You served for two years as George W. Bush’s ethics counsel. Since Donald Trump took office, you and a couple of other ethics experts have been in high demand, especially on cable TV. You may dislike Trump, but you have to admit, he’s been a boon to the ethics-industrial complex. Well, he certainly created a lot of attention on ethics issues. Previously, people would violate ethics rules, but it was not quite as rampant as what’s going on here. We’ve been through a phase somewhat like this before, during Watergate, when ethics was front and center in the news.You were about 12 years old when Watergate happened. Were you paying attention as a kid? Oh, yeah, I was watching those hearings. I remember hearing a man named Archie Cox had been fired and asking, Who fired him? The president. What was he doing? Investigating the president. You figure that out: There’s something wrong with that.Which of President Trump’s potential ethical violations bothers you the most? Well, that depends on how broadly you define ethics. If ethics is limited to financial conflicts of interest — that’s really what I did in the Bush White House — that’s a huge problem for me because Trump refused to sell his businesses. We don’t know where he’s getting his financing. All we know is he won’t share his tax returns. Certainly, since he was elected, things have blown up in areas relevant to ethics. It’s a scary situation if you have a president obstructing justice, particularly when it’s about whether his political campaign was infiltrated by a foreign adversary.

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Epstein were first linked in 2002, when it was reported that the former president took his first of four trips aboard Mr. Epstein’s private jet, for a trip related to Mr. Clinton’s work on his foundation, according to a Clinton spokesman, and Mr. Clinton has stressed that he has not been in touch with Mr. Epstein in over a decade.But Mr. Trump has his own long history with Mr. Epstein, one he has been playing down since before he began his presidential campaign. The two New Yorkers were friends through the 1990s, and into the 2000s, and in at least one instance, were even caught on camera ogling women together at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate. The source of their eventual falling out — which Mr. Trump has highlighted more than the friendship itself — has been in dispute.Whether he believes the theories he promotes or not, Mr. Trump knows that many people will latch onto them, lured by the idea that a hidden force is controlling fate.“He revels in conspiracy theories because he knows it gives him quick and easy traction with the masses — they’re easily swayed by the notion that there is an organized group getting over on them,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, a journalist and one of Mr. Trump’s biographers. “Because he never feels remorse or guilt about peddling these fables, he dives right in even when he knows better.”On Saturday, when the news of Mr. Epstein’s death broke, Mr. Trump was at his New Jersey golf club, where he plans to spend his vacation and where, accompanied by few aides, he often uses Twitter more freely than when he is at the White House.“It’s another example of something where he should stop and think about the fact that he’s the president of the United States, and stop his thumbs, but he never does,” said Rich Lowry, a columnist and editor of the conservative National Review.In the murky story of Mr. Epstein’s death, Mr. Trump found particularly fertile soil: the demise of an accused pedophile with powerful friends, whose apparent suicide in a federal Manhattan jail has raised questions about “serious irregularities” and has many people — not just Mr. Trump — speculating in public about what might have really taken place.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: One of his lawyers now says President Trump did not really say what he seemed to say on Twitter. John Dowd contends that he was the author of a tweet about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Dowd adds he didn't word it very well. It's awkward because the tweet arguably implicated the president of the United States in a crime. Preet Bharara is the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York until he was dismissed by President Trump. He's on the line. Good morning, sir.PREET BHARARA: Good morning.INSKEEP: So let's just remember the basics here. It was after the charging of Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI. Trump's Twitter account says, quote, "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the FBI." Why's that matter?BHARARA: Well, it matters because it's a change from what the reasoning was that was given by the president in the first place. You know, a few days after he became the national security adviser, the president said only that he fired Michael Flynn because he had lied to the vice president. And now you have the interjection of a new reason, apparently, which was that he knew - the president knew that there was a lie to the FBI, which then suggests that if he did that and knew that before he asked Jim Comey...INSKEEP: ...The FBI director.BHARARA: ...To back off on - the FBI director - to back off the investigation, that shows the level of knowledge and intent that was presently - you know, previously unknown.INSKEEP: Oh, and the key thing here is lying in general is not a crime, but lying to the FBI in an investigation is very specifically a crime. So the president is saying, I knew Mike Flynn committed a crime and then tried to get the prosecutors to go easy on him.BHARARA: That's the theory. And now as you point out, his lawyer - one of his lawyers, John Dowd, says, well, no it wasn't the president. It was me - in an apparent attempt to try to mitigate the damage to the president.INSKEEP: Is obstruction of justice then the crime that you would throw at the president's feet or lay at the president's feet?BHARARA: Well, I'm not prepared to lay anything directly at the president's feet just yet. But it's clearly one of the things that's being looked at by Special Counsel Mueller and his team. And it certainly doesn't help the president and his folks in connection with the potential obstruction accusation.INSKEEP: So John Dowd has made a number of statements since taking responsibility for this tweet that he says was sloppily worded. And one of them gets to this question of obstruction of justice by the president. John Dowd talking to Mike Allen of Axios says over the weekend, quote, "the president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under the Constitution and has every right to express his view of any case." Do you think that is correct that you really can't make this case at all because it's the president of the United States?BHARARA: Look. He's the president's defense lawyer. And he has to say things in the press and in the media that defend the president. I have a lot of experience with John Dowd. He represented some high-profile people in cases before my office. And he said then as he's saying now a lot of incorrect, mistaken and, on occasion, ludicrous things. So I don't put a lot of stock in it.INSKEEP: Meaning you think that the president can be charged with obstruction of justice.BHARARA: Yeah. I think it's a very high bar. It's a very high threshold. It's a difficult thing. It's never been done before. But the mere fact that the president is the president doesn't immunize him from an accusation of obstruction.INSKEEP: When you read the news about Michael Flynn being charged with lying to the FBI, not being charged with other things that he potentially could have been and saying that he's now telling his story and cooperating with federal prosecutors, what does that tell you about the direction of the Robert Mueller investigation?BHARARA: Well, you know, this is maybe a little bit unsatisfying. I don't think we know for sure. On the one hand, a lot of people are saying it means he must have a sweetheart deal. And he must have gotten sort of off lightly because he has a lot of other information. But I don't know that to be true. It's possible that this is all Bob Mueller has. It's also possible that there may be future charges to come down the pike. But in the ordinary course, if he was, in fact, guilty of more crimes then he's been charged with, that all would have been part of a guilty plea proceeding now as we speak. So I think we have to see.INSKEEP: I actually appreciate you saying what you don't know. Thank you very much.BHARARA: Yes.INSKEEP: But with that said, does it - do you see any indication that this investigation could be near its end, which apparently is a thing that the president has been saying to people around him?BHARARA: No. I don't. And look. I think that this team is moving very quickly. But there's a lot still to happen. We have charges pending against Paul Manafort and another gentleman. And that's going to take a bit of time to finish, wrap up and get to a jury.INSKEEP: Mr. Bharara, thank you very much - really appreciate it.BHARARA: Thank you.INSKEEP: That's former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara.Copyright © 2017 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.

The challenge in thinking about a case like the suspicious suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, the supposed “billionaire” who spent his life acquiring sex slaves and serving as a procurer to the ruling class, can be summed up in two sentences. Most conspiracy theories are false. But often some of the things they’re trying to explain are real.Conspiracy theories are usually false because the people who come up with them are outsiders to power, trying to impose narrative order on a world they don’t fully understand — which leads them to imagine implausible scenarios and impossible plots, to settle on ideologically convenient villains and assume the absolute worst about their motives, and to imagine an omnicompetence among the corrupt and conniving that doesn’t actually exist.Or they are false because the people who come up with them are insiders trying to deflect blame for their own failings, by blaming a malign enemy within or an evil-genius rival for problems that their own blunders helped create.Or they are false because the people pushing them are cynical manipulators and attention-seekers trying to build a following who don’t care a whit about the truth.For all these reasons serious truth-seekers are predisposed to disbelieve conspiracy theories on principle, and journalists especially are predisposed to quote Richard Hofstadter on the “paranoid style” whenever they encounter one — an instinct only sharpened by the rise of Donald Trump, the cynical conspiracist par excellence.But this dismissiveness can itself become an intellectual mistake, a way to sneer at speculation while ignoring an underlying reality that deserves attention or investigation. Sometimes that reality is a conspiracy in full, a secret effort to pursue a shared objective or conceal something important from the public. Sometimes it’s a kind of unconscious connivance, in which institutions and actors behave in seemingly concerted ways because of shared assumptions and self-interest. But in either case, an admirable desire to reject bad or wicked theories can lead to a blindness about something important that these theories are trying to explain.Here are some diverse examples. Start with U.F.O. theories, a reliable hotbed of the first kind of conspiracizing — implausible popular stories about hidden elite machinations.It is simple wisdom to assume that any conspiratorial Fox Mulder-level master narrative about little gray men or lizard people is rubbish. Yet at the same time it is a simple fact that the U.F.O. era began, in Roswell, N.M., with a government lie intended to conceal secret military experiments; it is also a simple fact, lately reported in this very newspaper, that the military has been conducting secret studies of unidentified-flying-object incidents that continue to defy obvious explanations.So the correct attitude toward U.F.O.s cannot be a simple Hofstadterian dismissiveness about the paranoia of the cranks. Instead, you have to be able to reject outlandish theories and acknowledge a pattern of government lies and secrecy around a weird, persistent, unexplained feature of human experience — which we know about in part because the U.F.O. conspiracy theorists keep banging on about their subject. The wild theories are false; even so, the secrets and mysteries are real.Another example: The current elite anxiety about Russia’s hand in the West’s populist disturbances, which reached a particularly hysterical pitch with the pre-Mueller report collusion coverage, is a classic example of how conspiracy theories find a purchase in the supposedly sensible center — in this case, because their narrative conveniently explains a cascade of elite failures by blaming populism on Russian hackers, moneymen and bots.And yet: Every conservative who rolls her or his eyes at the “Russia hoax” is in danger of dismissing the reality that there is a Russian plot against the West — an organized effort to use hacks, bots and rubles to sow discord in the United States and Western Europe. This effort is far weaker and less consequential than the paranoid center believes, it doesn’t involve fanciful “Trump has been a Russian asset since the ’80s” machinations … but it also isn’t something that Rachel Maddow just made up. The hysteria is overdrawn and paranoid; even so, the Russian conspiracy is real.A third example: Marianne Williamson’s long-shot candidacy for the Democratic nomination has elevated the holistic-crunchy critique of modern medicine, which often shades into a conspiratorial view that a dark corporate alliance is actively conspiring against American health, that the medical establishment is consciously lying to patients about what might make them well or sick. Because this narrative has given anti-vaccine fervor a huge boost, there’s understandable desire among anti-conspiracists to hold the line against anything that seems like a crankish or quackish criticism of the medical consensus.But if you aren’t somewhat paranoid about how often corporations cover up the dangers of their products, and somewhat paranoid about how drug companies in particular influence the medical consensus and encourage overprescription — well, then I have an opioid crisis you might be interested in reading about. You don’t need the centralized conspiracy to get a big medical wrong turn; all it takes is the right convergence of financial incentives with institutional groupthink. Which makes it important to keep an open mind about medical issues that are genuinely unsettled, even if the people raising questions seem prone to conspiracy-think. The medical consensus is generally a better guide than crankishness; even so, the tendency of cranks to predict medical scandals before they’re recognized is real.Finally, a fourth example, circling back to Epstein: the conspiracy theories about networks of powerful pedophiles, which have proliferated with the internet and peaked, for now, with the QAnon fantasy among Trump supporters.I say fantasy because the details of the QAnon narrative are plainly false: Donald Trump is not personally supervising an operation against “deep state” child sex traffickers any more than my 3-year-old is captaining a pirate ship.But the premise of the QAnon fantasia, that certain elite networks of influence, complicity and blackmail have enabled sexual predators to exploit victims on an extraordinary scale — well, that isn’t a conspiracy theory, is it? That seems to just be true.And not only true of Epstein and his pals. As I’ve written before, when I was starting my career as a journalist I sometimes brushed up against people peddling a story about a network of predators in the Catholic hierarchy — not just pedophile priests, but a self-protecting cabal above them — that seemed like a classic case of the paranoid style, a wild overstatement of the scandal’s scope. I dismissed them then as conspiracy theorists, and indeed they had many of conspiracism’s vices — above all, a desire to believe that the scandal they were describing could be laid entirely at the door of their theological enemies, liberal or traditional.But on many important points and important names, they were simply right.Likewise with the secular world’s predators. Imagine being told the scope of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged operation before it all came crashing down — not just the ex-Mossad black ops element but the possibility that his entire production company also acted as a procurement-and-protection operation for one of its founders. A conspiracy theory, surely! Imagine being told all we know about the late, unlamented Epstein — that he wasn’t just a louche billionaire (wasn’t, indeed, a proper billionaire at all) but a man mysteriously made and mysteriously protected who ran a pedophile island with a temple to an unknown god and plotted his own “Boys From Brazil” endgame in plain sight of his Harvard-D.C.-House of Windsor pals. Too wild to be believed!And yet.Where networks of predation and blackmail are concerned, then, the distinction I’m drawing between conspiracy theories and underlying realities weakens just a bit. No, you still don’t want to listen to QAnon, or to our disgraceful president when he retweets rants about the #ClintonBodyCount. But just as Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s network of clerical allies and enablers hasn’t been rolled up, and the fall of Bryan Singer probably didn’t get us near the rancid depths of Hollywood’s youth-exploitation racket, we clearly haven’t gotten to the bottom of what was going on with Epstein.So to worry too much about online paranoia outracing reality is to miss the most important journalistic task, which is the further unraveling of scandals that would have seemed, until now, too implausible to be believed.Yes, by all means, resist the tendency toward unfounded speculation and cynical partisan manipulation. But also recognize that in the case of Jeffrey Epstein and his circle, the conspiracy was real.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram, join the Facebook political discussion group, Voting While Female.

There has been no evidence so far of foul play in Mr. Epstein’s death. Like other officials, the mayor called for a full and independent investigation into Mr. Epstein’s death and said he hoped law enforcement would continue to pursue justice for Mr. Epstein’s accusers.Other prominent figures, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Representative Al Green, a Democrat of Texas, and Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, all said on Monday that they did not need to wait for an official investigation to assert that something did not add up.Mr. Trump, who has often shared unfounded conspiracy theories, has contributed to the frenzy, retweeting a baseless one about Mr. Epstein and the Clintons. Mr. Giuliani said in an interview Monday that Mr. Trump “feels very poorly treated because they tried to connect Epstein to him.”Mr. Epstein was found dead on Saturday morning after he had apparently hanged himself, just two weeks after he had been taken off suicide watch at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, officials said.The jail is run by the federal Bureau of Prisons, so Mr. de Blasio does not have jurisdiction over it. The United States attorney general, William B. Barr, said on Monday that there had been “serious irregularities” at the jail, and that the F.B.I. is investigating what happened.

Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device Video Is this South Korea's Sachin Tendulkar? Tae Kwan Park didn't feel like he was getting the right cricket training in South Korea. So he travelled to Mumbai where he's been training and trying out for local clubs.Video by Pooja Agarwal, Janhavee Moole and Sharad Badhe

Last winter, as bitcoin zoomed to $10,000, Mike Novogratz, a hedge-fund-manager-turned-crypto-investor, proclaimed that it could “easily” reach $40,000. Then, when bitcoin broke $11,000, antivirus software pioneer John McAfee boldly predicted $1 million bitcoin by 2020.For one astonishing moment, when bitcoin exceeded $20,000 per coin in mid-December 2017, Novogratz and McAfee seemed prophetic. But while $1 million bitcoin by 2020 is still theoretically possible, the last year has cast serious doubts on their prognostication abilities.Bitcoin’s price has been in steady decline since May and the cryptocurrency is now floundering below $4,000, an 80% fall from its peak. Its market cap has sunk from $327 billion to $66 billion over the last 12 months. Roughly speaking, it’s gone from the size of Exxon Mobil to about the size of FedEx.If 2018 was the year bitcoin was supposed to make inroads toward widespread adoption, the falling price is just one signal the mainstreaming of bitcoin hasn’t happened.Beyond bitcoin, it’s been a painful year for the crypto faithful. Since Jan. 1, the collective market cap for all cryptocurrencies fell from $822 billion to $130 billion. That includes alternative cryptocurrencies and scam projects, as well as bitcoin offshoots, so it might not be the best representation of the bitcoin ecosystem.Bitcoin’s network fundamentals also illustrate the 2018 decline.According to BitInfoCharts, the number of bitcoin wallet addresses active daily has declined from 1.1 million in December 2017 to 450K. And the network lost about 1,500 nodes—the computers that connect to the bitcoin network—a 12% decline over the last year, according to Bitnodes.Mining revenue, the money generated through compensation for securing the network, and the number of transactions confirmed per day have also fallen, suggesting that fewer people used bitcoin this year than last year. And per Google Trends, during 2018, bitcoin’s worldwide popularity score dropped from 100 to 18—another indication of its crushing descent.Also in 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission did not approve a bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The long-awaited financial product would allow investors to own bitcoin without having to buy it themselves. An ETF might have brought a fresh wave of speculators and provided tacit endorsement of cryptocurrency as an asset class, but the SEC passed due to ongoing concerns about manipulation in the bitcoin spot market.Meanwhile, existing financial products, like bitcoin futures, haven’t garnered much interest. “Institutional players have stayed on the bitcoin sidelines, and as long as they are, the futures contracts are likely not to generate substantial amounts of volume,” Craig Pirrong, a finance professor at the University of Houston, told Bloomberg in October.In 2018, corporate acceptance of bitcoin was also a mixed bag. Microsoft resumed its bitcoin payment option in January, and Dish Network even added bitcoin cash—an offshoot of bitcoin—as a payment choice for its subscription television service. But this year, Expedia and Reddit also dropped support for bitcoin payments, and broader adoption by Starbucks turned out to be caffeinated hype.Finally, as crypto-focused companies, like ConsenSys and Bitmain, lay off employees, it’s one more reminder that bitcoin’s price last year may have been just a blip on the radar. The year 2018 was supposed to be bitcoin’s victory lap. Instead, it’s looked more like a goodbye tour.

LONDON (Reuters) - Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, one of the fiercest opponents of Theresa May’s Brexit plan, is now edging towards backing her deal, Telegraph deputy political editor Steven Swinford said on Tuesday. “Boris Johnson edges towards backing the Prime Minister’s deal,” he said on Twitter, quoting Johnson as saying at an event: “if we vote it down again, there is an appreciable and growing sense that we will not leave at all. That is the risk.” Reporting by Stephen Addison; editing by Alistair SmoutOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

China has released a dramatic video showing off its army’s capabilities as the head of the armed forces in Hong Kong said the unrest in the province had seriously threatened the life and safety” of the people and should not be tolerated.The commander of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) garrison in Hong Kong warned it was “determined to protect national sovereignty, security, stability and the prosperity of Hong Kong”.The remarks were made by Chen Daoxiang on Wednesday at a reception celebrating the 92nd anniversary of the PLA. They came the day after 43 protesters were charged with rioting and released on bail. Some of those charged were as young as 16 and included a Cathay Pacific pilot.The PLA chief also gave his “firm” support to Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, as well as to to the Hong Kong police force for “rigorously enforcing the law”.At the reception, the PLA released a video showcasing the army. In one scene, an anti-riot drill was shown where ranks of marching soldiers holding riot shields advanced and fired on fleeing “citizens”. The scene included footage of tanks rolling in, water cannon being used, and “handcuffed” citizens being led away.A soldier was seen shouting in Cantonese, the language spoken in Hong Kong rather than mainland China: “All consequences are at your own risk.”The commander’s intervention came as first chief executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, accused the US and Taiwan of orchestrating the protests that have rocked the former British colony for eight weeks.Tung claimed that “foreign politicians and anti-China forces with ulterior motives” were working “to incite the fear of the people of Hong Kong and undermine the relationship between the mainland and Hong Kong”. He warned Hong Kong people against “being used”.Tung, who is a vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, also gave his support to the Hong Kong authorities in “defending the rule of law and taking decisive measures to restore social order”, adding that they have “already heard the voice of the public”.The remarks of both the PLA chief and Tung reiterated Beijing’s position and the rhetoric it has used throughout the protests with its backing of the Hong Kong authorities, the claims that foreign forces are intervening, and the condemnation of the increasingly violent protests.The PLA chief’s remarks will further stoke fears that the Chinese army may intervene in the protests. Last week, an official from the Chinese defence ministry said Beijing could legally intervene should the Hong Kong government ask for help “in maintaining social order”.Bloomberg reported yesterday that a senior US official said that the White House was monitoring a congregation of Chinese forces on Hong Kong’s border. An analyst said that it was possible that they were simply observing a police swearing-in ceremony.“The PLA comments are part of psychological warfare against Hong Kongers,” said Andreas Fulda, a China researcher at the University of Nottingham, adding that he believed it to be highly unlikely the Chinese army would intervene to avoid “a protracted urban armed conflict”.“Any military deployment in Hong Kong will also lead to internal disagreements within the Chinese Communist Party,” he said, adding that the city is an important financial hub for the party.Hong Kong is in its eighth consecutive weeks of protests, which were sparked by a proposed extradition bill that would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China. Public anger has mounted over the excessive use of force by the police, which is being investigated by the city’s corruption watchdog over accusations that it failed to protect the public when masked thugs attacked protesters and train passengers earlier this month in Yuen Long.Hundreds of people who work in the financial industry gathered in the heart of the city on Thursday to express their support for the movement. They were also protesting the Hong Kong police’s use of violence and their failure to protect citizens from the thug attack earlier this month. The city is a global financial hub and it is rare for those in the industry to speak up about political matters, particularly when it comes to Beijing.There are protests planned for the next two weeks. This weekend, civil servants have planned a peaceful rally for Friday, while marches have been scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday across the territory. A general city-wide strike has been called for Monday, backed by the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions.The police denied the application made by the organizers of Saturday’s protest, in effect banning the march – the third time the police have banned a protest since the unrest began in June.Law enforcement swept in quickly to clear the last two banned demonstrations, using tear gas and rubber bullets to the condemnation of Amnesty International. After the police denied permission for a protest that occurred last week, the human rights organization said that “for police to declare [the] protest unlawful was simply wrong under international law”. Topics Hong Kong China Asia Pacific Protest news

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election, will meet on Thursday to discuss whether Rosenstein will stay in his job. Rosenstein had spent the weekend contemplating whether he should resign after a New York Times report last week said he had suggested secretly recording Trump in 2017, a source told Reuters. The White House announced the meeting on Monday after a flurry of conflicting media reports about whether Rosenstein, a frequent target of Trump’s anger, would be leaving the post. “At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Twitter. Trump, who is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, told reporters he would meet with Rosenstein on Thursday when he returns to Washington. “We’ll be meeting at the White House and we’ll be determining what’s going on,” Trump said. “We want to have transparency, we want to have openness, and I look forward to meeting with Rod at that time.” The Rosenstein furor, kicked off by unconfirmed reports that he had verbally resigned, underscored the mounting tension in the White House over the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election. Related CoverageFactbox: Who would oversee the Mueller investigation after Rosenstein?Instant View: Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein heads to White House amid reports he will resignThere had been widespread speculation that Trump would fire Rosenstein since Friday when a New York Times report said that in 2017 Rosenstein had suggested secretly recording the president and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke a constitutional amendment to remove him from office. The Times said none of those proposals came to fruition. Rosenstein denied the report as “inaccurate and factually incorrect.” Shortly after the Times story, Trump told supporters at a rally in Missouri that there is “a lingering stench” at the Justice Department and that “we’re going to get rid of that, too.” Rosenstein’s departure would prompt questions about the future of Mueller’s investigation and whether Trump, who has called the probe a “witch hunt,” would seek to remove Mueller. The investigation has resulted in indictments or guilty pleas from 32 people. The Rosenstein furor came just six weeks ahead of the Nov. 6 congressional elections, and his removal could become an explosive political issue as Trump’s fellow Republicans try to keep control of Congress. Thursday’s meeting between Trump and Rosenstein is set for the same day that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, and the woman who has accused him of sexual misconduct are scheduled to testify at a Senate hearing. FILE PHOTO: Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein speaks during the Bureau of Justice Assistance's rollout for the "Fentanyl: The Real Deal" training video in Washington, U.S., August 30, 2018. REUTERS/Chris WattieIf Rosenstein resigns, Trump has more leeway on replacing him while firing him would make it harder for Trump to designate a successor. Rosenstein’s future ignited a series of conflicting reports on Monday, with the Axios news website cited an unidentified source with knowledge of the matter as saying he had verbally resigned to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Other reports said Rosenstein expected to be fired while NBC News reported Rosenstein said he would not resign and the White House would have to fire him. U.S. Treasury yields fell as much as 2 basis points after the Axios report, signaling investor concern but later pared losses. The S&P 500 also ticked down briefly but recovered most of its losses. Rosenstein has defended Mueller and been a target of Trump since he assumed supervision of the Russia investigation after his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, recused himself because of his own contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington while serving as a Trump campaign adviser became public. Trump also has blasted Sessions frequently and said last week “I don’t have an attorney general.” Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said he was “deeply concerned” about the reports of Rosenstein stepping down, saying his departure would put the federal probe into Russian election activities at risk. “There is nothing more important to the integrity of law enforcement and the rule of law than protecting the investigation of Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller,” McCabe said in a statement. McCabe was fired by Sessions in March after the Justice Department’s internal watchdog accused him of misconduct. McCabe charged that he was targeted for being a witness into whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Slideshow (6 Images)Rosenstein served for 12 years as the chief federal prosecutor in Maryland under both Democratic and Republican presidents before becoming deputy attorney general in April 2017. Trump appointed him after firing Sally Yates, who served as deputy attorney general under Democratic former President Barack Obama and as acting attorney general under Trump. He dismissed her 10 days after taking office, after she refused to defend his executive order banning people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington and Jeff Mason in New York; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Bill Rigby and Bill TrottOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

A day after telling a federal court that Donald Trump directed him to violate campaign finance laws, Michael Cohen was hit with a subpoena in a separate investigation in New York state of Trump’s charitable foundation.The New York state attorney general, Barbara Underwood, sued the Donald J Trump charitable foundation, Donald Trump and three of his children in June for allegedly violating state charity laws.“The foundation is little more than an empty shell that functions with no oversight from its board of directors,” the lawsuit alleged.Simultaneous to the announcement of the subpoena on Wednesday, Cohen’s lead lawyer, Lanny Davis, announced the launch of an online crowdsourced fundraiser called the Michael Cohen Truth Fund to raise money for Cohen’s legal bills. The fundraising goal is $500,000.“Michael decided to put his family and his country first,” read the fundraising pitch. “Now Michael needs your financial help – to pay his legal fees.”Cohen, who was for 10 years Trump’s trusted lieutenant, has pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. However he has not yet been sentenced, and he would require additional legal representation in any negotiation with prosecutors to enter a potential cooperation agreement in the special counsel’s Russia investigation or other matters.As a longtime senior executive in the Trump Organization, Cohen could provide valuable testimony in the New York state case about how the Trump Foundation operated.Prosecutors allege that Trump had not contributed to the charity since 2008 but used millions contributed tax-free by outside donors as “little more than a checkbook” to settle legal claims against his Mar-a-Lago resort and against Trump National Golf Club.The suit additionally alleges that the charity paid $10,000 to buy a painting of Trump displayed at the Trump National Doral golf course, and that it operated as a wing of the Trump presidential campaign and not independently as a charity.“Trump ran the foundation according to whim, rather than law,” the suit said.The suit seeks $2.8m in restitution and penalties from Trump and asks for the distribution of $1m in assets to other charities. The lawsuit also seeks to dissolve the Trump Foundation and bar the Trumps from serving on the boards of any charitable organizations – Trump senior for 10 years and three of his children for one year.In addition to Trump, the lawsuit names his children Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric.Trump has denied all wrongdoing. In tweets after the suit was filed, he blamed it on “the sleazy New York Democrats” and said “I won’t settle this case!”One potentially threatening aspect of the suit for Trump and his children is that, should a criminal case develop, any conviction would not be pardonable by the president, who can pardon only federal crimes under the constitution.Additionally, a state could indict a sitting president – a step the justice department has signaled it would not do, tweeted Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel in the department of defense and editor of the Just Security blog.“A good time to remember that even if [special counsel Robert] Mueller’s hands are tied by the Department of Justice’s legal opinions – saying that a sitting president can’t be indicted – state attorney generals aren’t,” wrote Goodman. “It would be for them and the courts to decide.” Topics Michael Cohen Donald Trump US politics news

(Reuters) - Hong Kong’s protests have drawn millions of people to the city’s streets in recent months and thrown the former British colony into its biggest political crisis since it was returned to China in 1997. FILE PHOTO: People hold up a black flag during a protest outside police headquarters to demand Hong Kong’s leaders step down and withdraw an extradition bill, in Hong Kong, China June 21, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File PhotoThe activism has also powered a wave of colorful cultural expressions of diverse origins, from protest mooncakes to Christian hymns, that have filled the city’s streets. Here are some of them: HALLELUJAH The five-word Christian hymn “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”, originally penned in the United States in 1974, emerged as an unlikely anthem of the protests and was heard almost non-stop at the main demonstration site in front of the city’s Legislative Council. As religious gatherings can be held without a permit in Hong Kong, the song provided a cover of legitimacy for protesters and was first used by a group of Christian students. Its simple melody and words helped spread its use and it was seen at times as defusing tension with the police. A woman sings religious songs outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong, China June 11, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File PhotoHAND SIGNALS To coordinate amid the crowd chaos, protesters rapidly formed human chains that passed supplies as needed. A system of hand signals helped protesters communicate where supplies or aid were needed and to assist with constructing barriers. (Click tmsnrt.rs/32pNi2Q to see a detailed interactive graphic about human chains and hand signals used during the Hong Kong protests over the extradition law.) UMBRELLAS Umbrellas, particularly yellow ones, have become a symbol of Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Coming to prominence during the “Occupy” movement in 2014, protesters used umbrellas to protect themselves from pepper spray and tear gas fired by the police. An open umbrella also helps to keep the protester out of reach of police batons on the frontlines of violent clashes. Protesters protect themselves with umbrellas as they clash with riot police during a demonstration near the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, China June 12, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File PhotoUNION JACKS, BLACK FLAGS The Union Jack and Hong Kong’s colonial-era flag appeared prominently during protests, designed to rile authorities in Beijing. The Union Jack was unfurled when protesters stormed the legislature on July 1, the 22nd anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China rule. “I miss colonial times. The British colonial time was so good for us. I saw the future,” Alexandra Wong, 63, a protester known affectionately as ‘Grandma Wong’, who is usually seen waving a large British flag during the demonstrations, told Reuters. An altered version of Hong Kong’s post-handover flag, with a black background instead of red, has been brandished by protesters, with the tips of the territory’s emblem flower, the bauhinia, on it dipped in red. Anti-extradition bill protesters raise a black Hong Kong flag next to a Union flag outside the West Kowloon Express Rail Link Station during a march at Hong Kong's tourism district Tsim Sha Tsui, China July 7, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu‘BE WATER’, AS BRUCE LEE SAID “You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend,” Hong Kong’s martial arts legend Bruce Lee said during a 1971 interview in regards to his character on the TV series “Longstreet”. A sign that reads "Be water" is seen as anti-extradition bill protesters march to West Kowloon Express Rail Link Station at Hong Kong's tourist Tsim Sha Tsui district, China July 7, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File PhotoReferences to that quote have appeared on signs and chants during the protests, as a call for activists to mobilize and disperse quickly. That fluid and nimble approach marks a shift in strategy from the 2014 Occupy protests, when activists spent months encamped in the same places. Reuters GraphicsSigns of discontentSounds and slogans from the July 1 march.POST-IT ‘LENNON WALLS’ Mosaics of sticky notes containing messages of support for protesters have popped up across the territory from the Central financial district to Lantau island. Part art, part politics, supporters have dubbed them “Lennon Walls” after the original John Lennon Wall in communist-controlled Prague in the 1980s, which was covered with graffiti, Beatles lyrics and messages of political protest. A worker walks past Post-it notes bearing messages left behind on the walls of the Legislative Council, a day after protesters broke into the building, in Hong Kong, China July 2, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva/File PhotoMOONCAKES Wah Yee Tang, a family-owned bakery in Sai Ying Pun district, started printing messages of support for the protesters such as “Hong Kong People” and “Let’s Fight Together” on mooncakes. Some mooncakes are inscribed with the text “Report Your Mother,” a humorous take on an obscene insult hurled at journalists by police at a recent protest. Mooncakes with the Chinese words "Support each other" on them are seen at Wah Yee Tang Bakery in Hong Kong, China July 12, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File PhotoWriting by Karishma Singh; Editing by Sam HolmesOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Donald Trump continued his assault on the media and Democrats on Thursday night, wrongly claiming “total exoneration, complete vindication” at his first rally since Robert Mueller submitted his report.Trump dedicated about half of his approximately 90-minute speech in front of a raucous audience at Grand Rapids to the topic, labeling the accusations and investigation “ridiculous bullshit”. The president bounced between theories about why the special counsel’s investigation happened and attacks on his opponents.“All of the Democrats, politicians, the media also – bad people,” Trump told the crowd at Michigan’s Van Andel Arena. “The crooked journalists, the totally dishonest TV pundits” helped perpetuate “the single greatest hoax in the history of politics”.He later claimed that the investigation was really an effort “to overturn the results of the 2016 election”.“It was nothing more than a sinister effort to undermine our historic election and to sabotage the will of the American people,” Trump said to loud boos.He repeatedly called for “accountability”, drawing chants of “Lock them up”. At other points, the president mocked Democratic opponents, including “little pencil-neck [US representative] Adam Schiff” and his fellow lawmaker Jerry Nadler, whom Trump said he “beat again”.Though Trump told the crowd multiple times that Mueller found “no collusion and no obstruction”, the attorney general William Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller’s report only stated that it found no proof that Trump criminally colluded with Russia. Barr’s summary said Mueller had reached no conclusion about whether Trump had obstructed justice, but Barr wrote that he decided there was insufficient evidence to pursue obstruction charges against Trump.Democrats and Republicans are calling on Barr to release the full report, which he has so far refused to do, raising suspicion about its contents among Democrats.Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, was told by Barr there is no intention of giving the confidential report to Congress immediately, as Barr redacts grand jury testimony and other elements.Democrats say they may subpoena the report if it’s not forthcoming by the Tuesday deadline they have set, which Barr has said will not be met.Through the day on Thursday, tempers were rising on Capitol Hill. Shaking her fist for emphasis, the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said Barr’s summary was “condescending” and “arrogant”.“Mr Attorney General,” she said, “show us the report and we’ll come to our own conclusions.” She asked what Trump and the Republicans were afraid of and mocked them as “scaredy-cats”.On Thursday night, to loud cheers, Trump recounted that Grand Rapids was the last stop during his 2016 campaign. Despite the enthusiasm, Trump may face a struggle to win the state, as the latest polling shows a strong majority of Michigan voters – including independents – don’t plan to vote for Trump in 2020. Moreover, Democrats in 2018 swept all three statewide offices by healthy margins, and Democrat candidates received more collective votes in the state legislature.Trump’s more outlandish claims came in an attack on progressives’ Green New Deal, a proposal to tackle climate change and reform the economy, which Trump falsely stated called for the elimination of airplanes and cows. Trump also claimed Democrats were pushing for a law that would allow for the execution of newborn babies in Virginia. He was referring to comments made by Ralph Northam, who is not proposing such a law.Trump returned to the border wall and immigration several times throughout the speech, telling the audience: “By the way, we are building that wall.” Later in the speech, he said he would travel to an undisclosed location in several weeks to reveal “vast sections of brand new wall”, drawing familiar chants of “Build the wall”.The Associated Press contributed to this report Topics Donald Trump Trump administration US politics Robert Mueller Trump-Russia investigation US elections 2020 news

LONDON — Boris Johnson has been British prime minister for barely a week, and the honeymoon appears to be over. His Conservative Party lost a special election, cutting his working majority in Parliament to just one seat at a critical moment for the country.The narrow defeat in a previously Conservative-held district, the Brecon and Radnorshire area of Wales, was a brutal reminder of Mr. Johnson’s weakness in Parliament.It immediately fueled speculation that Mr. Johnson would seek to increase his majority by holding a general election sooner rather than later. The only question is whether it would be before or after Oct. 31, the deadline for the country to leave the European Union.“The election campaign is effectively already underway,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London.The results from Wales made clear that an election is needed. But they also suggested that Mr. Johnson cannot be confident of victory should one take place in the fall. And that is his quandary.Mr. Johnson has long been the cheerleader for pro-Brexit forces, and since becoming prime minister he has doubled down on his vow to leave the European Union on schedule, with or without a deal governing future relations with the bloc.Parliament has thrice rejected the Brexit deal pushed by Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, and most lawmakers oppose a no-deal Brexit. With European officials resolute that the withdrawal agreement cannot be reopened, Mr. Johnson is preparing for a showdown over his plans.Even with the support of 10 lawmakers from Northern Ireland, a working majority of just one seat leaves the new prime minister especially vulnerable.The defeat in Wales has also illustrated how Brexit is re-engineering British politics, cutting across traditional party lines with unpredictable consequences as voters focus on the tortured Brexit efforts.Officials announced early Friday that Jane Dodds, the candidate for the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats, had defeated the Conservative incumbent, Chris Davies, by 1,425 votes.Ms. Dodds was helped by an experimental “remain alliance”: Two small parties did not contest the seat so as not to divide the anti-Brexit vote. She won even though a majority of voters in the region had voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.Mr. Johnson’s energy and upbeat, if blustery, rhetoric has cheered Conservative supporters and given his party a bounce in some opinion polls, one that was reflected in the closer-than-expected result in Brecon and Radnorshire.Normally, the Conservatives would expect to keep the seat, having won it comfortably in 2017 by about 8,000 votes.But the circumstances that prompted the election complicated matters for the Conservatives. Their chosen candidate, Mr. Davies, was unseated by a petition from local voters after he was convicted of making a false expenses claim. The party nonetheless chose him to fight for the seat.But the results also showed mounting challenges for all of the big traditional mainstream parties. The main opposition Labour Party, which is equivocal on Brexit, was pushed into an embarrassing fourth place, its vote share squeezed by the anti-Brexit alliance.Nigel Farage’s populist Brexit Party placed third with around 10 percent of the vote, enough to suggest it remains a problem for Mr. Johnson despite his efforts to neutralize it by stuffing his new cabinet with hard-liners.During a tour of the United Kingdom this week, Mr. Johnson also doubled down on his red lines for negotiations with Brussels, stoking anger in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which voted to remain, and rattling investors who sold the pound.If he sticks to his word, striking a deal would require either him, or the European Union, to reverse course.Failing that, Mr. Johnson’s determination to leave the bloc anyway would face a rebellion in Parliament, where a majority of lawmakers oppose a potentially chaotic “no deal” Brexit.It is unclear, however, whether lawmakers can find a legally watertight way to stop Britain from crashing out of the European Union come Oct. 31.Holding an election after such an outcome could help Mr. Johnson scoop up Brexit Party supporters, having delivered on their overriding objective.But it could entail the serious risk of fighting an election against the backdrop of chaos.British consumers’ reactions to possible shortages of food and pharmaceuticals is impossible to predict, as are the wider economic, political and constitutional ramifications of a sudden rupture.“Holding an election after ‘no deal’ risks exaggerating the ability and willingness of the British people to keep calm and carry on,” said Mr. Menon, the political professor.“We don’t react well to a crisis,” he added, pointing to the response to a gasoline shortage in 2000 and to the shock of Britain’s forced exit in 1992 from an exchange rate system linking European currencies.When Britain held a general election during a crisis in 1974, the prime minister lost. Voters might have become less tolerant of disruption since then: Last year, when the KFC chain ran out of chicken, some angry customers contacted the police.Mr. Johnson could face the voters before Brexit is completed, demanding a mandate from them to press ahead, while blaming Parliament and the European Union for obstructing him.“I think in his ideal world he would like to have definitive proof that Parliament is trying to stymie Brexit,” Mr. Menon said, “and that the European Union is blocking him and that he has no alternative.”In terms of election timing, Mr. Menon said, “October is looking increasingly likely.”

Enlarge this image Graphic facilitator Emily Jane Steinberg rendered a visual summary in real time of the conversation at an opioid summit held in Stroud, Okla., in late February. Courtesy of Chuck Tryon hide caption toggle caption Courtesy of Chuck Tryon Graphic facilitator Emily Jane Steinberg rendered a visual summary in real time of the conversation at an opioid summit held in Stroud, Okla., in late February. Courtesy of Chuck Tryon Oklahoma has been making progress in fighting the opioid epidemic. But there's still a lot of work to be done. While the death rate from prescription opioids is on the decline here, the number of opioid prescriptions written in the state continues to vastly outpace the national average. Also, deaths from heroin overdoses have been climbing — up by more than 50 percent between 2015 and 2016 — and that could be a byproduct of stricter state regulations that aim to curb opioid prescribing.So in late February, I was one of about 60 people from across Oklahoma invited to brainstorm ideas during a one-day exercise to find solutions to the state's opioid crisis. The Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Improvement Cooperative convened the meeting at the Tatanka Ranch in Stroud. The cooperative was created in 2014 to help doctors and nurses across the state do their jobs better by implementing best practices as determined by medical research. It works like an agricultural extension service, with academic doctors and nurses acting like farm bureau experts and visiting local offices throughout the state to share their wisdom.The conveners of the opioid meeting divided us into small groups and focused on two really tough questions: What if Oklahoma had zero overdose deaths? What would be expected of each of us to make that happen? Academic physicians (like me) from the state's two major research universities, were sprinkled among the groups, which also included community and rural physicians, some of whom specialize in medication-assisted treatment for substance use.But what made the one-day summit unique in my eyes was the inclusion of professionals well beyond doctors, nurses and physician assistants. Pharmacists were there, as were officials from Oklahoma's Medicaid agency and the state's Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which administers Oklahoma's Prescription Monitoring Program. Thirty-seven states now give health care providers access to online tools that let them see the prescriptions for controlled substances, such as opioids, that a patient has received. This information can help prevent "doctor shopping" by people seeking drugs and it can help clinicians be aware of potential overuse.Given how disruptive opioid addiction can be for families, there were also child welfare and mental health professionals who reported on programs to help addicted mothers overcome opioids and find pathways to win back custody of their children. Shots - Health News White House Plan To Stop HIV Faces A Tough Road In Oklahoma The summit also included representatives from law enforcement and community-based support programs, such as a prison diversion initiative aimed at providing treatment and help instead of incarceration for nonviolent male offenders. The strength of the meeting was that it brought together people who work on different aspects of the same broad problem, who may never have had the chance to meet one another in their day-to-day work and consider ideas from others' perspectives. "We're all blindfolded people working on our own aspect of an elephant," one person noted. "And this has allowed us to remove our blindfolds and see the whole elephant in the room."One set of conversations early in the day asked us to put ourselves on a complicated flow diagram of where, when and how opioid prescribing occurs. Some people were involved in fielding patients' complaints. Others worked in doctors' offices or hospital emergency rooms, right on through to the dispensing of medicines in pharmacies. Still others were on the law enforcement, social service, and payer sides of such transactions. By visualizing where each of us work along the opioid continuum, we could more easily imagine ways to improve things and implement new educational approaches to better inform the public about the risks and benefits of opioid use.Suggestions for lessening the impact of opioid abuse included both "upstream" and "downstream" components. Upstream refers to preventing opioid abuse and addiction before it starts. Ideas for that included more interdisciplinary and interagency cooperation, and pushing our state legislature to consider the health effects of all bills that are enacted into law. Downstream suggestions included widening availability and accessibility of mental health and substance abuse treatment services, something Oklahoma sorely lacks. Other ideas included better data monitoring and sharing tools.I left the meeting mulling over what we had really accomplished. I don't think we'll ever realistically get to zero opioid deaths. But it's certainly a worthy aspiration. In order for us to move in that direction, we have to treat addiction as a medical problem — not a character flaw — and place equal value on every human life. Further, we have to accept the idea that we have excellent medical treatment for opioid addiction and be willing to provide it in all kinds of health care settings, including jails and prisons, without preconditions. If we could achieve this mindset, people would have the chance to live longer, more productive lives. Family and childhood trauma could be greatly diminished, too.The meeting prompted me to learn more about intranasal naloxone, an opioid antidote, and to carry it with me. If I can use it, certainly anyone can. I also plan to lobby to make medication-assisted treatment more widely available.The attendees concluded it would be important for those of us in different sectors to keep in touch and sustain the dialogue. We also pledged to better educate each other, our lawmakers and the public.But as inspiring as it was to be part of the meeting, it was abundantly clear that complex issues such as opioid use and abuse don't lend themselves to one-day solutions. John Henning Schumann is a writer and doctor in Tulsa, Okla. He serves as president of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. He also hosts Public Radio Tulsa's Medical Mondays and is on Twitter: @GlassHospital.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, about violent demonstrations over Kashmir outside the Indian embassy in London, the foreign ministry said. FILEPHOTO: Demonstrators protest against the scrapping of the special constitutional status in Kashmir by the Indian government, outside the Indian High Commission in London, Britain, August 15, 2019. REUTERS/Henry NichollsThousands of people, many waving Pakistani and Kashmiri flags, protested outside the embassy last week, on India’s Independence Day, against Modi’s withdrawal of Kashmir’s special status. Modi’s supporters and members of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said demonstrators had attacked Indian women and children with bottles and eggs and that British authorities had failed to thwart them. Modi, in a telephone call with Johnson on Tuesday, said vested interests were pursuing their agenda with violent means. “In this context, he referred to the violence and vandalism perpetrated by a large mob against the High Commission of India in London on the last Independence Day of India,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “Prime Minister Johnson regretted the incident and assured that all necessary steps would be taken to ensure safety and security of the High Commission, its personnel and visitors,” the ministry said. Police in London said four people were arrested for affray, obstruction of police and possession of an offensive weapon. Modi’s revocation of Kashmir’s special status in the constitution means people there will lose exclusive rights to property, government jobs and colleges places and open them up to all Indians. Modi says the reform will open up Kashmir’s economy to the benefit of all. The change has sparked fury in Pakistan which claims the territory as its own. Pakistan has sought the support of the United States, Britain and other powers to pressure India over Kashmir. But India says it is an internal matter and that it would only hold talks with Pakistan if it stops supporting militants operating from its soil. Pakistan denies giving material help to the militants. Modi told Johnson terrorism was a problem for both India and Europe and that measures had to be taken to fight it. “He stressed the importance of effective steps to ward off the threats posed by radicalization, violence and intolerance, particularly in the context of the expanding footprint of terrorist organizations such as ISIS,” the ministry said, referring to the Islamic State militant group. Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Robert BirselOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson speaks in Parliament in London, Britain, March 12, 2019, in this screen grab taken from video. Reuters TV via REUTERSLONDON (Reuters) - Britain will leave the European Union on March 29 after a deal is reached “at five minutes to midnight”, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Wednesday. Johnson, one of Britain’s most prominent Brexit campaigners, told LBC radio that the parliamentary vote on Wednesday to rule out a no-deal exit would not take no-deal off the table. “It’s quite possible that parliament will vote symbolically to say that it doesn’t want a no-deal ... but what happens then is that under the law, the UK will leave the EU on March 29 because that is what the law provides,” Johnson told LBC. Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Elisabeth O'LearyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Germany's economy grew by 1.5% last year, its slowest rate since 2013, the latest official figures show.Figures from the Federal Statistics Office showed Europe's largest economy slowed sharply as the year wore on.A weaker global economy and problems in the car industry, caused by new pollution standards, have been cited as contributing to the slowdown.At the start of 2018, the German economy had been expected to grow by 1.8%. Growth was 2.2% in 2017.Germany's economy had shrunk in the third quarter of the year, by 0.2%, with global trade disputes blamed for the contraction.There were fears that Germany was at risk of following that with another quarter of negative growth, something that would have put the country into recession.The statistics office has not released fourth-quarter figures yet, as it does not have enough data to give an accurate reading. But initial calculations by independent economists suggest the economy may have grown by about 0.2% in the final three months of the year.Reasons for slower growth last year include a slowdown in the global economy and a weaker car sector, with German consumers less willing to buy new cars amid confusion over new emission standards.In addition, low water levels, particularly in the Rhine, affected growth by holding back movement of some goods.Analysis: Andrew Walker, World Service economics correspondentSo Germany probably avoided a recession last year, although further data publications might yet change that conclusion. What is clear though is that the economy hit a weak patch in the second half of last year. It's not alone. The eurozone as whole slowed markedly in the third quarter of the year. Two large economies, Germany and Italy, contracted in that period, though Spain and France both managed reasonably firm growth. Germany, as a leading exporter, is especially exposed to the global trade climate.A slowdown in international commerce is a major part of Germany's loss of momentum and China is an important element in that story. It's Germany's third largest export market. A recent survey of German manufacturers found the steepest fall in export orders for six years and a number of firms reporting lower sales to China. Germany's export orientation also makes it vulnerable to the tensions in global trade spilling out from the United States - the new tariffs on steel and aluminium and the conflict with China. For Germany, and the eurozone more widely, there are certainly clouds on the horizon. Germany may have dodged a recession, but a period of slower expansion looks likely. It's worth adding that whatever other problems Germany might encounter, unemployment is currently very low. Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the best guess was that the German economy had avoided recession, but the main story was still that the economy had lost pace, "thanks mainly to a slowdown in consumers' spending and exports"."Looking ahead, we think consumption will pick up. Real wage growth is firm, and the recent plunge in growth of goods spending won't be sustained."

Pompeo called the commentary "stray voltage" in an interview with CBS News and said he's not worried about rhetoric from North Korean media."We know with whom we're negotiating. We know what their positions are. And President Trump has made his position very clear: no economic relief until we have achieved our ultimate objective," he said.Experts say the hardline negotiating positions staked out by both sides have resulted in a protracted stalemate.North Korea is only willing to give up its nuclear weapons once it has established a peaceful and trusting relationship with the United States; the United States is only willing to form a peaceful relationship with North Korea until after it gives up its nuclear weapons.This type of posturing could easily spiral out of control, as it did in 2017, says Adam Mount, a senior fellow and the director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists.North, South Korea begin demilitarizing 'scariest place on earth'"This is a more direct threat to collapse talks and resume the nuclear program at full speed than we've seen since negotiations since started. So in that regards it's a shift from their previous position," Mount said.However, experts like Mount say the North Korean position does not come as a total surprise -- staking out hardline positions in state media ahead of diplomatic meetings has long been a favored tactic in Pyongyang's playbook."It's a clear play for leverage, it's a clear play to set the agenda in the upcoming round of diplomacy, but there's still a very real risk that it does seriously damage the negotiation process."JUST WATCHEDMoon: The masterful dealmakerReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMoon: The masterful dealmaker 02:31North Korea claims it has taken some steps toward denuclearization and has expressed its displeasure that the United States has not made concessions in return. Pyongyang's biggest priorities are believed to be sanctions relief and bringing about a formal end to the Korean War.But experts say North Korea's moves so far are largely cosmetic and easily reversible.JUST WATCHEDUS cancels military exercise with South KoreaReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHUS cancels military exercise with South Korea 01:34Kim's regime has shuttered a missile engine testing facility; destroyed the entrances to its nuclear test site; and promised to close the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where North Korea is believed to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons, if Washington takes what it calls "corresponding measures.""They're basically saying, I did half of my end of the Singapore bargain, now it's your turn," said Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and expert on North Korea and nuclear nonproliferation issues.Kim says it is unreasonable for the North Koreans to demand sanctions relief without taking any "serious steps toward denuclearization.""What's needed most right now is a real nuclear deal -- a denuclearization roadmap lined up with a peace process so that both sides have predictability. They shouldn't be negotiating in pieces as they arise," she said.