WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Clarence Thomas took a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991, he had only barely survived a series of bitter Senate hearings on allegations of sexual harassment that divided the country. But he said he was quickly welcomed by his eight fellow justices. “After going through all those difficulties, the members of the court were just wonderful people to a person,” Thomas said in an appearance at the Library of Congress earlier this year. “So the court itself is quite different from the ordeal. It’s almost the opposite of the ordeal it took to get there.” Brett Kavanaugh will be counting on those strong traditions of collegiality after he was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as a Supreme Court justice on Saturday. Kavanaugh’s nomination hearings were rocked by university professor Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her in 1982, when they were both high school students. Two other women also alleged sexual misconduct by the conservative Kavanaugh. The accusations, as well as Kavanaugh’s angry denials and fierce criticism of Senate Democrats, widened the U.S. political divide just weeks before congressional elections and raised concerns about the court’s reputation in U.S. society. Like Thomas in 1991, Kavanaugh will be joining a right-leaning court. He succeeds retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was often the decisive 5-4 swing vote on social issues, and consolidates conservative control of the nine-member Court. But the four liberal justices include 85-year-old feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who made her name as an advocate for women’s rights. Ginsburg voiced support for the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct even as Kavanaugh was about to face a grueling Senate hearing on the allegations against him, saying that unlike in her youth, “women nowadays are not silent about bad behavior.” Still, Supreme Court experts believe the justices are likely to move past any differences, as they have in the past. “I think the justices care very much about collegiality and not purely for the sake of collegiality. They think it’s important for people who disagree with each other to work together,” said Carolyn Shapiro, who served as a law clerk for liberal Justice Stephen Breyer. The liberal justices - Ginsburg, Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor - need to seek support from at least one conservative in ideologically divisive cases, so they have a strong incentive not to alienate the new arrival, court experts said. Kagan, known for her strategic mind, has an existing relationship with Kavanaugh. In her former role as dean of Harvard Law School, she hired Kavanaugh to teach there. “She is practical enough that she is going to put that behind her and have the best relationship she can with someone she is going to have to put up with for 30 years,” said one Washington lawyer, who declined to be named because he argues cases at the court. “The bigger question is Sotomayor and Ginsburg,” the lawyer added. FILE PHOTO: Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., September 27, 2018. Tom Williams/Pool via REUTERS/File PhotoSotomayor has stressed the importance of collegiality, recounting at a 2016 event how the justices often eat together after oral arguments. “There is no topic that’s off limits. But we try to avoid controversy, so we’re very guarded about raising topics that we think might create hostility in the room,” she said. Ginsburg was herself famously close friends with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, with the two bonding over a shared love of opera despite their ideological differences. Thomas is seen as a popular figure among the other justices. Kagan told an event for female alumni at Princeton on Friday it was “incredibly important” for the court to guard its reputation of being fair or impartial and not be simply “an extension of the terribly polarized political process and environment that we live in.” “And going forward that sort of middle position - it’s not so clear whether we’ll have it. All of us need to be aware of that ... and to realize how precious the court’s legitimacy is. The only way we get people to do what we say they should do is because people respect us and respect our fairness,” she said. “And I think especially in this time when the rest of the political environment is so divided, every single one of us has an obligation to think about what it is that provides the court with its legitimacy.” Aside from his belligerent Senate appearance and his reputation as a doctrinaire conservative, Kavanaugh has been seen as a calm easy-going judge on the federal appeals court in Washington. He is also a self-declared fan of sports and beer. Supreme Court justices do not always get on, however. Most notably, several justices chafed at the leadership of Chief Justice Warren Burger, who served from 1969 to 1986. The broader problem facing the court may be whether the circumstances of Kavanaugh’s confirmation have damaged not just his reputation but also the institution itself. “This is going to make the court seem more political, and I think that’s dangerous because the legitimacy of the court turns on the belief that law is distinct from politics,” said Ernest Young, a conservative law professor at Duke University. At the Sept. 27 Senate hearing on Ford’s allegations against him, Kavanaugh fought back with a blistering partisan attack in which he described the allegations against him as a “calculated and orchestrated political hit” masterminded by the Democrats and left-wing groups. “I had hoped and still hope that if confirmed he will be a non-partisan justice,” said Yale Law School Professor Akhil Amar, who supported Kavanaugh’s nomination. “But the savage and ugly partisanship in late September may make that harder, psychologically, to happen.” Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, a Republican appointee, said on Thursday Kavanaugh’s remarks in that hearing should disqualify him from serving on the high court. Kavanaugh, in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal article this week, said he regretted some of his comments. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participates in taking a new family photo with her fellow justices at the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, U.S., June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo“I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said,” he wrote. The concern for some on the left is whether Kavanaugh will be able to put aside several bruising weeks and give all who come before him a fair shake. “We should fully expect that there will be parties that appear before him in the future who will be deeply skeptical about receiving a fair opportunity to be heard,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights group. Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; additional reporting Helen Coster and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Kieran Murray, Cynthia Osterman and Dan GreblerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Stock markets have taken fright over a number of warning signs from key economies, the latest this week being the inversion of the US bond yield curve and news of a contraction in the German economy. Here is a guide to the trouble spots in the global economy that are rattling investors.The US is at the centre of the global stock market sell-off, with investors overlooking the fact that the US is expected by the International Monetary Fund to be the fastest growing of the G7 economies this year – at 2.6% – and has not enjoyed a lower unemployment rate since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969. Instead, Wall Street fears that higher interest rates from the US central bank, the fading impact of tax cuts, and the trade war with China, are pushing the economy into recession.Britain’s inclusion in the list of problem countries comes down to one word – Brexit. The economy contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter as stockpiles of goods, accumulated in the run-up to the original EU departure date of 29 March, were run down. Strong employment growth and rising real wages should be enough to produce a growth revival in the third quarter but a no-deal Brext on 31 October could have a marked impact on the UK, EU and rest of the world.Europe’s most prolific exporter has found demand for its machine tools, trucks and cars has declined sharply over the past year, especially from China. The slump in exports sent GDP into reverse in the second quarter, declining 0.1%. A measure of business confidence fell so dramatically that last month it hit its lowest level since the 2008 financial crash. That said, the government has plenty of money to spend after a decade of budget surpluses, and businesses are carrying little debt, so have strength to weather any storm.Officially China is growing at more than 6% a year but the reality is more grim than the headline numbers suggest. The country’s president, Xi Jinping, is trying to shift China towards slower but higher-quality growth, a process that is complicated by the vulnerability of Chinese companies and banks to tighter credit conditions and the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs, which are leading to weaker factory output and a slowdown in exports. China announced this week that industrial production had hit a 17-year low in July.The domestic side of Brazil’s economy looks reasonably robust but that has not prevented shares and the currency from coming under severe pressure. Latin America’s biggest economy is getting the backwash from problems elsewhere in the world: its close neighbour Argentina is in financial meltdown, slower growth in China means a reduction in demand for Brazil’s abundant raw materials, and there are concerns that exporting to the US will also be choked off by a slowdown in the world’s largest economy.The return to political prominence of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the controversial former leftwing president of Argentina, has sent investors running for the hills. A pre-election poll put her and her running mate, the populist candidate Alberto Fernández, on course to beat the incumbent, president, Mauricio Macri, who has struggled to bring some order to the country’s finances. The government has borrowed heavily in the recent past and squandered most of the money on vanity projects and subsidies for crucial voter groups. Fernández and Kirchner are not being given the benefit of the doubt by investors. A sell sign over the country is already in place on the basis that, should the pair take power, the country will certainly default on its sovereign debt.A recovery in 2017 proved to be brief, once Rome picked a fight with Brussels over the national budget that sent business confidence sliding. Threats of pulling out of the euro and possibly the European Union altogether may have faded from the rhetoric deployed by Matteo Salvini, leader of the League party, which heads the polls, but business confidence remains on the rack. A banking sector dragged down by bad debts, and a corporate sector that competes and loses with Chinese rivals, are likely to make for a prolonged period of decline.Singapore’s economy has been tipped to enter recession in the third quarter of 2019. The finger of blame is pointed at the US-China trade war, which continues to rock the south-east Asian nation after second-quarter growth was confirmed this week at -3.3%. The city state of 5.5 million people is a financial centre that hosts hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign savings and is considered a bellwether for the region. So it was a shock for investors that it could easily be knocked off its stride by declining sales of manufactured goods to China. A decline in Chinese tourists also depressed wholesale and retail trade. Topics Global economy Economics China Brazil Germany Italy Argentina features

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s growth outlook remains clouded as manufacturers are hit by escalating trade conflicts, Brexit uncertainty and other geopolitical crises, the economy ministry said on Wednesday. “The outlook remains subdued for the time being. Trade conflicts have recently worsened and the prospects for an orderly Brexit have not improved,” the economy ministry said in its monthly report. Industrial orders data and sentiment indicators are currently not pointing to the sector providing positive impetus in the coming months, the ministry said. But it added that domestic demand remained robust thanks to rising incomes and fiscal stimulus. Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Michelle MartinOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

FILE PHOTO: German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is pictured in Berlin, Germany, June 5, 2019. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/File PhotoBERLIN (Reuters) - An escalation in a trade conflict between the United States and China will further damage the global economy, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz warned on Tuesday, urging all sides to negotiate. “A further escalation will only do damage, trade conflicts are already hurting the global economy,” Scholz said in a statement, adding everyone should keep a level head, tone down the rhetoric and return to the negotiating table. “If that succeeds, we will get back to more growth,” he said. Reporting by Christian Kraemer; Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Michelle MartinOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government still believes the German economy will grow slightly this year despite contracting in the second quarter, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday, adding that the government did not think further stimulus was necessary. “As the chancellor has already laid out, the government does not currently see any need for further measures to stabilize the economy - the fiscal policy of the German government is already expansive,” a government spokeswoman said. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier had said earlier on Wednesday that Germany was not yet in a recession and could avoid one if it took the right measures. Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Tassilo HummelOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

But as real as Comey’s independence and integrity were, they also became part of a persona that he cultivated and relished.The reason that people knew about his defiance of Bush and Cheney is that Comey himself told Congress, at a stage-managed 2007 hearing. As a former Justice official later told the journalist Garrett Graff, “Jim Comey always has to be positioned oppositional to those in power.”With this background, you can understand — though not excuse — Comey’s great mistake. He was the F.B.I. director overseeing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. He and his team decided that she had not done anything that warranted criminal charges. And he knew that Republicans would blast him as a coward who was trying to curry favor with the likely future president.So he decided to go public with his explanation for not charging Clinton and to criticize her harshly. He then doubled down, releasing a public update on the investigation 11 days before the election, even as other Justice officials urged him not to. Department policy dictates that investigators aren’t supposed to talk publicly about why they are not bringing charges. They especially don’t do so when they could affect an election.Comey, however, decided that he knew better than everyone else. He was the righteous Jim Comey, after all. He was going to speak truth to power. He was also, not incidentally, going to protect his own fearless image. He developed a series of rationales, suggesting that he really had no choice. They remain unpersuasive. When doing the right thing meant staying quiet and taking some lumps, Comey chose not to.His tragic mistake matters because of the giant consequences for the country. He helped elect the most dangerous, unfit American president of our lifetimes. No matter how brave Comey has since been, no matter how honorable his full career, he can never undo that damage.As he takes over the spotlight again, I’ll be thinking about the human lessons as well the political ones. Comey has greater strengths than most people. But for all of us, there is a fine line between strength and hubris.

Texts for other major religions are available online in China: The Taoist classic the Daodejing is for sale on JD, Taobao, and Amazon, and Buddhist sutras are available commercially.The Quran was also sold online, perhaps reflecting Islam’s status as a faith practiced by minorities who sometimes enjoy more privileges than the majority ethnic Chinese population. The Quran is also available commercially in bookstores and, unlike the Bible, has the Chinese equivalent of an ISBN, a numeric book identifier.Both Christianity and Islam, however, have come under heavy government pressure.From 2014 to 2016, more than 1,500 crosses were removed from churches in one Chinese province with close ties to Mr. Xi. At the same time, the government has stepped up measures against what it sees as excessive public displays of the Islamic faith, such as men wearing long beards or women wearing headscarves, as well as shops and restaurants that do not sell pork products, tobacco or alcohol.At the same time, government policy has encouraged faiths that it sees as more indigenized, for example by subsidizing Taoist music or folk religious pilgrimages. Mr. Xi has also spoken favorably about Buddhism, calling it integral to Chinese people’s cultural and spiritual life.This overall approach to faith was reflected in a report issued Tuesday that shows the extent of the country’s religious revival. The previous report, in 1997, showed that China had 100 million followers of all of its officially sanctioned religions. The new report doubles the number.Although other surveys show higher overall numbers, the new report is significant because it represents official recognition of China’s religious boom.The report shows that most religions in China have been quickly increasing their reach. The number of Buddhist or Taoist believers was not counted because those faiths lack membership rolls, but their growth can be seen in the increasing number of temples — to 33,500 and 9,000 today from 13,000 and 1,500 in 1997.

Brazil's former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, says he was jailed to prevent him from winning the 2018 presidential election which saw far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro elected.In an exclusive interview with the BBC via letters from his cell, Lula said Judge Sergio Moro "did politics and not justice" when he sentenced him.Mr Moro says the verdict was upheld by an appeals court and was not "a one-man decision".Lula is serving a 12-year sentence.A month before the election, an electoral court banned Lula from running on the grounds that he had been sentenced, and that sentence had been upheld on appeal.At the time, Lula had a 20-percentage-point lead over his closest rival, Jair Bolsonaro, in opinion polls. Brazil's Lula: Saint or sinner? Jair Bolsonaro beyond the sound bites Jair Bolsonaro: Trump of the Tropics? Lula's Workers' Party replaced him on the ballot with his running mate Fernando Haddad on 11 September.With less than a month to campaign as presidential candidate, Mr Haddad struggled to match Lula's name recognition.While he made it into the run-off, Mr Haddad lost to Mr Bolsonaro by 10 percentage points.Banned from giving face-to-face or telephone interviews, Lula answered questions posed by Brazilian journalist Kennedy Alencar for a BBC TV documentary via letters.In them, Lula said that "Bolsonaro only won because he did not run against me".Lula was sentenced by Judge Moro to nine and a half years in prison after being found guilty of corruption in July 2017 over a scandal linked to oil-giant Petrobras.In his letters, Lula argues that his guilty verdict was politically motivated."I was convicted for being the most successful president of the Republic [of Brazil] and the one who did most for the poor," he wrote, referring to his high approval rating when he left office after serving as president from January 2003 to January 2011."[Judge] Moro knew that if he acted according to the law he would have to acquit me and I would be elected president.""So he did politics and not justice and now benefits from it," Lula wrote, referring to the nomination of Judge Moro to the post of justice minister by President-elect Bolsonaro.The decision by Mr Moro to accept the post was heavily criticised by many in Brazil who had accused the judge of disproportionately targeting left-wing politicians in his anti-corruption drive. It was also seen as an about-face by Mr Moro who had told Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in 2016 that he would never enter politics.Mr Moro said that he was led to make the decision to become justice minister by "the prospect of implementing strong policies against corruption and organised crime, while respecting the constitution, the law and rights". In his letters, Lula also insists on his innocence, writing that "I am imprisoned for no reason". He warns fellow Brazilians that their rights are under threat "if this can be done to a former president".In response to Lula's allegations, Mr Moro said that the former president was convicted for being "the mastermind of [the] Petrobras scandal". "About $2bn were paid in bribes using Petrobras contracts during his presidency," he wrote in a message to Kennedy Alencar. Mr Moro also pointed to the fact that an appeals court unanimously upheld Lula's conviction in January and increased the sentence to 12 years and one month, and the Superior Court in Brasilia had upheld his prison order."It is not a one-man decision," Mr Moro wrote of Lula's conviction.He also added that his nomination as justice minister did "not have anything to do with [Lula's] conviction". "I did not even know the elected president in 2017 when the sentence was delivered," he wrote. Lula surrendered to police in April and has been held in a cell in at the federal police headquarters in Curitiba since. The three-part BBC documentary series "What happened to Brazil..." will be broadcast on BBC World News starting on 12 January 2019.

Enlarge this image Protesters dressed as characters from The Handmaid's Tale outside the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Win McNamee/Getty Images Protesters dressed as characters from The Handmaid's Tale outside the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday. Win McNamee/Getty Images The first day of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings was long on quarreling, protesting and speechifying. While good theater, there was little actually learned about the man whom President Trump has nominated for a lifetime seat on the nation's highest court.Here are a few takeaways from Tuesday's often contentious session:1. Democrats came ready for a fightBeing in the minority, Democrats can't do much to stop Kavanaugh's nomination, as long as Republicans remain unified in their support, which so far they have been. So Democrats formulated another strategy: to obstruct and disrupt the proceedings and question the legitimacy of the process. Their weapon was the documents that they say Republicans and the White House have refused to produce. They even came up with the Twitter hashtag #WhatAreTheyHiding.As NPR's Scott Horsley reported: "Democrats complained that the Trump administration blocked the release of more than 100,000 pages of documents detailing Kavanaugh's service in the George W. Bush White House. Other documents were released at the last minute, or not at all — including documents from 2003 to 2006 when Kavanaugh served as Bush's staff secretary. " 'There's a 35-month black hole in your White House career where we've been denied access to any and all documents,' Durbin said. 'During that period of time, President Bush was considering same-sex marriage — an amendment to ban it — abortion, executive power, detainees, torture, Supreme Court nominees, warrantless wiretapping.' " 'Before sitting on the bench, you were a political operative, involved in the most political and partisan controversies of our time,' added Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. 'It is precisely those views that are being hidden from us today.' " That's not to say there are no documents. In fact, the White House released some 42,000 on the eve of Tuesday's hearing, but with the caveat that they were "committee confidential," meaning only senators could view them and they would not be released to the public. Politics Kavanaugh Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Off To A Raucous Start Democrats also called for a vote to adjourn Tuesday's hearing, which not surprisingly, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, refused to hold. Republican Sen. John Cornyn accused Democrats of attempting "mob rule" on the committee after their frequent interruptions during the morning's proceedings.2. Committee Democrats weren't the only protesters during Day 1There were frequent disruptions by demonstrators inside the hearing room, often interrupting the Democrats' interruptions. Many expressed concerns over the fate of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. At one point, a protester could be heard shouting "more women are going to be subject to back-alley abortions." And outside the hearing room a group of women dressed in bonnets and red robes from The Handmaid's Tale stood silently. U.S. Capitol Police say they arrested a total of 70 demonstrators Tuesday.3. A Trump tweet haunts Tuesday's hearingDemocrats and Republicans are concerned about President Trump's Labor Day tweet, in which he attacked the Justice Department for prosecuting cases against GOP Reps. (and early Trump backers) Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, "just ahead of the Mid-Terms." Trump added, "Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff [Sessions]"Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Kavanaugh was the nominee of "a president who has shown us consistently that he is contemptuous of the rule of law," saying he fired the FBI director and "harasses and threatens his own attorney general on almost a daily basis." Addressing Kavanaugh, Durbin continued, "and it's that president who's decided you are his man," asking, "Are people nervous about this? Are they concerned about it? Of course they are."Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said "the comments from the White House yesterday about trying to politicize the Department of Justice — they were wrong." Sasse added that "they should be condemned, and my guess is Brett Kavanaugh would condemn them."And Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, another GOP senator who has at times criticized the president, said Trump's comment was "why a lot of people are concerned about this administration and why they want to ensure that our institutions hold."4. 2020 aspirants get some airtimeIt's never too soon to start thinking about the next presidential election, right? And while the Senate is full of people who believe they could, or should be president, there are at least a few Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who are believed to harbor real aspirations for the Oval Office.Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., calling on Republicans in the committee's majority to release more Kavanaugh-related documents, used some soaring rhetoric. "This is a hearing about who will sit on the highest court of our land," she noted. "This is a hearing about who will sit in a house that symbolizes our system of justice in this country. And some of the most important principles behind the integrity of our system of justice is that we have due process and we have transparency."Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., raised some eyebrows when he emailed an appeal during the hearing "to join me in this fight and oppose Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court." While it was not a direct fundraising pitch — as the only request was to sign a petition — the timing was suspicious to at least one of Booker's GOP colleagues, Sasse, who called Booker out on Twitter, saying "this stuff will make us sicker, not healthier."5. Kavanaugh again plays up his family and regular-guy bona fidesNo elitist he, this D.C. federal appeals court judge with two degrees from Yale who was counselor to a president. Kavanaugh, when it was finally time to make his opening statement Tuesday evening before the hearing wrapped for the day, stressed the strong women in his family, name-checking his mother, wife and two daughters. He also stressed his Jesuit school background and his love of coaching ("I love coaching," he said). The remarks were similar to some Kavanaugh made when he was named by Trump in July. Kavanaugh also mentioned sitting in the stands with his father, watching the Baltimore Orioles and Washington's NFL team, speaking of "a lifetime of friendship, forged in stadium seats over hot dogs and beer."He insisted that he will be "a pro-law judge" and a "team player on the Team of Nine." Committee members will attempt on Wednesday to determine what positions he will play on that team.6. Democrats see an opportunity in attempted handshake Enlarge this image Fred Guttenberg (left), whose daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla., attempts to shake hands with Kavanaugh (right) as the nominee leaves for a lunch break while appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Andrew Harnik/AP hide caption toggle caption Andrew Harnik/AP Fred Guttenberg (left), whose daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla., attempts to shake hands with Kavanaugh (right) as the nominee leaves for a lunch break while appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Andrew Harnik/AP Perhaps the day's most viral moment came when the father of a teenage girl who was killed during the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., approached Kavanaugh during a break in the hearing and offered to shake the judge's hand."I invited Fred Guttenberg to sit in the audience at today's hearing because the Supreme Court affects the lives of real people," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's top Democrat, tweeted after the hearing. "He knows firsthand how Brett Kavanaugh's extreme views on guns could lead to more massacres. Thank you Fred, for honoring your daughter."A photo of the moment taken by an Associated Press photographer that quickly made the rounds online appeared to show Kavanaugh refusing Guttenberg's handshake."He pulled his hand back, turned his back to me and walked away," Guttenberg tweeted about the moment. "I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence."But a video posted on Twitter by NBC News from a different perspective shows someone who appears to be a Hill staffer seemingly interceding in the interaction."As Judge Kavanaugh left for his lunch break, an unidentified individual approached him," White House spokesman Raj Shah tweeted Tuesday afternoon. "Before the Judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened." In a second tweet, Shah included a video clip of the moment.By Tuesday afternoon, a link to online coverage of the attempted handshake had been posted on the Twitter account of Demand Justice, a Democratic activist group fighting Kavanaugh's nomination to the court, and to the group's other social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram. "You need to see this," the Demand Justice tweet said.

A sex worker has been tied to the drug-overdose deaths of three men—including the head chef of a Cipriani restaurant in Manhattan, who was found stuffed inside a garbage can.A criminal complaint filed in federal court charges that Angelina Barini, 41, plied her clients with narcotics, including the powerful opioid fentanyl, during rendezvous at seedy hotels in New York City.In the span of a week, two of the johns died—but Barini and her pimp allegedly continued to drug her customers, and even robbed some of them once they were incapacitated, authorities said in court papers.The first death was July 4 at a hotel in Astoria, Queens, where Barini was caught leaving the room on videotape. The man died of a lethal cocktail of booze, meth, cocaine, and fentanyl, officials said.On July 11, a second man was found dead of a fentanyl overdose at another hotel in Queens, where Barini was again allegedly caught on videotape.The next time a john turned up dead, Barini was in the room with the body, authorities said.“Shortly after Barini opened the door, law enforcement authorities smelled a strong odor consistent with the smell of a dead body and burning incense.”— Criminal complaintOn Aug. 21, police looking for Andrea Zamperoni, who ran the kitchen at Cipriani Dolci, went to the Kamway Lodge in Elmhurst, Queens, and knocked on the door of Room 15.“Shortly after Barini opened the door, law enforcement authorities smelled a strong odor consistent with the smell of a dead body and burning incense,” a Homeland Security Investigations agent wrote in an affidavit.“Barini stated in sum and substance and in part that she did not do it, her pimp made her do it and it was not her.“In the corner of the room, law enforcement authorities noticed what appeared to be a garbage can with bed linens stuffed inside and what appeared to be a bare human foot sticking out of the bed linens.”The court papers identified the man only as John Doe-3 but the details match the case of Zamperoni, 33, who was reported missing after he missed his weekly call with his mother in Italy and then failed to show up for work.According to the complaint, Zamperoni died on Aug. 18—the cause of death is pending toxicology reports—after Barini reportedly gave him liquid ecstasy.Barini claimed her pimp would not let her call police. Instead, he and others came to the room and discussed cutting up the body—and investigators did find a power saw, an empty suitcase, and bleach in the room, although there was no “external trauma” to Zamperoni’s body.Barini is charged with conspiracy to distribute substances containing fentanyl.

Does the federal government mean to cede the territory of the United States back to the Native Americans? The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has altered its mission statement, removing the characterization of America as a “nation of immigrants” in order to emphasize the new goal of “securing the homeland”. Some critics made the point that most citizens are immigrants or their descendants, while others noted that most Americans believed that immigration should remain stable or increase. Yet the problem with the change in language lies deeper. According to our own legal tradition, Americans claim sovereignty over the territory of the US as immigrants, precisely because the territories in question were someone else’s homeland: the Native Americans’. Since our country exists, we don’t ask ourselves how or why. The legal foundation of the federal claim to dominion over territory is something called the Doctrine of Discovery, a notion that goes back five centuries. As European explorers sought new maritime passages and found new lands, popes granted European powers the authority to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue” the people they found. Portugal, Spain, France and England claimed territory by planting a flag, a symbolic action known as “discovery”. It made no difference whether the land in question was inhabited or not, since only Christians had conferred upon themselves the right to “discover” in this sense. By the logic of the papal bulls, and that of later charters to English explorers made by the English king or queen, indigenous peoples had no rights to land or to legal recognition of any kind. Only immigrants did. The young American republic preserved this European doctrine. The US supreme court formalized the Doctrine of Discovery in three famous cases of 1823, 1831 and 1832. Chief Justice John Marshall took for granted the obvious fact that America was the homeland of the Native Americans, “the rightful occupants of the soil”. By the logic of “discovery”, Native Americans had no rights because America was their homeland: “Their power to dispose of the soil at their own will to whomsoever they pleased was denied by the original fundamental principle that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it.” In American law, to have a homeland established no sovereignty over territory; only immigration created such authority. According to Marshall, English charters and claims had established an “absolute and complete” title to the land of North America, which then “passed to the United States” in 1776. The judicial magic of creating sovereignty and property is performed on behalf of immigrants and only on behalf of immigrants. From the perspective of modern human rights, or even of simple logic, there is much to criticize in the Doctrine of Discovery and in these rulings. In light of the first amendment of the constitution, separating church and state, papal bulls seem untenable as a source of American jurisprudence. When Marshall writes that “conquest gives a title that the courts of the conqueror cannot deny”, it is easy to wonder whether anything more is being claimed in his rulings than that might makes right. Native American scholars have made all of these points, and aboriginal activists here and around the world have asked the pope to repeal the original bulls. However flawed it may be, the Doctrine of Discovery is the law of the land, affirmed regularly by our highest court. In the 21st century, in New York v Oneida Indian Nation of New York, the supreme court cited Marshall’s rulings and relied upon the Doctrine of Discovery as the basis of the federal government’s dominion over land once controlled by Native Americans – which is to say, the entirety of the United States of America. The American claim to American land is that Native Americans had a homeland but no dominion over it, since sovereignty automatically shifted to immigrants. If the federal government no longer defines the America as a “nation of immigrants”, it abandons, by its own logic, the claim to sovereignty over the land. If US policy is now, instead, to protect a “homeland”, that would mean restoring the rights of the Native Americans to the entirety of the US. To be sure, a mission statement does not itself make law. But it expresses an attitude that is quite common in the Trump administration and indeed in both houses of Congress, one that denies the premise of the Doctrine of Discovery, disables the rulings of the supreme court, and reopens the question of the sovereignty of the US over territory. Marshall admitted that territorial control by immigration, the “pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited territory into conquest” might appear “extravagant”. Yet the Doctrine of Discovery prevails, he asserts, so long as the “principle has been asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained”. If the federal government claims that the US is a nation of natives rather than immigrants, that test is no longer met. If the federal government no longer asserts the principle on which its own sovereignty is based, no longer sustains the Doctrine of Discovery. Following Marshall’s reasoning, Native Americans would then have, in his words, a “legal and just claim to retain possession” of what is now the United States of America. We have a responsibility to know and face our history, the indefensible as well as the praiseworthy. To deny our past as immigrants is to deny ourselves the chance of understanding who we are, for better and for worse. It is also, following the very logic and law of America, to abandon our claim to the dominion over territory, and to restore the land to those who first called it home. Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University. He is the author, most recently, of The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. Topics US immigration Opinion Native Americans comment

CARACAS, Venezuela—President Nicolás Maduro named an active general to lead the state oil industry, the nation’s last major economic sector that had been outside the military’s control.National Guard Maj. Gen. Manuel Quevedo will be the new energy minister and president of state-run Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PdVSA, which accounts for almost all the country’s foreign-currency income.Gen....

Brazil’s rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro, has piled further pressure on Venezuela’s embattled leader, Nicolás Maduro, vowing to do “everything for democracy to be re-established”.Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s influential son, who some describe as Brazil’s parallel foreign minister, labelled Maduro a “cancer” that needed to be “excised”.In a video message to the Venezuelan people ahead of planned anti-Maduro protests next Tuesday, Brazil’s far-right leader pledged his administration would do “everything for democracy to be re-established and so you can live in freedom”.“I believe the solution will soon come,” said Bolsonaro on Thursday, flanked by Miguel Ángel Martín, one of several exiled Venezuelan opposition leaders with whom he held talks in Brazil’s capital, Brasília.Brazil’s foreign ministry issued a blistering attack on Maduro, who began his second six-year term as president on 10 January despite a storm of criticism at home and abroad.Brazil’s foreign ministry claimed Maduro – who took power after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013 and has led his country into economic ruin – headed an “organized crime apparatus” built on “widespread corruption, narco-trafficking, the trafficking of people, the laundering of money and terrorism”.Bolsonaro’s son and close confidant Eduardo Bolsonaro tweeted: “Maduro’s narco-dictatorship is a cancer that needs to be excised.”Eduardo Bolsonaro is a longstanding critic of Maduro and has close relations with rightwing Venezuelan dissidents who seek Maduro’s military overthrow.The condemnation came as Venezuela’s opposition – suddenly reinvigorated by the ratcheting up of regional pressure by countries such as Brazil and the emergence of a potential new figurehead – prepared to hold a day of demonstrations next Tuesday.Long moribund, Maduro’s opponents have found a new voice since Juan Guaidó, the young head of Venezuela’s opposition-run national assembly, declared himself ready to assume the presidency as a result of Maduro’s illegitimate rule and received backing from rightwing governments in Brazil, Colombia and the United States.Guaidó’s profile grew further last Sunday when he was briefly detained by members of Venezuela’s security services – a headline-grabbing incident he claimed highlighted growing desperation within Maduro’s inner circle.Writing in the Washington Post this week, Guaidó denounced Maduro as a “usurper” and “de facto ruler” whose re-election last May was a “farce”. In the absence of a legitimately elected president, Guaidó argued, it was his constitutional duty to occupy the position on an interim basis until free and fair elections could be held.He also called on the military – whose members are being offered amnesty by Venezuela’s opposition – to turn on Maduro.“The chain of command has been broken, and there’s no commander in chief – it’s time to get on the right side of history,” wrote Guaidó, who has adopted Barack Obama’s famous rallying cry “¡Sí, se puede!” – “Yes we can!” Topics Jair Bolsonaro Nicolás Maduro Brazil Americas Venezuela Juan Guaidó news

PARIS (Reuters) - French police are investigating the disappearance of Interpol chief, Meng Hongwei, who was reported missing after traveling from France to his native China, while his wife has been placed under police protection after receiving threats. Meng’s wife contacted police in Lyon, the French city where the international police agency is based, after not hearing from him since Sept. 25, and after receiving threats by phone and on social media, France’s interior ministry said. A person familiar with the investigation said the initial working assumption was that Meng had antagonized Chinese authorities in some way and had been detained as a result. “France is puzzled about the situation of Interpol’s president and concerned about the threats made to his wife,” the ministry said, adding that it was in contact with China. Meng’s wife, who has remained in Lyon with their children according to police sources, was receiving protection, it said. It was not clear why Meng, 64, who was named Interpol’s president two years ago, had traveled to China, which has not commented officially on his disappearance. China’s Ministry of Public Security did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment and there was no mention of him in official media on Saturday. There have been several cases in recent years of senior Chinese officials vanishing without explanation, only for the government to announce weeks or even months later that they have been put under investigation, often for suspected corruption. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed source as saying Meng had been taken for questioning as soon as he landed in China, but it was not clear why. French police are investigating what is officially termed in France a “worrying disappearance”. Interpol, which groups 192 countries and which is usually focused on finding people who are missing or wanted, said in a statement from its secretary general, Juergen Stock, that it had asked China for clarification. “Interpol has requested through official law enforcement channels clarification from China’s authorities on the status of Interpol President Meng Hongwei,” Stock, who is in charge Interpol’s day-to-day running, said on Saturday. Roderic Broadhurst, a professor of criminology at Australian National University, said Meng’s disappearance would be “pretty disconcerting” for people in international bodies that work with China, and could ultimately damage China’s efforts to develop cooperative legal assistance measures with other countries. “It is bizarre,” Broadhurst said on Saturday, adding that China was likely to “brush off” any political damage that it would cause to Beijing’s involvement in international bodies. “It’s a price that might have to be paid, but I guess they would see that as a cost worth bearing,” Broadhurst said. Presidents of Interpol are seconded from their national administrations and remain in their home post while representing the international policing body. Meng is listed on the website of China’s Ministry of Public Security as a vice-minister, but lost his seat on its Communist Party Committee in April, the South China Morning Post reported. Meng has almost 40 years’ experience in criminal justice and policing, and has overseen matters related to legal institutions, narcotics control and counter-terrorism, according to Interpol’s website. Interpol staff can carry special passports to help speed deployment in emergency situations but that would not have given Meng any specific rights or immunity in his home country. FILE PHOTO: INTERPOL President Meng Hongwei poses during a visit to the headquarters of International Police Organisation in Lyon, France, May 8, 2018. Jeff Pachoud/Pool via ReutersWhen Meng was named Interpol’s president in Nov. 2016, human rights groups expressed concern that Beijing might try to leverage his position to pursue dissidents abroad. Beijing has in the past pressed countries to arrest and deport to China citizens it accuses of crimes, from corruption to terrorism. At the time, Amnesty International called Meng’s appointment “at odds with Interpol’s mandate to work in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Reporting by Catherine Lagrange in Lyon, Richard Lough, Simon Carraud, Sarah White and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris, Mark Hosenball in London, Yawen Chen and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Richard Balmforth/Raju Gopalakrishnan/Alexander SmithOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Residents of El Paso demonstrated as Donald Trump arrived in the Texas city to pay tribute to the victims of one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent US history. With much of the president’s rhetoric reflected in the El Paso shooter’s anti-immigrant and racist essays, many felt the visit was ‘throwing salt on the wounds’ of a binational, largely Latinx community in mourning ‘People are afraid to be Hispanic’: Trump visits an angry, grieving El Paso

The protestors, most of whom were students from Rio's Federal University (UFRJ), were later allowed temporary access to the courtyard outside the museum in order to give the building a symbolic "hug."The National Museum is a part of the UFRJ and dependent of public funding. Many of the protestors gathered claimed funding intended for restoration and renovation projects had been diverted by the government.Flames engulf the 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday."This fire was caused due to several years of neglect from the federal government," Caio, an anthropology student who studied at the museum, told AFP. "The anthropology department went through absurd budget cuts from the federal government during the past two years. In my class alone, it was around 70%."During the blaze, firefighters arrived at the scene only to find two hydrants did not have enough pressure to work properly, according to Roberto Robadey, a spokesman for Rio de Janeiro fire department. Fire crews had to draw water from a nearby pond instead, said Robadey.The building was equipped with a sprinkler system, but it was inadequate, according to Brazilian Minister of Culture Serguio Sá Leitao.An aerial view of Rio de Janeiro's treasured National Museum a day after a massive fire ripped through the building.Many are now pointing the finger at Brazilian President Michel Temer and his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, who they accuse of fiscal mismanagement in the lead up to and aftermath of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and 2014 World Cup. Those events cost millions of taxpayer dollars, all while public institutions like the museum have complained of their own funding dry up in recent years. A project to improve the fire system had been approved in June, and the funds were expected in October, Roberto Leher, dean of the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, told reporters Monday. "There was no other obstacle for the funds to be liberated," he said. "The entire process with the Brazilian Development Bank was concluded."A view of the entrance of the musuem after the blaze.On Monday, President Michel Temer called the loss "insurmountable." However, one of his opponents in the upcoming presidential election, Marina Silva, was less conciliatory, describing the fire as equivalent to "a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory." Silva called it a "tragedy foretold" due to the recent budget cuts to public institutions of higher education.Most of the museum's collections are now feared lost, including priceless indigenous artifacts from the pre-Colombian period. Some items housed in an adjacent building -- including a library with 500,000 volumes -- were saved, Museum Deputy Director Luis Fernando Dias Duarte said.Video uploaded to social media appeared to show that a famed meteorite found in 1784 survived the fire intact, surrounded by debris.The palatial National Museum building used to be the home of a Portuguese royal family. Almost exactly 200 years ago, it was converted into a museum. It housed artifacts in areas such as biological anthropology, archeology, ethnology, geology, paleontology and zoology,according to its website.It was home to "Luzia," a skull and bones more than 11,000 years old (the oldest human remains ever found in Brazil); Andean mummies; and an impressive collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts. The skull of "Luzia" was believed to be more than 11,000 years old.As news of the inferno spread, employees, researchers and academics rushed to the museum. Many shed tears as they watched flames consume the building. "This is 200 years of work of a scientific institution -- the most important one in Latin America," Marco Aurélio Caldas, who worked at the museum for nine years, told Agência Brasil. "Everything is finished. Our work, our life was all in there."Agência Brasil said officials carefully removed remains of debris, such as lumber, shingles, and even metal beams, in the hope of finding something of historical value. About 15 museum employees entered the building on Monday afternoon to briefly recover items.The work is slow and meticulous, as many pieces may still be in a condition to recover, beneath tons of burned wood and clay tiles, the news agency reported. "Very little will be left," preservation director João Carlos Nara told Agência Brasil. "We will have to wait until the firefighters have completed their work here in order to really assess the dimension of it all."Officials said they will focus on rebuilding the museum. "We are hoping to start an international campaign to mobilize collectors that would be willing to donate or sell their collections," said Sá Leitão.

Apple is a leader in the tech industry when it comes to protecting user privacy and security. Compared to Google and Facebook, and even Microsoft and Amazon, Apple collects way less data about its users and is frequently the first to implement new security features across its software and hardware lineups.However, that’s not to say Apple can’t learn a thing or two from other tech companies when it comes to protecting your privacy and data. Some of the biggest companies and plenty of smaller ones have come up with innovative offerings that help keep their user’s data more secure–offerings that Apple doesn’t offer, at least for now.Apple normally releases new privacy and security features with its major operating system updates every fall. In the past, these updates have included enabling system-wide encryption on Macs, and offering a built-in password manager in the Safari browser for iOS and MacOS, just to name two examples. No doubt we’ll see more advanced privacy and security features when iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 land later this year. But if Apple needs some suggestions of what type of features to include, it need look no further than these features from other tech companies.Block USB ports while a device is locked (Google)In general, Google isn’t known for putting user privacy before profits. But it is serious about security. A great example of this is the Titan Security Key that Google released last year. The security key is a dongle that you plug into your computer when you log into an online account. The fact that the security key is present acts as a physical form of two-factor authentication that helps ensure rogue actors with your login credentials can’t access your account.But I’m not suggesting Apple comes out with its own security key (though it wouldn’t hurt). Instead, Apple should follow Google’s lead in another area, and introduce a much more user-friendly security protection measure. Google will soon update its Chrome OS, which runs on Chromebooks, with a feature called USBGuard. This feature blocks devices that are plugged in via the Chromebook USB ports from accessing data or transferring data to a locked Chromebook.This is a brilliant security move, as it’s common practice by bad actors to plug a USB drive into a laptop and run executable code from a program on that drive to infiltrate the computer. Hackers don’t do this when the computer’s owner is around. They either do this after they have stolen the laptop, or they simply wait until the owner has walked away and thinks their computer is protected because the screen is locked with a password. USBGuard thwarts this method of attack, as any device plugged into the Chromebook’s USB port is rendered inoperable until the Chromebook is unlocked again (you can whitelist “trusted” devices such as your own external hard drives).Apple already has a similar feature on its iOS devices that blocks any kind of data transfer between an iPhone or iPad and a device plugged into its Lightning port after the iPhone or iPad hasn’t been unlocked for an hour (charging cables still work). It would be great if Apple follows Google’s lead and brought this technology to its MacBooks and iMacs, too.A built-in VPN (Opera)Safari is generally one of the fastest, most secure web browsers out there. Apple goes to great lengths to keep you safe by blocking all tracker cookies, offering a built-in password manager, and obfuscating your computer’s fingerprint on the web.However, if Apple really wanted to make our web activities more private, it could follow Opera’s lead and build a VPN directly into Safari. A VPN is probably the most important tool everyday web users should be using to protect their privacy online, yet many don’t. Apple could change that overnight by building in a secure VPN so hackers can’t track you, and ISPs can’t sell your web activity to advertisers.Email encryption (ProtonMail)With FileVault 2, Apple was the first PC maker to automatically enable full disk encryption on all of its laptops and desktops. It was also one of the first tech giants to embrace end-to-end encryption for messaging. No one, not even Apple, can read the iMessages you send using the Messages app except you and your recipient.That’s why it’s baffling that Apple doesn’t apply end-to-end encryption to its iCloud email service, as Proton does for its ProtonMail service. It’s time for Apple to change that. As important as end-to-end encryption is for an app like Messages, we often send our most sensitive data over email–for example, emails sent to our doctors discussing our health. If Apple wants to be the true king of user privacy, they should ensure that our emails are as off-limits to others as our messages are.A highest-possible-security mode (Microsoft)Apple can even learn something from its oldest competitor when it comes to security. With Windows 10, Microsoft introduced a new feature called S Mode. It’s a configuration of Windows 10–which was originally a cheaper version of Windows targeted at schools that might otherwise buy Chromebooks–that automatically enables the highest security and privacy settings on a PC. When you buy a new computer with Windows S Mode as the default, you can only download and install apps from the Microsoft Store, where they’re Microsoft-verified for security. It’s locked to Microsoft’s Edge browser to surf the web, and disables command-line shells, the registry editor, and developer tools.For Apple’s part, MacOS already includes a feature called Gatekeeper that can be set to prevent users from installing apps outside of the Mac App Store. But still, a Mac’s Terminal app lets anyone with access to your computer run any UNIX command, providing unfettered access to your machine. Another baffling oversight: Though Apple defaults to full disk encryption on every Mac, the company doesn’t turn on MacOS’s built-in firewall by default.There are some legitimate reasons why a small percentage of pro users might not want to turn on MacOS’s built-in firewall or disable access to the Terminal app. But for everyday web and email users, disabling the firewall and enabling Terminal access may do more harm than good.So I’m proposing that Apple implement something like a MacOS S Mode. Make it optional during a Mac’s setup process, but at least give users the choice of automatically setting up their Mac with the strictest security and privacy measures possible.All that being said, Apple’s products are still the all-around best when it comes to security and privacy. However, the goalposts of optimal protection keep moving, and if Apple wants to stay in the lead, it’s got to keep improving its strategy and offerings.

As much as 90% of the collection at Brazil’s National Museum was destroyed in a devastating fire on Sunday and – compounding the disaster – the building was not insured, according to the museum’s deputy director.Some pieces survived, including the famous Bendegó meteorite and a library of 500,000 books – including works dating back to the days of the Portuguese empire – which was kept in a separate annex, Cristiana Serejo told reporters in front of the building’s blackened shell.But it was still not possible to say how much of the collection had escaped the flames, Serejo said. “It could be 10%, it could be 15, it could be 20,” she said. “We had a very big loss.”The museum’s Egyptology collection was completely destroyed, Serejo said.Researchers who were able to enter one area of the building in Rio de Janeiro are starting to catalogue what little is left, said Serejo, who appealed to members of the public to return any items they found.Asked if the museum was insured, she screwed up her face in mock anguish, and shook her head.“I hope we learn from this,” she said. “Other public buildings are in the same situation.”Two days after the museum was gutted in a fire that has traumatized Brazil, smoke still rose from the wreckage, and small fires are still breaking out, said a firefighter who declined to give his name. “It’s wood that is still burning. We are constantly throwing water on it.”The scale of the destruction was clear: although the museum’s smoke-charred exterior walls are still standing – and statues still gaze out over the Quinta da Boa Vista park, little could be seen inside but piles of rubble.Firefighters combing the wreckage on Tuesday found some bones and fragments of a skull, sparking hopes that the museum’s centerpiece – a 12,000-year-old skeleton known as “Luzia” – may have survived.“Obviously we would love it to be Luzia but we can’t confirm this,” said Fernanda Guedes, a spokeswoman, adding that the biological anthropology area where the fragment was found also housed dozens of other skeletons.Some porcelain and paintings have also been recovered from the ruins.On Tuesday morning, there was a scuffle of excitement around Felipe da Silva, 29, a security guard who had found a burnt page of a book near the museum.TV cameras and reporters jostled for pictures of the page – a text in English about Paleolithic and Mesolithic populations in Turkmenistan.“It is an inexplicable feeling to be able to deliver something that stayed intact in this destruction,” Da Silva said.The building has been sealed off to the public by crash barriers – some of which bore the name of Rio’s tourism agency Riotur. Notes of protest had been taped to some of them. “A society without culture and research is a failure,” was written on one. Yet while anger over the disaster remains intense, there was a palpable sense that many people want to rescue something from this tragedy. Serejo said donations from other museums – and the return of pieces that had been loaned elsewhere – could help that process.“The message is we will be alive and we will keep research on its feet,” she said.On Monday, federal prosecutors said they had requested a police investigation into the cause of the fire.In a statement, they said they held a meeting in June 2017 with fire chiefs and the government’s Institute of Historical and National Artistic Heritage to produce fire prevention standards. “Unfortunately over a year later the federal institutions responsible have not published the standards,” prosecutors said.Meanwhile, Serejo confirmed that two fire hydrants had run out of water as firefighters battled the fire. Topics Brazil Museums Rio de Janeiro Americas Heritage Art Sculpture news

And the episode shows how after Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Manafort sought to cash in on his brief tenure as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman even as investigators were closing in.The Ecuadoreans continued to explore the possibility of Chinese investment, but with the United States Justice Department and intelligence agencies stepping up their pursuit of Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks, Mr. Moreno’s team increasingly looked to resolve their Assange problem by turning to Russia.In the months after Mr. Moreno took office, the Ecuadorean government granted citizenship to Mr. Assange and secretly pursued a plan to provide him a diplomatic post in Russia as a way to free him from confinement in the embassy in London. (That plan was ultimately dropped in the face of opposition from British authorities, who have said they will arrest Mr. Assange if he leaves the embassy.)Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Mr. Manafort, said that it was Mr. Moreno — not Mr. Manafort — who broached the issue of Mr. Assange and “his desire to remove Julian Assange from Ecuador’s embassy.” Mr. Manafort “listened but made no promises as this was ancillary to the purpose of the meeting,” said Mr. Maloni, adding, “There was no mention of Russia at the meeting.”Late last year, Mr. Mueller’s team charged Mr. Manafort with a host of lobbying, money laundering and tax violations in connection with his consulting work for Russia-aligned interests in Ukraine before the 2016 election. Mr. Manafort was convicted of some of the crimes and pleaded guilty to others as part of an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors. But prosecutors said last week that he violated the deal by repeatedly lying to them. Mr. Manafort remains in solitary confinement in a federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., waiting for a judge to set a sentencing date.The trip to Ecuador was part of a whirlwind world tour that represented the last gasps of Mr. Manafort’s once lucrative career.

The global smartphone market fell 9% in a year this quarter, the biggest fall in smartphone history, with even Apple’s iPhone sales down 1% as users hang on to their phones longer.For Apple, which is shipping 5m fewer smartphones than a year ago, the decline is offset by an increase in the average sale price of its iPhone, thanks to the popularity of its £1,000 iPhone X.But as Samsung and others join Apple in pushing the top end of the market to higher prices the demand for new phones appears to be waning. Data from Strategy Analytics shows global smartphone shipments shrank year-on-year from 438.7m to 400.2m in the fourth quarter of 2017.Linda Sui, director at Strategy Analytics, said: “It was the biggest annual fall in smartphone history. The shrinkage in global smartphone shipments was caused by a collapse in the huge China market, where demand fell 16% annually due to longer replacement rates, fewer operator subsidies and a general lack of ‘wow models’.”The iPhone X adopted the market trend of all-screen designs first introduced by the Samsung Galaxy S8 in March. But big leaps in smartphone features, such as ever better cameras, are now behind us, with incremental increases in artificial intelligence now taking the spotlight.“We’re getting to the point where photo quality is already so good that the focus is turning to the smarts that you build beyond that,” Google’s vice president product manager Mario Queiroz, said last year.Whether that is enough to excite buyers and drive upgrades remains to be seen.“Global iPhone volumes have actually declined on an annual basis for five of the past eight quarters,” said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. “If Apple wants to expand shipment volumes in the future, it will need to launch a new wave of cheaper iPhones and start to push down, not up, the pricing curve.”Despite the shrinkage in the last quarter the entire market crossed 1.5bn smartphones shipped for the first time in 2017, up 1.3%. But it is a far cry from the year-on-year increase of 158m and 12.3% in 2015 and smaller still than the 48m and 3.3% increase in 2016, as developed nations hit saturation point and first time buyers become upgraders – a much harder sell. 2017: the year smartphones went all-screen and came with baked-in AI Topics Smartphones Mobile phones Apple iPhone Samsung Telecommunications industry Telecoms news