For some migrants, the policy effectively meant no asylum case at all.Miguel Aquino, 29, who fled El Salvador in a caravan in October after being shot in the leg and hand by MS-13 gang members, waited for weeks in Tijuana to apply for asylum at the sprawling San Ysidro port, the biggest on the border. He was interviewed and sent back to Mexico to wait for a court date.In March, when he arrived for a preliminary hearing without an attorney, the judge gave him more time to find one — and sent him back to Mexico to wait. Mr. Aquino said he has called eight lawyers, and they all said they couldn’t represent him because he is in Tijuana. At this point, he is tired of waiting.“The next time, if I don’t go with a lawyer and they don’t give a clear answer,” he said, “I’m going to look for another way to get in.” Mr. Trump often says he plans to build a wall on the border with Mexico to halt illegal immigration. But when the standoff over funding for the wall led to a 35-day government shutdown in December and January, it actually made things worse. Many immigration judges were furloughed, and tens of thousands of deportation and asylum cases were delayed, in some cases for years. There is another problem with the wall: Slowing the exodus of migrants from Central America would need to start in those countries first.Central America’s economies are still weak, and residents face drug and gang violence at levels largely unseen in other countries. Many are subject to deep poverty, a situation that recently reached a crisis with the collapse of coffee, corn and maize crops. M.C., a 23-year-old Guatemalan woman who asked to be identified by her initials for safety reasons, received an anonymous letter recently in her hometown, San Marcos, warning her that she would be killed if she did not give the letter writers 65,000 Guatemalan quetzals, nearly $8,500.

In May 2017, the FBI opened an inquiry into whether Donald Trump was working on behalf of Russia, the New York Times has reported.Citing unnamed former law enforcement officials, the paper reported on Friday that in the days after the president fired FBI director James Comey, law enforcement officials were so worried about his behavior that they began investigating whether the president was working against US interests and on behalf of Moscow.Counterintelligence investigators were reportedly considering whether Trump’s actions constituted a national security threat, an extraordinary line of inquiry against a sitting president. They also sought to determine whether the president was knowingly working for Russia, the report said.Trump responded on Saturday morning with a volley of tweets which did not question the Times’ reporting but lambasted “the corrupt former leaders of the FBI” for opening an investigation “for no reason & with no proof”.“Funny thing about James Comey,” Trump said. “Everybody wanted him fired, Republican and Democrat alike. My firing of James Comey was a great day for America. He was a Crooked Cop.”Of the leaders who opened the investigation, Trump claimed without offering evidence that “almost all [were] fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons”.He then accused special counsel Robert Mueller of protecting Comey and made familiar attacks on Mueller’s ongoing investigation for failing to go after “the Real Collusion (and much more)” of Democrats with Russia in the 2016 election.The Times report quoted private House testimony from Lisa Page, a former FBI lawyer who worked for Mueller and who with fired FBI agent Peter Strzok has been a target of Republican ire.Comey, who last year published a bestselling memoir and has become a strident critic of Trump, responded on Twitter on Saturday.“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” he wrote, slightly misquoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who actually said “My friends, judge me by the enemies I have made” in a speech in Portland, Oregon in September 1932.FDR's words are familiar in political circles. Six years ago, when he was still a property mogul and reality TV star, Trump tweeted them himself.On Friday, responding to the Times story, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement: “James Comey was fired because he’s a disgraced partisan hack, and his Deputy Andrew McCabe, who was in charge at the time, is a known liar fired by the FBI.McCabe, who was fired just short of retirement in March last year, will publish his own book next month. Trump mentioned all four of his FBI bêtes noires in another Saturday tweet.Sanders continued: “Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push America around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia.” Trump echoed those sentiments on Saturday.Rudolph Giuliani, one of Trump’s attorneys, also sought to downplay the significance of the FBI investigation, telling the Times: “The fact that it goes back a year and a half and nothing came of it that showed a breach of national security means they found nothing.”In an interview with CBS Face the Nation due to be broadcast on Sunday, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA at the time of the Comey firing, said the Times report was “silly on its face and not worthy of a response”.The remarkable report is sure to ramp up the pressure for a White House already feeling the heat from months of investigations. In August, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of financial charges and later pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the US and conspiring to obstruct justice. Trump’s longtime lawyer and aide Michael Cohen is set to begin a three-year prison sentence in March after pleading guilty to fraud, campaign finance violations and lying under oath.Manafort was charged as part of the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, appointed Mueller shortly after Comey’s firing in May 2017 to lead the investigation into Russian meddling and ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Mueller is reportedly also investigating whether the president tried to impede the investigation into Russia’s role in the election.It was reported this week that Rosenstein will soon step down. Trump’s acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker remains in place despite controversy over his view of the Russia investigation and qualifications for the role. The nominee to become attorney general, William Barr, is also the subject of debate about his fitness to oversee Mueller’s work.Mueller took over the FBI counterintelligence investigation, the Times reported, just days after it was first opened. FBI spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The report may also raise new questions for congressional investigators looking into Russian meddling. Newly in control of the House of Representatives, Democrats have vowed to further scrutinize Trump’s Russia ties. Topics Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Trump administration US politics Russia news

Forget the morals that millennia of children have learned from the Hare and the Tortoise and the Fox and the Crow: Aesop would have had a greater effect with his fables if he’d put the stories into the mouths of human characters, at least according to new research from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).In the Canadian study, researchers read one of three stories to almost 100 children between four and six years old: Mary Packard’s Little Raccoon Learns to Share, in which anthropomorphic animals learn that sharing makes you feel good; a version of the story in which the animal illustrations were replaced with human characters; or a control book about seeds.Before they were read the story, the children chose 10 stickers to take home and were told that an anonymous child would not have any stickers to take home. It was suggested to the children that they could share their stickers with the stickerless child by putting them in an envelope when the experimenter was not looking. After they had been read the story, the children were allowed to choose another 10 stickers, and again asked to donate to the stickerless child.The study, which has just been published in the journal Developmental Science, found that those children who were read the book with human characters became more generous, while “in contrast, there was no difference in generosity between children who read the book with anthropomorphised animal characters and the control book; both groups showed a decrease in sharing behaviour,” they write.The academics, led by Patricia Ganea, associate professor of early cognitive development at OISE, said that existing studies using the same method showed that before they are six, “children share hardly any stickers with their friends, and even after age six, children keep most of the stickers for themselves”, so the task “offers a lot of room for children to change their sharing behaviour after reading the story”.But reading a book about sharing “had an immediate effect on children’s pro-social behaviour”, they found. “However, the type of story characters significantly affected whether children became more or less inclined to behave pro-socially. After hearing the story containing real human characters, young children became more generous. In contrast, after hearing the same story but with anthropomorphised animals or a control story, children became more selfish.”Ganea said that while “a growing body of research has shown that young children more readily apply what they’ve learned from stories that are realistic … this is the first time we found something similar for social behaviours”.“The finding is surprising given that many stories for young children have human-like animals,” said Ganea.From Aesop to the Gruffalo via Winnie-the-Pooh, talking animals play a major part in children’s literature. A 2002 review of around 1,000 children’s titles found that “more than half of the books featured animals or their habitats, of which fewer than 2% depicted animals realistically”, the majority anthropomorphising them.Ganea felt that it would be useful for children’s authors to be aware of her research. “We tell stories to children for many reasons, and if the goal is to teach them a moral lesson then one way to make the lesson more accessible to children is to use human characters. Yes, we should consider the diversity of story characters and the roles they are depicted in,” she said.Chris Haughton, author and illustrator of animal picture books including Oh No, George! and Shh! We Have a Plan, felt that while “a simple instructional moral message might work short term”, the stories that have longer impact are the ones that resonate deeply. “I read Charlotte’s Web as a child and I know that made a big impression on me. I thought about it for a long time after I read the story. I identified with the non-human characters. That, among other things, did actually turn me into a lifelong vegetarian. I think a truly engaging and quality story that resonates with the child will be replayed in their mind and that has the real effect on them and the course of their life,” he said.Picture book author Tracey Corderoy said that in her experience, “where the main characters of a moral tale are animals as opposed to humans, the slight distancing that this affords the young child does a number of important things. It softens the moral message a little, making it slightly more palatable. Some would feel that this waters it down and makes it less effective. But the initial ‘saving-face’ that using animals brings quite often results, I feel at least, in keeping a child reader engaged.”Kes Gray, the author of the bestselling rhyming animal series Oi Frog and Friends, was unperturbed by the researchers’ findings. “Authors and illustrators have no need to panic here, as long as we keep all of the animal protagonists in all of their future stories unreservedly cuddly. Big hair, big eyes and pink twitchy noses should pretty much nail it,” he said. Topics Children and teenagers Picture books news

Google is officially celebrating its 20th bithday this Thursday. But though its namesake search engine launched in 1998, the then tiny startup didn’t get around to hiring any interns until 1999. When it did, Jen Fitzpatrick was one of them. Then she became one of the company’s first women engineers. Over the subsequent years, she cofounded Google’s user experience team and worked on search, advertising, Google News, and other products. In 2014, she took on overarching responsibility for Google Maps and Local as Google’s VP for geo.Related Video: Over its 20 years, Google has revolutionized the worldI recently visited Fitzpatrick at her Google office to chat about about why she joined the company, why she’s stayed, and the challenges and opportunities of her current job. This interview has been edited for publication.“My parents thought I was crazy”Fast Company: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you come to work at Google?Jen Fitzpatrick: I was a student in the computer science department at Stanford at the time, and first heard of Google as a product before it had turned into Google, when it was still a research product. And I quite literally just fell in love with the product. I was a student; information was a big deal to me. It very quickly turned into an indispensable tool in my life. And I found myself enthusiastically telling all of my friends and family about this sort of life-altering new tool that I thought they needed to discover and learn about as well.When it came time a few months later to look for a summer internship, I couldn’t imagine anything other than working on a product that I really cared about. I wasn’t interested in just going and writing code for the sake of writing code. Google was at the very the top of the list from that standpoint. So I applied for, and luckily got, an internship. I was part of the first intern class. There were four of us that year. Very quickly I discovered, in ways that kind of surprised and shocked me, just how much there was to learn. I had thought that life in a university setting was kind of the pinnacle of what learning and being constantly challenged looked like and felt like.At the end of the internship, I got an offer to stay on, which I happily accepted, and literally have been here ever since.FC: Did it feel like you were coming aboard a rocket ship that was going places?JF: There’s absolutely no way I could have predicted back then what Google would become today. It never, never crossed my mind in my wildest imagination. It was clear from the very early days that we were onto something in the sense that the more word of mouth spread, the more people discovered the Google experience. It was growing because it was fundamentally different and better than anything else out there at the time.You felt momentum based on that. When I started working here, no one had heard of Google. My parents thought I was crazy taking a job at this tiny little startup that no one had ever heard of. And moving from there toward a world where you would tell people where you work and they say, “Oh yeah, I’ve used that Google thing. That was really great.” The world was waking up to the existence of Google, and everyone had their own personal story about how it had either changed their life, or been instrumental in one particular moment that they could remember. It felt like everyone, as time went on, had a Google story of their own.More about Google’s 20th anniversary: How I went from Google intern to the head of Google MapsAs Google turns 20, it can’t take our goodwill for grantedWhat eight Google products looked like when they were brand newThese 16 Google search queries will produce easter eggs to remind you it’s 2018The Google Doodle is even older than Google itself“There was a focus on being as ambitious as possible”FC: Was the Google culture in place when you arrived, or did you see it evolve in front of your own eyes?JF: I would say the imprints of the culture were there right from the start. But it’s obviously grown and evolved, as all cultures do with time. I’ve been quite pleasantly surprised at how consistent the culture has remained, now almost 20 years later.From the earliest days, there was a focus on being as ambitious as possible in whatever we tackled. Not settling for just, “What do we need to do this week, or this month, or this quarter?” But thinking about, how do we work to deliver amazing things that work at scale, that work for the whole planet? That scale of thinking was there very early on.The other thing that stands out to me from the early days is having a culture of healthy debate, but also deep collaboration. I can’t think of any projects, when I look back, where it was one person sitting alone, toiling and getting something done. There was lots and lots of teamwork, and lots and lots of healthy and sometimes vigorous debate about things, but in ways that wound up getting us to better places. And I think that is still very much a hallmark of the culture here.FC: One thing that’s striking is that a surprisingly large number of early Google employees are still here, and some of the ones who left went on to do interesting things elsewhere. Is there any easy way to explain why that was true? Was Google just smart about hiring?JF: It was something that we all were expected to spend a fair amount of time on, partly because the company was growing fast, but also because we put a lot of care, attention, and rigor into finding great people. And finding people who could come in and hit the ground running and make a big impact. So I do think that that focus on hiring paid off. But, I also think that Google, throughout the arc of its existence, has been an incredible learning lab for the employees.Many of the problems that we’re tackling are not problems that have been solved ever before anywhere else. Many of the types of products that we’re building are pushing the bounds of what it means to solve a particular user problem in a particular way. There’s an element of it that is bringing in great people and setting a really high standard for hiring. But there’s equally an element of creating the environment here, which makes it a place where people can really push to the edge of what they’re capable of and learn on the job in a pretty accelerated way.FC: You mentioned that in some ways that Google’s early culture is still recognizable. Other than the company being a lot bigger and doing more things, are there other things that have changed in that time?JF: Very early on, we could pull the whole company together in a single room and have one conversation, and everyone kind of magically knew what was going on. Google is at a large enough scale today that the sheer questions of, How do you get the word out to people about what’s going on? How do you help people connect the dots between the different parts of what we’re building? takes a lot more work and forethought and deliberation. There’s obvious changes like that, that are just a natural by-product of scale, not to mention the geographic spread that we now have all around the world.But a lot of the core elements of the culture itself, whether it be that appreciation for healthy, vigorous debate on solutions, whether it be the focus and attention on keeping those debates sort of respectful and professional, whether it be the deep sense of kind of teamwork and collaboration that lead throughout . . . those things to me feel very much consistent over the years.FC: In your current job, does your longevity here play a major role in kind of shaping who you are as a Google employee and somebody in charge of a large chunk of the company?JF: In many ways, I’ve quite literally grown up here at Google, at least in a professional sense. And so, yes, almost everything that I do is influenced by the fact that I have been here so long and learned many, many things over the course of that time. I also think, as we continue to grow, it’s given me a certain understanding of how we work, how to get things done, and also given me the ability to try to help teach some of that to new leaders as we’re bringing them into the company.It’s not always obvious if you come in from the outside exactly sort of how Google works and why. There’s a lot of things that appear on the surface to be kind of crazy or mysterious or maybe just a little bit chaotic. And so that’s a role I’ve also tried to embrace.“The world just remains very, very large”FC: Let’s talk about Maps. I was just looking at some screenshots of the earliest version, and it’s totally recognizable as being the same thing as Google Maps today. It’s just that it’s way smarter and has vastly more data. Is that just sort of a fact of life for Maps?JF: Maps is this fascinating challenge, because on the one hand, we are a service that’s deeply relied on by more than a billion people to help them reliably get from here to there, to understand the route, to be able to plan ahead, to be able to leave home with the confidence that they’re not going to get lost on their way, and all these other things.And yet, at the same time, we’ve been working really hard over a period of many years in the background to deepen our understanding, broaden our understanding of the real world out there, and find new ways to reflect that understanding back to users. Whether that’s mapping places in the world that haven’t previously ever been mapped, whether that’s going deeper in our understanding of the world . . . not just understanding what are all the local businesses out there, but what are all the details about those businesses that really matter if you’re trying to make a decision about whether to go there? Or even just understanding how the world changes not just once a year or once every few months, but up to the minute, in real time, how are changes in the world going to affect the journey that you’re about to take?We have this incredible responsibility to keep being that service that our users can rely on and trust with the things that they already know that we can do. But we’re finding new things all the time on the back of that growing understanding of the world, that we can also help users with.FC: Years ago, I always used to think that when a service like Google Maps could give driving directions that included things like, “Keep an eye out for the gas station on the left,” I would know that it was better than a human. You more or less do that now. Do you have a laundry list of little improvements like that that you tackle?JF: We look at it from a couple different angles. One is, our users will often tell us what they want in the form of searches that they bring to Google or Maps. And one of the things we found is, for example, more users have shifted to using voice input to ask questions as opposed to typing things into a box. They’ll ask us questions that are longer and more detailed. Instead of just saying, “Restaurants nearby,” they might ask, “Where can I find a restaurant nearby that’s open 24 hours and serves buffalo wings?” And as those questions get harder, that implies new types of information that we need to figure out how to source or create, so that we can do a better job answering those questions.We also just pay attention to how the world is changing. So for example, more and more users these days are not using Maps just to drive in cars but also to do last-mile walking navigation or to do a chain of different modes of transportation to get from here to there. Those are areas where we need to get better at stitching together the things we do to make those experiences simpler or seamless.And then also thinking about, How do we take this understanding of these experiences and take them to as many places as we possibly can? I think sometimes we sit here in the Bay Area or in the U.S. or some parts of the world and think that mapping is becoming a solved problem. Well, first of all, it’s not. I can tell you lots of ways in which it’s not even here, but you look at other parts of the world and we’re many, many years behind what I would consider the state of the art in terms of just having the basics of having the road networks mapped, having the local businesses on the maps. And that’s something that we’re also deeply committed to, making sure that we really do build maps for the entire world. There’s a lot of territory still to cover there.FC: And is that not complete just because it takes a lot of time to get to every place, or are there places where it’s inherently more of a challenge?JF: One of the really exciting things we’ve seen happen over the last couple of years is some breakthroughs and changes in how we actually build the maps themselves. And so what used to be much more of a manual, brute-force approach of map making is rapidly evolving towards an approach that’s much more based on a combination of automated signals, user-generated content, machine-learning models, and automation. What that’s allowing us to do is pick up the pace with which we can expand all the places that we map. It’s something where I would say I see us continuing to accelerate. The world just remains very, very large.“I don’t consider mapping a solved problem anywhere”FC: In somewhere like the Bay Area, where you even have the pathways within a park mapped now, there’s potential to do things beyond what you’ve done so far?JF: I don’t consider mapping a solved problem anywhere in the world. To use your example, we might now have sidewalks or pathways through a park, but we still, by and large, don’t necessarily know which parks have playgrounds or which parks have barbecue pits. If you’re trying to plan an outing with your child or an event with your family, those are pretty important things that are going to deeply influence your decision about whether that’s a good park for you to choose for your next outing.That’s just one example. It’s increasingly not enough for us to know just that there is a coffee shop on the corner over there. If you’re trying to decide whether to spend your Friday night studying at that café, it’s going to be really important to know if there’s a rock band playing there, or if it’s going to be a quiet, cozy setting.I can give you a million examples like that. As you shift from thinking about whether it’s enough to know about all the places in the world to, “What do I need to know to make a really high-quality decision about my needs with respect to that place on the world?” you quickly uncover a whole lot of information that frankly isn’t on the map today. In many cases, isn’t necessarily available in digital format today. All of that is still to come.“It’s . . . a very, very hard technical problem”FC: The demo you did at Google I/O of Google Lens functionality within Maps looked like it might be transformative. Do you expect things like augmented reality will fundamentally change how we interact with Maps in a way that is different from this experience we’ve known all along?JF: We’re really excited about the walking navigation AR experience that we showed at I/O. In particular because it does start to blur the lines between the physical and the digital world in some pretty interesting ways. It’s a fundamentally different mode of understanding what’s around you than we’ve ever had before.Take walking as an example. It’s a task that is currently, frankly, kind of awkward. I’m having to look up and down at my phone, I’m having to do this complicated mental process of translating what I see on this 2-D map on the screen in front of me to the 3-D physical world out there, including which direction my phone is pointing versus which direction my is head pointing. Do I understand which direction the phone thinks its compass is pointing? When you put a camera in front of it, that whole mental gymnastics of translation goes away. So I do think there’s an opportunity to take some of these experiences that work, but awkwardly so, and rethink them in new ways.Having said that, it’s also a very, very hard technical problem. So one that we’re paying particular attention to make sure that when we do that one-to-one mapping between the physical world and our digital understanding of it, that we get it right.FC: Any final thoughts?JF: We’ve been really centered, for much of Maps’ history to date, on this question of how we help you get from here to there. We’ll continue to strive to be even better at that in more ways and more places. But we’re increasingly broadening that to also get better at helping you explore and understand the world around you. We talk about this as helping you discover the world around you in new ways, helping you explore what’s nearby you right now, helping you find and discover things that you might otherwise not have known about.We’re also thinking about how to increasingly put a proactive spin on that. How do we not just wait for you to come and ask us the question that you might have, but how do we find the right sort of subtle, respectful ways to also tell you that there might be information about the world that’s important to you that maybe you want to know about. For example, if there’s a new restaurant opening in your neighborhood, that might be something that you might not know to ask about, but that might be super helpful, if there’s a way for you to know that that’s coming. That’s a very simple example, but you can imagine lots of others.

Good morning, here are our early stories:---- The Next Big Focus In The Russia Investigations: Social Media.-- Uber To Lose License In London: 'Not Fit And Proper', City Says.-- Snow Falls In The Sierra Nevada On Summer's Last Full Day.And here are more early headlines:North Korea Threatens To Test Hydrogen Bomb In Pacific. (USA Today)Man Charged With Attempted Murder In London Tube Bombing. (BBC)Hurricane Maria Brings Hurricane Conditions To Turks And Caicos. (NHC)Iran Vows To Beef Up Missile Capabilities. (VOA)Mexican Rescuers Search Quake Collapsed Buildings. (Al Jazeera)Spanish Police Arrest New Man Over Barcelona Attacks. (AFP)Nepal Says It Will Do Its Own Height Survey Of Everest. (Telegraph)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty’s stone pedestal to protest U.S. immigration policy declared in federal court on Monday she would do it again to call attention to the plight of families separated at the border and was found guilty of trespassing. Therese Okoumou, Statue of Liberty climber, is seen at the United States Courthouse in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., December 17, 2018. REUTERS/Jeenah MoonTherese Patricia Okoumou, 44, was also convicted of interfering with governmental administration and disorderly conduct before a U.S. magistrate judge in New York City. Each misdemeanor count carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail, according to Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York. Okoumou, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who the New York Daily News said became a U.S. citizen in 2016, remains free pending her sentencing on March 5, Biase said. In a statement announcing the guilty verdict, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Okoumou’s actions “went well beyond peaceable protest.” “It was a crime that put people at grave risk,” Berman said, calling her conduct “dangerous and reckless.” Okoumou was arrested on July 4 after she scaled the base of the statue and began a three-hour standoff with police that led to the evacuation of the landmark in the midst of the U.S. Independence Day holiday. She and her lawyer later said her act of civil disobedience was primarily a demonstration against the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from parents who were caught crossing the U.S. border illegally. Administration officials said the policy was needed to secure the border, but it was ended in June after images of separated youngsters held in cage-like detention facilities sparked a furor both at home and abroad. Testifying in her own defense on Monday, Okoumou was asked by her attorney, Ron Kuby, whether she would repeat her protest under the same circumstances. She answered, “Yes.” “As long as our children are being placed in cages, my moral values call for me to do something about it,” she said in court, according to Kuby and the Daily News account. Reporting by New York bureau staff; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, Editing by Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The United Nations general assembly met in New York this week, affording Donald Trump his first opportunity to address the world body as president. He duly gave a bellicose speech in which he said that if provoked, the United States “will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”.The White House pushed back at a Wall Street Journal report that Trump was looking for ways to avoid exiting the Paris climate accords. “There has been no change in the United States’ position on the Paris agreement,” a spokesperson said. “As the president has made abundantly clear, the United States is withdrawing unless we can re-enter on terms that are more favorable to our country.”In a bilateral appearance at the UN with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Trump mentioned how impressed he had been with the military parade he saw in Paris earlier this year and said he would like one of those for himself.“To a large extent, because of what I witnessed [in France], we may do something like that on 4 July in Washington down Pennsylvania Avenue, if I have your approval,” Trump told Macron. “I don’t know. We’re gonna have to try and top it, but we had a lot of planes going over and a lot of military might.”It was also revealed in a CNN report citing unnamed sources that the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been the target of a secret wiretap by the US government before and during the presidential election. Any revelations from the wiretap were not disclosed.Trump appeared before the UN general assembly and made eyeballs pop with the line: “If [the US] is forced to defend ourselves or our allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” Trump also suggested that he may yet seek to unravel the Iran nuclear deal, which he called “an embarrassment to the United States”.The speech was met with stony silence and occasional outbursts of perhaps disbelief. The White House chief of staff, John Kelly, listened with face planted firmly in palm.In reply to a major and deadly earthquake that struck Mexico City, Trump tweeted: “God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you.”A Manafort spokesman responded to news of the wiretapping with a statement implying that Manafort had been the victim of a political vendetta and demanding an investigation into what he called the “leak” of the wiretap information. “Mr Manafort requests that the Department of Justice release any intercepts involving him and any non-Americans so interested parties can come to the same conclusion as the DoJ – there is nothing there,” the statement concluded.The US health secretary Tom Price’s travel itinerary last week included five charter jet flights that cost taxpayers an estimated $60,000, according to a Politico report. Price is a supposed budget hawk.In action at the UN, Trump, sitting with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, had this to say of prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace: “Who knows? Stranger things have happened. But I think we have a good chance.”After the Senate announced that it would hold a vote next week on a plan to dismantle Barack Obama’s healthcare law, Trump chimed in, tweeting: “I hope Republican Senators will vote for Graham-Cassidy and fulfill their promise to Repeal & Replace ObamaCare. Money direct to States!”Trump remained at the UN general assembly in New York and continued to meet world leaders, including the presidents of Afghanistan, Ukraine, Japan, Turkey and South Korea. A day later, he posted this video:He also kept up his support for the latest GOP healthcare bill, tweeting: “I would not sign Graham-Cassidy if it did not include coverage of pre-existing conditions. It does! A great Bill. Repeal & Replace.”Experts agreed: the bill would in fact have a negative effect on coverage of pre-existing conditions.Trump extended his war of words with Kim Jong-un after the North Korean leader took a swipe at him in a state television broadcast. Kim called Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard” and said he would “pay dearly” for threatening to destroy his regime.Trump fired back on Twitter: “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!”North Korea threatened to test a nuclear bomb in the Pacific Ocean.On Friday evening, Trump headed to Alabama for a rally on behalf of the Senate appointee Luther Strange in the Republican primary race to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he became attorney general. “Will be in Alabama tonight,” Trump tweeted. “Luther Strange has gained mightily since my endorsement, but will be very close. He loves Alabama, and so do I!”Strange’s opponent, hardline conservative judge Roy Moore, led most polls.On healthcare, Trump had started the day by tweeting: “Rand Paul, or whoever votes against Hcare Bill, will forever (future political campaigns) be known as ‘the Republican who saved ObamaCare.’”By late afternoon the bill appeared headed for yet another failure after the Arizona senator Jon McCain – who cast the decisive third no vote against its predecessor in July – announced that he would vote no. Trump did not immediately respond. Topics Trump administration Tracking Trump US politics Paul Manafort blogposts

Former FBI director James Comey has outed himself on Twitter as the person behind the account of Reinhold Niebuhr.Speculation had been rife that Comey was the owner of the account after Gizmodo writer Ashley Feinberg in March followed a trail of crumbs that ended with Niebuhr’s private account.The trail got much warmer after Niebuhr tweeted an Anchorman meme with the slogan “Actually I am not even mad, that’s amazing” and a link to the FBI jobs page.The only thing missing was explicit confirmation from Comey, which came on Monday when, tweeting from Iowa, he posted a picture of himself standing in the middle of a road with sunglasses on, looking out across cornfields.Shortly later a friend of Comey’s confirmed that the account did belong to the former FBI chief.Comey, who has remained out of the public eye since he was fired by Donald Trump in May, is currently writing a book about his time in government.On Friday, he had tweeted about how good it was to be back in the Hawkeye State, which is the site of the primaries and a key swing state. Over the weekend, Comey had been seen dining at 801 Chophouse in Des Moines, the must-stop steakhouse for the political elite eyeing the state’s quadrennial presidential caucuses.However, Comey was not, it appears, taking the fledgling steps of those who would seek the office Trump now holds. He was visiting his in-laws.Damon Murphy, general manager of 801 Chophouse, said Comey was visiting with his wife Patrice, an Iowa native, whose father was celebrating his 90th birthday. Murphy said Comey and party “quietly enjoyed their meal.”Associated Press contributed to this report Topics James Comey Iowa Twitter Blogging Digital media Internet

The case is a rare example of a nun publicly accusing a Church superior of wrongdoing. Mulakkal's arrest in September followed weeks of protest by nuns in Kerala calling for his prosecution. Last week, a local court in Kerala granted him bail, attaching the condition that he leave the state, except for his appearances before investigators. Following his release, he returned to Punjab to a hero's welcome, with supporters cheering as he made his way home.The 44-year-old nun, who has not been named, first filed a police report in June, accusing Mulakkal of raping her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. She alleged the abuse occurred while Mulakkal was staying in Kerala in a guest house belonging to the St. Francis Mission Home.At the time, Mulakkal was the bishop of Jalandhar, a city in Punjab. His diocese said the bishop was a frequent visitor to Kerala for church-related events.Earlier in August, an advocacy group filed a petition on behalf of the nun, asking for the immediate arrest of Mulakkal, but the Kerala High Court declined to intervene, saying the delay in bringing charges was understandable given the amount of time that has passed since the alleged abuse. As the case dominated headlines in India, Mulakkal temporarily stepped down from his position in September.It was the second time in two months the nun's supporters had unsuccessfully petitioned the court to intervene, leading to renewed accusations that state politicians and Catholic leaders were working behind the scenes to suppress the case. The Catholic Church has been battling allegations of sexual abuse around the world, especially against minors, for years. In an unusually blunt letter released last month, Pope Francis acknowledged that the church had historically failed to address properly wrongdoing by priests.Christianity is a minority religion in India, practiced by 2.3% of the population, according to the most recent census data, but Kerala is home to a sizable Christian community that dates back hundreds of years. The majority are Catholics. According to recent government figures, the southern state is home to more than 6 million Christians, or 19% of the population. Communities there draw their heritage from Thomas the Apostle, who is traditionally believed to have traveled to India to preach the gospel in the first century.

The transformation can be traced back to Nov. 8. 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi stunned the country by banning 86% of the money in circulation. India's tens of millions of small firms, which analysts say account for 40% of the economy and provide 80% of its jobs, were particularly hard hit because they usually do business only in cash. "It's been a terrible year," said Vinod Gupta, who owns a factory in Naraina producing plastic goods such as bottle caps and fobs for car keys. "90% of our business has been wiped out." Gupta said he had to lay off more than half his workers, as have other business owners in the area, which produces everything from steel to electronics. "Where there were fifteen workers before, now there are three," he added. "Soon we might have to ask even them to go home." Modi's ban on 500 rupee ($7.70) and 1,000 rupee ($15.40) notes -- the two largest denominations at the time -- was followed by another huge change this year that also hurt small businesses. Related: What happened when India trashed its cash The government implemented an overhaul of India's tax system in July to replace a complex web of state tariffs with a single national tax. Small firms have struggled to adapt. India's economic growth has slumped to a three-year low of 5.7% as a result. Two million people lost their jobs in the first six months of 2017. "It is clear that [the cash ban] severely damaged output and incomes over the past year," analysts at Capital Economics wrote in a research note this week. India has 100 million small firms Praveen Chakravarty, an economic commentator and analyst at the IDFC Institute in Mumbai, estimates that India has 100 million small and medium-sized firms that play a vital role in the economy. They're also vulnerable to sudden policy change. "They are predominantly cash based, employ less than ten employees on average and are outside the tax net," he told CNNMoney. "They are informal because they can't afford the costs of formality." Modi's predecessor Manmohan Singh, an economist and former finance minister, said on Tuesday that the cash ban and tax reform had "broken the back" of small businesses. The government says its policies will benefit India in the long run by bringing more people under the country's notoriously small tax net and promoting digital payments. Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday called the cash ban "a watershed moment" that Indians would later look back on "with a great sense of pride." Gupta, the Delhi plastics manufacturer, is not convinced. "The note ban, taxation -- they must have had some strategy behind doing it, I'm not saying that they didn't," he said. "But they should have shown a little leniency to small business owners like us." Related: India's economy in 'downward spiral.' What did Modi get wrong? The warehouse opposite Gupta's, meanwhile, was devoid of activity except for two carpenters contracted to build an office for the owner. Workers like them, who depend on daily wages, are now struggling to make ends meet. The duo said they used to be busy all month, but now work less than 10 days on an average. "The expenses are piling up for laborers like us, while the rich aren't feeling anything," said one of them, Mohammad Sagir. "There's no point of a government that lets poor workers starve to death."

The news cycle moves incredibly fast these days. There’s the drama of judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court; the question of who wrote the anonymous editorial in the New York Times that revealed the existence of a resistance movement within the Trump administration; and the impending political showdown in Europe after the United Kingdom charged two men it says are Russian secret agents in the Novichok poisoning case. But lost among these headlines is a story that shouldn’t fade into the background: The US government recently revealed that 416 migrant children remain in government custody, separated from their families–14 of whom are under the age of five.In a joint status update (pdf) filed with the District Court for the Southern District of California on Thursday (Sept. 6), the ACLU said that of the 416 children still under custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), 199 were the children of parents who had waived their rights to reunification. But Jacob Soboroff, a correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC who has been covering the family separation crisis since it began earlier this year, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that parents of migrant kids still in ORR custody were being pressured into signing away their right to be reunified with their children. Meanwhile, the ACLU, in its joint status update, said that dozens of parents are being denied reunification with their children based on questionable allegations of criminal histories and other red flags.The brief discusses the case of a mother who was denied reunification with her four-year-old child (who was three when he was first detained), based on an outstanding warrant from her home country, which alleges that she is a gang member. But, as lawyers for the ACLU write:The mother denies this allegation, and at her immigration bond hearing, the immigration judge expressly found that this warrant was not sufficient evidence that the mother was a danger to the community. Defendants have nevertheless refused to reunify this family based on the parent’s alleged criminal history. This child is suffering greatly in detention and is at particular risk of grievous and irreparable harm.The short- and long-term impact that family separations have on children cannot be overstated–especially when it comes to kids under five years old, who are going through the most critical phase of human development. The separation causes stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, to flood their systems. Over time, those hormones can cause learning and behavioral problems, physical and mental health issues, and, if the separation becomes permanent, immune system deficiencies, cardiovascular problems, and can even alter the physical structure of the brain.The longer the separation, the worse the impact of the stress is likely to be–which is not good news for the 416 children who have been alone, in government custody, since June.Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, told Quartz that separating kids from their parents is one of the worst things we can do to them: “Here we have taken away what science has said is the most potent protector of children in the face of any adversity—the stability of the parent-child relationship.”As he explains: “This is not a scientific issue—it’s a fundamental, moral disaster.”Read more from our series on Rewiring Childhood. This reporting is part of a series supported by a grant from the Bernard van Leer Foundation. The author’s views are not necessarily those of the Bernard van Leer Foundation.

Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, protests in Gaza and the shredding of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon – the week captured by the world’s best photojournalists

"Investigation further revealed that the fraud was allegedly perpetrated despite the knowledge of senior officials of Punjab National Bank, who did not implement the circulars and caution notices issued by the Reserve Bank of India regarding safeguarding the SWIFT operations and instead, misrepresented the factual situation to RBI," according to a statement from the CBI last year.The CBI has raided dozens of offices and seized property worth millions of dollars belonging to Modi, who denies all wrongdoing. He has already been charged by the bureau for criminal conspiracy, fraud and corruption.Forbes once ranked Modi as India's 85th richest man, with a net worth of $1.8 billion.India election 2019: latest updatesHis arrest may have an impact on upcoming Indian elections due to take place in May.The discovery of the alleged fraud and Modi's refusal to return to India to face criminal charges has increased pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- no relation to Nirav Modi -- who promised to fight corruption in India.Tuesday's arrest and the possibility of extradition could help to improve the Prime Minister's tarnished image.Rahul Gandhi, leader of the principle opposition party Congress, has repeatedly attacked PM Modi on his failure to bring fugitives back to India.In 2016, liquor baron Vijay Mallya left the country owning an estimated $1.6 billion to 17 Indian banks.The process for Mallya's extradition to India is ongoing. He has denied fleeing the country over his debts and described charges of fraud and money laundering as "false, fabricated and baseless."

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will prosecute former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei for graft after an investigation found he spent “lavish” amounts of state funds, abused his power and refused to follow Communist Party decisions, its anti-corruption watchdog said on Wednesday. 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 Reuters/File PhotoInterpol, the global police coordination agency based in France, last October said Meng had resigned as its president, days after his wife reported him missing after he traveled back to his home country. The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said Meng Hongwei was suspected of taking bribes and causing serious harm to the party’s image and state’s interests, adding he should be severely dealt with. The watchdog issued its statement after Chinese President Xi Jinping returned from a state visit to France, where Emmanuel Macron raised the issue of human rights in China and certain specific cases, a French presidency official said. The anti-graft body said Meng Hongwei had “refused to enact decisions of the party center” and abused his power for private gain. He “wantonly and lavishly spent state funds to satisfy his family’s luxurious lifestyle”, it said. Meng also used his position to help his wife get a job and illegally took a “huge amount of possessions” from other people in exchange for help with promotions and job moves and “company operations”, the statement said, without giving details. Meng has been expelled from the party and his case been handed to legal authorities for prosecution, the statement said. It has not been possible to reach Meng for comment since he was detained, and unclear if he has been allowed a lawyer. Meng’s wife, Grace Meng, told French television on Sunday that she had written to Macron ahead of Xi’s trip seeking his help protecting their “fundamental human rights”. Her lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment on the anti-corruption body’s allegations. France’s interior and justice ministries did not respond to Reuters’ questions. Meng is certain to be found guilty when his case eventually comes to trial as the courts are controlled by the party and will not challenge its accusations. Meng, who was also a deputy Chinese public security minister, became president of the global police cooperation agency in late 2016 as China widened its bid to secure leadership posts in international organizations. His appointment prompted concern at the time from rights groups that Beijing might try to leverage his position to pursue dissidents abroad. Under Xi, China has pursued a sweeping crackdown on official corruption. Reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Richard Lough and Marine Pennetier in Paris and Catherine Lagrange in Lyon; Editing by Robert Birsel, Clarence Fernandez, William MacleanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image Kativ/Getty Images Kativ/Getty Images The Federal Communications Commission has launched an investigation into a phone and Internet outage that disrupted 911 services across the country starting Thursday.The telecommunications giant CenturyLink, based in Monroe, La., says the outage began at 8:18 a.m. ET on Thursday. The website Down Detector says it primarily affected Western states, but emergency service providers on both coasts reported disruptions. CenturyLink has said "a network element ... was impacting customer services" but has offered no further details on the cause of the outage or the number of customers affected."When an emergency strikes, it's critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a press release Friday. "The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling."On Friday afternoon, more than 24 hours after first reporting the outage, CenturyLink's Twitter feed said: "While our network is experiencing service disruptions, where CenturyLink is the 911 service provider 911 calls are completing." The tweet followed an earlier one that prompted ridicule, in which CenturyLink suggested its customers drive to fire stations if they couldn't call 911.Social media posts from emergency service providers and media outlets from Boston to Tacoma, Wash., posted messages like this one, from the Helena, Mont., police department Thursday. Lewis and Clark County 911 reports that we are being affected by a nationwide CenturyLink outage early this morning. ...Posted by Helena Montana Police Department on Thursday, December 27, 2018 As 911 appeared to be restored in some areas, emergency managers continued to advise residents of local 10-digit numbers that could take emergency calls.Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Numbers Association, says that while small, localized 911 outages are fairly common and quickly repaired, outages affecting a large enough population to prompt an FCC investigation are not.The FCC says its last investigation of a 911 outage was launched in March of last year. It fined AT&T $5.25 million for two nationwide outages in March and May 2017 that lasted a total of approximately six hours and resulted in the failure of 15,200 failed 911 calls.In addition to disrupting 911 services, the CenturyLink outage also caused outages of Verizon network services in at least two states, New Mexico and Montana. Some ATMs in Montana and Idaho also failed to work, and at the North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, Colo., doctors and nurses for a time had difficulty accessing patient records.CenturyLink calls itself "the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers." Its growth in the Western states was driven by mergers like its acquisition of Denver-based QWest, approved by the FCC in 2011. Last year the FCC approved CenturyLink's purchase of Level-3 Communications in a deal valued at approximately $34 billion.

Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device Video Man saves rabbit from California wildfires Footage has captured the moment a man stopped his car to rescue a wild rabbit from wildfires in California.The incident took place on 101 freeway in La Conchita. More than 150 homes have been destroyed in the Ventura area, near Los Angeles, and 50,000 people evacuated.

Religious privilege of this sort was never intended for all belief systems, but rather for one type of religion. Sure, its advocates will on occasion rope in representatives of non-Christian faiths to lend the illusion of principle to their cause. But the real aim and effect of the religious liberty movement is to advance their idea of religion at the expense of everyone else.If your religion or deeply held moral beliefs include the view that all people should be treated with equal dignity, then this religious liberty won’t do anything for you. If you’re a taxpayer who helps to fund your local hospital, a patient who keeps it in business, or a professional who works there, then your sincerely held religious and moral conviction that all people are entitled to equal access to the best medicine that science can provide and the law permits won’t stand a chance against a Catholic bishop’s conviction that some procedures are forbidden by a higher authority.Today’s Christian nationalists will insist they are the only victims here. But that is as false as it is lacking in compassion. The terribly real effect of the kind of religious supremacy they seek is to target specific groups of people as legitimate objects of contempt. L.G.B.T. Americans, women and members of non-favored religions may be able to get the services they need from some other pharmacist or cake decorator or retirement home or emergency room — at least we have to hope so. But what they won’t get back is the equal dignity to which they are entitled — and that’s the point.President Trump, as part of his kickback to the white evangelicals who got him elected, has fashioned this idea of religious supremacy into a cornerstone of his shambolic administration. In January 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services set up an office designed to make it easier for health care professionals to deprive their clients of medical services, including birth control and other forms of reproductive care, on the basis of religious belief. In July, Attorney General Jeff Sessions followed up with his own Religious Liberty Task Force. Already the Department of Labor is assuring federal contractors that it’s all right to violate anti-discrimination law as long as they can claim they did it on account of an implicitly defined set of religious or deeply held moral beliefs.All of these detestable initiatives, however, are really just a preview of the damage Brett Kavanaugh would be able to deliver from the Supreme Court.To understand the significance of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, you have to know something about how he got to this crowning point in his career. Judge Kavanaugh comes from a hothouse carefully tended by the ideologues of the Federalist Society and given the stamp of approval by Mr. Trump’s court evangelicals and conservative Catholics. Having lost the so-called culture war on women’s and L.G.B.T. rights among the general public, Christian nationalists understand that the only way for their regressive views to dominate is if they control the courts.The confirmation process brought to you by today’s Republican Party only serves to confirm the antidemocratic nature of Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment. Republicans defaulted on their Constitutional obligation to advise and consent on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. But now they are aiming to push Judge Kavanaugh’s through without anything close to a full revelation of his documentary trail.

Good morning, here are our early stories:-- 'A Close Personal Relationship' Under Pressure As Trump Hosts Macron.-- Alexa, Tell Me A National Security Secret: Amazon's Reach Goes Beyond The Post Office.And here are more early headlines:Paris Bombing Suspect Convicted In Separate Brussels Attack. (BBC)Pompeo Nomination Facing Opposition In Senate Committee. (AP)Service Honors New Mexico Woman Killed On Southwest Flight. (Albuquerque Journal)Former NYC Mayor Bloomberg To Donate $4.5 Million To Fight Climate Change. (CBS)Armenian Protest Leader Detained After P.M. Leaves Meeting. (CNN)Paraguay Elects Conservative With Link to Dictator As President. (Los Angeles Times)Suspected Alabama Tornado Injures 5. (Alabama Public Radio)Catch The End Of The Lyrid Meteor Shower. (WLOS)Man Survives Shark Attack After Bear Mauling, Snake Bite. (BBC)

There’s a fire sale happening in Indian telecom, and that has turned the sector into the hottest destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) flowing into the country.In financial year 2018, FDI inflows into communication services touched over $8.8 billion (around Rs63,000 crore), rising nearly 50% from the previous fiscal, according to the provisional numbers the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released last week in its annual report. This increase has for the first time helped telecom dethrone manufacturing, which had received the biggest share of FDI for the last nine years, according to the central bank’s report.In financial year 2017, manufacturing had received around $11 billion in inflows.One of the key reasons for telecom’s prominence in FDI is the heavy losses the industry has suffered in recent years, particularly since the disruptive entry of Reliance Jio in November 2016. Jio has offered data and voice-calling services at extremely low rates, kicking off a brutal price war that is bleeding the industry dry.Profitability has nosedived, forcing global players to quit the scene and other smaller ones to consolidate or shut shop.For instance, Telenor and Docomo have exited India. Aircel is filing for bankruptcy following its failed merger talks with Reliance Communications, which is also close to bankruptcy. Vodafone India and Idea Cellular have merged, leaving Airtel as the only major firm standing on its own.To raise funds and absorb the heavy losses, companies are also putting their assets on the market. This, in turn, has caught the attention of international giants.“There was an increase in investment by global players such as American Tower Corporation (ATC) in telecom tower assets. Surviving telecom players such as Vodafone also had to infuse greater private equity to keep going,” said Tanu Sharma, associate director at India Ratings.Boston-based ATC is buying 20,000 towers from Vodafone and Idea. The two firms had put their standalone towers on sale after deciding to merge.Canadian investment group Brookfield had agreed to buy the telecom towers of the beleaguered Reliance Communications, but the deal fell apart after the latter called off its proposed merger with Aircel. Brookfield is now looking to buy towers from other players in the country.However, telecom’s FDI share has also been growing steadily over the past four years, since the Indian government lifted the 74% cap on FDI in the sector in 2013.India’s overall FDI growth has been wobbly since the election of the Narendra Modi government in 2014. That year, annual FDI growth rose over 54%, but by financial year 2017, it had tanked to 0.08%.In financial year 2018, FDI grew only by 2.89% to $37.37 billion.“During the initial years of the (Modi) government, there were huge expectations of change,” said Himanshu Srivastava, senior analyst and manager research at Morningstar. “Later, as reality settled in, expectations got realigned.”Cheap oil prices since 2014 and slow growth in developed economies also made India more attractive to investors, according to Devendra Pant, chief economist and head of public finance at India Ratings.“Developed markets were not growing. China was slowing down. India was among the best in the world, with robust macroeconomic indicators. Inflation was under control, growth was high, and the trade deficit appeared to be under control,” Pant said. “But once oil prices started rebounding, the country’s true strength began reflecting across these indicators.”Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly mentioned that Airtel and Reliance Communication had merged.

The justices have been complicit in this, all too happy to intervene — for instance, in Roe v. Wade in 1973, Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Citizens United in 2010. The court would have us believe it’s only a bystander, but the reality is that the justices have virtually total control over which cases they hear. Too many times the court steps into the fray purely because it can. Just as bad, when the justices should get involved — not to pick winners and losers in ideological battles, but to correct structural flaws in the electoral process or to protect minority rights — they often shrink from their duty. The cases on partisan gerrymandering that the court ducked in June, for example, were precisely the type it ought to be resolving.The court’s arrogance enfeebles Congress. Lawmakers recognize there’s little benefit in doing their jobs if, in the end, the court is going to resolve the hard questions anyway. This is why many reformers and activists focus on the court. Witness the money and energy expended on litigating, say, abortion. When demonstrators convene outside the Supreme Court, they surely miss the irony that they’re marching right past the Capitol across the street.Under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., we have a court of blue chambers and red chambers. It wasn’t always that way. In the past, presidents weren’t driven solely by hyperpartisan agendas for the court, in part because the court wasn’t in the maelstrom of so many divisive issues as it is today. Yes, justices sometimes disappointed the presidents who appointed them — like Earl Warren, selected by Dwight D. Eisenhower to be chief in 1953, and David H. Souter, picked by George H.W. Bush in 1990. But now, thanks to more cynical vetting, nominees act on the bench the way the presidents who chose them expected. Barack Obama got what he wanted with Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. So, too, in most votes, did George W. Bush with John Roberts and Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Bill Clinton with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. When the votes in contentious cases can be predicted at the outset, constitutional law simply becomes partisan politics by another name. If you typically know beforehand how justices will vote based on which president appointed them, then what’s the point of having a court that, in theory, operates above politics?