WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s strategy for the U.S.-Mexico border includes mobilizing the National Guard, the White House said on Tuesday, after Trump had earlier spoken publicly to reporters about “guarding our border with the military” to stop illegal immigrants. U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for the Easter service at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas The White House statement was released after Trump met with Defense Secretary James Mattis, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other officials on border issues. It gave no details on whether or when Trump’s strategy might be implemented. The National Guard, part of the U.S. military’s reserve forces, has been used in recent years for surveillance and intelligence on the border, but not direct law enforcement. The president’s earlier remarks sharpened his recurring anti-immigration rhetoric. He said he wanted to deploy U.S. military forces until his long-promised border wall is built. “Until we can have a wall and proper security we’re going to be guarding our border with the military,” Trump told reporters at the White House, lamenting what he called “horrible” U.S. laws that left the southern border poorly protected. Trump railed against a “caravan” of Central American migrants traveling from the Mexico-Guatemala border in the last 10 days toward the United States, journeys that have occurred annually since 2010 in an effort to draw attention to the plight of people fleeing violence in their countries. On Tuesday night, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Twitter that the caravan “dispersed gradually and at the decision of its participants.” Mexican officials say privately that they believe Trump has exaggerated the caravan’s importance to renew pressure on Mexico over the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. After 14 months in office, Trump still hammers regularly on an anti-immigration theme that helped to energize conservative Republican voters who helped him win the presidency in the 2016 election. Trump took a hard line on illegal immigration during the campaign and has also sought to curtail legal immigration. His efforts have thus far failed to produce a comprehensive overhaul of America’s immigration laws or full funding for his border wall in the Republican-led Congress. No major legislation was expected before November’s congressional elections. His latest comments immediately raised questions in Congress and among legal experts about troop deployments on U.S. soil. The Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law on the books since the 1870s, restricts using the U.S. Army and other main branches of the military for civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, unless specifically authorized by Congress. But the military can provide support services to law enforcement and has done so on occasion since the 1980s. Under Republican President George W. Bush, the National Guard between 2006 and 2008 provided border-related intelligence analysis, but had no direct law enforcement role. In 2010, President Barack Obama sent National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support to U.S. Border Patrol agents. Some specific statutes authorize the president to deploy troops within the United States for riot control or relief efforts after natural disasters. “The details really matter here,” said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “The real question is going to be if the president is serious about this, what kind of legal arguments do we get out of the White House and the Pentagon for such a deployment.” A senior Republican aide in the U.S. House of Representatives said key lawmakers had not been briefed on the White House plan. The aide said there was no indication that a specific plan had even been formulated yet. Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexico’s ambassador in Washington, said he had spoken to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about Trump’s remarks on the border and that Mexico had formally asked the U.S. government to clarify them. “It’s certainly not something that the Mexican government welcomes,” Gutierrez told CNN. Nielsen, who took part in the meeting with Trump, said in a Twitter message late on Tuesday that she had been told by Mexican officials “the caravan is dissipating.” In southern Mexico, officials screened the dwindling number of hundreds of largely Central American migrants on Tuesday. At a campaign rally, Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is leading most polls by double digits before the July 1 presidential election, said that if the U.S. government militarizes the border, thousands of his supporters would protest by forming a “big human chain of Mexicans for peace.” Some members of Congress said they were uncomfortable with the idea of using the military at the border. Democratic Senator Brian Schatz said Trump should have to seek approval from Congress for any such troop deployment. “We should put that new law to a vote in the Senate,” he said on Twitter. “I predict fewer than 20 votes.” In a Twitter post earlier on Tuesday, Trump said the caravan “heading to our ‘Weak Laws’ Border, had better be stopped before it gets there. Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!” Congress is on vacation until next week. Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Makini Brice, Amanda Becker, Richard Cowan, Eric Beech, Mohammad Zargham and Phil Stewart in Washington; Karen Freifeld in New York and the Mexico City newsroom; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Grant McCoolOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Protests continue at Hong Kong International Airport An unidentified man, center, is shouted at by protesters during a demonstration at Hong Kong International Airport. (Philip Fong /AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump’s attacks on the media have been condemned by experts at the United Nations, who warned that the US president’s vitriolic rhetoric could result in violence against journalists.In a joint statement, two experts on freedom of expression – David Kaye, who was appointed by the UN human rights council, and Edison Lanza, who holds the corresponding position at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said: “These attacks run counter to the country’s obligations to respect press freedom and international human rights law.”Trump’s attacks “are strategic, designed to undermine confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable facts”, they added, while noting the president “has failed to show even once that specific reporting has been driven by any untoward motivations”.“We are especially concerned that these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence.”The rebuke comes as Trump has intensified his criticism of the media and appeared to embrace the hostile attitude among his supporters towards members of the press. The president unleashed a Twitter tirade against the media on Sunday, labeling reporters as “unpatriotic”.“When the media – driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome – reveals internal deliberations of our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk! Very unpatriotic!” Trump tweeted.“Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to report the news … ...accurately,” he added. “90% of media coverage of my Administration is negative, despite the tremendously positive results we are achieving, it’s no surprise that confidence in the media is at an all time low!”Earlier this week, the president and his son, Eric Trump, shared a video on their Twitter accounts of attendees at a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida, shouting “CNN sucks!” at journalists covering the event. The taunts came a week after the White House was roundly criticized for banning the CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins from covering an event that was open to the press after she had repeatedly directed questions to the president about his relationship with his former attorney, Michael Cohen. Trump’s combative approach toward the media has been emblematic of both his tenure in the White House and candidacy for president; in 2016, the Trump campaign routinely barred media outlets from covering rallies in retaliation against coverage of which they disapproved. Trump has often used his podium to hurl insults at the press and single out reporters by name, frequently before an angry mob of his supporters, and has derided coverage he dislikes as “fake news”.The president has also labeled the media the “enemy of the American people” – a characterization his daughter, Ivanka Trump, rejected on Thursday. “I’ve certainly received my fair share of reporting on me personally that I know not to be fully accurate, so I have some sensitivity around why people have concerns and gripe, especially when they’re sort of targeted,” she said at an event hosted by Axios. “But no, I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people.”The issue also arose during a fraught exchange at Thursday’s White House briefing. Press secretary Sarah Sanders produced a list of complaints about how she has been personally “attacked” by the media, including comedian Michelle Wolf’s mockery of her at this year’s White House correspondents’ dinner.“You brought a comedian up to attack my appearance and call me a traitor to my own gender,” Sanders said, becoming visibly emotional. “As far as I know, I’m the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required secret service protection.”But Jim Acosta, the CNN journalist heckled at the Tampa rally, repeatedly challenged Sanders to publicly disagree with Trump’s view of the press as the enemy of the people.Sanders replied: “I appreciate your passion. I share it. I’ve addressed this question. I’ve addressed my personal feelings. I’m here to speak on behalf of the president. He’s made his comments clear.”Acosta then tweeted: “I walked out of the end of that briefing because I am totally saddened by what just happened. Sarah Sanders was repeatedly given a chance to say the press is not the enemy and she wouldn’t do it. Shameful.” Topics Donald Trump United Nations Journalist safety Press freedom Trump administration Newspapers Newspapers & magazines news

But, as is so often the case with Republican public health policies, both the lawsuit and TN Together are invariably too little too late. The $25 million that TN Together earmarks for treatment, for example, will treat 6,000 to 10,000 addicted Tennesseans, according to state estimates, while the number of Tennesseans who actually abused opioids in 2016 was 317,647. And approximately 82,000 of them were already addicted.In 2015, Gov. Haslam tried to persuade the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly to expand Medicaid in the state through a federally approved, budget-neutral compromise to the Affordable Care Act. In keeping with a long tradition of defying common sense, statehouse legislators said no. If they had said yes, Tennessee would likely be enjoying addiction news similar to Kentucky’s: “After expanding Medicaid,” notes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Kentucky experienced a 700 percent increase in Medicaid beneficiaries using substance-use treatment services.” That number coincides with a 90 percent drop in overdose hospitalizations of uninsured Kentuckians.My senior English course in high school was a survey of British literature. Somewhere toward the middle of the unit on Romantic poets, a boy in my class raised his hand and asked our teacher why so many of the writers we studied were drug addicts and alcoholics. More to the point, he wondered, why should we be reading the work of people who were clearly moral failures?I don’t remember that student’s exact words, but I remember our teacher’s response. “When someone is struggling with addiction,” she said, “remember that you don’t know how many times he resisted that temptation before he finally gave in. A person who resists 99 times, even if he gives in the 100th, is a stronger person than someone who’s never been tempted at all.”I have thought of the beloved teacher’s words countless times over the past 38 years. It’s such decent, human advice: Before judging another person, consider all the kinder ways there are to interpret what might seem at first like a terrible moral failing. And the way to do that is to imagine what it feels like to be fighting their battles.Here in Tennessee, our struggling neighbors won’t benefit from federal dollars through Medicaid expansion for the same reason Tennesseans won’t benefit from so many other things that citizens of other states can take for granted. Why? Because Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly are consistently more committed to defying what they see as federal overreach than to helping their own vulnerable citizens.

Poisoned syringes that could be fired at dogs on the street to kill them instantly were sold by a gang in China, allowing pets to be snatched and sold for the dinner table, according to state media.Police in the eastern province of Anhui arrested eight people, alleging they sold 200,000 of the syringes across the country filled with a large dose of the muscle relaxant suxamethonium.The buyers were mainly dog vendors who collect and sell the animals to restaurants for meat, Xinhua news agency said, citing police who warned that people who ate the meat were also in danger of being poisoned.The needles were modified by the gang with a spring and tailfin so they could be shot from a distance.After buying the needles, unscrupulous dog dealers would target pets, then abduct them.Police were searching for more of the syringes, which contained enough suxamethonium to kill the animals immediately.When police raided the gang’s lair in Enshi City, central Hubei province, in October, they found 4kg of chemical powder, 10,000 needles and 100,000 yuan (£11,200). Topics China Asia Pacific Dogs Animals Pets news

John Oliver has criticised the racist tactics of Donald Trump’s White House in a new attack on the policy of family separation.On his HBO show Last Week Tonight, the comic started with discussion of the migrant caravan and Trump’s unfounded statements about how dangerous and evil many of the asylum seekers are. “That is such old-timey racism. I’m genuinely amazed that image didn’t automatically turn black and white as he talked like Pleasantville in reverse,” he said.He then proceeded to talk about the family separation policy that has seen young children ripped away from their parents at the border. It has also led to some children going missing in the system. “You shouldn’t be able to lose children in a government system as easily as in a Chuck E Cheese ballpit,” Oliver said.He played footage explaining that a policy of finding babies involved calling out their names to see who responds. “Anyone who calls a baby’s name and then gives up on finding them either knows nothing about babies or is covering for a baby who doesn’t actually want to be reached,” he said.Oliver continued: “When it comes to ‘How did we do this?’ the answer seems to be a combination of incompetently and cruelly.”In a presser with the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, she was outraged when asked if the deliberate separation was being used as a deterrent. “You can always tell you’ve figured out exactly what they’re doing when they get offended by your description of what they might be doing,” he said.Oliver continued: “It’s not that they don’t want immigrants to come here because they’re criminals, it’s that they’re calling them criminals because they don’t want them to come here.”One of the biggest concerns is how young children are able to cope with the trauma. “Lasting damage to children is a huge consequence,” he said. “You’re separating them from their parents, not telling them you ate all their Halloween candy to get on Jimmy fucking Kimmel.”Trump has repeatedly referred to the caravan as an invasion, despite the fact that it’s made up of asylum seekers. “Even though the language of war is being used, there is not a war, and the only reason people keep talking like there is one is to give themselves permission to make the choices they want to be forced to make but family separation cannot be one of them,” he said.Oliver ended by saying: “If the president really wants to make Tuesday’s election about him and about immigration then fine, let’s make it about that because family separation is perhaps the most emblematic moment of his presidency so far. It was cruel, sloppy, needless, racist and ultimately exactly what we should have expected.” Topics John Oliver John Oliver recap TV comedy Comedy Television Donald Trump US television news

In light of such statistics, it’s not surprising that a recent article explaining how opioids aren’t always necessary after surgery made a bit of a splash. Firoozeh Dumas, who wrote the article, underwent a laparoscopic hysterectomy in Germany. She was told that ibuprofen—the nonprescription medication found in Motrin and Advil—would be sufficient. What she really would need was rest. Dumas, who had moved from California, worried that her pain would be undertreated. But, it turned out that her worry was misplaced. She recovered well, with the help of very little ibuprofen and lots of tea and rest.There are many interesting lessons in this story, but one main point that the reader is invited to take away is that part of America’s opioid problem has to do with patient expectations. Dumas attributed her focus on pills to her time in the US. Abroad, she ended up finding something valuable in her experience of being forced to slow down and heal.So are those of us who want, expect, or even request opioid medications doing something wrong? Should we see each medical encounter for pain as an opportunity to be part of the solution to the opioid crisis?As an academic who wrestles with the ethics of pain management both professionally and personally, I think stories like Dumas’ are important, but that inferring too much from them is dangerous. Yes, America probably needs a culture change regarding pain medicine, but we have to be careful how we frame that challenge.Opioids are certainly powerful analgesics, but in the medical literature consensus it is beginning to emerge that they are not as good as initially thought. Most of us now know that the risks are very serious, including the development of opioid use disorder and even fatal overdose. Given such serious risks, their benefits would need to be significant to warrant use. But the literature shows that this often isn’t the case. For many pains, a combination of non-opioid therapies—acetaminophen and ibuprofen, as well as nonpharmaceutical alternatives like physical therapy, exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy—works quite well, and carries less serious risks. As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends using opioids sparingly for severe, acute pain, and only under special circumstances for chronic pain. If opioids aren’t a panacea for pain, then doctors need to be careful how they use them. Patient demands, however, can make that difficult. In a culture of patient as consumer, changing physician behavior may require changing patient expectations.The above considerations seem to support the view that, as patients, perhaps each of us has an obligation not to request or demand opioid therapy, and to resist if offered. However, I would urge caution. Stories aren’t data, and they don’t generalize. Firoozeh Dumas was fortunate to have experienced as little pain as she did after her surgery in Germany. It’s important to recognize, though, that her procedure was laparoscopic. As a result, she had only small incisions and was able to leave the hospital on the same day. This is certainly not to minimize her pain, but only to point out that many other patients will be in very different circumstances. Some surgeries are brutally painful, as is trauma and many other medical conditions, such as sickle-cell anemia. Patients are individuals, and they react uniquely to pain and medication. What works for one person may not work for others. Some people are unable to take ibuprofen or are limited in their ability to exercise.In addition, following a full pain regimen that utilizes both pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical therapies is expensive, while generic opioids are quite cheap. As a result, insurance companies in the US that readily pay for morphine may not pick up the tab for pricier medications, or for nonpharmaceutical therapies. Narratives that emphasize not taking opioids are valuable for making clear that not all pain requires a pill. But they could also be risky: Pain patients and opioid therapies are already deeply stigmatized. Those who take opioids for pain are often treated with suspicion and taken to be drug-seeking.So is there behavior that we, as patients, ought to adopt in order to help combat the opioid epidemic? Like most ethical issues, the answer, I think, is less clear and more nuanced than most people might like it to be. I do believe that opioids should not be viewed as evil, and those, for whom they make life more manageable, should not be shamed. But we surely can make some changes.The medical community is getting better at understanding what kinds of surgical interventions are likely to require little or no opioid therapy. So, if you are undergoing surgery, talk to your doctor about whether she thinks you will really need opioid therapy, and if so, for how long. Tell her that you don’t want a prescription for more pills than is likely to be necessary. There is emerging evidence that many surgeons overprescribe opioids, and that patients often need far fewer pills than are prescribed.If you end up with unused medication anyway, dispose of it properly. Half-used or even untouched bottles of pills can be found and used by family members or stolen to be misused or sold on the street. Finally, many of us do need to understand that zero pain is often both an inappropriate and unrealistic goal. So we need to wrestle with the fact that injury, trauma, surgery, and just aging often hurt, and while medicine may help us improve our quality of life, we shouldn’t expect or demand magic. None of this means, however, that we should accept further marginalization of pain and opioid therapy patients. Some pain is devastating and life-limiting, and sometimes such pain responds well to opioids. We should not, in the name of public health, cultivate an attitude that makes it more difficult for those suffering to access what relief they have been able to find.This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at [email protected] article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The white nationalist Richard Spencer boasted “we own these streets” during a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence last summer in Charlottesville, Virginia, a court has heard.On 11 August, neo-Nazis and other white nationalist supporters marched through the University of Virginia campus with torches, chanting racist abuse. A day later, as attendees of a rally clashed with counter-protesters in town, a car was driven into the crowd, killing 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.A civil lawsuit accuses 25 far-right individuals and groups of conspiring to commit the violence. At a federal courthouse in Charlottesville on Thursday, Judge Norman Moon heard arguments brought by 19 of them seeking to have the case thrown out, claiming they had a first amendment right to free expression and should not be held directly responsible for the bloodshed.But Karen Dunn, an attorney representing 10 Virginia residents who brought the suit last October, told the court that, following the march with torches, Spencer declared to a crowd: “We own these streets. We occupy these grounds.”She argued this was an “overt” claim for credit and “sufficient to keep him in the case at the motion to dismiss stage”, comparing Spencer to a drugs gang boss who says “well done” to one of his foot soldiers. Dunn added: “The leaders in a conspiracy didn’t always have their specific fingerprints on the conspiracy but they did organise it and they took credit for it after the fact.”Moon questioned whether merely claiming credit for an event was sufficient evidence of Spencer’s involvement. Dunn insisted: “It is evidence of his participation in the conspiracy to do violence … Mr Spencer was not just some passive participant in this. He was an organiser, he was a leader. He was the person who, after this march took place, stood before the crowd to say the objective had been achieved.”An official court order shows that Spencer, a notorious alt-right leader who wants to create an “ethno-state” for white people, was expected to address the judge on Thursday. But he did not appear in court, where about 80 people were gathered in the public gallery. He told the Guardian by phone that this was due to a “security issue”. Instead, despite struggling to raise legal fees, he was represented by attorney John DiNucci, who sought to downplay the significance of Spencer’s remarks last August.“That doesn’t prove there was a conspiracy … There is certainly no allegation I can find that Mr Spencer or another defendant intended for a vehicle to cause death or injury,” DiNucci told the court.The court heard how white nationalists used private online chatrooms such as Discord to encourage the bringing of weapons, wearing of uniforms and a march with torches that had not been granted a permit.Attorney Roberta Kaplan, also for the plaintiffs, told the court: “We’re talking about racially motivated violence as a result of a carefully coordinated conspiracy … What we allege is that armed groups of men wearing Nazi insignia, carrying weapons, marched around the synagogue not only chanting Nazi slogans but saying they would burn it down.”She added that online communications had included discussing the legality of running someone over with a car as well as overtly racist statements such as: “If you beat up a nigger, it’s not really beating someone.”But attorney James Kolenich, representing most of the defendants, denied that the elements of a conspiracy had been established. “What’s not clear from the complaint is that there was a pre-existing plan to commit violence … We are arguing that torches, chants, raising your voices are part of a political rally and protected under the first amendment. The fact the defendants are scary-looking individuals and doing scary-looking things isn’t assaultive.”Michael Peinovich, a white nationalist, spoke on his own behalf in court, acknowledging that his podcasts are “bombastic”, “shocking” and “offensive” to some people. “I’m the kind of person for which the first amendment was designed,” he claimed. He insisted that there was nothing he had broadcast or tweeted that could be construed as inciting violence.As the hearing ended, Moon indicated that he would reach a decision “reasonably soon”. This article was amended on 25 May 2018 to clarify the number of people accused in the lawsuit. Topics Virginia The far right news

The four shortlisted artists for the £30,000 Deutsche Börse prize this year are Mathieu Asselin, Rafał Milach, Batia Suter and Luke Willis Thompson. Their projects share a concern for the production and manipulation of knowledge and systems of visual representation

It took more than 10 minutes for paramedics to arrive after a housekeeper found a man collapsed on the floor of a bathroom in a Boston Veteran Affairs building.The paramedics immediately administered naloxone, often known by its brand name Narcan, to reverse the man's opioid overdose. But brain damage can begin after just a few minutes without oxygen.Pam Bellino, patient safety manager for the Boston VA, read that incident report back in December 2015 with alarm. "That was the tipping point for us to say, 'We need to get this naloxone immediately available, without locking it up,' " she says.The easiest way to do it quickly, Bellino reasoned, would be to add the drug to automated external defibrillator cabinets already in place. Those metal boxes on the walls of VA cafeterias, gyms, warehouses, clinic waiting rooms and some rehab housing were installed to hold equipment for a fast response to heart attacks.Now the Veterans Administration, building on a project started in Boston, is moving to add naloxone kits to the AED cabinets in its buildings across the country, an initiative that could become a model for other health care organizations. Enlarge this image Pamela Bellino opens the AED box located in the cafeteria at West Roxbury campus of the VA Boston Healthcare System. The blue pouch, tucked next to the defibrillator, contains the naloxone. Jesse Costa/WBUR hide caption toggle caption Jesse Costa/WBUR Pamela Bellino opens the AED box located in the cafeteria at West Roxbury campus of the VA Boston Healthcare System. The blue pouch, tucked next to the defibrillator, contains the naloxone. Jesse Costa/WBUR Equipping police with nasal spray naloxone is becoming more common across the country, but there has been some resistance to making the drug available in public.Bellino has heard from critics who say easy access to naloxone gives drug users a false sense of safety. She disagrees."Think of this as you would a seat belt or an airbag," she says. "It by no means fixes the problem, but what it does is save a life."Giving naloxone to someone who hasn't overdosed isn't harmful, but it is a prescription drug. So Bellino says the VA had to persuade the accrediting agency The Joint Commission to approve guidelines for the AED naloxone project.The cabinets must be sealed and alarmed so staff can tell if they've been opened. They must be checked daily and refilled when the naloxone kits expire.The commission didn't agree to let the VA put the words "naloxone" or "Narcan" on the cabinets doors to alert the public that the drug is inside, but did allow the VA to affix the letter "N."In December, the project will expand nationwide, as VA hospitals across the country will add naloxone to their AED cabinets."The overwhelming evidence is that it just saves lives," says Dr. Ryan Vega with the VA's Center for Innovation. "We're hopeful that other health systems take notice and think about doing the same." Shots - Health News Poll: Most Americans Know About Opioid Antidote And Are Willing To Use It Vets have nearly twice the risk of overdose, compared with civilians, says Amy Bohnert, an investigator with the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, citing 2005 death data. She says it isn't clear why veterans are more likely to OD, but many do have complex medical conditions."Some of that's related to combat exposure," Bohnert says. "They've got mental health treatment needs. They may have injuries that result in them being more likely to be prescribed opioids than your average person. And all of these things can impact their risk of overdose."A smattering of schools, airports, churches and employers around the country have added naloxone to their AED cabinets.Some are stocking other lifesaving tools as well: tourniquets to stop bleeding after a shooting; EpiPens to keep airways open; and even injectors to treat diabetic shock.Dr. Jeremy Cushman leads a project at the University of Rochester that has placed both tourniquets and naloxone in 80 AED cabinets across that campus as of July."This system is already in place," Cushman says. "The question is, how can we leverage it to save more lives?" Enlarge this image The contents of the naloxone kit inside an AED box located in the VA West Roxbury cafeteria. Jesse Costa/WBUR hide caption toggle caption Jesse Costa/WBUR The contents of the naloxone kit inside an AED box located in the VA West Roxbury cafeteria. Jesse Costa/WBUR Cushman says there are challenges to turning AED cabinets into miniature emergency medical stations. Medicines can't be left outside during extreme temperatures. They are expensive and expire.Those are all challenges, says Dr. Scott Weiner, president of the Massachusetts College of Emergency Physicians. He has encountered them all while developing street-level dispensing stations for naloxone.And then there's the belief among some that naloxone enables drug use by offering an assurance of life after an overdose. Weiner says that attitude is waning and as it does, the public may be more open to other controversial, lifesaving measures."Naloxone is kind of the lowest barrier for people to understand, where someone has already overdosed and we're going to give them the antidote," Weiner says. "The leap to giving them needles [through a needle exchange] or allowing them to inject in a safe space, that's just another level of acceptance that people will have to get to."The Boston VA's Bellino hopes that AED manufacturers will start selling cabinets that meet the new hospital accreditation standards. So far, the Boston VA counts 132 lives saved through all three parts of its naloxone project: training high risk veterans, equipping police and the AED cabinets.This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes WBUR, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Boris Johnson is about to feel the pinch of Brexit Britain’s new global status: squeezed on one side by Europeans in no mood to yield, and on the other by a United States driving a hard bargain for its economic support. FILE PHOTO: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson attends a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan (not pictured) at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain August 7, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Pool/File PhotoWith a deepening political crisis at home, Johnson makes his international debut at a gathering of G7 leaders in the French resort of Biarritz on Saturday, less than three months before the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union. With no sign of an exit deal being agreed by then, the world’s fifth largest economy is on course for a messy divorce from its biggest trading partner and looking across the Atlantic to President Donald Trump for a new trade deal and support. The three-day meeting in southwest France will lay bare the new realities for Britain: collapsing influence in Europe and growing dependency on the United States. Neither is a comfortable position for New York-born Johnson, who took office with a swagger last month promising Brexit by Oct. 31 no matter what. “The UK risks being stuck uncomfortably between a United States it disagrees with and a Europe it will struggle to influence,” said Thomas Raines, head of the Europe Programme at London-based think-tank Chatham House. Ever since World War Two, Britain has tried to temper Europe’s drive for integration with a so-called special relationship with the United States. Brexit forces a departure from that strategy. Britain’s exit from the EU is not on the agenda for the meeting, attended by the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and the EU, but is expected to feature heavily in discussions on its sidelines. With Johnson insisting on re-opening a previously negotiated exit agreement that the British parliament rejected three times and that Brussels says cannot be reopened, a no-deal Brexit is seen as an increasingly likely outcome. Both sides say they do not want it to happen, but will be prepared for that outcome. The EU insists Britain will be hit hardest and leaked British government “worst case” planning documents show possible food, fuel, and medicine shortages. UK-EU ‘ICE AGE’ Short-term disruption aside, Guntram Wolff, director of the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel, said the long-term implications could be even more damaging, isolating Britain from its closest neighbor. “The real danger of a no-deal Brexit … is the political implications, and for a long while there will be an ice age between the EU and the UK,” Wolff said. “Then Trump says (to the UK), ‘I’m your buddy’ - and potentially drives a wedge between the EU and the UK.” Ahead of the G7 meeting Johnson travels to Berlin and Paris, having failed to break the impasse with a letter to EU Council President Donald Tusk. British government sources said they did not expect a breakthrough this week, or at the G7. “In Biarritz, the EU side will hold its ground on Brexit,” said one EU official dealing with Brexit. “We don’t expect much to be agreed on Brexit there, even if some interesting exchanges may take place.” EU sources said Brussels was instead waiting to see if Britain’s parliament, where a small majority is also opposed to leaving the bloc without a deal, could force Johnson into delaying or halting the exit process. In contrast, Johnson’s pre-summit phone call on Monday with Trump prompted an enthusiastic response from the U.S. leader: “Great discussion with Prime Minister @BorisJohnson today. We talked about Brexit and how we can move rapidly on a US-UK free trade deal. I look forward to meeting with Boris this weekend, at the @G7, in France!” Trump said on Twitter. Earlier this month senior Trump aide John Bolton visited London carrying a message from his boss that the United States would set aside foreign policy differences and focus on doing whatever it could to help Britain through the Brexit process. But, even though Johnson and other pro-Brexit advocates argue that the United States will be a crucial ally for a Britain unshackled from EU trade policy, Trump’s support is likely to come at a price. Britain has long been the United States’ closest military ally, but its status as an influential player in the EU has also given it clout to diverge from Washington when it disagrees - something it has frequently done since Trump came to power. “At the point at which it is leaving the EU, it finds itself much closer to the European position on most big issues than to the Trump administration: on climate change, on international trade, on the Iran (nuclear) deal,” Raines said. Slideshow (3 Images)That leaves Johnson caught between European and U.S. thinking. He will need to avoid angering a volatile Trump and risking trade ties, but also to be wary of alienating himself from other leaders who have a more multilateral approach to world politics. “Boris should not attempt to corral his fellow heads of government into a common line on every issue, nor set himself up as the go-between for the U.S. and Europe,” former British foreign minister William Hague wrote in the Telegraph newspaper. “Such efforts would be doomed to fail, for now at least, and more likely to end in ridicule than renown.” Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Writing by William James; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Frances KerryOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Paul Manafort has been charged with 16 felonies by the state of New York, meaning that he could be convicted and jailed for crimes that Donald Trump is powerless to pardon.Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of mortgage fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records, the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance said on Wednesday.The new charges were announced by Vance just minutes after Manafort received a second prison sentence in Washington DC for his convictions on federal charges stemming from Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.Trump has the authority as US president to pardon Manafort for all his federal convictions, meaning he could be freed from his combined seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence. But Trump has no power to intervene in Vance’s state prosecution.“No one is beyond the law in New York,” Vance said in a statement. He said that Manafort’s alleged crimes “strike at the heart of New York’s sovereign interests, including the integrity of our residential mortgage market”.Trump has not said publicly if he intends to pardon Manafort, a veteran Republican operative who worked for brutal dictators overseas. But the president has hailed Manafort as a “brave man” in contrast to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former legal fixer, whose cooperation with federal prosecutors has imperilled the president.“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” Trump said on Twitter last August.Manafort, 69, is accused in New York of fraudulently obtaining home loans worth millions of dollars between 2015 and 2017. He has been jailed in Virginia since June last year, when his bail was revoked after he was caught witness tampering.According to the indictment, Manafort repeatedly submitted false information to lenders to obtain multi-million-dollar mortgages. Quoting from emails that Manafort sent, prosecutors said he turned this scheme into a conspiracy by recruiting family members to take part.Some of the transactions for which Manafort was charged also arose in his prosecution in Virginia last year on federal fraud charges. Following a trial there, a jury found Manafort guilty on eight counts but could not reach a verdict on 10 others.Manafort was charged in New York with conspiracy for allegedly having Rick Gates, his deputy in business and on the Trump campaign, sign a letter falsely saying that Manafort had allowed Gates to use his American Express card to buy baseball season tickets.Prosecutors from Mueller’s office told the jury in Virginia that Manafort used the letter to explain the scale of his American Express bill to a bank from which he was seeking a loan. Gates, who separately pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, testified that Manafort needed the letter because he could not afford to pay his bill.Manafort’s attorneys are likely to challenge at least some of the new charges on the basis of double jeopardy, which holds that Americans may not be prosecuted twice for the same crime.In the New York indictment announced on Wednesday, Manafort was charged with eight counts of falsifying business records, three counts of mortgage fraud, three counts of conspiracy, one count of attempted mortgage fraud and one count of scheming to defraud.None of the charges brought against Manafort by Mueller’s team have related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election, which is the focus of their investigation.Mueller, who is widely thought to be concluding his inquiry after almost two years, has alleged that Manafort shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime business associate and alleged Russian intelligence operative. Topics Paul Manafort US crime Donald Trump New York US politics news

Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro reacts after being stabbed during a rally in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Raysa Campos Leite SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil’s front-running presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is unlikely to return to campaigning before the Oct. 7 first-round vote because of the severity of wounds he suffered in a stabbing attack, his son said on Friday. Flavio Bolsonaro said in a video posted on Facebook that his father was in a “delicate situation and has trouble speaking.” He added that the elder Bolsonaro, 63, “probably will not be able to get back in the streets in this campaign. He cannot go to the streets, but we can.” Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed by an assailant on Thursday during a stopover in his right-wing presidential campaign in Minas Gerais state. Reporting by Brad Brooks; Editing by Tom BrownOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image A youth scouts for mud crabs and snakehead fish on the parched bed of Chembarambakkam Lake on the outskirts of Chennai, India. Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images A youth scouts for mud crabs and snakehead fish on the parched bed of Chembarambakkam Lake on the outskirts of Chennai, India. Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images One of Chennai's biggest reservoirs, Chembarambakkam Lake, is now a cracked, windswept mud flat. There are swarms of insects as big as hummingbirds, stray goats nibbling at dust-coated shrubs and what look like a few water buffalo — but no water. A massive pipe that's supposed to carry water into the city is empty.But Chennai got 755 millimeters (about 30 inches) of rain last year. That's more than London typically gets. So how did this happen?No flow zonesAt his cramped office near Chennai's seafront, Nityanand Jayaraman, an environmental activist, unfurls a map of Chennai's reservoirs and its car factories. The city is India's Detroit — an auto industry hub. He traces his finger around the circumference of a reservoir, and then farther out, to all the wetlands surrounding it."A reservoir is not just a pot. It has a catchment, and how you use or abuse the catchment also determines how healthy your reservoir is going to be," Jayaraman explains. The catchment is the surrounding area where rainfall can flow into the reservoir.That's the problem at Chembarambakkam Lake, he says."Around it, we've had intense development. So just [uphill from the reservoir] sits a very large special economic zone for automotive components and automobiles," he says.That special zone houses a Hyundai automotive plant at Irungattukottai, an area that used to be part of the lake's catchment area. The factory uses rain and groundwater — for cooling machinery, washing vehicles and mixing with paint — that would otherwise flow into the reservoir.Urban sprawlOn the other side of Chembarambakkam Lake is what used to be a farming area. It's called Senneer Kuppam, which means "place with pure water" in the local Tamil language.This is where, for generations, Vincent Prasad's family grew eggplants and sunflowers. They used to irrigate them with ample water from a shallow well, dug by hand. As recently as 10 to 15 years ago, Prasad says he had to dig just 10 feet down to reach water. Now his neighbors have had to drill 80 to 100 feet down to strike water, he says. But renting a drilling rig is too expensive for him.His father ended up abandoning agriculture and working in a factory. Prasad, now 39, has done the same. And as Chennai expands beyond its city limits, a superhighway has just been built through their once-sleepy village.Farmers are selling their land for development — or, during the current water crisis, becoming water merchants."All my neighbors are drilling deep bore wells. It's an investment!" Prasad says. "You make more money selling your water than using it to irrigate crops."More and more bore wellsThis summer, Prasad joined a neighborhood group, comprised mostly of tenants who are petitioning the Indian government to stop landowners from drilling bore wells and protect the community's access to water. Those who can afford it drill bore wells that drain the aquifer, a porous area underground where water naturally accumulates. Those who cannot afford to drill, or don't own land, have had the taps in their homes run dry."They are selling our water to private companies and hotels. So we don't have any water at all. I can't take a bath," says Virmala, 32, a lawyer who goes by one name. She skips showers so she can bathe her 2-month-old daughter.She says the water shortage has turned neighbors against one another. As water becomes scarce, protests have erupted."We are all angry, but the government doesn't support us. It supports the rich people who buy this water," says Prasad. "Because it's our water from here that's keeping the city of Chennai alive."Meanwhile, what was once lush farmland has now become a dusty jam of giant tanker trucks. Locals took NPR correspondents on a driving tour of 29 new bore wells in the village of Senneer Kuppam, with hundreds of water tankers lined up alongside them. It takes just 15 minutes for a tanker to fill up and get back on the highway.The "place of pure water" is draining fast. Private water tanker trucks fill up at a bore well on Chennai's outskirts. The area was once a lush farming village but has become part of Chennai's expanding urban periphery. Locals are drilling bore wells to sell their groundwater. It's more profitable than using the water to irrigate crops. Lauren Frayer/NPR hide caption toggle caption Lauren Frayer/NPR Mother Nature or mismanagement?Chennai's water shortage, and the unrest it has unleashed, were avoidable, says Srinivasan Janakarajan, president of the South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies. He says Chennai's water shortage is not caused primarily by climate change, though that could indeed make matters worse."When somebody says, 'Sorry, you don't get rainfall. It's nature's fury,' I just cannot take it!" says an exasperated Janakarajan.The problem is not Mother Nature, he says. It's unchecked urban growth, lack of reservoir maintenance, and overextraction of groundwater by public authorities and private landowners through bore wells.Other environment experts say Chennai is a perfect example of how those things, exacerbated by climate change, can morph into a climate emergency. This is the type of water crisis that's becoming more frequent in the world's megacities."If you look at cities like Phoenix or Chennai or Cape Town, they're where land use and climate change will collide. So climate change and its effects will only worsen what has already been made worse by what we call development — the pattern of urbanization," says Jayaraman, the local activist.Chennai gets most of its rain during the northeast monsoon season from October to January, though it also gets some showers in the southwest monsoon from June to September. In 2015, the city suffered deadly floods. But last year's monsoon was unexpectedly weak. Precipitation in Chennai has always been erratic. Overall, the city gets plenty of rain, but it has to conserve it better to last through the dry spells, Janakarajan says."Chennai is endowed with fantastic reservoirs, but they're encroached upon [by urbanization], clogged and silted up. The catchment areas are disappearing. There's no periodic maintenance," he says. "I'm not saying climate change is a fiction. It's science; it's happening. But for all our mismanagement, all our inefficiency, please don't hide behind climate change."Janakarajan and many others accuse city and state officials of prioritizing growth and industry over residents' water supply. NPR contacted Chennai's water board, its chief engineer and the office of the chief minister of the state of Tamil Nadu, whose capital is Chennai. Officials declined or did not respond to repeated requests over a two-week period for an interview.The chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Edappadi K. Palaniswami (his position is similar to a U.S. state governor), has accused the media of "creating an illusion" of water scarcity based on "some stray incidents" but says the situation is under control. The state's high court has nevertheless ordered his administration to submit a report explaining steps it has taken to mitigate the shortage.Harvesting rainwaterIn 2003, the state government did take action. Lawmakers passed the Tamil Nadu Groundwater Development and Management Act. It sought to regulate the numbers and locations of private bore wells by requiring landowners to apply for permits before drilling. It also mandated rainwater harvesting at all buildings. But the law was never really enforced and was repealed by an ordinance in 2013. The government has promised new legislation to replace it, but six years on, nothing has been passed.In advance of that 2003 law, Tamil Nadu also commissioned Chennai's Rain Centre, a nonprofit organization inaugurated by the then-chief minister, to teach people how to harvest rain."Catch rain. It's free! That's our slogan," says Sekhar Raghavan, its affable 72-year-old founder and director.The exterior of Raghavan's office building is outfitted with drainage pipes. They run from the building's roof, down into an underground cistern to store rainwater. He gives tours and rainwater demonstrations and was hosting a delegation of Australian diplomats and Canadian students on the day NPR visited.But 16 years ago, when the state government first required residents to "catch rain," Raghavan says it was a tough sell. Not many people were willing to invest in drain pipes and tanks."Nobody bothered about this! Now they have realized, there's no water to buy. So I get 20 to 25 calls every day," he says.People are desperate for advice, he says, on how to avoid buying water from expensive private tanker firms and how to collect it for free."This is a wake-up call for all of us," Raghavan says. "Future droughts, future floods — they're only going to get more severe, because the city is developing, and getting more and more built up.""We have to change our habits right now," he says.NPR producer Sushmita Pathak contributed to this report.

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Europe adviser is in Brussels to pass on the British leader’s message that the country is leaving the European Union on Oct. 31 “whatever the circumstances”, a government spokesman said on Wednesday. The spokesman said David Frost was having introductory meetings with key officials and to relay the prime minister’s message in person that “the UK is leaving the EU on Oct. 31 whatever the circumstances”. “We will work energetically for a deal but the backstop must be abolished. If we are not able to reach an agreement then we will of course have to leave the EU without a deal,” the spokesman said. Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Kylie MacLellanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Mr. Pruitt told a conference of state agricultural commissioners that he intends to issue a draft proposal of replacement water regulations in the spring and to finalize new rules this year, according to Politico.The Waters of the United States rule, designed to limit pollution in about 60 percent of the nation’s bodies of water, was put forth by the E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers in 2015. It had extended existing federal protections of large bodies of water, such as the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, to smaller bodies that flow into them, such as rivers, small waterways and wetlands.Issued under the authority of the 1972 Clean Water Act, the rule has been hailed by environmentalists. But farmers, ranchers and real estate developers oppose it as an infringement on their property rights.Republicans in farm states cheered the administration’s move on Wednesday.“The Obama administration’s outrageous Waters of the United States rule would have put backyard ponds, puddles, and farm fields under Washington’s control,” said Senator John Barrasso, the Wyoming Republican who is chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Today’s action will give Wyoming’s ranchers, farmers, small businesses, and communities clarity.”Environmentalists, meanwhile, assailed the move and vowed to sue the administration.“The Clean Water Rule protects the bodies of water that feed the drinking water supply for one in three Americans,” said Jon Devine, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “E.P.A. Administrator Scott Pruitt is racing the clock to deny protections for our public health and safety. It’s grossly irresponsible, and illegal — and we’ll challenge it in court.”

The special counsel investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin has dropped nearly two dozen criminal fraud charges against a key witness who has agreed to cooperate in the investigation.A court filing on Tuesday showed that prosecutors working for Robert Mueller dropped some charges against Rick Gates, a former aide to the Trump campaign who previously worked as a lobbyist for pro-Russian interests, just days after he was indicted for participating in a conspiracy to hide millions of dollars in fees he was paid for lobbying work and evade US taxes.Gates pleaded guilty last week to separate charges, filed against him in Washington DC, that he conspired against the US and lied to investigators over the course of their inquiry. The Virginia charges were dropped against him as part of a plea agreement in which Gates is being shown leniency by prosecutors in exchange for his full cooperation.Gates worked closely with Paul Manafort, a Republican lobbyist and former Trump campaign manager who has also been charged with money laundering, tax evasion, and lying about his status as a foreign agent.Under US law, individuals who lobby on behalf of foreign governments – as Manafort has since acknowledged doing – are required to report their activity to the Department of Justice.Gates’s guilty plea last week has put Manafort under intense pressure to cooperate with investigators or face a potentially long prison sentence, given Gates’s promise to testify against him. Manafort has vehemently denied all wrongdoing and promised to fight the case against him.Gates is one of several former Trump campaign aides to plead guilty to criminal charges. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, has also pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. Donald Trump has called the investigation a witch-hunt against him, and he denies ever having colluded with the Kremlin to gain advantage against Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential election. Topics Trump-Russia investigation Robert Mueller Donald Trump Trump administration US politics Paul Manafort Russia news

A fire in Kentucky destroyed a warehouse containing about 45,000 barrels of Jim Beam bourbon after officials let the blaze run its course to avoid ethanol contamination in a nearby creek that runs into the Kentucky River.The fire started around 11 p.m. in Woodford County on Tuesday and was completely out by noon on Wednesday, fire officials said. No injuries were reported.“The biggest issue we are dealing with is the environmental aspect,” said Drew Chandler, the Woodford County emergency management director. “If we put the fire out, we are going to dump a lot of water on it and that water will be contaminated.”He said fire officials did not know what had caused the fire, but a spokeswoman for Jim Beam said she believed lightning had sparked it.“Initial reports suggest the fire resulted from a lightning strike, and we will work with local authorities to confirm the cause and to remediate the impacts,” Emily York, the spokeswoman, said in a statement.The building is one of 126 barrel warehouses that Jim Beam operates in Kentucky. Altogether, these warehouses hold 3.3 million barrels of bourbon for the Jim Beam brand, Ms. York said.[Sign up for The New York Times Cooking newsletter.]A standard barrel typically produces 150 to 200 750-milliliter bottles, according to The Louisville Courier Journal. Prices for a standard bottle of Jim Beam vary, but an estimate of $18 per bottle would mean the fire caused roughly $122 million to $162 million in lost revenue.ImageThe building is one of 126 barrel warehouses that Jim Beam operates in Kentucky.CreditRyan Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader“The warehouse that was destroyed contained 45,000 barrels of relatively young whiskey from the Jim Beam mash bill,” Ms. York said. “Given the age of the lost whiskey, this fire will not impact the availability of Jim Beam for consumers.”Firefighters sprayed water on nearby buildings to prevent the fire from spreading, Mr. Chandler said.“We are letting that distilled spirit burn out so there is less contamination in the runoff,” he said.Martin Stute, a chairman of the department of environmental science at Barnard College said, “It probably made a lot of sense to let it burn out.”“Alcohol released into the environment would directly kill or damage organisms, and the decomposition of the alcohol would consume oxygen and possibly kill fish as well,” he added.Even using fire extinguishers to put out the fire could be harmful, he said.“Those contain monoammonium phosphate, which causes eye and skin irritation in humans and also affects the respiratory system,” Dr. Stute said.Letting the fire burn out was the best option, he said, because putting it out would have been difficult given that “alcohol is so extremely flammable and has such a high energy content.”There is one perk to a bourbon warehouse fire, Mr. Chandler said, and it has nothing to do with drinking it.“It’s about the best-smelling fire I’ve ever been at,” he said. “It is not as pungent like in a house fire because it is mostly old natural wood and a distilled spirit, so it has a bit of a sweetness to it.”

FBI agent Peter Strzok, who once helped lead the bureau’s investigation into Russian election interference and sent texts disparaging Donald Trump, has been fired by the bureau.Strzok, a 21-year veteran of the organisation, helped oversee both the Russia inquiry and the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, but sent texts critical of Trump including one where he labeled the future president an “idiot”.An inspector general’s report in June revealed a history of text messages sent during the 2016 presidential between Strzok and Lisa Page, then an FBI lawyer with whom he was having an affair.In one exchange, Page asked: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok replied: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”Trump and his allies have blasted Strzok, making him a poster boy for their claim that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is a “witch-hunt”.Special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from the Russia investigation after the messages were discovered.Strzok’s lawyer said FBI deputy director David Bowdich ordered the firing on Friday – overruling the bureau’s office of professional responsibility and going against the recommendation of the career FBI official responsible for employee discipline, who had said Strzok should be suspended for 60 days and stripped of his supervisory responsibilities.“This decision [to fire Strzok] should be deeply troubling to all Americans,” Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, said in a statement.“A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzok’s personal views ever affected his work,” he said. “The decision to terminate was taken in response to political pressure, and to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the first amendment, not on a fair and independent examination of the facts.”Trump exulted over the firing on Monday.“Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI – finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction – I just fight back!” he said on Twitter.Trump added in another tweet: “Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!”Testifying before House committees last month, Strzok said his personal views had never affected his work and called Republican attacks against him “another victory notch in Putin’s belt”. Topics FBI Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump news

JACKSON, Miss. (Reuters) - A white Republican senator’s casual reference to a “public hanging” has inflamed a special election runoff in Mississippi, fueling Democratic hopes of an upset in a conservative state with an ugly history of racist violence. The U.S. Senate race between appointed Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy, a black former congressman and U.S. agriculture secretary, will test the power of the black vote and the viability of Democrats in a region where Republicans have dominated for decades. The Nov. 27 runoff, which caps a congressional election cycle drawn out by recounts and too-close-to-call races, will not affect the balance of power in Congress. Republicans will hold a Senate majority even if Hyde-Smith loses and Democrats will control the House of Representatives. Espy, 64, is a heavy underdog in the Deep South state, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. But his campaign got a jolt of adrenaline when a video surfaced a week ago showing Hyde-Smith, 59, praising a supporter by saying: “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” The comment set off a furor in Mississippi, a state scarred by a history of racism and violence against blacks, including lynching. According to the NAACP civil rights group, Mississippi had 581 lynchings between 1882 and 1968, more than any other state. Advocacy groups conducting a voter turnout drive aimed primarily at African-Americans, who make up 38 percent of the state’s residents, said their efforts had gained new urgency. “If people recognize the importance of this moment, there is an opportunity for Secretary Espy to win this race,” said Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the black Democratic mayor of Jackson, the state’s largest city. “If we can show progress in a state with such historic suffering, then what does it say about the future?” Hyde-Smith, a former state legislator appointed in April to replace retiring Senator Thad Cochran, released a statement calling the Nov. 2 comment “an exaggerated expression of regard” for a friend. She apologized for the remarks for the first time during a debate on Tuesday, but said Espy had twisted her words for political gain - a charge he denied. Retailer Walmart Inc, medical device maker Boston Scientific Corp and railroad Union Pacific Corp made public requests this week for Hyde-Smith to return their donations because of the remarks. Espy would be the first black senator from Mississippi since shortly after the Civil War. He told reporters that Hyde-Smith’s “disappointing, hurtful” remarks perpetuated stereotypes Mississippi was striving to overcome. “There was already a high level of engagement but her comments took everything up to a whole new level,” said Cassandra Welchlin, co-director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, one of at least two dozen advocacy groups involved in turnout efforts. Welchlin’s group is partnering with childcare centers, churches and sororities to target infrequent black women voters. Other groups are focusing on registered black voters who did not participate in the Nov. 6 election, using phone banks, texting parties and ride-shares to get them out. FILE PHOTOS: U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy and U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) are seen in combination file photos, in Jackson, Mississippi, U.S. on May 8, 2018 and in Southaven, Mississippi, U.S. on October 2, 2018 respectively. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman (L) and REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File PhotosMississippi Democrats hope to recreate the coalition that propelled Democrat Doug Jones to a Senate victory in neighboring Alabama last year by energizing black voters, particularly women, and appealing to white swing voters. Espy has used the Jones race as a template, focusing on issues like rural healthcare, equal pay and education. A political moderate, he portrays himself as a bridge-builder in a state where Republican President Donald Trump is popular. At a weekend breakfast in Jackson, Espy told black women leaders that Jones was elected because women turned out to support him. “What that did for Doug Jones in Alabama, you have to do for me in Mississippi,” he said. The runoff to serve the last two years of Cochran’s term was needed because no candidate gained more than 50 percent of the vote in a Nov. 6 special election. Hyde-Smith and Espy, who nearly deadlocked at about 41 percent, met in their only debate on Tuesday night. Both the Republican and Democratic national parties have sent help to Mississippi for the runoff. Trump will hold two get-out-the-vote rallies in the state next week, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee said it was spending at least $800,000 on ads. That will be augmented by $1 million from the Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group aligned with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. National Democratic committees are sending staff to help get out the vote, and the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC has started a $500,000 ad buy. Senators Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, who are both African-American and potential 2020 presidential contenders, campaigned with Espy. “This is a race that has national importance,” Harris said at the Jackson breakfast, saying the outcome would “make a point about who we are as a country, symbolized by the state of Mississippi.” Hyde-Smith has hammered Espy as too liberal for Mississippi. She touts her endorsement from Trump, who won Mississippi by 18 percentage points in 2016, and campaigns in a bus with a blown-up photo of her and Trump stretched across the side. “This race is a conservative versus a liberal and Mississippi is a conservative state,” said Melissa Scallan, a spokeswoman for Hyde-Smith. She declined to comment on the hanging remarks. Hyde-Smith became embroiled in another controversy last week when a video surfaced in which she seemed to endorse the voter suppression of liberal students as “a great idea.” In a statement, Hyde-Smith’s campaign said she was joking. The wild card in the runoff will be how many supporters of Republican Chris McDaniel, a hardline conservative who captured 16.5 percent of the vote on Nov. 6, stay home or back Espy instead of Hyde-Smith. McDaniel had criticized Hyde-Smith, a former Democrat who switched parties in 2010, as insufficiently conservative but endorsed her. Slideshow (2 Images)Hal Marx, a McDaniel supporter and mayor of the small town of Petal, said he was not enthusiastic about Hyde-Smith but would vote for her. “She isn’t the best choice possible but of the two that are left we need a Republican in the seat,” Marx said. Reporting by John Whitesides; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.