Two years ago, Meng Hongwei became the first Chinese person to head Interpol, the international police cooperation organization based in Lyon, France. Nearly two weeks ago, he went missing. Yesterday (Oct. 7), China announced that Meng was under investigation for “suspicion of violating the law,” according to China’s anti-corruption authorities (link in Chinese).China’s Ministry of Public Security (link in Chinese), which oversees law enforcement, today (Oct. 8) said that Meng was involved in bribery and that his investigation was required to “utterly rectify the poisoned stream of influence brought by Zhou Yongkang.” Meng at one time worked with Zhou, who as minister for public security was one of the most high-profile politicians to be taken down during a corruption campaign launched by president Xi Jinping after coming to power in 2012.It’s unclear how long the investigation into Meng will last—though there may be little surprise about how it ends. A brief timeline of Meng’s political career and disappearance—and shifts in China’s politics—offered hints of troubles to come.At the Communist Party congress in 2012, Xi became general secretary of the party, and Zhou retired. Not long after he went into retirement, Zhou disappeared from public view. In 2014, authorities confirmed he was being investigated for corruption. The investigation targeted hundreds close to him in the oil industry where he once worked, and in the public-security ministry.Zhou was given a life sentence in 2015 for crimes including bribery and abuse of power, and his son and wife, a former TV presenter, were convicted of bribery charges the following year. Xi’s ability to conduct such a campaign against a retired elite party member was seen as a sign of his consolidation of power. Other theories for the takedown proliferated.Still, Meng appeared to carry on unscathed—in recent days Meng’s wife said the two men were not close and that Zhou had tried to oust her husband from the security ministry.In November 2016, Meng was elected in Indonesia as the president of Interpol for a four-year term.During Meng’s time at Interpol, China filed lists of its most wanted suspects with the organization, with 15 persons on that list returned to China since 2017 (link in Chinese). China also asked the organization to issue a “red notice” to arrest Guo Wengui, a Chinese property tycoon living in the US who has made serious accusations against China’s former and current officials.While Meng’s downfall seems sudden, looking back there appear to be traces of what was to come, one blogger wrote (link in Chinese) on WeChat, China’s main messaging app. The article was reposted by local Chinese news outlet The Paper.Meng’s last public appearance in Singapore, when he met the country’s second permanent secretary.Grace Meng, the missing chief’s wife, said that on Sept. 25 her husband sent her a knife emoji, followed by the message “wait for my call,” according to a screenshot of a WhatsApp exchange between them. She then lost contact with her husband. She reported her husband’s disappearance to Lyon police on Oct. 4, telling them she hadn’t seen her husband in 10 days since he departed for a trip to China.After acknowledging reports of Meng’s disappearance, the organization said on Saturday it had requested “clarification from China’s authorities” on his whereabouts.Meng was supposed to be in his post until 2020. On Sunday evening local time, the Communist Party’s internal graft investigation body and a national anti-corruption agency said in a one-sentence statement that Meng was under investigation. Not long after, Interpol said that the 64-year-old had resigned.The same day, Grace Meng gave an impassioned press conference in Lyon, her face hidden from the cameras.“From now on, I have gone from sorrow and fear to the pursuit of truth, and responsibility toward history,” she said, speaking in Chinese. “For the husband whom I deeply love, for my young children, for the people of my motherland, for all the wives and children, so that their husbands and fathers will no longer disappear.”In a lengthy statement carried on Chinese news outlets, the Ministry of Public Security elaborated on (link in Chinese) the reasons for Meng’s detention:…Meng Hongwei’s investigation for bribery and suspected violation of the law was very timely, completely correct, and very wise. It fully demonstrates the clear attitude of the party Central Committee with comrade Xi Jinping as the core to strictly manage the party and carry out the anti-corruption struggle. It resolutely demonstrates that there is no privilege and no exception before the law. Anyone who violates the law must be severely punished. We must resolutely uphold the authority and dignity of the law, bearing in mind that the red line of the law cannot be overstepped… It is necessary to make the legal system a ‘high-voltage line’ of electricity.

A Fox News reporter took immigration enforcement into his own hands, lurking in the bushes along the US southern border to “foil” an attempt by migrants to enter the country.A segment aired on the network showed reporter Griff Jenkins in McAllen, Texas, where he spotted a group of Hondurans trying to cross a river from Mexico into the United States on a raft.“We laid in the bushes in wait and we busted one of those smuggling operations,” Jenkins said in the Tuesday segment.Huddled in the brush, Jenkins explained his mission, before scrambling down the river bank to confront a group of migrants attempting to cross on a raft.“We’ve been hiding in the bushes waiting to witness one of these crossings. Let’s go – they’re coming right now,” he said. “You can see they’ve come in, they’ve got a family on a raft.”Trailed by his camera, Jenkins yelled out to a group of men, women and children on a small raft that one man was paddling across.“Excuse me, sir, were you trying to cross into America illegally?” Jenkins asked.The raft turned around and headed back to the river bank on the Mexican side of the border, as Fox displayed onscreen text that read: “Griff foils illegals’ attempt to cross border.”“What we’re witnessing now is clearly a family that was being brought over by that smuggler that was paddling the raft. This is an attempt to illegally cross, and they’ve gone back over there,” Jenkins said. “We seem to have foiled this attempt, but officials tell us that he’s probably just going back to look for another spot.”Later, Jenkins caught up with the migrants. He asked a woman in the group if she knew the crossing was illegal, and she said yes. “Can you tell me why you came illegally?” he asked.The woman offered a factual answer, saying she made the journey because of “the situation of Honduras”.“You cannot have work there because criminals always will get your money,” she said.Text on the screen then read: “Illegal admits to knowingly breaking the law.”The Fox reporter’s tactics drew criticism on social media. “That’s Griff Jenkins, the Fox News REPORTER, stopping people from illegally crossing the border,” Kamahl Santamaria, a presenter at Al Jazeera English, wrote on Twitter. “This isn’t reporting. It’s a news channel doing the work of a government. It’s state propaganda.”Bishop Rudolph McKissick Jr, senior pastor of the Bethel Baptist Institutional church in Jacksonville, Florida, added in a tweet: “They are so disgusting.”Fox has been uniquely friendly among cable networks to the administration of Donald Trump, which has pursued hardline immigration policies. Hope Hicks, formerly Trump’s communications director, took a job this month as chief communications officer for Fox, the news network’s parent company. Former Fox News co-president Bill Shine, meanwhile, was appointed White House communications director in July, taking over Hicks’s old role. Topics Fox News US immigration Fox news

Britain’s current political dynamics have been made crystal clear by the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection result. The Liberal Democrats won because Plaid Cymru and the Greens stood down, in an explicit electoral pact. The Tories could have inched it had the Brexit party also stood down. Labour, which never had a chance in this rural constituency, saw its vote share slump from 17% two years ago to just over 5%.With a majority of just one, it is now inevitable that Britain faces a snap general election – either because Boris Johnson’s government is defeated in the Commons or because, having achieved some shabby Brexit deal, he will seize the moment to look for an electoral mandate.For progressives, the last two weeks have shown how high the cost of losing that general election would be. The country would be ruled by a faction of elite Tories who have abandoned their moral and intellectual dividing lines with the far right. Britain would become an appendage of the United States, in foreign policy and in trade. It would be goodbye to the welfare state and the tolerant society.What to do is the question that’s dominated discussions in the union movement, among NGOs and party activists for the past week. There is only one proven response in history that beats an alliance of far-right populists and conservative amoralists: a temporary alliance of the centre and the left. That’s what the Greens, Plaid and the Lib Dems achieved in Brecon – and it looks like a big chunk of 2017 Labour voters took part in it.To make it work nationally will not be easy. Everything depends on Labour. Basically its choice is either to lead an informal progressive alliance or to become one. The first thing Labour’s frontbench has to do is to commit – immediately and unequivocally – to fight any general election called before Britain leaves the EU on a remain and transform ticket.The possibility, still being spun by Jeremy Corbyn’s advisers, that Labour would go into that election equivocal on the issue of Brexit makes my stomach churn. It defies not only principle but also electoral calculation: why bring down a government over Brexit if you won’t tell people what your alternative is?But committing enthusiastically to remain only gets you to first base. On top of that, we need a one-off electoral arrangement between parties of the left and centre aimed at preventing a no-deal Brexit and removing Johnson from Downing Street.I can predict now the screams of protest from many Labour activists. But the popular-front tactic has deep antecedents in the very political traditions the modern Labour left emerged from. In 1935 the Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov single-handedly manouvered the Communist International into supporting calls for a “popular front” against fascism. This was about formal electoral pacts with centrist socialists, left nationalist and liberals – and it paid off within six months. In Spain, to the fury of conservatives who had formed their own electoral alliance with the fascists, the Popular Front took power in January 1936. In May that year the Popular Front won in France, giving the country its first socialist prime minister.After Neville Chamberlain’s peace deal with Hitler in 1938, Nye Bevan and Stafford Cripps, two key figures on the Labour left, advocated an electoral pact including Communists, Liberals and anti-fascist Tories. Both were expelled from the party in March 1939, but they paved the way for Labour’s wartime coalition with Winston Churchill. So the popular-front tactic is not some piece of niche, retro-leftist memorabilia. It is the property of the western democratic tradition; the only tactic that halted or delayed the march to fascism in the 1930s. And it was invented by the Corbynistas of their day. So how could we make it happen now?The most obvious part of the proposition concerns the Green party. Up to a million people could simply vote Green as a protest, as they did in 2015, especially since the climate emergency is energising young voters. Labour should offer Caroline Lucas a place in the shadow cabinet now, a place in cabinet if it wins, and to stand down in her constituency and in up to two others where the Greens have a chance. In return, and for one time only, Labour should ask the Greens to stand down everywhere else and to join a united local campaign team. This should be done through formal negotiation beginning now.It is impossible to ask Labour activists in Scotland to do the same with the SNP. The progressive working-class in Scotland is too heavily divided between unionism and independence. However, at a UK level Corbyn can offer Nicola Sturgeon something tangible: a penalty-free independence referendum at any point Holyrood chooses to stage it. Brecon was a victory for the Unite to Remain alliance – but I do not propose that Labour joins it. As the official opposition party, it is powerful enough to set its own terms for a limited formal agreement to defeat Johnson. Such an agreement could involve, as Anthony Painter has suggested, a “coupon” agreement, as the Tories and Liberals adopted in 1918. Or the party bureaucracy could simply stop expelling activists who make local-level agreements. Either way, the conversation needs to start immediately – because it will take place with or without the Labour leadership.With the Lib Dems, Labour has to go beyond simply denouncing Jo Swinson’s voting record. The clue is there in all election results since May: millions of people care more about Brexit than Nick Clegg’s duplicity over tuition fees. I sense cognitive dissonance among many Labour people over the Lib Dem surge: surely it’s not real or permanent? The only way for Labour to win back millions of votes from the Lib Dems is by listening to the reasons why those voters deserted Labour, by proposing a practical unity against no deal, and allowing voters to measure the Lib Dems’ actions against their rhetoric. Labour activists have to face a grim fact. In addition to being already toxic on the doorsteps of many working-class voters in the north and Midlands of England, antipathy towards Corbyn in many liberal metropolitan constituencies is now high. That antipathy is entirely of his own making. He has looked uncertain on Brexit – calculating and cagey when progressive working-class people expected flair and courage.But those same voters are, from doorstep reports, also seething about no deal and the money Johnson is spending on preparing for it, while the NHS and local services bleed. To seize back the high ground is a tall order for Corbyn, but it’s possible – with a decisive change of tone and narrative. What he needs to do, and urgently, is show he understands the severity of the threat – to democracy, to the welfare state and to our tolerant society – and to speak from the heart to the party’s twin heartlands: the cosmopolitan cities and the devastated small towns.The route to power Labour saw in 2017 is no longer open. Even if it claws its way back from 25% to 40%, that will not be enough to form a government if faced with a Nigel Farage-Johnson pact that is backed by dark money and the social-media savvy of the far right. In any marginal constituency where the xenophobic right has one candidate and the progressive left two, the right will win.Every Labour member should be asking themselves the question: is beating Johnson in a snap election more important than anything else? If you want to beat Johnson, listen to the polls, the professionals and above all the historians – about what it’s going to take to do that. And rule nothing out.• Paul Mason is a writer and broadcaster on economics and social justice Topics Labour Opinion Conservatives Green party Liberal Democrats Boris Johnson Brexit Jeremy Corbyn comment

LONDON — In the first electoral test for Britain’s new prime minister, the Conservatives lost a special election on Thursday, cutting Boris Johnson’s already slim working majority in Parliament to just one.During his first week in power, Mr. Johnson has sought to project the image of an energetic leader who is determined to take Britain out of the European Union by an Oct. 31 deadline and who is willing to risk a disorderly withdrawal without an agreement if necessary.But Thursday’s election loss, in the Brecon and Radnorshire region of Wales, is a reminder of the fragility of his position in Parliament. A majority of lawmakers in London have previously voted against a “no deal” Brexit, and further moves are underway in the legislature to try to block such an outcome.The possibility of leaving the European Union on Oct. 31 without a deal has also put pressure on the British pound. On Thursday, the currency fell below $1.21, a level not seen in two and a half years.Defeat in the special election increases the prospects of Mr. Johnson’s seeking to win a bigger majority in a general election in the fall.Normally, the Conservatives would expect to retain the Brecon and Radnorshire seat, having comfortably won it in the 2017 general election with around 8,000 more votes than went to the centrist Liberal Democrats, in second place.But the circumstances that prompted the election complicated matters for Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives. Their candidate, Chris Davies, was unseated by a petition of local voters after he was convicted of making a false expenses claim.Although Mr. Davies, 51, admitted submitting two false invoices for nine photographs costing 700 pounds, or about $850, to decorate his office, his party selected him again to fight the seat.He lost to the Liberal Democrats, who want to stop Brexit. Reuters reported that the Liberal Democrat candidate, Jane Dodds, won with 13,826 votes, while Mr. Davies came second with 12,401 votes.The Liberal Democrats have performed well in recent local and European elections and, to maximize their prospects in the Welsh vote, struck a “Remain alliance” among like-minded parties. That made Brecon and Radnorshire something of a test case for future cooperation among opponents of Brexit.Under this pact, neither the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, nor the Greens — both of which oppose Brexit — contested the seat, giving the Liberal Democrats a clearer run. Britain’s main opposition party, Labour — which opposes a no-deal Brexit but whose leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is more equivocal about remaining in the European Union — fought for the seat.Mr. Johnson’s first week in charge prompted a lift for the Conservatives in some opinion polls, but his tour of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland underscored worries about the economic, political and constitutional risks of a no-deal withdrawal.Since arriving in Downing Street, Mr. Johnson has hardened the Conservative Party’s stance on Brexit, and on Thursday his government announced that it was setting aside an additional £2.1 billion to prepare for the possibility of leaving without a deal. Some of that money would be used to recruit border officers and to introduce an advertising campaign to prepare businesses for the disruption of leaving the European Union without an agreement.There was also competition for the Conservatives in Brecon and Radnorshire from the Brexit Party, the upstart populist political force led by Nigel Farage. The Brexit Party wants to leave the European Union as quickly as possible, is content to confront the disruption of a disorderly withdrawal and says that Mr. Johnson cannot be trusted to deliver.Although the Conservative Party now holds 310 seats in the House of Commons, by convention, one of those, the deputy speaker, is among a handful of lawmakers who do not vote.The opposition parties (excluding Sinn Fein lawmakers from Northern Ireland, who do not take up their seats in Westminster) together can now muster 319 votes.However, the Conservatives have an alliance with the 10 lawmakers from the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. As things stand, that gives the government a one-seat margin.

Boris Johnson belatedly admitted to failures in his handling of the leaked cables issue that led to the resignation of a British diplomat as he came under intense political pressure on Friday.In a tense interview on the BBC, the would-be prime minister acknowledged that his refusal to explicitly back Sir Kim Darroch, the UK’s outgoing ambassador to Washington, amid a diplomatic row had been a factor in the envoy’s decision to step down. But he insisted that his remarks had been misrepresented to Darroch.In a Tory leadership hustings that took place at about the same time as the prerecorded interview was being broadcast, Johnson admitted he should have handled the situation differently, as he was heckled by an audience member who demanded that he “answer the bloody question”.Johnson had declined repeated opportunities during a televised debate on Tuesday to explicitly back Darroch, an act he told the BBC had been a “factor” in the envoy’s decision to resign. He later told the hustings audience, however: “I don’t think that anything I said was actually decisive in Kim’s decision to resign. Had I my time again, to answer your question directly, yes – I probably should have been more emphatic that Kim personally had my full support.”Even as he acknowledged his impact, Johnson robustly defended his role. He told the BBC his remarks in the hustings had only been “relayed” to the ambassador and that they had been “misrepresented”.Darroch, he claimed, had not seen the debate himself and, after hearing the second-hand report of the remarks, decided to resign from one of the UK’s most prestigious foreign postings without watching the broadcast.Darroch quit his post on Wednesday, after Donald Trump publicly expressed his fury about a series of highly critical reports that had been leaked to the Mail on Sunday.Johnson, challenged repeatedly about the issue in the interview with the BBC’s Andrew Neil on Friday, denied that he failed to support Darroch in Tuesday’s ill-tempered ITV leadership debate.“I stood up completely for the principle that civil servants should be allowed to say what they want for their political masters without fear or favour,” he said, adding: “The real culprits are the people who leaked that material.”He said: “I spoke to him [Darroch] the next day and said how sorry I was that he had resigned, and he said he had not watched it,” Johnson said.But he added: “What he said was that somebody had relayed to him what I had said. He said that what somebody had relayed to him had certainly been a factor in his resignation. I think, unfortunately, what I said during that TV debate was misrepresented to Kim.” Johnson also denied being “craven” towards the US president, and claimed that in the debate he had simply been rejecting the idea that Darroch’s career should be made into a “political football”.During Tuesday’s debate, when asked to confirm that he would keep Darroch in post if he became prime minister, Johnson declined to do so, saying it would be “presumptuous”.By contrast, his rival, Jeremy Hunt, said: “Who chooses our ambassadors is a matter for the United Kingdom government and the United Kingdom prime minister, so I’ve made clear that if I am our next prime minister, the ambassador in Washington stays.”Friends of the former ambassador have cited the perceived lack of support from Johnson as one reason he took the dramatic step of resigning the next day. The Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan said Johnson had, “thrown our top diplomat under a bus”.Darroch’s resignation was greeted with dismay at the Foreign Office, where Johnson’s stance was viewed as a failure to stand up to the maverick US president, who had called the ambassador “wacky” and a “pompous fool” on Twitter.The department’s permanent secretary, Sir Simon McDonald, told MPs he believed the incident was unprecedented.In his own interview with Neil, Hunt said he “expects” Brexit to be completed by Christmas.Throughout the campaign, Hunt has carefully avoided echoing Johnson’s pledge to take Britain out of the EU by the 31 October deadline “come what may” – though he claims his background as an entrepreneur will help him to strike a new compromise with the EU27. He insisted on Friday: “I’m being honest with people.”Hunt also hinted that he acknowledged the flamboyant Johnson was more attractive to many of the 160,000 grassroots Tory members who are selecting Britain’s next prime minister in a postal ballot.He said his worry was that Conservative members would “vote with their hearts instead of their heads”.The result of the hard-fought contest, which began with a field of 13 candidates more than a month ago, will be announced on 23 July. Theresa May will take part in her final prime minister’s questions the next day, before going to Buckingham Palace to tender her resignation to the Queen.May also gave an interview to the BBC on Friday, reflecting on her troubled three years in Downing Street. The prime minister said when she left No 10, she expected to feel “a mixture of pride at having done the job. But also a degree of disappointment because there was more that I wanted to do.”She said she had been surprised by the challenge of persuading MPs to back the withdrawal agreement, which she continued to insist was a “good deal”.Asked what she might do differently if she had her chance again, May said: “One could always look back and say, ‘If I’d sat down and talked to people more often.’” She also admitted that there had been mistakes in the 2017 “strong and stable” general election campaign, which resulted in the Tories losing their majority.“I regret running a campaign that wasn’t really me,” she said – and she conceded: “I probably actually should have done the TV debates.”She was widely criticised at the time for ducking scrutiny by failing to take part in televised debates with her rivals – something Jeremy Corbyn was able to capitalise on by joining the fray himself.However, May insisted that she still did not regret triggering the snap election in the first place. Topics Boris Johnson Conservative leadership Conservatives Foreign policy Jeremy Hunt Theresa May Brexit news

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: We go now to Iraq, where there are still roughly 5,000 U.S. troops even though ISIS has been largely driven out. NPR's Jane Arraf traveled with the U.S. military for an exclusive look at one of the more remote American bases near the Syrian border.JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: To get to the firebase, you fly by helicopter over Mosul, the city retaken from ISIS a year ago after nine months of fighting along Sinjar Mountain, where minority Yazidis fled to escape genocide in 2014. And then just a little more than a mile from the Syrian border, there's a collection of tents and armored vehicles in the desert. For the last month, that's been home to about 150 American soldiers and Marines working with Iraqi forces to fire artillery at ISIS in Syria.SERGEANT JASON POWELL: This is the M777 Alpha 1. It shoots the 155 round as we have here. They weigh about a hundred pounds each. And sometimes we get up to 12-round fire missions. So with your gear on and hauling these rounds, these guys are fricking animals.ARRAF: That's Sergeant Jason Powell from Kentucky. The guys he's talking about are his crew, the men who load the guns.POWELL: Shell 549, Alpha 1. Fuse seven-three-niner (ph).ARRAF: This one was a demonstration. They didn't fire anything. Normally they're firing over the border into Syria at ISIS fighters. The main focus is denying them terrain, firing into areas to keep them from moving in.POWELL: Deflection 3200, Quadrant 300.1.ARRAF: It's all done to support Iraqi troops and aircraft operating in Syria. Lieutenant Ray Clapp says it's still all about defeating ISIS.LIEUTENANT RAY CLAPP: So I think the fire support that this location provides to support forces in Syria is invaluable and then also the cooperation between U.S. forces here and Iraqi forces.ARRAF: Iraqi commanders normally select the targets. The strikes are mostly in remote areas. The U.S. military says it takes care to avoid civilian casualties. Sergeant Powell says they never see their targets.So do you ever actually see who you're aiming at then?POWELL: No, Ma'am. They just come back and brief us on how good we did.ARRAF: Fifteen years after the U.S. invaded Iraq with 130,000 troops, it's a lot different here for the American military. But the bond between soldiers is the same. Private Luis Villegas emigrated from Mexico and joined the Army. He's 20.PRIVATE LUIS VILLEGAS: I always thought there was some honor. I believe that if I serve with these men right here right next to me, that I'm going to learn many things that are going to help me in the future. Just love. Love - that's a primary thing - to love and value friendship and the people that are around you.MAJOR GENERAL WALTER PIATT: I appreciate what you guys do 'cause none of this was here. You built it all upon arrival.ARRAF: Major General Walter Piatt tells the soldiers and Marines he's proud of them. As we walk along, he stops for selfies with Iraqi soldiers and officers who share the base.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Foreign language spoken).PIATT: (Foreign language spoken).(LAUGHTER)UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Very good.ARRAF: It's about a hundred degrees here. Sand as fine is baby powder settles over everything. There's scorpions and huge, biting spiders. I ask Private Clayton Mogensen how they plan to spend the Fourth of July.PRIVATE CLAYTON MOGENSEN: Oh, well, see; we've got a few baseballs here, and we take the handle from a pickaxe and set bases up and just have a good time. So I think Fourth will be good spent playing ball.ARRAF: General Piatt tells the men they probably won't be there much longer. After this, they'll likely move somewhere else along the border, fighting an enemy that's been driven out but not entirely defeated. Jane Arraf, NPR news, at the Um Jurius (ph) firebase in northern Iraq.Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen told lawmakers on Wednesday he was aware of other possible illegal acts involving Trump that he could not discuss because they were under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Cohen, Trump’s onetime “fixer,” was asked at a congressional committee hearing if he was aware of other wrongdoing or illegal acts regarding Trump that had not been discussed before the panel. “Yes, and again those are part of the investigation that is currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York,” Cohen replied, referring to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. Cohen told the hearing that he was assisting with those investigations in hopes that prosecutors would file what is called a Rule 35 motion on his behalf recommending that his three-year prison sentence be reduced due to his cooperation. “If those investigations become fruitful, then there is a possibility of a Rule 35 motion,” Cohen said. “I am currently working with them on several other ... investigations.” A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment. Cohen met with federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month and provided information about potential irregularities at the Trump Organization and a donor to the president’s inaugural committee, the New York Times reported last week. The meeting with Cohen indicates prosecutors are interested in matters at the Trump Organization that go beyond its role in the illegal hush payments before the 2016 presidential election made to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney of U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives to testify before a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueCohen was handed the three-year sentence by a federal judge in Manhattan in December after he pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations over his arranging hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom claimed to have had sex with Trump. Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, received grand jury immunity from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, according to a person familiar with the matter. In addition to probing the hush payments, federal prosecutors in Manhattan also sent a subpoena to Trump’s inaugural committee about $107 million in donations in 2016. Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Sarah N. Lynch and Nathan Layne; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Lisa ShumakerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Senior politicians, a former cabinet secretary and an ex-head of the home civil service have called for a top-level inquiry into how Boris Johnson’s closest aide, Dominic Cummings, was able to sack an adviser to Sajid Javid, the chancellor of the exchequer, without Javid’s knowledge and then order an armed police officer to escort her out of Downing Street in front of staff.A former senior Metropolitan police officer, former Chief Superintendent Dal Babu, also said the episode should be subject to urgent twin investigations by the cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwill, and Scotland Yard.The demands for inquiries into the sacking last Thursday of Sonia Khan, the 27-year-old Treasury special adviser, came amid heightened tension at Westminster over Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for five weeks.The suspension, planned by Cummings for several weeks, was partly designed to limit the time MPs will have to block a no-deal Brexit.Saturday’s demonstrations against the shutting down of parliament featured protesters across the country chanting “stop the coup” and “save our democracy”.Cummings is understood to have concluded that Khan had been dishonest about her recent contacts with her ex-boss, the anti-no deal former chancellor Philip Hammond, and one of his ex-aides – accusations that Khan strongly denies.Having summoned her to No 10 on Thursday evening to question her, Cummings took her two phones, one used for private calls and one for work, and fired her after seeing she had talked to an ex-aide to Hammond last week. Cummings then went outside No 10 and asked an armed officer to enter the building and escort Khan off the premises.Friends of Khan said she was deeply upset by the episode and was considering what action to take next. They accused Cummings of establishing a “reign of terror” at the heart of government.Hammond is heavily involved in attempts by a cross-party group of MPs to prevent a no-deal Brexit by passing legislation when MPs return to Westminster this week. They hope a new law can be passed mandating Johnson to ask the EU for a further extension to the UK’s membership if the prime minister cannot strike a deal soon.On Saturday Hammond condemned “staggeringly hypocritical” plans to withdraw the whip from Conservative MPs if they vote against the government’s policy on Brexit. In a tweet, he said: “If true, this would be staggeringly hypocritical: 8 members of the current cabinet have defied the party whip this year. I want to honour our 2017 manifesto which promised a ‘smooth and orderly’ exit and a ‘deep and special partnership’ with the EU. Not an undemocratic No Deal.”On Friday, Javid confronted Johnson in a heated meeting and demanded an explanation into how the volatile Cummings had dismissed one of his staff without telling him beforehand.Former attorney general Dominic Grieve told the Observer that if the accounts of the sacking, not denied by Downing Street, were true, it was an outrageous abuse of power by Cummings and inappropriate of the police to have got involved. “If the facts are correct Mr Cummings’s behaviour in inviting the police into what at most could only have been an employment issue is deeply troubling. It was wrong of the police to get involved.”He said the prime minister needed to explain why “ordinary principles of fair behaviour have broken down in his office, and hold an inquiry by the cabinet secretary”.Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, said: “Government advisers must not abuse their power by drawing the police into heavy- handed political stunts. This needs to be reviewed by the cabinet secretary and the Metropolitan police straight away.”Former cabinet secretary Lord Turnbull said it was up to No 10 to explain under what authority Cummings had been working when he dismissed a fellow special adviser and why he thought he had the right to ask an armed officer to march her out of Downing Street. “Getting one of the armed police to escort an adviser out of Downing Street is deeply offensive and is part of Cummings’s mantle of fear,” he said.The former head of the home civil service, Lord Kerslake, also called for an urgent inquiry by the cabinet secretary.Before parliament’s return on Tuesday, when MPs from all opposition parties will try to block a no-deal Brexit, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday accused Johnson of mounting a “smash and grab raid on our democracy” to force through no-deal Brexit.Writing in the Observer Corbyn said Johnson “is running scared of being held to account” and calls for a general election in which Labour would commit to another Brexit referendum.“A general election is the democratic way forward. And in that election Labour will give the people the chance to take back control and have the final say in a public vote, with credible options for both sides, including the option to remain.”Dal Babu who served in the Met for 30 years said that police officers should not have been asked to march Khan out of Downing Street. “It’s a shocking abuse of armed officers, it’s appalling. The police should be asking questions of Cummings, asking questions of the prime minister around an abuse of process. At a time when we should be proud of having BAME women at the heart of government this sends out a very wrong signal of how people are valued.“I would expect the cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill to conduct an inquiry and I would expect the police to conduct an inquiry about individuals in No 10 utilising police officers in a very inappropriate way.” Topics Dominic Cummings The Observer Boris Johnson Brexit European Union Foreign policy Sajid Javid Jeremy Corbyn news

The Conservative party is in the habit of seeing the European Union as something that was inflicted on Britain and Brexit as self-defence. Eurosceptics struggle to perceive any aggression in the act of leaving the EU. But for citizens of other European countries the referendum felt profoundly hostile. How could it be taken any other way? Control over immigration was a centrepiece of the leave campaign. Xenophobia was an active ingredient and without it the result might have been different. Since then many efforts have been made to regularise the position of EU citizens in UK law but the underlying condition of anxiety persists.Last week, the Home Office announced that over one million people have been granted “settled status” – the new legal category that maintains rights of work and residence in the UK. More than 50,000 people applied in the first weekend after the scheme was launched in March. The Home Office advertises that number as if it describes enthusiasm for a popular new product and not a desperate dash for security. The total number of EU nationals in the UK is around 3 million.The crux of the matter is not in technical solutions but in the politics that created the problem. It is in the ethics of changing the terms on which people are allowed to continue living in the country where they might have put down roots. It comes down to the state telling people who believed they had rights of citizenship that, as of a certain date, they do not. That is an indignity imposed not just on EU nationals in the UK but on around 1.3 million British citizens elsewhere in the union. It is up to other member states how generous they want to be towards those people but exposure to those vagaries is a consequence of UK policy. The harder the Brexit, the more vulnerable dislocated workers and their families become.Many Brexiters struggle to comprehend the nature of the offence. There is a view that the extension of privileges, very much like those of full citizenship, and with an easy glide path towards full citizenship, count as adequate compensation. But hidden in that approach is the old loyalty test based on a hierarchy of indigenousness. EU nationals are being told to register as admissible aliens if they want to requalify for the freedom to be at home in a place they already thought was home.It is irrelevant that Boris Johnson describes EU citizens as friends and promises that their rights will not be trampled. His readiness to pursue a no-deal Brexit proves the opposite. The loss of the transition period contained in the withdrawal agreement that Mr Johnson despises vastly increases stress and economic insecurity. The PM’s pledge will not be supported by legislation because he is afraid to put any bill before the Commons, lest it be amended by pro-European MPs.Brexit of any kind perpetrates an injustice on EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals elsewhere in Europe. A no-deal Brexit turns injustice to cruelty. And if those people’s long-term security is meant to be guaranteed by the honour of the current prime minister, that is no protection at all. Topics Brexit Opinion Article 50 European Union Foreign policy Boris Johnson editorials

9 U.S. ‘Can The President Be Impeached?’ We Answer Your Questions

US President Donald Trump has attacked former FBI director James Comey over his "many lies", suggesting he be jailed over his testimony to Congress."Why did he lie to Congress (jail)," Mr Trump said, adding: "How come he gave up classified information (jail)."He also criticised Mr Comey's forthcoming memoir, saying the "badly reviewed book" raises "big questions".His comments come ahead of an ABC News interview with Mr Comey to be aired on Sunday as part of his book tour.The book - A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership - reportedly paints an unflattering portrait of Mr Trump, who fired Mr Comey last year.According to excerpts of the book obtained by US media, Mr Comey writes that interactions with Mr Trump gave him "flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview". Ways Comey could hurt Trump - or himself Comey's FBI memoir: Six claims about Trump In the ABC News interview to be broadcast in full later on Sunday, Mr Comey discusses his handling of the FBI investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state under then-President Barack Obama.He states that his assumption that Mrs Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election was a factor in reopening the inquiry shortly before the vote.Mr Trump said this decision was "stupid" in a series of tweets on Sunday in which he referred to Mr Comey as "slippery" and a "slimeball". He also said that the former FBI boss was "not smart" and "will go down as the worst FBI director in history - by far!", adding that his book was "self-serving and FAKE!". The excerpts from Mr Comey's memoir have infuriated the US president, who insisted that he "never asked Comey for personal loyalty" and the he "hardly even knew this guy". Republican website trashes 'lyin' memoir FBI boss who went from 'respect' to 'nut' Following the president's tirade, Mr Comey tweeted explaining that his memoir was about "ethical leadership" and that Mr Trump was not the only subject of the book. Mr Trump's allies have also mounted an online campaign to discredit Mr Comey's book, with a website that brands the nation's former top law enforcement official as "Lyin' Comey".However, preview sales of the book have already made the memoir a bestseller on Amazon.Correction 16 April: This article has been amended to say that Mr Comey reopened the inquiry into Mrs Clinton's emails shortly before the election.

Stressed out by Brexit? I have a mindfulness exercise for you, one guaranteed to bring calm. Instead of imagining a deep, cool lake or a beach of bone-white sand, comfort yourself by imagining the day, several years from now, when a Chilcot-style inquiry probes the epic policy disaster that was Brexit. As you take deep breaths, and with your eyes closed, picture the squirming testimony of an aged David Cameron under sustained interrogation. Look on as Boris Johnson is at last called to account for the serial fictions of the 2016 campaign. Or perhaps contemplate the moment the panel delivers its damning, final report, concluding that this was a collective, systemic failure of the entire British political class.Last night’s series of votes in the Commons will provide a rich batch of evidence. Almost everyone involved, from both main parties, showed themselves to be immersed in delusion, trading fantasies and absurdities, each one refusing to meet reality’s eye, let alone tackle it head on.Most culpable, once again, is the prime minister. If our jaws weren’t already slackened to numbness by the last 30 months, they should have hit the floor at this latest performance. Theresa May had repeated endlessly, and for weeks, that her deal was the only deal on offer. Yet there she was, standing at the despatch box urging MPs to vote for an amendment that trashes that very same deal. The Brady amendment, which passed by 16 votes, demands what May had constantly said, up until yesterday morning, was impossible: the replacement of the Northern Irish backstop with “alternative arrangements”. It’s an extraordinary thing, this ability of May’s: she somehow manages to combine grinding intransigence with a willingness to perform the most brazen U-turns.Cheering her on was a Conservative party celebrating the rare thrill of unity. For the first time in ages, they could all be on the same side, declaring with one voice that what they really wanted was May’s deal minus the backstop. They beamed as if this result meant something, when it is in fact triply meaningless.First, it’s really no great achievement to get MPs to agree that they’d like the good bits of a deal but don’t want to swallow the bad bits: yes to the sugar, no to the pill. The Tories have united around a position that says they’d like the benefits of the withdrawal agreement, without paying all the costs.It’s the familiar Brexit delusion, which Brussels took all of six minutes to crush, by declaring – for the millionth time – that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” In other words, what the Daily Mail calls “Theresa’s triumph” is to have got her party to unite behind a stance that is doomed to fail.But even on its own terms, the vote is hollow. For what did MPs vote for but “alternative arrangements”? Not a specific, detailed counter to the backstop, spelling out concrete ways that a hard border might be avoided, but the nebulous promise of an “alternative”. When you don’t like x, then “not x” looks mighty alluring, not least because it can mean whatever you want it to mean.Brexiteers know the truth of that, because it was that same logic that saw them win the referendum itself. Their message back then boiled down to: do you want to stay in the European Union, with all its concrete, visible flaws, or would you like “alternative arrangements”? What we’ve all learned since is that the moment an “alternative” becomes real, it loses its all-things-to-all-people appeal. Which means that, even if Brussels were to relent and offer a revised proposal to the backstop, the new plan would enrage as many people as it would please – and would likely face rapid rejection by the Commons, by the Brexiteers swiftest of all.Instead, MPs voted for a toothless, non-binding amendment that confirms they don’t like no-deal very much, but are ready to do precisely nothing to prevent it. And while the Tories are still chasing unicorns, Labour is in its own fantasyland. Incredibly, shadow cabinet minister Richard Burgon was on TV last night still mouthing the same vacuities about “Labour’s alternative” Brexit and how it’s going to negotiate a “strong single-market relationship” – all the benefits, none of the costs – as if there isn’t only a matter of weeks to go till Britain leaves the EU. This just 24 hours after the party had embarrassed itself by planning to abstain on Tory legislation ending the free movement of people, only to reverse position 90 minutes later following a backlash on Twitter.The Sir John Chilcot of the future will note all this, even as she or he exempts the handful of MPs who are using every parliamentary wile they can to stop the country from slamming into the iceberg. The names Grieve, Cooper, Boles and others may earn themselves an admiring footnote in the report that will eventually come. But as for almost everyone else: they will be slammed for their role in a saga that disgraces this country and its supposed leaders more with each passing day.• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Topics Brexit First thoughts Article 50 European Union Foreign policy Labour Conservatives comment

WASHINGTON—Apple Inc.’s exclusive market for selling iPhone apps came under fire at the Supreme Court Monday, as justices considered whether consumers should be allowed to proceed with a lawsuit alleging the company has an illegal monopoly that produces higher prices.The plaintiffs are a group of consumers challenging Apple’s requirement that all software for its phones be sold and purchased through its App Store. Their class action lawsuit seeks damages on behalf of people who have purchased iPhone apps....

By Nov. 26, 2018 12:38 pm ET By at least one measure, Microsoft’s past mistakes are now firmly in the past. The software giant was once equally known for having ushered in the PC revolution while completely missing the mobile one. The former made Microsoft the world’s most valuable company in the late ’90s and as recently as 2002. The latter made the company seem destined for a slow ride to the corporate graveyard. When Apple Inc. first introduced the iPhone in early 2007, Microsoft’s market value was about 4 times that of its Silicon Valley nemesis.... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

FILE PHOTO: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures during a news conference at the end of the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, August 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/File PhotoLONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenged lawmakers to deliver on the Brexit vote and not thwart his plans to take Britain out of the European Union on October 31. Johnson has pledged to deliver Brexit with or without a deal, but opposition lawmakers - and several lawmakers from Johnson’s Conservatives - want to act to rule out a no deal Brexit when parliament returns from recess on Tuesday. Previous votes have indicated a majority in parliament opposing a no-deal Brexit, but in a newspaper interview, Johnson said that backing opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn risked there being no Brexit at all. “The fundamental choice is this: are you going to side with Jeremy Corbyn and those who want to cancel the referendum? Are you going to side with those who want to scrub the democratic verdict of the people — and plunge this country into chaos?,” Johnson told the Sunday Times. “Or are you going to side with those of us who want to get on, deliver on the mandate of the people and focus with absolute, laser-like precision on the domestic agenda? That’s the choice.” Johnson is seeking to renegotiate his predecessor Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement so that Britain can leave the bloc with a deal. But the EU has ruled out Johnson’s key demand - removal of the “backstop” to preserve an open Irish border - unless he finds an alternative which does a similar job. Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Dan GreblerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Right now, a report from justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. She has been looking into why conspiracy theories continue to flourish about the murder of Martin Luther King.CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Walter Cronkite broke the news to his TV audience the night of April 4, 1968.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)WALTER CRONKITE: Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tenn. Police have issued an all-points bulletin for a well-dressed young white man seen running from the scene.JOHNSON: After an international manhunt, authorities apprehended James Earl Ray at an airport in London. Ray, a sometime bank robber, pleaded guilty to King's murder in 1969, in part to avoid the death penalty. But Ray backtracked on the story days later, and that has left some room for doubt ever since. Eight years after King's death in 1976, Congress launched its own investigation.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The House Select Committee on Assassinations held its first public hearing today on the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. Representative Walter Fauntroy delivered opening statements.WALTER FAUNTROY: Martin Luther King Jr. used to say that truth crushed to Earth will rise again. We are making a serious effort to establish what in fact was the truth.JOHNSON: The effort was serious. Disclosures that King had been hounded by the FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, gave rise to lots of questions about possible government involvement in his death. The House committee hired engineers to trace the path of the bullet that hit King as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. They enlisted forensic experts to study the autopsy report, and they interviewed lots of witnesses. One was the convicted killer, James Earl Ray. G. Robert Blakey was the chief counsel to the House Select Committee.G ROBERT BLAKEY: And so we worried about - was there somebody else involved in King's death?JOHNSON: The House investigation found Ray had purchased the rifle likely used to shoot King, and Blakey says he found no involvement by the FBI or the Ku Klux Klan. But he still wonders whether Ray was motivated by the lure of a financial reward.BLAKEY: The truth of the matter is conspiracy investigations need to be made at the time of the crime.JOHNSON: Blakey says the FBI could not win approval for wiretaps to snoop on Ray's brothers at the time, and so a key question lingered without a decisive answer. Meanwhile, from prison, Ray continued to maintain his innocence. He attracted allies like William Pepper, who became his lawyer. Here's Pepper in a 2013 interview about that relationship.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)WILLIAM PEPPER: I spent five hours interrogating Ray with enormous tension and pressure. We all came away, said this guy didn't - this guy didn't do it.JOHNSON: Pepper appealed the case. He tried the Supreme Court - no luck.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)PEPPER: It looked like we were at the end of the road. And then I came up with an idea that - well, look, why don't we try to have a real trial on television?JOHNSON: HBO broadcast that mock trial in 1993, and the TV jury found Ray not guilty. The media interest attracted some new voices, voices like Lloyd Jowers, who owned a bar and grill near the motel in Memphis. Here he is with Sam Donaldson on ABC in 1993.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)SAM DONALDSON: Mr. Jowers, did James Earl Ray kill Dr. Martin Luther King?LLOYD JOWERS: No, he did not.DONALDSON: Do you know who killed Dr. King?JOWERS: I know who was paid to do it.JOHNSON: That account from Lloyd Jowers provoked a new round of questions about King's murder. James Earl Ray, ailing and serving a 99-year prison sentence, once again pushed for a way to reopen the case and thus began another investigation. Local prosecutors in Memphis were looking at claims by Jowers and others.JOHN CAMPBELL: There was a lot of people that, yes, all of a sudden just came out of the woodwork.JOHNSON: John Campbell was an assistant district attorney at the time. Investigators went back and interviewed people who were at Jowers' bar and grill in 1968. Campbell says many of those people failed to back him up. And Jowers himself changed his tune from what he told the FBI at the time of the murder.CAMPBELL: Within a couple of weeks, we pretty much figured that this first story was not going to go anywhere. It wasn't true.JOHNSON: Something else was happening around that time - another investigation, this one by the U.S. Justice Department under President Bill Clinton. Veteran civil rights prosecutor Barry Kowalski led the effort.BARRY KOWALSKI: We conducted a conscientious and a thorough investigation. And just like the four official investigations before it, found no credible evidence or reliable evidence that Dr. King was killed by conspirators who framed James Earl Ray.JOHNSON: Prosecutors interviewed 200 witnesses and reviewed tens of thousands of documents. They found Jowers and the theory of a government-directed conspiracy were not credible, and they discounted other allegations, claims the murder was somehow linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Again, Barry Kowalski.KOWALSKI: Now, 20 years later, I remain absolutely convinced that those well-founded findings were correct.JOHNSON: Still, doubters remained. Three of the men who investigated the crime told NPR the case will never be closed in some people's minds. Blakey, who drafted the federal wiretapping and racketeering laws, said there's almost too much evidence in the King case. John Campbell, the former assistant district attorney in Memphis, says he still gets questions about his investigation.CAMPBELL: You just don't think these powerful people, these people who are larger than life, can be killed by just some, you know, nobody with a gun. You know, it has to be more. It has to be more involved. Well, sometimes, there's not more involved.JOHNSON: Carrie Johnson, NPR News.Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Boris Johnson has no policies, it appears, beyond tax cuts for the rich and – oh – “optimism”. Act happy. Act big. He wants the Queen to have a great big yacht. At a hustings last night he burbled on about the royal yacht. One of the things that all wings of the Labour party can agree on is that it was a good thing to decommission HMY Britannia in 1997. If the royal family wants a yacht it has more than enough dosh to buy its own.Johnson, of course, doesn’t see it that way. Nor does the newspaper that pays him a quarter of a million pounds a year. The Telegraph has campaigned for a new royal yacht and Johnson has argued in the Commons before about it. It was regretful, he said in 2016, that this was not a priority for Theresa May’s government.Some of us find the necessity of food banks and conditions of rough sleepers regretful, but heigh ho! What floats Johnson’s and many other Tory MPs’ boats … is literally a big boat. A peculiar vision of a yacht as a kind of floating embassy, presumably with an ambassador on board, one approved by Trump, I guess, and maybe Prince Andrew. This vessel would sail around the world doing all these amazing post-Brexit trade deals, impressing people.It is a fantasy. Johnson goes on about soft power. He considers this country to have a lot of soft power and thinks this would enhance it. Should taxpayers fund it? No – even he is not that bonkers. Instead he says it should be privately funded – which is not dodgy in the least, is it? A boat “given” to the royal family paid for by anonymous donors to do deals in the brave new world.Johnson was responding to a question from the Thursday night audience about the prospect of commissioning this new royal yacht as a “a post-Brexit weapon in our foreign policy”. Right. Does the Queen want this? The great man doesn’t appear to know. He replied: “I think the crucial thing is that it should be something that Her Majesty herself actually wants – and I’ve not established that.” But a yacht is a perfect symbolic vessel for the post-Brexit buccaneers of the high seas. Business done on boats by oligarchs who can fly on to its helicopter pad is how this country will flourish apparently. What will go on there, and who is accountable?We already know he loves a big symbol of power: a bridge. The unbuilt garden bridge on which millions was wasted. Boris Island, an airport in the Thames estuary. He is “enthusiastic” about a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland. All of this selling of impossibility is alluring to his base. It passes for imagination and derring-do, rather than the jottings of an ill-prepared egomaniac.He cares about displays of might that benefit the already gilded. This has nothing to do with healing a divided country. It has everything to do with how he will operate as prime minister. He will front it out. His only idea for the country is that it becomes more like him. We pretend to be a superpower even if we are not, we fake sovereignty while relying on unnamed businessmen, we wing it but call this independence. We will actually bow down before anyone who will buy a used car from us.It is all a facade. He is the ringmaster of the circus in this fake-it-till-you-make-it version of global trade. His promise, both personally and politically, is to act as if you are in power even if you are not. It worked for him and that’s all that matters. It is not for Queen or country. The yacht is just another side-show in the vanity project that will be his premiership.• This article was amended on 17 July 2019 to clarify that Johnson was responding to a question from the audience about the prospect of a new royal yacht.• Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist Topics Conservative leadership Opinion Boris Johnson Conservatives Monarchy comment

The U.S. is pressing for European Islamic State militants captured in Syria and Iraq to be sent back to their home countries in an effort to ensure they don’t return to the battlefield.One problem: Europe doesn’t want them.As the U.S.-led coalition has rolled back Islamic State, European militants have retreated to Northern Syria, only to...

WASHINGTON/PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to close the U.S. border with Mexico next week, potentially disrupting millions of legal border crossings and billions of dollars in trade, if Mexico does not stop immigrants from reaching the United States. “There’s a very good likelihood that I’ll be closing the border next week, and that will be just fine with me,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump has repeatedly said he would close the U.S. border with Mexico during his two years in office and has not followed through. However, this time the government says it is struggling to deal with a surge of asylum seekers from countries in Central America who travel through Mexico. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials warned that traffic with Mexico could slow as the agency shifts 750 border personnel from ports of entry to help process asylum seekers who are turning up between official crossing points. “Make no mistake: Americans may feel effects from this emergency,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement. Nielsen said the personnel shift would lead to commercial delays and longer waiting times at crossing points. Some of those delays were already being felt on both sides of the international border. On Friday afternoon, the wait was longer than usual on the Mexican side of the crossing between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas, with long lines of freight trucks carrying goods from Mexican factories into the United States, according to a Reuters witness. One driver said she had been stuck in line for three hours on her way to her job in the United States. Nielsen and other U.S. officials say border patrol officers have been overwhelmed by a dramatic increase in asylum seekers, many of them children and families who arrive in large groups fleeing violence and economic hardship in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Related CoverageTrump says it is very likely he'll close border with MexicoAfter Trump border threat, Mexico says doesn't act on threatsMarch is on track for 100,000 border apprehensions, DHS officials said, which would be the highest monthly number in more than a decade. Most of those people can remain in the United States while their asylum claims are processed, which can take years because of ballooning immigration court backlogs. Nielsen warned Congress on Thursday that the government faces a “system-wide meltdown” as it tries to care for more than 1,200 unaccompanied children and 6,600 migrant families in its custody. Mexico played down the possibility of a border shutdown. “Mexico does not act on the basis of threats. We are a great neighbor,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Twitter. Mexican Senator Ricardo Monreal, who leads President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s party in the chamber, said in a statement on Friday he would seek to send a diplomatic note to the U.S. Congress criticizing what he called Trump’s “xenophobic attitudes.” It was not clear how shutting down ports of entry would deter asylum seekers because they are legally able to request help as soon as they set foot on U.S. soil. But a border shutdown would disrupt tourism and commerce between the United States and its third-largest trading partner, with trade totaling $612 billion last year according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A general view shows vehicles queued to cross the Cordova-Americas international border crossing bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez“We’d be looking at losses worth billions of dollars,” said Kurt Honold, head of CCE, a business group in Tijuana, Mexico, in response to Trump’s threat. “It’s obvious he’s not measuring what he says.” A shutdown could lead to factory closures on both sides of the border, industry officials say, because the automobiles and medical sectors have woven international supply chains into their business models. “We are Siamese twins - we are so entangled together,” said Alan Russell, chief executive of the Tecma Group, an outsourcing firm. Lean hog futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange fell 5.7 percent on worries that the border closure would disrupt exports to the top U.S. pork market. U.S. ports of entry recorded 193 million pedestrian and vehicle-passenger crossings last year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. As president, Trump has legal authority to close particular ports of entry but he could be open to a legal challenge if he decided to close all of them immediately, said Stephen Legomsky, a former chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under Democratic President Barack Obama. Trump is trying to convince Congress to sign off on a revised trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that his administration negotiated last year. Trump launched his presidential bid in June 2015 with a promise to crack down on illegal immigration, saying Mexico was sending rapists and drug runners into the United States. He said on Friday Mexico should do more to prevent Central American migrants from reaching the United States. Slideshow (13 Images)“It’s very easy for them to stop people from coming up, but they don’t choose to do it,” he said. Lopez Obrador said on Thursday tackling illegal immigration was an issue chiefly for the United States and the Central American countries to address. Trump has so far been unable to convince Congress to tighten asylum laws or fund a proposed border wall, one of his signature policies. He has declared a national emergency to justify redirecting money earmarked for the military to pay for building a wall. Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by David Alexander and Andy Sullivan in Washington, Anthony Esposito and Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City, Karl Plume in Chicago and Julio-Cesar Chavez in El Paso, Jose Luis Gonzalez in Ciudad Juarez and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Grant McCoolOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

This week, Japanese lawmakers approved a policy change proposed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that will create new visa categories to allow an estimated 340,000 foreign workers to take both high-skilled and low-wage jobs in Japan over the next five years. While this represents a major shift in Japan's approach to immigration, many experts argue it doesn't go far enough.Vietnamese student Linh Nyugen came to Japan to pursue higher education.Japan is already a "super-aged" nation -- meaning that more than 20% of its population is over 65 years old. Just 946,060 babies were born in 2017, a record low since official records began in 1899, while an increase in deaths accelerated the population decline.The decline means ashrinking cohort of workersis left supporting an increasingly elderly population in need of healthcare and pensions.But Japan isn't the only country with such a problem. Germany is a also a "super-aged" nation. And by2030, the US, UK, Singapore and France are expected to have earned that status. While the EU and US veer towards populism and adopt anti-immigrant stances, in Asia nations are competing for new arrivals, potentially reversing the power balance between immigrants and host countries.If Abe is to prevent Japan's population from dipping below100 million by 2060, he will need to provide migrants good reasons to choose the country, says Hisakazu Kato, an economics professor at Meiji University in Tokyo.A 2015 Pew surveyexploring how people in Asia-Pacific see each other revealed that a median of 71% of people in the region held a favorable view of Japan, with positive views exceeding negative sentiment by more than five-to-one.Nguyen points to Japan's solid environmental practices and strong safety record as appealing factors. But the country's historic failure to integrate previous waves of foreign workers raises questions as to why migrants would choose to come to Japan.Faced with labor shortages in the 1990s Japan revised its immigration rules to offer long-term, renewable visas to the descendants of Japanese immigrants who had moved to Latin American after World War II. But when the economy slumped in 2008, the government urged those same immigrants to return to Brazil and the other Latin American nations where they had moved from."Japan treats its foreign workers like Kleenex," says Jeff Kingston, a Japanese studies professor at Temple University. "They have a use-it, toss-it mentality." Singapore has a very different track record. Since independence in 1965, the small South-east Asian city state has built a diverse society by taking in large numbers of immigrants from neighboring Asian countries. Today, foreigners make up more thanone-third of Singapore's labor force, though conditions are challenging for low-skilled laborers and numerous abuses exist.On itswebsite, the Singapore government states that non-resident foreigners do jobs Singaporeans don't want, and do not compete with locals for high-paying professional or managerial jobs. "They are here to help build our homes, keep our roads clean, and make our lives just a little more comfortable," the website says.The new visa will allow blue collar workers to stay in Japan for up to five years.Experts argue that Japan lags behind other industrialized countries in extolling the benefits of immigration to its domestic population. "The government needs to sell how these people contribute to pensions and economic growth," Kingston says.As immigration policy has failed to keep up with demand, temporary fixes have plugged the gap. Foreigners on student visas, for example, can work up to 28 hours per week -- but Japan has been accused of using students to fill labor shortages. Nguyen, who is studying for a masters degree, is one of thousands of young international students and foreign workers trying to make a go of it in Japan. In 2018, the number of foreign residents reacheda record high of 2.5 million, although that's still only 2% of Japan's total population.On a bustling Tokyo side street is the office of Inbound Japan, a concierge service and cultural interpreter for foreign students struggling to navigate living and working in Japan.Yusuke Furumi at work in the Inbound Japan office with his Vietnamese colleague, Angel Phan.Five years ago, Inbound Japan started providing foreign students with cheap dorm rooms. Its range of services grew as people wanted help getting phone contracts, setting up bank accounts, going to hospital and finding part-time jobs. Yusuke Furumi, an employee there, hopes Japan can gradually become more open to the idea of working alongside foreigners, and make it easier for them to stay and contribute to the economy and society. In the small town of Muroto, in southeastern Japan, foreigners on the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) have come to the rescue. Once a booming fishing port, today Muroto has a graying community. Vacant houses pockmark the area where the town's bars once thrived. Many of the town's public facilities such as hospitals and elementary schools have shut down. So when Mie Kinoshita was unable to find a mechanic to work in her car dealership in 2017, she decided to outsource her needs -- and applied to receive technical interns from the Philippines. John Riggs Ancino is shadowing Masahiro Maeda.The scheme has faced frequent criticism since its establishment in 1993. In theory, the TITP allows low-skilled workers to come to Japan to learn technical skills they can later take back to their home countries. But opponents of the program allege it has been used as a loophole to plug gaps in the domestic labor market. Trainees, meanwhile, have reported frequent instances of workplace abuse and bullying. Kinoshita was aware of the horror stories. To help create a more welcoming environment, she bought a house for her staff. And while they presently only make minimum wage, which is 762 yen ($6.70) an hour in Muroto, she hopes to increase their wages as their skills grow. Kinoshita's employees John Riggs Ancino and Marvin Curilan, arrived in Muroto from the Philippines two months ago. On arrival in Japan, the pair received several weeks of Japanese language and culture lessons. "I'd like to stay here," says Riggs Ancino, who worked in a tire repair shop back home. "It would be great if I could build a family in Japan." Their Japanese colleagues also appreciate the newcomers. "It's still hard for us to understand one another, but I've been working on my English skills," says Masahiro Maeda, a mechanic in his late 50s. "I'd like them to stay." Masoto Yasuda, a mechanic in his late 30s, adds: "I want to go to the Philippines now. It hadn't really crossed my mind before I met them."Both local and foreign workers at the car dealership said they hoped the immigrants could stay in Japan. Under the current rules, technical trainees can only work in Japan for five years.Abe's proposals, however, would allow them to apply for an additional five years. But there's a catch. To do so they would have to apply from their home countries, denying them the right to seek permanent residency -- which requires 10 years of continuous living in Japan.Experts fear terms like this may run through many of Abe's new proposals, helping more blue collars workers come to Japan -- but preventing them from settling long term. While Japan might be coming around to the appeal of foreigner workers, not all of the newcomers are keen on Japanese work culture.Samir Levi came to Japan from Nepal four years ago, after his older brother did a six-week cultural exchange in Tokyo. Levi, 26, worked a part-time job as a dishwasher in a ramen shop and the graveyard shift at a convenience store, before becoming a recruiter for a Japanese language school in the capital.He has absorbed the Japanese habits of gently bobbing the head in agreement and executing a well-timed farewell bow. "I blend in here now," he says. "I've become Japanese in some ways."Levi meets up with friends in Shin-Okubo, an area of Tokyo split along gastronomical lines.But the longer Levi lives in Japan, the less he wants to stay. Now a salary man, Levi clocks long hours -- just like locals. Earlier this year, the government limited overtime to 100 hours per month, but Levi yearns for better options.Now he wants to move to the US or Australia. Nguyen, too, has integrated into Japan and has a mix of local and migrant friends. But she is wary of committing to Japan's long working hours and culture of heavy out-of-office drinking with colleagues, known as "nomikai." She would stay in Japan, she says, if she could bring her parents to live with her. Failing that, she might move to Australia or Canada or go back to Vietnam."I haven't lost my fascination with Japan yet," Nyugen says. "But perhaps Japan may need to realize that it needs foreigners as opposed to the other way around."