen Freifeld and Amanda Becker in Alexandria, Virginia; Writing by Warren Strobel and Susan Heavey; Editing by Alistair Bell and James DalgleishOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The situation quickly deteriorated. Police fired multiple rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, turning nearby streets into smoke-filled battlegrounds. Protesters, many of whom had armed themselves with improvised shields and bamboo sticks, fought back, hurling bricks, eggs and other objects at police lines. The two groups continued in a tit-for-tat struggle, with protesters at one point setting a cart on fire and pushing it in the direction of police.The violence brought much of central Hong Kong to a standstill, as tear gas permeated the air forcing shops to shut and trapping residents inside buildings. In the residential area of Sheung Wan, many people were left stranded after the subway suspended west-bound services and major thoroughfares were closed. Sunday marked the eighth consecutive weekend of mass demonstrations in Hong Kong. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets since the protests began two months ago, plunging the city into its most serious political crisis since its return to China in 1997. Originally sparked by opposition to a controversial and now-shelved bill that would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to China, the demonstrations have evolved to include calls for greater democracy, an independent investigation into alleged police brutality and the resignation of the city's leader, Carrie Lam. Demonstrators on Sunday initially met in Chater Garden in downtown Hong Kong, close to the Hong Kong government headquarters. Police had approved the rally but denied protesters' application to march through the city, citing the "high" risk of violent clashes -- the second time authorities have rejected a protest permit following a ban on yesterday's march in Yuen Long.Ventus Lau, 25, one of the organizers of Sunday's protest, called the police decision "unreasonable," saying such logic would prevent "peaceful protests" in the future."This is a serious threat to our freedom of expression in Hong Kong," Lau added. A protester throws tear gas back at police officers during a demonstration in the district of Yuen Long in Hong Kong on July 27, 2019.Sunday's protest came a day after riot police and protesters clashed in the small town of Yuen Long, near Hong Kong's border with China.Yuen Long became an unlikely focal point of the city's pro-democracy movement after protesters returning to the town from a march in downtown Hong Kong last weekend were viciously attacked by a mob wielding iron bars and bamboo sticks.About a dozen men have been arrested in connection with that attack, some of whom have links to organized crime groups, or triads. Protesters were reportedly at the mercy of the mob for almost an hour before police arrived and at least 45 people were injured, some seriously. On Saturday, protesters -- many wearing black -- returned to the district, chanting "There is no riot only a tyranny" and "Hong Kong Police, the lawbreakers" as they thronged through the streets in sweltering summer temperatures.Police initially appeared unwilling to intervene, but as dusk approached, hundreds of officers in full riot gear advanced on demonstrators.The crowd quickly thinned, but a core of several hundred mostly young protesters in hard yellow helmets and protective gear, appeared unwilling to back down -- charging police lines and forming barricades.In response, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators. A small group of front line protesters threw bricks and other materials at police as the two sides fought for several hours.As night fell, additional riot police advanced from multiple angles slowly pushing demonstrators in the direction of Yuen Long metro station, in a final bid to clear the streets. Chaos briefly reigned inside the station when riot police charged up the stairs with batons, hitting protesters and using pepper spray.Twenty-four people between the ages of 15 and 60 were hospitalized following the clashes, authorities confirmed. Two were in a serious condition. In statement Saturday, Hong Kong police reiterated that the demonstration had been an "unauthorized assembly" and accused protesters of throwing bricks and "hard objects" at officers during violent clashes.The protest in Yuen Long followed a large peaceful demonstration at the city's international airport Friday night. Thousands of protesters joined aviation staff in occupying the arrivals hall, where they greeted passengers with chants of "Free Hong Kong" and "Justice for victims of brutality."

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The Chinese territory of Macau is set to elect as leader the only candidate for which it is allowed to vote: a Beijing-backed former legislator who is expected to cement China’s control over the special administrative region and distance it from escalating protests in neighboring Hong Kong. FILE PHOTO: Ho Iat Seng, the candidate for Macau chief executive, speaks at a news conference in Macau, China, August 10, 2019. Zhang Wei/CNS via REUTERS The selection of former legislature head Ho Iat Seng - the sole candidate approved to run - is scheduled for Sunday, when he will be chosen by a 400-member pro-Beijing committee to lead the world’s largest gambling hub for at least the next five years. The 62-year-old’s highly scripted appointment comes as the former Portuguese colony tries to position itself as a beacon of stability and model for the Chinese government’s “one country, two systems” formula through which Beijing administers Macau and Hong Kong. “Many people expressed they do not want to mess up Macau,” Ho told local media this week, explaining that he had heard much opposition to the protests that have plunged Hong Kong into its deepest political crisis since its handover to Beijing in 1997. Ho, who has deep ties to China and was on the committee of the mainland’s prestigious legislative body, said local youth could resist the influence of Hong Kong’s protesters and supported measures to boost patriotism in Macau. Although anti-government protests have roiled the former British colony of Hong Kong for nearly three months, Macau has seen little dissent to Beijing’s rule. Many in Macau, particularly the middle-aged and elderly, have sought to distance themselves from the movement. “People in Macau are more satisfied. Everyone is secure with their jobs. We have annual payments. We are comfortable and we are grateful for it,” said Ms Leong, a marketing executive who declined to give her first name. Chinese rule has generally been welcomed in Macau, which has seen economic growth soar and a sustained period of stability - a sharp contrast to the years preceding the handover in 1999, when there were a series of mob wars. About half of Macau’s population of 600,000 immigrated from China in recent decades, which has helped foster a stronger affinity for the mainland than in Hong Kong, where most of the population was born in the territory. In recent years, millions of dollars have been piled into creating youth associations linked to the Chinese government that encourage study and learning in the mainland. Macau’s behavior has pleased Beijing. In state media this week, netizens applauded the swift shutdown of a planned unlawful protest against what activists described as excessive violence by Hong Kong’s police. Police told Reuters that dozens of officers were deployed on Monday to the historic Senado Square, where the protest was meant to take place, and that 30 people were “investigated”. The ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily said on its online Weibo account “why are Macau people so excellent#? It comes to the importance of education.” Other comments praised Macau’s police enforcement and local mindset. “Positive life is meaningful,” wrote another user. “Macau doesn’t want to respond to Hong Kong. Don’t prevent Macau people from making money, you are not welcome to revolt here.” Ho, who campaigned on integrating Macau’s economy with the Greater Bay Area and improving livelihoods, will take over from incumbent Fernando Chui in December as Macau celebrates 20 years under Chinese rule and President Xi Jinping is slated to visit. The Communist Party will also mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on Oct 1. Macau-born Ho moved into government in the early 2000s after starting off in the family business under his industrial tycoon father, Ho Tin. He has no ties to the casino industry, in contrast to previous leaders, and will play a key role in determining what will happen to the six casino operators - Sands China, Wynn Macau, SJM Holdings, Galaxy Entertainment, Melco Resorts and MGM China - when their licenses expire in coming years. Ho has said he wants “healthy” development for the gambling industry, as it is the main source of tax revenue for the government. He has also warned that the protests and the China-U.S. trade war could hurt Macau’s economy. As Hong Kong’s protests have intensified, Ho has cautioned against rushing through controversial legislation such as national education and a public investment vehicle, and stated that the government needs to be more inclusive. FILE PHOTO: Ho Iat Seng (L), the candidate for Macau chief executive, attends a meeting to present his political platform in Macau, China, August 10, 2019. Zhang Wei/CNS via REUTERS But Macau pro-democratic activists, mainly in their 20s and 30s, say the city has a broken and undemocratic political system and called on the international community to support Macau’s efforts for democratization. An open letter from a group of anonymous locals on Wednesday demanded universal suffrage and said Beijing had been imposing stronger control with increasingly authoritarian rule. “The time to fight for our universal rights is now, before Macau becomes just another Chinese city,” the letter said. “The eyes of the world are on Hong Kong right now. But please also take a look at its next door neighbor.” Reporting by Farah Master; Additional reporting by Kevin Liu; Editing by Gerry DoyleOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong is facing its worst crisis since it returned to China from British rule in 1997, the head of China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office said on Wednesday amid more anti-government protests in the Asian financial hub. “Hong Kong’s crisis ... has continued for 60 days, and is getting worse and worse,” Zhang Xiaoming, one of the most senior Chinese officials overseeing Hong Kong affairs, said during a meeting in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. “Violent activities are intensifying and the impact on society is spreading wider. It can be said that Hong Kong is now facing the most severe situation since its handover,” he said. Hong Kong has seen months of sometimes violent protests that began with opposition to a now-suspended extradition law and which have evolved into a direct challenge to the government of embattled leader Carrie Lam and calls for full democracy. Hong Kong’s protests pose a major challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping who is grappling with a trade war with the United States and a slowing economy. Zhang held a forum on Wednesday to discuss the political crisis in Hong Kong which included Hong Kong delegates to China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress and China’s main consultative body, the CPPCC. No opposition democratic figures or protest representatives were invited. Related CoverageHong Kong protests take a toll as companies flag impactChinese official says Hong Kong facing biggest crisis since 1997Speaking after the meeting, several attendees said Zhang cited speeches by former Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1984 and 1987 in which he said if “turmoil” occurs in Hong Kong, “the central government must intervene”. No specific mention, however, was made of deploying the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which has a garrison in Hong Kong, to quell the unrest, with Zhang cited as saying Beijing remained confident in the Hong Kong government and local police. “We note with concern the Chinese government’s statements,” a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said, without citing which of the comments Washington considered problematic. “We urge Beijing to adhere to its commitments in the Sino-British Joint Declaration to allow Hong Kong to exercise a high degree of autonomy,” the spokeswoman said.” We urge all sides to exercise restraint and refrain from violence.” Elsie Leung, a former justice secretary, said she felt that even if the PLA were deployed it would not conflict with Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” by which it has been governed since 1997. “One country, two systems would continue,” she said. In China’s sharpest rebuke yet of the protesters, the government warned them on Tuesday not to “play with fire” and called on Hong Kong citizens to protect their homeland. People aim laser pointers at the facade of the Hong Kong Space Museum during a flash mob staged to denounce the authorities' claim that laser pointers were offensive weapons in Hong Kong, China, August 7, 2019. Picture taken with a slow shutter speed. REUTERS/Thomas PeterThe Global Times, a Chinese tabloid published by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, showed a video on its official Twitter feed of thousands of police officers taking part in an anti-riot training drill in Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong. The protests have drawn millions onto the streets in opposition to an extradition bill that would see suspects tried in mainland courts controlled by the Communist Party. Many feared it would undermine Hong Kong’s independent judiciary and was another step towards full mainland control of Hong Kong. Several thousand Hong Kong lawyers dressed in black, marched in silence on Wednesday to call on the government to safeguard the independence of the city’s department of justice. The city’s lawyers fear the justice department’s prosecutions of arrested protesters are taking on an increasingly political slant with over 500 arrests, many charged with rioting, an offence that carries a 10-year jail term. A female lawyer who declined to be named said she was marching “to make sure the government knows that within the legal sector, we will not allow judicial independence to be compromised by politics or pressure from the Chinese government”. A group of unidentified government prosecutors published an open letter last week accusing Secretary of Justice Teresa Cheng of putting politics above legal principles. “All we want is justice and all we want is consistency,” said prominent lawyer Kevin Yam, who also protested. “We don’t want to see thugs get away while the best of our youth get prosecuted. We uphold the rule of law and we ask for justice.” Slideshow (10 Images)Protesters are demanding a complete withdrawal of the extradition bill, an independent inquiry into the crisis, an investigation into what they say is excessive use of force by police, and for Hong Kong leader Lam to step down. A brazen attack by an armed mob on protesters at a train station in Yuen Long on the night of July 21 that left 45 people injured, has so far seen 23 people arrested for the relatively light charge of unlawful assembly. Protesters say police were slow to protect them. Police fired tear gas in Sham Shui Po late on Tuesday, as protesters gathered outside a police station to demand the release of Keith Fong, a student union leader from Baptist University, who they say was unlawfully arrested by several plain-clothes police for buying laser pointers on the grounds that he possessed offensive weapons. Protesters have sometimes aimed lasers, which are widely available in shops, at police during recent clashes. Reporting by Farah Master, James Pomfret, Anne Marie Roantree, Greg Torode, Donny Kwok, Noah Sin and Sijia Jiang; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry, Paul Tait and Grant McCoolOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rick Gates, a former business partner of President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is still cooperating with several ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to a court filing on Wednesday. Rick Gates, former campaign aide to U.S. President Donald Trump, departs after a bond hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., December 11, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua RobertsThe joint filing by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and Gates’ lawyer suggests that Gates may be helping investigators on matters that do not pertain just to his former boss Manafort. It was not clear which probes Gates is helping with, but he was deeply involved in running the Trump campaign’s day-to-day operations and played a key role at the Republican National Convention where Trump was chosen as the party’s nominee. He stayed on in the campaign even after Manafort resigned in August 2016 over a controversy about cash payments from Ukraine, and also served on the presidential transition team. In the filing, prosecutors and Gates’ lawyer said he was not ready for sentencing and asked to postpone filing a status report until mid-January. Gates was a star witness over the summer in the high-profile trial of Manafort, after he previously pleaded guilty in Mueller’s probe in exchange for agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors under a deal that could lead to a reduced sentence. Gates testified before a federal court jury in Alexandria, Virginia, that he helped Manafort file false tax returns and hide his foreign bank accounts. Manafort was convicted on eight counts of financial wrongdoing. Manafort was due to stand trial a second time in Washington over charges related to his lobbying activity for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government, but he opted to plead guilty in September in exchange for cooperating with Mueller. The special prosecutor has not filed any new cases since July in his probe into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Trump denies colluding and has called the probe a witch hunt. But Mueller’s office has been busy interviewing witnesses such as Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. Several associates of Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone have also testified before a grand jury. One of Stone’s associates, Jerome Corsi, told Reuters this week he was expecting Mueller’s office to offer him a plea deal. Trump is expected to provide written answers to questions from the special counsel as soon as this week. Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image Members of the Ku Klux Klan ceremonially initiate a new recruit at a meeting in 1922. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Topical Press Agency/Getty Images Members of the Ku Klux Klan ceremonially initiate a new recruit at a meeting in 1922. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images National Is There A Cure For Hate? Education Right-Wing Hate Groups Are Recruiting Video Gamers As long as the United States has existed, there's been some version of white supremacy. But over the centuries, the way white supremacy manifests has changed with the times. This includes multiple iterations of the infamous Ku Klux Klan.According to the sociologist Kathleen Blee, the Klan first surfaced in large numbers in the 1860s in the aftermath of the Civil War, then again in the 1920s, and yet again during the civil rights era.Blee is a professor and dean at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement, as well as Understanding Racist Activism: Theory, Methods and Research. She says the anonymity allowed by the internet makes it difficult to track just how much white supremacist activity we're seeing today.But despite this difficulty, she and other experts say there's been an indisputable uptick in hate crimes — and an overall rise in white supremacist violence: Earlier this fall, a gunman shot and killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. In 2017, a clash with protesters at the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., left one woman dead. In 2015, the shooting at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C., killed nine black churchgoers. And in 2012, a rampage at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, Wisc., killed six people.As we consider this spate of racist attacks, we thought it'd be helpful to talk to Blee about the ebbs and flows of white supremacy in the United States — and what, exactly, those past waves say about today's political climate.Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.First, can we talk about the various phases of white supremacy in the U.S. throughout history — and what caused those ebbs and flows?The 20th to 21st century Klan actually formed after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction period. Then it was entirely contained within the South, mostly in the rural South. It [was] all men. There were violent attacks on people who were engaged, or [wanted] to be engaged, in the Reconstruction state, [including] freed blacks, southern reconstructionists, politicians and northerners who move to the South. That collapses for a variety of reasons in the 1870s.Then, the Klan is reborn in the teens, but becomes really big in the early 1920s. And that is the second Klan. That is probably the biggest organized outburst of white supremacy in American history, encompassing millions of members or more. ... And that's not in the South, [it's] primarily in the North. It's not marginal. It runs people for office. It has a middle class base. They have an electoral campaign. They are very active in the communities. And they have women's Klans, who are very active and very effective in some of the communities. That dissolves into mostly scandals around the late '20s.Then there's some fascist activity around the wars — pro-German, some Nazi activity in the United States — not sizable, but obviously extremely troubling.The Klan and white supremacy reemerge in a bigger and more organized way around the desegregation and civil rights movement — again, mostly in the South, and back to that Southern model: vicious, violent, defensive, Jim Crow and white rights in the South.And then it kind of ebbs. After a while, it kind of comes back again in the late '80s and the early 21st Century as another era. And then there's kind of a network of white supremacism that encompasses the Klan, which is more peripheral by this time. Also Neo-Nazi influence is coming as white power skinheads, racist music, and also neo-Nazi groups. The Klans tend to be super nationalist, but these neo-Nazi groups have a big international agenda.Then the last wave is where we are now, which is the Internet appears. The movement has been in every other era as movement of people in physical space like in meetings, rallies, protests and demonstrations and so forth. It becomes primarily a virtual world, and as you can see, has its own consequences — many consequences. It's much harder to track. And then there are these blurred lines between all these various groups that get jumbled together as the alt-right and people who come from the more traditional neo-Nazi world. We're in a very different world now.That's a long history. You mentioned that, for a variety of reasons, the Klan in the Reconstruction era collapsed. What are some of the factors that contributed to that?I would say two things that mostly contributed to that ebb over time.One is the white supremacist world, writ large, is very prone to very serious infighting. Internal schisms are quite profound in collapsing white supremacists, even as an entire movement, over time.What's that infighting look like? How racist to be?No, no. It's almost always power and money. So, for example, the '20s Klan — I say "Klan" but in every era there were multiple Klans, they all have different names, they all have different leaders — they are trying to extract money from their groups, and they are all fighting about money .... and then over power, and who controls the power, because white supremacy groups don't elect their leaders right away. To be a leader just means to grab power and control. So there's a lot of contention in these groups of control.It's not ideas. Ideas aren't that central. They have these certain key ideas that they promulgated — race and anti-Semitic ideas — but the fine points of ideological discussion don't really occur that much in white supremacist groups, nor do they get people that agitated. It's not like in other kinds of groups, where people might have various versions of ideas, versions of ideologies. [The Klan] just have kind of core beliefs. But they do tend to fight over ideas for money, power and access to the media.So that's the fighting. The other thing is, in different waves of history, there are prosecutions, either by the police or civil prosecutions that collapse groups and movements. Sometimes, there's kind of a blind eye to white supremacist organizing, but at other times there is really successful either civil or state prosecutions of these groups that do debilitate them.How does the longevity of white supremacy or these [hate] groups coincide with who has political power?It's very hard to create a generalization here. Certain groups, like the Klan, tend to rise and fall based on the threats to who is in power. The 1870s Klan [was] based on the Southern racial state formed during slavery being threatened by Reconstruction. In the 1920s, the idea was that political power [was] being threatened by this wave of immigrants. The 1920s Klan [was] very anti-Catholic, as well as racist and anti-Semitic. Part of this anti-Catholicism [was] based on the idea that Catholics were going to start controlling politics as well as the police.There's some really good analysis by some sociologists that showed that the Klan appeared in counties where there was the least racist enforcement of the law. Because in counties where the sheriff and the county government was enforcing racist laws, there was no need for the Klan.How does this apply to this more recent wave of white supremacy?Right now, we have an extremely heterogeneous group that we might call white supremacists. So some of them, probably the smallest group, are nationalistic. And probably the larger group are not particularly nationalistic. This is why it's hard to make generalizations. It's not the case that nationalist fervor just finds itself in the white supremacist movement. The person accused of the shooting in Pittsburgh is an example. If you look at [his] writings, they're not nationalistic, they're in fact anti-nationalistic. And that's pretty common with white supremacy today — some of them have this sense that their mission is this pan-Aryan mission. They're fighting global threats to whites and creating a white international defense. So that's not a nationalist project, that's an internationalist project.And the other reason is there's this idea among white supremacists in the United States that the national government is ZOG — Zionist Occupation Government — and that's a shorthand way of saying that the national government is secretly controlled by an invisible Jewish cabal. So some of them will be amenable to very local government ... they'll embrace, and work with, and even try to seize control of the government at the county level. But generally, national politics are quite anametha for those two general reasons.In the 1920s, synagogues were targeted by the KKK. Can you run through other examples of violence like this?People will say the '20s Klan was not as violent as other Klans. But that's really because its violence took a different form. So there, the threat that the Klan manufactured was the threat of being swapped — all the positions of society being taken by the others — so immigrants, Catholics, Jews and so forth. So the violence was things like, for example, I studied deeply the state of Indiana where the Klan was very strong — pushing Catholics school teachers out of their jobs in public schools and getting them fired, running Jewish merchants out of town, creating boycott campaigns, whispering campaigns about somebody's business that would cause it to collapse. So it's a different kind of violence but it's really targeted as expelling from the communities those who are different than the white, native-born Protestants who were the members of the Klan. So it takes different forms in different times. It's not always the violence that we think about now, like shootings.When did we start seeing the violence that we see today?Well, the violence that we see today is not that dissimilar from the violence of the Klan in the '50s and '60s, where there was, kind of, the violence of terrorism. So there's two kinds of violence in white supremacy. There's the "go out and beat up people on the street" violence — that's kind of the skinhead violence. And then there's the sort of strategic violence. You know, the violence that's really meant to send a message to a big audience, so that the message is dispersed and the victims are way beyond the people who are actually injured.You see that in the '50s, '60s in the South, and you see it now.I was wondering if we could kind of talk a little bit about the language we use when we talk about mass killings that are related to race, religion or ethnicity — especially about the second type of violence, "strategic violence," that you describe. I've seen people use the phrase "domestic terrorism." What do you make of that phrase?Terrorism means violence that's committed to further a political or ideological or social goal. By that definition, almost all white supremacist violence is domestic terrorism, because it's trying to send a message, right? Then there's that political issue about what should be legally considered domestic terrorism, and what should be considered terrorism. And that's just an argument of politics, that's not really an argument about definitions right now.How these things get coded by states and federal governments is quite variable depending on who's defining categories. But from the researcher point of view, these are terrorist acts because they are meant to send a message. That is the definition of terrorism. So it's not just, you don't bomb a synagogue or shoot people in a black church just because you're trying to send a message to those victims or even to those victims and their immediate family. It's meant to be a much broader message, and really that's the definition of terrorism.I think what we don't want is for all acts of white supremacist violence to be thought of as just the product of somebody who has a troubled psyche. Because that just leaves out the whole picture of why they focus on certain social groups for one thing. [And] why they take this kind of mass horrific feature ... so I think to really understand the tie between white supremacism and the acts of violence that come out of white supremacism, it's important to think about that bigger message that was intended to be sent.What are the most effective strategies to combat these ideas of white supremacy, or this violence?I'd say the most effective strategy is to educate people about it, because it really thrives on being hidden and appearing to be something other than it is. I mean, millions of white supremacist groups have often targeted young people, and they do so often in a way that's not clear to the young person that these are white supremacists, they appear to be just your friends and your new social life, like people on the edges who seem exciting. ... And so helping people understand how white supremacists operate in high schools, and the military, and all kinds of sectors of society gives people the resources the understanding to not be pulled into those kinds of worlds.Twenty years, or even 10 years ago, I would have said it's really effective to sue these groups and bring them down financially, which was what the Southern Poverty Law Center was doing.[Now,] they don't have property; they operate in a virtual space. So the strategies of combating racial extremism have to change with the changing nature of it.

(Reuters) - Russian-born real estate developer Felix Sater, who worked on a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow, testified on Tuesday before the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, but a panel spokesman said he had not fully cooperated. Sater said he spoke “fully and completely” about the unbuilt Moscow tower, which Donald Trump pursued while running for president despite denying at the time any links to Russia. “All of the knowledge I had about the deal I revealed to the committee,” Sater said. “I answered every question that was asked of me.” Patrick Boland, a spokesman for the committee, disputed Sater’s assertion that he testified fully. We “must correct the record,” Boland said. “Mr. Sater has not fully cooperated with the committee, and he will remain under subpoena until he does so.” Boland said Sater did not produce documents requested of him, including unredacted telephone records, and asserted a “baseless claim of attorney-client privilege” in response to questions about a statement provided to the committee by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Robert Wolf, Sater’s lawyer, called the intelligence panel’s assessment of the real estate developer’s cooperation “unfortunate” and “inaccurate.” He said Sater was working to produce the requested telephone records. Sater reiterated to Reuters that he had cooperated fully with lawmakers, saying in a text message: “Their political agenda is not my concern.” The panel last month issued a subpoena for Sater after he failed to appear for a closed-door interview with the committee. He blamed his absence on an unexpected illness that caused him to sleep through his wake-up alarm. The New York-based Sater, whose links to Trump were examined in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, worked with Cohen on the plan to build a Trump-branded skyscraper in the Russian capital. Slideshow (6 Images)The House Intelligence Committee had wanted to talk to Sater about his work on the project, which came under renewed scrutiny after Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about when negotiations on the deal ended in order to minimize Trump’s links to Russia. Numerous current and former associates of Trump have refused to cooperate with Democratic-led congressional investigations of the Republican president and his business interests. Sater said he wanted to testify publicly but that the committee had requested the meeting be held behind closed doors. Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Nathan Layne; Editing by Bill Trott, G Crosse and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Paul Manafort (L), former campaign chairman for U.S. President Donald Trump, in Washington, DC, U.S., December 11, 2017, and Rick Gates, former campaign aide to Trump, in Washington, U.S., December 11, 2017 are pictured in this combination photograph. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File PhotoALEXANDRIA (Reuters) - The top aide to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort testified at trial on Tuesday that Manafort told him not to tell their firm’s bookkeeper about payments from accounts in Cyprus. Rick Gates, the U.S. government’s star witness in Manafort’s trial on tax fraud and bank fraud charges, testified in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, that there were hundreds of emails showing Manafort approved payments out of Cypriot accounts. Gates testified on Monday that wealthy Ukrainian businessmen paid Manafort millions of dollars for his political services through wire transfers to Cyprus-based accounts. Reporting by Nathan Layne, Lisa Lambert; editing by Grant McCoolOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

In the past eight years, more than 175 people around the world have been killed in at least 16 high-profile attacks motivated, or apparently motivated, by white nationalist conspiracy theories, including the far-right racist belief that nonwhite immigrants and refugees are “invaders” who pose an existential threat to the white race.The targets of deadly attacks have included Muslim worshippers at mosques in Canada, Britain and New Zealand; black Americans in church, including during Bible study at a historic black church in South Carolina; Jewish Americans in synagogues across the United States; and leftwing politicians and activists in the US, UK, Greece and Norway.Now, law enforcement officials in the United States are investigating two more mass shootings with potential links to white nationalist radicalization.An attack on Saturday at a Walmart superstore in El Paso, Texas, a majority-Hispanic city, which left 22 people dead and more than two dozen wounded, and a shooting the previous weekend at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California, packed with families with young children, which left three people dead and 15 wounded.Many of the white male perpetrators or suspects in these attacks have explicitly described immigrants and refugees as “invaders” or an “invasion” online, and have cited previous white nationalist killers as the inspiration for their attacks.Several of these deadly attacks have also been closely linked to mainstream political debates over refugees and immigration. Here are the prominent cases prior to this August 2019 shooting:1 killed in mass shooting targeting a synagogue in Poway, California, US.51 killed in mass shootings targeting two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.The alleged shooter, a 28-year-old white man from Australia, posted on 8chan before the attack, and then live-streamed himself shooting unarmed people in and around two Christchurch mosques. The manifesto posted before the shooting paid tribute to previous white nationalist attacks, including Anders Breivik’s 2011 bomb and shooting attack in Norway, as well as historic acts of violence against Muslims. 11 killed in a mass shooting targeting the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US.The alleged shooter, a 46-year-old white man, reportedly shouted “All Jews must die!” during the attack. After he was taken into custody, he told a law enforcement official that he believed Jews “were committing a genocide to his people”, a central white nationalist conspiracy theory. The gunman, who is awaiting trial and has pleaded not guilty, apparently had an active profile on an extremist social media site, where he accused Jewish people of trying to bring “evil” Muslims into the US, and wrote that a refugee aid organisation “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people”. Man attempted to enter black church before allegedly killing two black people in a supermarket in Kentucky, US.A witness said that during the attack, the alleged shooter said: “Whites don’t kill whites.” His two victims, Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, were both black. Shortly before the shooting he had attempted to enter a nearby, predominantly black church, which was locked. The suspect was charged with hate crimes.Heather Heyer was killed and dozens injured after a car ploughed into anti-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, US.After authorities shut down a violent white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the men who had been photographed with a white supremacist group drove his car into a crowded street full of counter-protesters. Heather Heyer, 32, who was there protesting the far-right supporters, was killed. Dozens more were injured, many seriously. The killer had been obsessed with Hitler as a teenager, according to a former teacher. He was sentenced to life in prison.A man called Makram Ali was killed and 12 people injured after a van ploughed into worshippers outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, United Kingdom.The killer, who has been jailed for life, shouted: “I want to kill all Muslims – I did my bit,” after the van attack, according to witnesses. He had been radicalised online and over Twitter, a judge concluded, and avidly consumed anti-Muslim propaganda from prominent rightwing figures.Two men stabbed to death after intervening in an anti-Muslim rant, Portland, Oregon, US.Two men were killed and one injured after they tried to intervene to protect young women on a public train who were being targeted with an anti-Muslim tirade. Their alleged killer shouted “Free speech or die” later in a courtroom, and “Death to Antifa! You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism!” The suspect is awaiting trial.Timothy Caughman stalked and killed by a white supremacist with a sword, New York, US.The alleged killer later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life behind bars.Caughman, a 66-year-old “can and bottle recycler”, had lively social media accounts full of photographs with celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey. His killer, an American military veteran, said he targeted a random black man on the street in New York City as a “practice run” for a bigger attack. Six people killed during evening prayers at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada.One of the victims, Azzeddine Soufiane, was killed as he attempted to tackle the gunman. Nineteen people were also injured in the shooting, which the convicted gunman said was prompted by Justin Trudeau’s tweet that refugees were welcome in Canada, and that “diversity is strength”. Those comments from the Canadian prime minster followed US president Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries. The shooter, who said he feared refugees would kill his family, had previously been known as an aggressive online troll .Labour MP Jo Cox shot and stabbed to death, UK.Cox was a supporter of Britain staying in the European Union. She was attacked a week before the EU referendum vote in 2016. The man convicted of killing her was a white supremacist obsessed with the Nazis and apartheid-era South Africa. He shouted: “This is for Britain,” “Keep Britain independent” and “Britain first” as he killed her.Three killed in attack on school in Trollhättan, Sweden.The attacker targeted a local high school with a high percentage of immigrant students. Police said students and teacherswith darker skinwere targeted. Three died, including 15-year-old Ahmed Hassan, who was born in Somalia and had recently moved to Sweden.Nine people killed during Bible study at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, US.The nine victims included elderly longtime church members at the Mother Emanuel AME church, and Clementa Pinckney, a state senator. The shooter, a self-avowed white supremacist, said he wanted to start a race war, and that he was concerned about “black-on-white crime”. He has been convicted of murder and hate crimes.Three killed at Jewish centre and retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas, US.A former Ku Klux Klan leader shot and killed three people, one of them just 14 years old. He was later convicted of murder. He said he believed Jews were destroying the white race, and that diversity was a kind of genocide. None of his victims were Jewish, but he said he considered two of them to be accomplices to Jewish people.Rapper and anti-fascist activist Pavlos Fyssas stabbed to death in Piraeus, Greece.A senior member of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party was imprisoned after confessing to the killing.Six worshippers killed in a shooting targeting a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.The dead included the temple president, Satwant Singh Kaleka. The shooter, a “frustrated neo-Nazi” who had played in white power bands, was a regular on racist websites, and died in the attack. He had previously talked to one colleague in the US military about a “racial holy war that was coming” and told another he was a “race traitor” for dating a Latina woman.77 people killed in attacks on Utøya island and in Oslo, Norway.A bomb attack, followed by a shooting that targeted the island summer youth camp of Norway’s Labor party. The shooter, who was convicted and is in prison, wanted to prevent an “invasion of Muslims” and deliberately targeted politically active young people who he saw as “cultural Marxists” and proponents of multiculturalism. More than half of the dead were teenagers.

Conspiracy theories used to be seen as bizarre expressions of harmless eccentrics. Not any more. Gone are the days of outlandish theories about Roswell’s UFOs, the “hoax” moon landings or grassy knolls. Instead, today’s iterations have morphed into political weapons. Turbocharged by social media, they spread with astonishing speed, using death threats as currency.Together with their first cousins, fake news, they are challenging society’s trust in facts. At its most toxic, this contagion poses a profound threat to democracy by damaging its bedrock: a shared commitment to truth.Their growing reach and scale is astonishing. A University of Chicago study estimated in 2014 that half of the American public consistently endorses at least one conspiracy theory. When they repeated the survey last November, the proportion had risen to 61%. The startling finding was echoed by a recent study from the University of Cambridge that found 60% of Britons are wedded to a false narrative.The trend began on obscure online forums such as the alt-right playground 4chan. Soon, media entrepreneurs realized there was money to be made – most notoriously Alex Jones, whose site Infowars feeds its millions of readers a potent diet of lurid lies (9/11 was a government hit job; the feds manipulate the weather.)Now the conspiracy theorist-in-chief sits in the White House. Donald Trump cut his political teeth on the “birther” lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and went on to embrace climate change denial, rampant voter fraud and the discredited belief that childhood vaccines may cause autism.Amid this explosive growth, one aspect has been underappreciated: the human cost. What is the toll paid by those caught up in these falsehoods? And how are they fighting back?The Guardian talked to five people who can speak from bitter personal experience. We begin in a town we will not identify in Massachusetts where a young man, who tells his story here for the first time, was asleep in his bed.Valentine’s Day 2018 was Marcel Fontaine’s day off. They slept late into the afternoon, having worked a double shift the day before. When they woke up, a wave of happiness washed over them – they were in a relationship, had a job they loved at a local concert venue. Their life was good.By the time they roused themselves, the deadliest high school shooting in US history was already over. A 19-year-old with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle had entered the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, and opened fire. Seventeen had been killed, though Fontaine, who has no cable TV or radio, was oblivious to the tragedy.Then they received a text from a friend. A photo of Fontaine was flying around the internet and they were being accused of carrying out the terrible Florida shooting.Their immediate response was bewilderment. What shooting? Where? Fontaine was in Massachusetts, 1,500 miles away. It would take a four-hour flight to reach the school. They’d only visited Florida once when they were a little boy to see Mickey Mouse.Fontaine, 25, describes themselves on Twitter as a “non-binary gay queer autistic commie that loves horror movies and metal!” They were diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum as a child and for years has struggled with anxiety and a debilitating stammer. At moments of heightened stress, they flap their hands like a bird.In short, Fontaine is a vulnerable leftwing individual who would not harm a flea, which apparently makes them perfect fodder for the sadistic mockery of 4chan, the anonymous message board that hosts alt-right activists and other extremists.A few days before the Parkland shooting, a photo of Fontaine wearing a T-shirt of Marx, Lenin, Mao and other communist luminaries dressed in party hats had been grabbed from his Instagram feed and posted by an anonymous user on 4chan, where they were promptly derided as a “lefty dimwit”. The T-shirt, Fontaine protests, was a joke, a pun on Communist party.In the conspiratorial bubble of 4chan, it was but a small step from ridiculing Fontaine to casting them as the Parkland shooter. Within two hours of the massacre, the image had been reposted on the bulletin board, now saying: “Florida Shooter Was A Commie!”From there, Alex Jones’s conspiracy theory site, Infowars, leapt into the fray. Its “reporter” lifted Fontaine’s photo directly from 4chan and, without any attempt at verification, ran with it on the front page. “Shooter is a commie. Alleged photo of the suspect shows communist garb,” the outlet screamed. The false rumor quickly spread from Miami to Beijing.Fontaine was horrified. “I knew a lot about the Alex Jones fanbase – that they were radical extremists who believe every word he says, and that a lot of them hold firearms. I knew my life was at risk.”The first death threats landed via Facebook messenger by nightfall: “I hope someone throws you out of a rotary aircraft, you commie!” Another made a direct reference to the concert venue that employed them. “They knew where I worked, what I did. It just got me so afraid.”Death threats and autism spectrum conditions make poor bedfellows, and exacerbated Fontaine’s condition, ramping up their anxiety, insomnia and social isolation.“I wasn’t able to function, to cook, do basic tasks. I went days without taking a shower. I didn’t want to go out, I just wanted to be with myself.” Soon, they started having frequent panic attacks.Over the past six months, Fontaine has slowly pulled themselves back together. They are in therapy to combat the bouts of panic and sleeplessness that still trouble them. But they have become less trusting of people and freezes whenever they see someone dressed in camouflage or wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Do they read Infowars? Fontaine wonders. “I get very nervous because they might recognize me and want to actually pull something out on me. Or like beat me to a pulp.”As the anniversary of the shooting approaches, they find it hard to understand why they were singled out. “It makes me sad. This event got me to a point where I just can’t be myself again.”Lenny Pozner, 51, is preparing to pack his bags, again. A few weeks ago, “hoaxers” – as he calls conspiracy theorists – reproduced a map of his Florida neighborhood with a dropped pin marking the precise location of his apartment. It will be the eighth time in five years he will have been forced to move home as he strives to keep one step ahead of the fanatics who relentlessly hound him.Pozner’s crime, in the eyes of conspiracy theorists, is being the father of one of the 20 children who were gunned down in the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Noah was the youngest of all victims. He had just turned six.Within months, conspiracy theorists, egged on by Alex Jones and Infowars, went to work. They generated thousands of web posts and a 426-page book called “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook”.Their thesis: the shooting at the elementary school never happened. The 20 kids who died were “crisis actors”. The tragedy was a con. Noah had never even existed, he was a construct of Photoshop.Within a year, it had reached such a pitch that Pozner knew he had to do something. “I agonized about the situation for several weeks. But ultimately I felt I owed it to my son to protect his memory.” He posted on his Google+ page his son’s birth and death certificates and kindergarten report card.“I was extremely naive. I believed that people were simply misinformed and that if I released proof that my child had existed, thrived, loved and was loved, and was ultimately murdered, they would understand our grief, stop harassing us, and more importantly, stop defacing photos of Noah and defaming him online.”Instead, he watched his deceased son buried a second time, under hundreds of pages of hateful web content. “I don’t think there’s any one word that fits the horror of it,” Pozner says. “It’s a phenomenon of the age which we’re in, modern day witch-hunts. It’s a form of mass delusion.”Pozner is extraordinarily controlled. His voice is flat and preternaturally calm, as though all emotion has been pummeled out of him. His apartment has the same pared-down, antiseptic quality. “I’ve gotten good at moving, I’ve adapted to it,” he says.He left Newtown for Florida in 2013 with Noah’s mother, his now former wife Veronique De La Rosa, and their two daughters in the hope of rebuilding their lives. (He asked the Guardian not to identify the town he now lives in.) He has deliveries sent to a separate address and has rented multiple postal boxes as decoys.The most serious of death threats came from Lucy Richards, a Florida resident who was so fervent in her belief that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake that she left messages on Pozner’s cellphone saying: “You’re going to die. Death is coming to you real soon, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” In June 2017, Richards was sentenced to five months in prison, followed by a further five months under house arrest.Pozner sees this outpouring of hatred as a product of digital technology running ahead of society’s ability to contain it. “Social media hasn’t matured. We lack a segment of law enforcement specializing in it. There really is no one to help.”But he reserves his staunchest criticism for Alex Jones, who he blames for amplifying conspiracies in the pursuit of profit. In a lawsuit suing Jones for defamation for more than $1m, lawyers for Pozner and De La Rosa chronicle how Infowars baited them over many years: the shooting was “staged”, a “giant hoax”. The school was an elaborate film set. It was all a “soap opera”.But in targeting Pozner, Jones picked on the wrong guy. Since 2014 Pozner has made it his life’s work to confront the conspiracy theorists. Through his organization the Honr Network, Pozner has systematically challenged those who he believes cross that line, forcing moderators to delete posts. In 2018 alone, he reported 2,568 videos to YouTube and had 1,555 of those expunged.Pozner’s lawsuit against Jones, which mirrors a similar legal case brought by Fontaine, is making its way through a federal court in Austin, Texas. Earlier this month they received a legal boost when the judge granted them access to Jones’s financial and marketing documents under discovery.Jones denies defaming anyone, though he has so far failed in having the suits dismissed on free speech grounds.Regarding the free speech argument, Pozner says: “You have the right to express yourself and your opinions, no matter how offensive they may be, until your chosen form of expression impedes my rights to be free from defamation and harassment.”What shocks Pozner most, he says, was how alone he was when he began this fight. “I was the only one standing up to the hoaxers, and other than the loss of my son that was my biggest disappointment at the time.”At least he has brought his son’s memory back to life. If you search Noah Pozner on Google you will find hundreds of articles about the boy’s life and death, and virtually none of the bile from those who questioned his existence.By Pozner’s reckoning, one in five people around the world are suggestible to conspiracy theories, and their obsessions are amplified by the crude logic of digital algorithms. “There is just no more truth, there is just what’s trending on Twitter,” he says. “Used to be, you had to burn books to keep people from finding out the truth, now you just have to push it to page 20 of a Google search.”Dr Paul Offit strode into a dispute over the safety of children’s vaccines in 1998. Twenty years later, he is still embroiled in it. His latest death threat arrived only about a month ago, when someone wrote on a forum frequented by vaccine skeptics that Offit was “dead already so they might as well assassinate him”.Offit’s worldview, as a pediatrician at the Children’s hospital of Philadelphia who has himself created a vaccine against rotavirus, had always revolved around the scientific method and evidence-based reality. “The assumption was that if you publish good papers in good journals, truth emerges and people abandon ill-founded beliefs. Didn’t work that way.”In 1998, the since-discredited British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield published a paper in medical journal the Lancet linking the MMR vaccine (against measles, mumps and rubella) to autism. Wakefield went on to advise parents to avoid MMR immunization for their children, spreading pandemonium across Europe and the US. In 2000, Offit decided to act, shocked that nobody was standing up for science. He set up the Vaccine Education Center to give the public a basic appreciation of vaccines which globally prevent up to 3m deaths each year.The backlash came almost immediately. It began with a flurry of emails calling him Satan, a Nazi. “It was devastating. It hurt, it always hurt, it still hurts. I never got so thick-skinned that when people assume my motives are evil it doesn’t hurt me.”He was stalked by a man who followed him from from one speaking engagement to the next. Protesters appeared outside medical meetings bearing placards with Offit’s face above the word “TERRORIST”.A voicemail was left for him at home. The man mentioned he had young children the same age as Offit’s. “We all want what’s best for our children, I’m sure you want what’s best for your children,” the man said, before going on to name Offit’s kids as well as the school they attended.It was the one time that Offit considered dropping it all. That night, he talked to his wife, Bonnie, and offered to quit standing up for vaccines. “If Bonnie had said stop to me that night, I would have stopped.” Bonnie told him to hang in there. You’re doing the right thing, she said, for science, for children. You mustn’t let them shut you up.Offit, 67, is hanging in there, sustained by two powerful motivations. The first is anger: although at least 17 major studies have found that MMR does not cause autism, conspiracy theorists continue to propound the falsehood. Offit is angry in particular at what he calls the “small group of professionals who do this as a living, the media-savvy, politically connected, lawyer-backed group” of anti-vaxxers who have become all the more vocal by using the internet as an organizing tool.“I think they’re evil, to be quite frank. I think they hurt children, they put children in harm’s way and to me they have to be defeated.”His second motivation: children. As the Guardian reported last month, anti-vaccine movements spurred on by rightwing populism are on the rise across Europe and immunization rates are plummeting as a result. The World Health Organization has included such movements – which it called “vaccine hesitancy” – among its top 10 global health threats for 2019.The result of this surge in conspiracy theories around vaccines is that measles outbreaks are at a 20-year high. In 2018 there were more than 60,000 European cases with 72 deaths, twice the number from the year before.Offit has seen at first hand what that means. One of the cases that haunts him is that of a mother who decided not to vaccinate her infant son against influenza, having read some fallacious material about the treatment.The little boy was brought in to the hospital and went through a progression of increasingly invasive care as his body was ravaged with flu. First the child was given an oxygen face mask, then put in a ventilator, then an oscillator and heart-lung machine, until finally he died. “The mother watched her child die in slow motion, like falling off a cliff slowly. It was very hard.”After the boy’s death, Offit asked the mother if she would be willing to talk to other parents wrestling with the decision to vaccinate as a way of preventing further tragedy. She politely declined. “She said to me she still thinks she made the right choice – the vaccine would have been more harmful.”As a developer of video games, Brianna Wu is well placed to judge the stakes involved when someone becomes caught up in the real-world fantasy that is a conspiracy theory. To her trained eye, the chances of prevailing within the maelstrom are passingly low.“If you address the conspiracy theory head-on, you just amplify the message you are trying to disprove. If you ignore it you just get screamed at and harassed until your career is over. It’s a no-win scenario,” she says.Wu, 41, speaks from brutal experience. “I will never forget the day it happened,” she says, recalling when she tweeted a collage of comments lampooning male conspiracy theorists in her industry. “My Twitter caught on fire with all kinds of threats and nasty comments. I knew I had a choice to make: I could sit down and say nothing, or I could take a stand.”She did take a stand, and by doing so, propelled herself into Gamergate, the misogynistic conspiracy theory that ran riot through 4chan, its sister imageboard 8chan, Reddit, Twitter and other social media platforms.The blow-up began in 2014 when fellow video game developer Zoe Quinn became the target of hundreds of anonymous male trolls propagating the false claim that she had sought to advance her career by having an affair with a video game journalist. The conflagration spread like wildfire, engulfing several other women in and around the gaming world. The bedlam could not have come at a worse juncture for Wu, erupting just weeks after she had launched her first video game, Revolution 60.Wu believes that women are targeted by conspiracy theorists more frequently than men, and yet they’re rarely heard. “The cost of speaking out is so high for women, I understand why most decide not to. I’ve heard hundreds of times over the last few years women with children saying ‘I am afraid to speak up because I don’t want my children to be targeted’. That is an utterly rational position – many women are correctly scared to talk.”Wu was scared, too. Her frivolous internet meme ridiculing the male trolls of Gamergate triggered an assault that continues to this day. At its peak, a woman turned up at her alma mater, the University of Mississippi, impersonating her in an attempt to acquire her college records. Someone else surreptitiously took photos of her as she went about her daily business. Wu was unaware of it until she received anonymous texts with pictures of her in coffee shops, restaurants, at the movies.An accurate floor plan of her house was assembled and published online, along with her address and pictures of her car and license plate. And then there were the death threats – up to 300 by her estimate. One message on Twitter threatened to cut off her husband’s “tiny Asian penis”. The couple evacuated their house and took refuge with friends and in hotels.Wu now devotes her time to running for Congress from her home in Dedham, Massachusetts. She sees her candidacy as a way of pressing federal authorities to take the problem of online conspiracy theories and harassment seriously. “The FBI employs about 30,000 agents in the US. As best as I can tell there’s no division that is specifically tasked with prosecuting extreme threats online – it’s simply not a priority for them,” she says.Wu looks back on Gamergate and is torn over its legacy for her. On the positive side, “it did show me there’s a toughness and resilience inside myself, it gave me almost rhinoceros-thick skin.” Then she quickly corrects herself. “Let’s not glamorize abuse. I came to a conclusion that having to read every day about people wanting to rape or kill me did permanent damage.”In October 2016, a month before Trump was elected, James Alefantis hosted a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Comet Ping Pong, his Washington DC pizza restaurant.Within days, his establishment was under siege and he found himself at the center of the mother of all modern conspiracy theories: Pizzagate. Hillary Clinton, so the narrative went, was masterminding a global child-trafficking ring that was holding kids as sex slaves in his basement.The rumor-mongering began when private emails of John Podesta, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, were stolen allegedly by Russian agents and released through WikiLeaks. In them, Podesta mentioned his brother Tony’s friend and their occasional cooking companion, Alefantis, as well as a fundraising dinner they were planning together at Comet Ping Pong.Soon, photos of Alefantis’ godchildren were being lifted from his Instagram page and repackaged to support claims of hideous pedophilia. Conspiracy theorists were arguing that “James Alefantis” was a bastardization of “j’aime les enfant” (I like children) and that cheese pizza, “cp” for short, was a code for child pornography.The heinous notion that Alefantis was a pedophile working with Hillary Clinton to abuse children in the basement of his restaurant (Comet Ping Pong has no basement) hurtled around the internet. Abusive messages were posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page and in Yelp reviews; one online critic claimed to have found a child’s hand in his pizza.But it was not until bigger beasts got involved that it became truly dangerous. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, retired army general Michael Flynn, fanned the flames by tweeting about Clinton’s “sex crimes w children”. Then up popped Alex Jones once more, telling his thousands of Infowars listeners that “something’s going on, something’s being covered up”, exhorting his devotees to “go investigate it for yourself”.So they did. The self-appointed “investigators” stepped out of the computer screen and began turning up at Comet Ping Pong.“There was this break into the physical world that began to happen,” Alefantis recalls. “People came into the restaurant to film or look around. They came by my house, asking neighbors questions. Suddenly you look around and you don’t know who to trust.”In December 2016, Edgar Welch answered Jones’s call to investigate the satanic child sex ring. He drove 350 miles from North Carolina and burst into Comet Ping Pong armed with three guns. He went table to table, terrifying customers and staff, then shot into a locked closet before giving himself up to police. Six months later, he was sentenced to four years and is still behind bars in Elkton federal prison in Lisbon, Ohio.Alefantis finds it impossible to talk about that day without tearing up. For a full year after the gunman’s appearance, armed guards were posted at both doors of the restaurant, which remains equipped with multiple security cameras and panic buttons.Alex Jones eventually apologized for promoting Pizzagate, and in August was barred from YouTube, Apple and Facebook and other leading social media platforms. Last week the streaming device Roku joined the ban having granted Jones and Infowars access to its content for less than one day. But for Alefantis this is too little too late. The damage has gone too deep.His extraordinary, petrifying ride has taught him a lot about the modern world. At one point, against the advice of friends, he reached out to some of his assailants and asked them why they hated him so much.“I communicated with them. I realized that they also live in fear. That there’s a sense of abandonment and powerlessness where young people online believe the government is conspiring against them or stealing their children which is outrageous but real for them. We have a lot of learning to do about who is disenfranchised in this country.”Through it all he has held on to positive thoughts, encouraged by the support of the community of pizza lovers that rallied around in his darkest hour. “It feels at times that things are out of control, that hate is on the rise. But I now understand the power of community. It saved this place. There’s no reason it can’t save the rest of the country, or the world.”• This article was amended on 18 February 2019 to correct an interviewee’s pronoun preference. Topics Communities Vaccines and immunisation Health features

One could analyze this predicament (someone needs to watch these videos; they yield valuable information about a territory closed to outsiders) as a human-resources issue. How does an employer protect its workers from trauma? One set of tips, quoted by Allam, includes the suggestion that the viewer lessen the effect of the snuff films by turning off the sound, changing the color settings to monochrome, or “taking a deep breath.” These techniques may well help, but they suggest a narrow perspective on the issue.I first watched a terrorist beheading video in 2002, when Pakistani al-Qaeda members beheaded the Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, and I was too young to know better than to click on the video. A couple of years later, the progenitor of the Islamic State, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, beheaded Nicholas Berg on camera, inaugurating a new era in decapitation videos. I was in the company of U.S. marines at Al Asad Air Base, in Iraq, when a burly corporal walked into the room and announced that he had found a “sick video” depicting the execution of a British contractor, Kenneth Bigley. I suggested that the marines not watch the video, but I knew that marines tend to do whatever they damn well please, and that friendly admonitions from non-marines tend to backfire. So out came the laptop. They watched the video, and although they didn’t shudder, and even laughed, I knew that it had wounded them. In a small way, they had participated in an act of supreme inhumanity.These were men—no women were in the room—more used to violence than most: They were trained and deployed to kill. One might add that they came from a culture soaked in violence, where cinemas countrywide are packed every weekend with audiences watching violent movies, and more people are shot per capita than anywhere else in the developed world. But I promise that when you watch the real thing—an actual murder, filmed in high definition—the difference becomes immediately apparent. You can never see a Hollywood or grind-house movie again without recognizing the violence for the comic-book fantasy that it is. Hostel (memorably praised by Jeffrey Goldberg as “the most repulsively violent movie I’ve ever seen twice”) contains scenes superficially reminiscent of ISIS videos, but it is no longer the violence that repels me; it’s the repulsively boring story, characters, and dialogue. Compare it with, say, certain Werner Herzog films, which shock you by being unmistakably real, with actors really frightened by real explosions, and magical scenes that could not possibly have been faked.But back to ISIS. The whole point of those videos is to terrify their viewers, and to nibble away at the mental health of people like those marines and other enemies of the Islamic State. Jihadists often quote the scriptures that commend terrorizing certain enemies of Islam. They interpret verses to mean that terrorism in the defense of Islam is no vice, and that anything that scares the bejesus out of the infidel is a blessing. So, to be direct: Is this concern about the mental toll of these videos a sign that they were successful? Are the researchers traumatized by these videos casualties of war?

Just hours after the high-profile financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on Saturday, unsubstantiated theories about his death began to gain traction online.Epstein, who was set to stand trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, killed himself in his jail cell in New York, prison officials said. He was accused of running a "vast network" of underage girls for sex, and pleaded not guilty to the charges last month.The 66-year-old was known to court famous friends and acquaintances. President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and the UK's Prince Andrew all had ties to him. Some of his powerful associates have been embroiled in the allegations against him, which has only served to fuel the conspiracy theories and misinformation.Many rumours have centred on what politicians may have known about Epstein's alleged crimes and whether some may have wanted him dead. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest this was the case. And yet, the hashtag #EpsteinMurder trended worldwide on Saturday. Profile: Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein Prince Andrew 'groped' woman, court files allege Joke images and memes - suggesting everything from a faked suicide to an orchestrated hit-job - were shared thousands of times throughout the day. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were rife with unfounded theories about what may have happened to the financier.This wild speculation was not confined to a fringe minority - far from it. Politicians and high-profile journalists also stoked rampant speculation at a time when little information was publicly available. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough tweeted: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said it was "way too convenient" that Epstein could no longer incriminate others. "What a lot of us want to know is, what did he know?" he told reporters. "How many other millionaires and billionaires were part of the illegal activities that he was engaged in?"Questions like these alluded, without evidence, to a malevolent conspiracy and fed the feverish speculation on social media.Further rumours centred on how a man who was found semi-conscious and with injuries to his neck just weeks earlier was able to take his own life. Initial reports said Epstein was placed on suicide watch after that incident in July, which led many people to ask how he could have died while being so closely monitored."What does the word watch mean in the phrase suicide watch?" tweeted President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. "Who was watching?" He then said it was "inconceivable" Epstein could have taken his own life under those circumstances. But prison officials later said Epstein had actually been taken off suicide watch prior to his death. Why this happened is one of a number of valid questions being asked about his death, without going into outlandish conspiracy theories. Why was Epstein taken off suicide watch so soon after an apparent attempt to take his own life? Why was his cellmate transferred? Why does it appear that he was not being checked on every 30 minutes? Were the guards overworked? But wild speculation focused on why this suicide watch decision was made, rather than how he was able to take his own life.Perhaps the most far-fetched conspiracy theories were pegged to the hashtags #ClintonBodyCount and #TrumpBodyCount, which both trended on Twitter over the weekend.The first was primarily used by conservatives to suggest that former "first couple" Bill and Hillary Clinton were linked to Epstein's death. The latter, perhaps predictably, was used by liberals who speculated that Mr Trump was somehow involved. Neither side had any evidence to work with.The baseless theory of the Clinton's involvement harks back to a long-running conspiracy that originated in the 1990s and claims the couple secretly kill their enemies. This was roundly and methodically debunked at the time by the fact-checking website Snopes."There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest an outside person ordered Epstein's death, and certainly no evidence whatsoever that Bill Clinton was that person," Dylan Matthews wrote in Vox this week."[Mr Clinton] knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York," his spokesman, Angel Ureña, said.But Mr Trump was quick to pour fuel on the flames. He shared a tweet from Terrence Williams, a comedian and Trump supporter, that alleged Epstein "had information on Bill Clinton & now he's dead". There is no evidence to support this, but the tweet has since been shared more than 55,000 times.Other theories and tidbits of misinformation have been easier to disprove. For example, a photo that appeared to show Mr Trump kissing the head of his daughter, Ivanka, while standing next to Epstein has been exposed as a fake. "The 1993 photograph... has been manipulated to include Epstein," the Associated Press reported last month.Similarly, after Epstein's arrest on 6 July, some social media users shared a false claim that prosecutors had struck a secret plea deal with the financier under the administration of President Barack Obama in order to protect his fellow Democrat Mr Clinton. That theory resurfaced on Saturday.But the deal, which allowed Epstein to plead guilty to lesser charges, was actually finalised before Mr Obama took office under the administration of President George W, Bush. Labour Secretary Alex Acosta resigned over his role in the deal last month.Meanwhile, some politicians and journalists have urged people to exercise caution given the sheer quantity of misinformation online."The immediate rush to spread conspiracy theories about someone on the 'other side' of [the] partisan divide illustrates why our society is so vulnerable to foreign disinformation," tweeted Republican Senator Marco Rubio.CNN presenter Jim Sciutto, reflecting on his time working in the Middle East, said: "Remember this is about... partisan politics. When I was [there]... folks didn't trust authorities so assumed a plot behind every event."

Perhaps Judge Ellis, a veteran of the federal bench who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, bought the argument that Mr. Manafort was being targeted to ratchet up the pressure on others as part of the broader inquiry into Russia’s actions in the 2016 presidential campaign, as his lawyers put it to Judge Ellis ahead of sentencing.During a revealing moment early in Thursday’s hearing, Judge Ellis said Mr. Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election.” This is true. But collusion, as Judge Ellis surely knows, is not a federal crime, and it is not mentioned in the appointment order that gave Mr. Mueller his mandate in May 2017. Rather, it’s a term of art that Mr. Trump and his defenders have abused to misdirect the public about the true nature of the special counsel investigation. Mr. Mueller, perhaps wisely, declined to make a specific sentencing recommendation for Mr. Manafort. But his office pulled no punches in laying out Mr. Manafort’s pattern of criminal conduct, his lack of remorse and his post-indictment behavior — all resulting in a revocation of his bail, new charges of obstruction of justice and the implosion of his plea agreement in a separate case, in Washington, D.C., for lying to prosecutors and the grand jury. (Mr. Manafort, who has admitted in that case to sharing polling data during the campaign with a Russian associate believed to have intelligence ties, will be sentenced in that case next week.)“Manafort’s criminal conduct was serious, longstanding, and bold,” Mr. Mueller’s team told Judge Ellis in a sentencing submission filed last month. “He failed to pay taxes in five successive years involving more than $16 million in unreported income — and failed to identify his overseas accounts in those same returns — resulting in more than $6 million in unpaid taxes.”To federal prosecutors, Mr. Manafort “benefited from the protections and privileges of the law and the services of his government, while cheating it and his fellow citizens.”

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro won a new six-year term on Sunday, but his main rivals disavowed the election alleging massive irregularities in a process critics decried as a farce propping up a dictatorship. Victory for the 55-year-old former bus driver, who replaced Hugo Chavez after his death from cancer in 2013, may trigger a new round of western sanctions against the socialist government as it grapples with a ruinous economic crisis. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is threatening moves against Venezuela’s already reeling oil sector. Venezuela’s election board, run by Maduro loyalists, said he took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 million for his closest challenger Henri Falcon, a former governor who broke with an opposition boycott to stand. “They underestimated me,” Maduro told cheering supporters on a stage outside Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas as fireworks sounded and confetti fell on the crowd. Turnout at the election was just 46.1 percent, the election board said, way down from the 80 percent registered at the last presidential vote in 2013. The opposition said that figure was inflated, putting participation at nearer 30 percent. An electoral board source told Reuters 32.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots by 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) as most polls shut. “The process undoubtedly lacks legitimacy and as such we do not recognize it,” said Falcon, a 56-year-old former state governor, looking downcast. Maduro had welcomed Falcon’s candidacy, which gave some legitimacy to a process critics at home and around the world had condemned in advance as the “coronation” of a dictator. Related CoverageLima group says does not recognize Venezuela's electionFactbox: Venezuela's presidential election candidatesFalcon’s quick rejection of Sunday’s election, and call for a new vote, was therefore a blow to the government’s strategy. Falcon, a former member of the Socialist Party who went over to the opposition in 2010, said he was outraged at the government’s placing of nearly 13,000 pro-government stands called “red spots” close to polling stations nationwide. Mainly poor Venezuelans were asked to scan state-issued “fatherland cards” at red tents after voting in hope of receiving a “prize” promised by Maduro, which opponents said was akin to vote-buying. The “fatherland cards” are required to receive benefits including food boxes and money transfers. A third presidential candidate, evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci, followed Falcon in slamming irregularities during Sunday’s vote and calling for a new election. Despite his unpopularity over a national economic meltdown, Maduro benefited on Sunday not just from the opposition boycott but also from a ban on his two most popular rivals and the liberal use of state resources in his campaign. His tally, however, fell short of the 10 million votes he had said throughout the campaign he wanted to win. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro is surrounded by supporters as he speaks during a gathering after the results of the election were released, outside of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, May 20, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia RawlinsMaduro, the self-described “son” of Chavez, says he is battling an “imperialist” plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela’s oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent. Attendance appeared thin in many polling stations visited by Reuters reporters, from wealthy east Caracas to the Andean mountains near Colombia. There were lines, however, at poorer government strongholds, where the majority of voters interviewed said they were backing Maduro. “I’m hungry and don’t have a job, but I’m sticking to Maduro,” said Carlos Rincones, 49, in the once-thriving industrial city of Valencia, accusing right-wing business owners of purposefully hiding food and hiking prices. Many Venezuelans are disillusioned and angry over the election: they criticize Maduro for economic hardships and the opposition for its dysfunctional splits. Reeling from a fifth year of recession, falling oil production and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is seeing growing levels of malnutrition and hyperinflation, and mass emigration. Venezuelan migrants staged small anti-Maduro protests in cities from Madrid to Miami. In the highland city of San Cristobal near Colombia, three cloth dolls representing widely loathed officials - Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena, Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello and Vice President Tareck El Aissami - were hung from a footbridge. But streets were calm, with children playing soccer on one road in San Cristobal blocked off at past elections to accommodate long voter lines. For many Venezuelans, Sunday was a day to look for scant food or stock up on water, which is increasingly running short because of years of underinvestment. “I’m not voting - what’s the point if we already know the result? I prefer to come here to get water rather than waste my time,” said Raul Sanchez, filling a jug from a tap by a busy road in the arid northwestern city of Punto Fijo because his community has not had running water for 26 days. With the election behind him, Maduro may choose to deepen a purge of critics within the ruling “Chavismo” movement. He faces a Herculean task to turn around the moribund economy, with the bolivar currency down 99 percent in the past year and inflation at an annual 14,000 percent, according to the National Assembly. Slideshow (32 Images)(Reuters Venezuela election coverage on Twitter @ReutersVzla) Additional reporting by Anggy Polanco and Brian Ellsworth in San Cristobal; Vivian Sequera, Leon Wietfeld, Pablo Garibian, Girish Gupta and Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas; Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo; Tibisay Romero in Valencia; Francisco Aguilar in Barinas; Corina Pons in Barquisimeto; Maria Ramirez in Ciudad Guayana; Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo; Caroline Stauffer and Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Michael Perry and Paul TaitOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Day and night for the past three years, an unprecedented number of the world’s spies have zeroed in on a patch of Iraq and Syria to hunt for one man. Their target, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State terrorist group, has eluded them all. But only just.The most wanted man on the planet has been traced to a specific place at least three times in the past 18 months alone. And despite the protection of a devoted network, there have been other sightings of the reclusive leader, reported by Isis members shortly afterwards and confirmed later by intelligence officers. Being a fugitive in the digital age, or in a losing cause, clearly has its shortfalls.One 45-second mistake on 3 November 2016 almost cost Baghdadi his “caliphate” before its collapse last year. As Iraqi and Kurdish forces advanced on Mosul, Baghdadi took up a handheld radio in a village between the west of the city and the town of Tal Afar. Spies based in a listening post further north were stunned as his distinctive voice exhorted followers to stand their ground.“He spoke for 45 seconds and then his guards took the radio from him,” said a senior member of the Kurdistan Region Security Council who monitored the call. “They realised what he’d done.”That rare moment of ill discipline allowed the network of spies chasing Baghdadi to trace him in real time. But then, as on at least two other occasions, there was no time to act. Baghdadi’s entourage knew his cover had probably been blown and whisked him away.Late last year, he was also traced to a village south of Baaj, again through the brief and careless use of a communications device. The connection was picked up by a signals intelligence network that has penetrated web and phone use in Isis areas. However, it was too fleeting to deploy fighter jets circling above on permanent hunt for targets, and there was no confirmation of exactly where he was hiding.The morsels of chatter have helped fill in a picture of Baghdadi’s movements – and temperament; the cast-iron discipline of his immediate circle has weak spots after all. His senior leaders, however, have had far more trouble with communications discipline, and slip-ups have often led to their demise.According to Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi expert and writer on Isis, Baghdadi is literally the last man standing among the group’s founding members. “Out of 43 main leaders, Baghdadi is the only one left,” he said. “Out of 79 senior leaders there are only 10 left. The mid-level commanders (124) constantly change positions and posts due to deaths of other members. Every six months their roles change, they either get killed or replaced.”Before being killed, some Isis leaders spoke on intercepted phones about having been in meetings with Baghdadi, or having known his movements. Their mistakes offered glimpses of his capacity and methods as leader. However, more has been gleaned about the terrorist tsar’s habits and leadership by people who have seen him regularly in parts of north-western Iraq and north-eastern Syria, and reported the encounters afterwards to regional and western spies.From late 2014 until her capture in May the following year, Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar had served tea to Baghdadi in the town of Omar in north-eastern Syria, whenever he came to visit her husband, the Isis oil “minister” Abu Sayyaf.“All I did is put the tea behind the door,” she told the Guardian. “But I knew he was there. He used to come often.” Bahar, otherwise known as Umm Sayyaf, said she was not allowed to see Baghdadi but was in no doubt when he was around. “He used to visit my husband and talk business. Everything changed when he arrived.” Abu Sayyaf was killed in a raid by US commandos, who took Bahar to Erbil, where she has been held ever since. She denies being a senior member of Isis, but her contact with the group’s leader has helped paint a picture of him.A more comprehensive psychological profile of Baghdadi and his movement patterns had been drafted by US and British spies by mid-2015. Two years later, his area of travel had shrunk, as had the Isis “caliphate”. Intelligence agencies in Iraq and Europe believe that for most of the past 18 months, Baghdadi has been based in a village south of Baaj, and has travelled in a small range between Abu Kamal, on the Iraq-Syria border, and Shirkat, south of Mosul.Three intelligence agencies have confirmed that Baghdadi was seriously wounded in an airstrike near Shirkat in early 2015. Separate sources have confirmed to the Guardian that he spent several months recovering in Baaj. Even now, his movements remain limited by his injuries. According to witnesses who saw him in Abu Kamal after the end of the Muslim festival of Ramadan, he was looking tired and drawn, a shadow of the confident, black-robed figure who ascended a pulpit in Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri in mid-2014 to proclaim the “caliphate’s establishment”.Hashimi said: “Isis has resorted to being a shadow government. They still control small parts of Anbar and Euphrates river but they are sleeper cells. There is no leadership structure, it has dissolved. They do not hold meetings any more – and if they do it is never in the same place twice. They don’t even pass oral messages to each other any more. They use Signal and Telegram [encrypted apps] to communicate. “They’ve cut back the men by 50%. The main budget cannot be touched any more. Leadership no longer matters.“I’ve met with [foreign fighter] Abu Hamza al-Belgiki, who feels betrayed, as do all of them. They had been instructed to fight for Mosul till their deaths. When the battles intensified in the city the senior leaders and those close to Baghdadi all fled, leaving these fighters behind. They feel fooled. They have been fooled.”Throughout the rise and fall of Isis, a debate has continued in intelligence circles about whether Baghdadi being dead or alive would make a difference to the group, and if the organisation still poses a threat to regional order and global security. A senior regional intelligence figure and a counterpart in Europe both say the threat level from the organisation has barely changed, and that Baghdadi’s survival could be used by his followers as a rallying call.Officials say the branch responsible for planning attacks abroad has been left relatively unscathed by the losses of fighters and land. “They are a complex administration filled with ex-intelligence officials,” Hashimi said. “They deal with recruiting, arming and transporting fighters and collect the financial contributions and alms. Out of 35 branches, 33 are run by two Iraqi men: Abdullah Youssef al-Khatouri, nicknamed Abu Bakr, and Abu Tiba Ghanem al-Jboori. We believe one is in Turkey and the other is in Scandinavia.”Shiraz Maher, the deputy director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, at King’s College London, said Isis was trying to convince its followers that military defeat had changed little, particularly in its capacity for planning attacks abroad.“In the next 24 months there will be concerted attempts to attack the west,” Maher said. “The narrative of vengeance is important.“What we are seeing in the support community is a fatalistic resignation about what has happened. “In their narrative, they say the US could only defeat the “caliphate” by attacking it from the air but didn’t have the guts to fight on the ground. Had that been the case, they say, they would have won.“Isis says it will return, and in the meantime it’s asking people to carry out attacks in its name. They’re also repositioning themselves politically, for example, with Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, claiming to be the rightful guardians of that cause. This is the mutation of an idea, not the end of it.”And as Isis regroups, so does Baghdadi. A US military assessment is that he is probably hiding in the Euphrates river valley, along the border with Syria. However, regional officials say he has returned to a tract of land between the Tharthar basin and the desert, nearer to where it all began for the now diminished leader and his downsized terror group.“He’s on his last legs,” a regional official said. “We will get him this year. Finally.”Additional reporting by Nadia al-Faour Topics Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Islamic State Syria Iraq Middle East and North Africa US foreign policy

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong’s government said violence and illegal protests were pushing the city to an “extremely dangerous edge”, as police fired multiple rounds of tear gas to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters on Sunday and Beijing said it would not let the situation persist. The Chinese-controlled city, an Asian financial hub, has been rocked by months of protests that began against a proposed bill to allow people to be extradited to stand trial in mainland China and have developed into calls for greater democracy. A general strike aimed at bringing the city to a halt is planned for Monday. Many flight departures were shown as being cancelled on Monday and a source and media reports said this was due to aviation workers planning to strike. Late on Sunday, hundreds of masked protesters blocked major roads, spray painted traffic lights, started fires and prevented transport from entering the Cross-Harbour Tunnel linking Hong Kong island and the Kowloon peninsula. “We sprayed the traffic light because we don’t want traffic to work tomorrow and we don’t want citizens to go to work,” said one protester who was clad from head to toe in black. Riot police confronted the protesters, who have adopted flash tactics, shifting quickly from place to place to evade capture and using online platforms such as Telegram to direct hundreds of people. In a strongly worded statement late on Sunday the government said the events of the day showed once again that violence and illegal protests were spreading and pushing Hong Kong toward what it called “the extremely dangerous edge.” Such acts had already gone far beyond the limits of peaceful and rational protests and would harm Hong Kong’s society and economic livelihood, it said. After the peaceful demonstrations finished earlier on Sunday, protesters blocked roads in the town of Tseung Kwan O in the New Territories, set up barricades and hurled hard objects including bricks at a police station. Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters after a separate rally in the island’s Western district where thousands of people gathered to urge authorities to listen to public demands. Protesters had begun a march towards China’s Liaison Office, which has been a flashpoint at previous protests. Later on Sunday night, police fired tear gas in the shopping area of Causeway Bay to dispel protesters, forcing stores and popular shopping malls including Times Square to close early. Police said the protesters were “participating in an unauthorised assembly”, similar to Saturday when they fired multiple tear gas rounds in confrontations with black-clad activists in the Kowloon area. The protests have become the most serious political crisis in Hong Kong since it returned to Chinese rule 22 years ago after being governed by Britain since 1842. They have also presented the biggest popular challenge to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in his seven years in power. Demonstrators react as riot police point strong flashlights to their face after an anti-extradition bill protest in Hong Kong, China August 5, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone SiuChina’s official news agency Xinhua said on Sunday: “The central government will not sit idly by and let this situation continue. We firmly believe that Hong Kong will be able to overcome the difficulties and challenges ahead.” During the night, protesters split into several different directions to disrupt transport networks. Police said they were “seriously paralysing traffic and affecting emergency services” and warned them to stop immediately. The leaderless nature of the protests has seen participants adopt a strategy called “be water”, inspired by a maxim of the city’s home-grown martial arts legend, Bruce Lee, that encourages them to be flexible or formless. Police said more than 20 people had been arrested since Saturday for offences including unlawful assembly and assault. During Sunday protesters marched and brandished coloured leaflets, calling for a mass strike across Hong Kong on Monday and shouting “Restore Hong Kong” and “Revolution of our time”. “We’re trying to tell the government to (withdraw) the extradition bill and to police to stop the investigations and the violence,” said Gabriel Lee, a 21-year-old technology student. Lee said he was particularly angered that the government was not responding to protesters’ demands or examining the police violence. What started as a response to the now suspended extradition bill has grown into demands for greater democracy and the resignation of leader Carrie Lam. “Even if Carrie Lam resigns, its still not resolved. It’s all about the Communist Party, the Chinese government,” said Angie, a 24-year-old working for a non-government organisation. On Saturday, protesters set fires in the streets, outside a police station and in rubbish bins. Thousands of civil servants joined in the protests on Friday for the first time since they started, defying a warning from authorities to remain politically neutral. [nL4N24Y3BF] The protests have adapted rapidly since the start of June with the movement spreading from the Admiralty area, where the legislative council is located, across to the whole city for the first time. Previous protests have also targeted mainland visitors to try to make them understand the situation in Hong Kong, which is officially termed a Special Administrative Region of China. Slideshow (29 Images)Young people have mostly been at the forefront of the protests, angry about broader problems including sky-high living costs and what they see as an unfair housing policy skewed towards the rich. Hong Kong has been allowed to retain extensive freedoms, such as an independent judiciary but many residents see the extradition bill as the latest step in a relentless march toward mainland control. Months of demonstrations are taking a growing toll on the city’s economy, as local shoppers and tourists avoid parts of its famed shopping districts. [L4N24V177] Reporting by Marius Zaharia, Felix Tam and Twinnie Siu; Writing by Farah Master; Editing by Michael Perry, Kenneth Maxwell, Angus MacSwan and Frances KerryOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The progressive candidates have signaled their desire to pursue a policy in which the United States reduces its military commitments overseas—what is usually called a “foreign policy of restraint.” The interesting question, though, is whether that is possible at an acceptable cost. Outside of the Middle East, the answer is almost certainly no. If they were to go further toward adopting a strategy of restraint whereby the United States does much less militarily around the world, they would have to make major sacrifices on alliances, nuclear proliferation, and spheres of influence that no Democratic commander in chief seems likely to want to make.Two candidates for president—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—have embraced the progressive-foreign-policy label. Reading their speeches and articles, two major themes stand out.The first is that Sanders’s and Warren’s specific ideas to change U.S. foreign policy are focused on the Middle East. They oppose military intervention in Syria and Iraq. They support the Iran nuclear deal. They want to get tough with Saudi Arabia, going beyond simply ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen. Both favor an end to the war in Afghanistan, and both have questioned the extent of ongoing operations against terrorist networks. Sanders and Warren do differ over Israel—Sanders is very critical of Israel and has questioned U.S. aid, whereas Warren is generally seen as supportive of the alliance.However, when you drill down, the two presidential candidates are difficult to pin down on whether they oppose military intervention on principle or, if not, under what conditions they might support it.Sanders opposed the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War of 2003, as well as numerous U.S. interventions in Latin America and the Middle East. However, he also voted for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 and later called Saddam Hussein “a brutal dictator who should be overthrown.” He opposed Operation Desert Fox, a bombing campaign in Iraq in 1998, primarily because it did not have congressional or United Nations approval, but also because he did not think it would bring about regime change. He voted for the 1999 Kosovo War and subsequently supported the NATO bombing campaign, even as he argued that President Bill Clinton’s failure to secure congressional support meant it was unconstitutional. He voted for the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and did not oppose the 2011 intervention in Libya in its initial stages, when the sacking of Benghazi by Muammar Qaddafi’s forces seemed imminent.Unlike Sanders, Warren never had to vote or comment on these interventions. She has been careful not to shed any light on her views on them since becoming a U.S. senator. However, Warren does have a track record from when she entered politics in 2012. In Warren’s first-ever speech on foreign policy, at Georgetown University in 2014, she implicitly criticized Obama for not being sufficiently sensitive to civilian casualties in his drone strikes. In 2014, she said that the defeat of ISIS should be the Obama administration’s top priority, but that the United States should avoid getting dragged into a war. She supported Obama’s air strikes in Iraq in 2014, while opposing his plan to train and equip Syrian opposition forces.