One kidney: That’s what a Washington DC-based Indian-origin scientist thinks Apple’s newest gadget is worth in India.The joke wouldn’t be lost on his countrymen who’ll have to shell out up to Rs1,02,000 ($1,594) for the company’s newest gadgets.Apple launched its latest smartphone models—the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X—on Sept. 12 in the US, and (like every time) the devices come at a premium in India.Here’s the price list: Model 64GB (In Rs) 256GB (In Rs) iPhone 8 64,000 77,000 iPhone 8 Plus 73,000 86,000 iPhone X 89,000 1,02,000 (Source: NDTV Gadgets)The models will be launched in India on Nov. 03 and pre-orders will be accepted from Oct. 27. Unsurprisingly, social media users in the country are already tickled.And in case you have that kind of money to spare on something that’s likely to be outdated in a year, may we suggest some alternatives to splurge on:An overseas trip: For less than what the lower-end iPhone X costs, you could spend seven days in Spain, including airfare and sightseeing excursions of Madrid and Zaragoza. In fact, you could even take someone along to Indonesia, Thailand, or Singapore.High-end gym membership: Think healthy. Even the annual membership to the popular Gold’s Gym costs Rs35,100 (in Bengaluru), less than half of what an iPhone 8 Plus costs.Sponsor a child for over eight years: At the price of the cheapest model, you could sponsor a child’s education for over 100 months. NGO World Vision’s child support programme costs just Rs800 a month and ensures education, healthcare, and clean drinking water.Motorbikes/cars:Enough said.Of course, there are also several second-hand cars that cost only as much as the latest iPhones.Gaming: Buy an XBox One console and several games for it for the price of an iPhone8. Besides gaming, it lets users browse the web, make calls via Skype on a big screen, and even save money on a gym membership (by working out with Kinect).Run your house for months: If you live in a metro, the money spent on a top-end iPhone X could cover your household expenditure for five months; if you live in an under-developed rural area, it could go up to 10 months. The average monthly household expense in metro cities is Rs20,227; in under-developed rural India, it is Rs9,423, according to a 2016 survey.Two iPhones: If your heart is set on an iPhone, you could settle for an older version—even the immediate predecessor of the latest models. And why just one? You could buy two iPhone 7s for the price of a top-end iPhone X.No doubt the new models have new features like a glass back for wireless charging (iPhone 8) and facial recognition option (iPhone X), but not many seem sold on those.

Air Ink, a brand new concept by India-basedGraviky Labs, uses polluted air to create paint and ink. The company's first line of Air Ink products includes pens, oil-based paints and spray paints. Each product contains pigments made from carbon soot.The ink is the brainchild of Graviky Labs founderAnirudh Sharma, who describes himself as a chronic inventor. Sharma previously createdLeChal, a smart shoe fitted with sensors that help the visually-impaired walk, through gentle vibrations.In a recent partnership with Tiger Beer, Graviky Labs tested its soot-based product in Hong Kong -- which is known for its high pollution -- and put it in the hands of local artists. 9 artists were invited to paint murals with the ink in the city's Sheung Wan district.Sharma was first inspired to create Air Ink after a conversation with his friends in India, during which, many complained about how heavy air pollution would leave marks on their clothes. Painting with pollution He experimented with the idea as a researcher atMIT media lab, and then went on to start Graviky Labs in India -- further developing the concept."I thought, artists create their work through smudging, marks, ink and paint. How do we tackle this air pollution problem creatively, like an artist would? What if we used art as a way to repurpose this carbon soot?"So for the past three years, Sharma's team at Graviky Labs have researched just that -- how to capture, purify and re-purpose carbon soot, and turn it into an usable paint for art.Car emissions are one of the biggest contributing factors of India's serious pollution woes. The air in Delhi, for example, was rated as having theworld's most polluted air (with the highest concentration of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers) by the World Health Organization in 2014."Because of this, we wanted to create technology that can capture a vehicle's carbon emissions without compromising the performance of the vehicle."The carbon soot is first captured using a cylindric device that is fit over the car's exhaust pipe. Next, Sharma says, the soot undergoes a purification process that removes heavy metals and carcinogens.Artist Caratoes paints on a wall in with Air Ink The purified carbon soot is then blended with other materials to turn it into a durable paint. "The soot is blended with oils to create oil-based paint, the spray paint is packaged with compressed gas and canned -- to a user, the end results are materials that function much like any other paint they use."Incredible paintings that actually breatheA single Air Ink pen, Sharma claims, contains 30-40 minutes of carbon emissions from a single car. "At this point we're experimenting further on how we can use this purified carbon. Maybe one day, we'll even create sculptures." The product is still in development and Sharma is hesitant to describe it as a product that can save the planet, just yet. But he explains that Air Ink's overall purpose is to reduce the amount of particulate matter in the air."The ink will confine the particulate matter (found) in emissions, that would have otherwise gone in our lungs."What we're doing at this point is repurposing a pollutant that makes people sick, is destroying our environment, and exists all around us in our air." Sharma says the lab's work with ink is far from complete -- currently his team is researching ways to produce the product on a larger scale, in the most efficient and environmentally safe way possible.Cath Love, an artist who participated in the Air Ink artist initiative Hong Kong, believes that the idea -- although still in its early stages -- is "genius, and deserves a chance.""I'm not a scientist, I can't tell you if this would leave a dent in the state of our environment. But this concept -- to make use of what we already have in the air, instead of extracting it from new materials -- really is a positive approach to creating sustainable art."

Spiralling up a hill in the heart of Caracas is a playful, ambitious building that once embodied Venezuela’s dreams of modernity, power and influence, and was fêted by Salvador Dalí and Pablo Neruda.Today, its crumbling concrete shell houses the headquarters of Venezuela’s intelligence services and the country’s most notorious political prison. It has become a symbol of national decay, bankrupt dreams and faltering democracy.Slums on the surrounding slopes obscure the aging Buckminster Fuller dome that tops its elegant coils, but the building can still be seen from around the capital, and casts a long shadow of fear.El Helicoide – as it was named in a nod to the geometry that inspired it – was conceived in the early 1950s as a shopping mall that would embody Venezuela’s wealth and confidence. Its curving lines are created by more than two miles of ramps in an interlocking helix, designed as a modern take on the high street.The design included space for 300 boutiques, and parking spaces for each. There were also plans for a hotel and galleries. But the building was never finished, and the shops never opened. Instead, areas earmarked for the sale of luxury goods were turned first into shelters for the homeless, then prison cells, police headquarters and eventually even torture chambers, described by former inmates as “hell on earth”.Several Venezuelan governments tried to remake El Helicoide as a museum or cultural centre, but all the efforts ended in failure. Its cells have never been as crowded as they are today, after months of street protests against the government of Nicolás Maduro that often turned violent. Support for his government has collapsed in the face of severe shortages of food and medicine, hyper-inflation and spiralling violence.The president blames foreign sabotage for the country’s problems, even though Venezuela sits on the world’s largest oil reserves, and he has responded to the unrest by jailing and blacklisting opponents, convening a legislative super-assembly to sideline the opposition controlled parliament, and even openly flirting with “becoming a dictator to guarantee prices for the people”.Celeste Olalquiaga, a cultural historian who grew up in Caracas, said: “El Helicoide is a metaphor for the whole modern period in Venezuela and what went wrong.” She has launched a project to document its extraordinary history and a book about the mall-turned jail.The transformation from icon of Venezuela’s hopes to emblem of failure and repression was slow and complicated. It began with a coup, stretched over decades of dictatorship and democracy, through the rule of 14 presidents and several cycles of oil boom and bust. Someone looking for bad omens might have found one in the name of the hill where it’s built, Roca Tarpeya; the Tarpeian Rock was an execution ground in ancient Rome.But after the project was unveiled in 1955, the first years of planning and construction were ones of steady progress and optimism. El Helicoide was so internationally celebrated that it was praised by Neruda, and Dali reportedly offered to help decorate the interior. But a 1958 coup that ousted the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez from power swept away dreams for the mall along with much else.El Helicoide was actually a private project, but Pérez Jiménez had become so famous for his grandiose construction plans that most Venezuelans assumed the dizzying mall was a state effort. As the country tried to move on from his brutal rule, everything associated with the ex-president was tainted – and that included El Helicoide. Without funding or support, the project collapsed and the near-finished building sat empty for years.Meanwhile, Caracas was changing around it. Wealthy residents of the city moved east, and slums expanded south, until they all but engulfed El Helicoide.The concrete shell, poured but never finished, became embroiled in legal action between the developers, the government and store owners who had made downpayments to purchase their space. Eventually in 1975 it came under government control.The lead Venezuelan architect Jorge Romero Gutiérrez had sunk so much of his once considerable fortune into it that its failure all but bankrupted him. It also damaged his reputation and destroyed his spirit, said Alberto Sato, an architect and professor based in Chile.Sato tracked down Romero – a personal hero of his – when he first came to Venezuela in the 1970s. He found a man bankrupted and broken by El Helicoide’s failure, who had largely abandoned architecture.That was his country’s loss, says Sato. “He was a type of madman, incredibly visionary,” pointing out that El Helicoide is one of the few Caracas buildings distinctive enough to identify easily from the air. “I think that he was one of the most important architects of the 1950s in Venezuela, but his work wasn’t treated as it deserved.”The building’s first permanent occupants did not move in until the mid-1970s, and could hardly have been further from original visions. When landslides swept away swathes of a nearby town, the government moved five hundred newly homeless families into temporary shelters on the ramps.Conditions were extremely basic: neither electricity nor water supplies had ever been installed, and so the building offered little more than protection from the elements.But that was attraction enough though for those who had lost everything, and before long, 2,000 families – 10,000 people – were crammed into the ramps, said Olalquiaga. Conditions were grim, and it soon became a centre for drug trafficking, prostitution and crime.In 1982, the families were cleared out, and Sato worked on a project to turn El Helicoide into a cultural centre. Romero wanted little to do with the building that had ruined his reputation.“He was too old, too tired, to have any real hope. I remember him saying ‘It’s cursed, you are not going to be able to do anything there,’ ” Sato said.Romero turned out to be correct, at least as far as Sato’s project was concerned. After a change of government in 1984 and a foreign currency crisis, El Helicoide slipped back into disuse. Worried about squatters returning, the government moved the secret police in the next year.Different iterations of the intelligence and security forces have been based in the building ever since 1985, with top floors serving as offices and the lower two as a jail. The cells are tiny and cramped, partly because of the deceptive nature of the building itself. It may look like a futuristic cruise liner, but most of its bulk comes from the hill that defines its basic form. The actual building is no more than the ramps spiralling up to the summit and back down.“When you visit El Helicoide you realise that between the rock, which takes most of the centre of the site, and the ramps, there is very little useable space,” said Olalquiaga, who was allowed inside on a visit in 2015.“It’s very anti-climactic, like a building equivalent of the Wizard of Oz. From outside you see a huge thing, but from inside you see that it’s kind of small,” she said. “I call it a living ruin as it’s semi-abandoned.”Even the indefatigable populist president Hugo Chávez was defeated by El Helicoide, which he described as both “cursed” and “very important”. At one point he ordered the intelligence services to leave and promised to turn the ramps into a social centre, but the officers and their prisoners never did depart and the grand project never materialised.There are no records of who was jailed in the early years. The first man known to have been held for his views was an astrologer, José Bernardo Gómez. He was arrested the 1990s for forecasting the impending death of the country’s then president, Rafael Caldera (who was then in his late 70s) – a crime that seems almost as strange as the building where he was held.“I was held prisoner at El Helicoide 21 years ago,” said Gómez, who is still reading the stars. “In those years the government (the president) reacted in this way because I had shared my astrological readings at a private event for businessmen.” (On his release in 1996, El Nacional newspaper quoted Gómez defiantly clinging to his reasons for seeing mortality in the alignment of Pluto, Uranus, Mars and the comet Chiron, though Caldera lived on until 2009.)Since then, hundreds of others have followed in Gómez’s footsteps, including both regular prisoners and those locked up for their political views. Rosmit Mantilla, an LGBT activist and opposition politician, said: “The Helicoide is the centre of torture in Venezuela. It’s a hell on earth.” Desginated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty, he spent two and a half years imprisoned in the building.He endured psychological torment and physical abuse, but believes he was spared the most extreme torture thanks to an international campaign for his release. He decided to compile a record of what he saw and heard from fellow prisoners, and has worked to raise awareness since his own release in November last year.He describes a routine of overcrowding and malnutrition, psychological pressure and sparse rations as universal. Some endured worse treatment.“There are at least three rooms used for torture, and we couldn’t sleep because we would hear the screams all night: people who would appear and disappear,” he said.Prisoners include both men and women, kept on separate floors. Tortures reported to Mantilla include people being beaten, electrocuted, hung by their limbs, forced into stress positions and forced to plunge their face into a bag of faeces and breathe in. Problems of overcrowding are now far worse. After months of political unrest and street protests, there are currently thought to be more than 300 people crammed into cells that already felt crowded with 80, according to the campaign group Una Ventana a la Libertad (A Window on Freedom). El Helicoide makes an unusually high-profile prison for political detainees: a landmark building visible from across the city. But the secret police are so unambiguously proud of their unique headquarters that in 2007 they issued a series of stamps to celebrate it. The fate of El Helicoide – built amid dreams of prosperity, but now in a state of slow decay – reflects Venezuela’s recent history. Spellbound by the promise of easy oil wealth, the country’s leaders focused on gleaming trophies and forgot the people they ruled, most of whom are still living in desperate poverty.Olalquiaga still hopes the building can be rescued from decay and its grim new reputation, by a government more dedicated to serving its people than controlling them. “What should happen is the one thing which has never happened, the communities that surround it should be asked what they want,” she said. “El Helicoide has suffered for all kinds of reasons, and it could and should be re-purposed. I don’t think things are doomed.” Topics Americas Architecture features

Scientists believe they are on the way to finding a cure for haemophilia A, the bleeding disorder that currently requires sufferers to inject themselves every other day to avoid life-threatening complications.One dose of a gene therapy given experimentally to 13 patients by NHS doctors in the UK has allowed them all to come off treatment. These were men – most sufferers are – who would not only bleed without stopping from an injury but would bleed into their joints even in their sleep causing pain and disability, without frequent injections of a clotting factor. None of them now bleeds spontaneously in that way.“I think it’s a huge step forward,” said Professor John Pasi, Haemophilia Centre director at Barts Health NHS Trust and one of the authors of the study. “Gene therapy for haemophilia has historically been the Holy Grail. Our patients have to treat themselves at least three times a week and even then they may still bleed. The treatment burden is massive.“The opportunity to give them a one-off treatment perhaps for a lifetime but maybe for many years is a huge opportunity. It could transform their care.”Patients were recruited from around England and all injected with a copy of the single gene responsible for causing blood to clot, which they were missing at birth. The treatment given at a low dose in the first two patients did not work. But the 13 subsequently treated at a higher dose have all stopped their regular injections. More than a year on, 11 of them have levels of the blood clotting protein Factor VIII that are at or near normal.The results of the trial in nine of the patients are published in the New England Journal of Medicine, together with an editorial by Dr H Marijke van den Berg, vice president of the World Federation of Haemophilia. She hails the trial and a second study into gene therapy for people with a resistant form of the rarer haemophilia B as “leading the way to a cure for haemophilia”.If the therapies can be perfected, she writes, “children born with this devastating disease could benefit from a life without bleeding.” The treatment would be particularly welcomed in the developing world, where patients cannot get access to clotting products, she points out.Globally, various types of haemophilia affect around 400,000 people. In the UK, around 2,000 people have severe haemophilia A. The best known sufferer historically was the young Russian Tsarevich Alexei, who had haemophilia B and whose treatment by the monk Rasputin has often been linked to the fall of the Imperial family.Scientists always thought it ought to be possible to find a gene therapy for haemophilia, but it has taken many years of unsuccessful attempts. One of the chief problems was finding a suitable virus to act as a delivery agent, or vector. The researchers have used an adeno-associated virus, which does not cause disease but could rule out the therapy for people whose immune system has encountered it in the past.The 13 patients will be closely followed to discover whether the therapy lasts and a bigger trial will need to be done before the treatment can be licensed. There will then be the issue of cost. “This is going to be hugely expensive therapy,” said Pasi. “The average cost in the UK of current treatment is £100,000 per year per patient for a lifetime. You can see what numbers can clock up. It is the elephant in the room.”Jake Omer, 29, who lives in Billericay with his wife and two small children, has been living with haemophilia all his life. For the last 18 months, since joining the trial, he has no longer had to give himself intravenous infusions. His levels of the blood clotting protein Factor VIII are higher than the average man in the street, he says.“It means I don’t have haemophilia any more. It’s crazy,” he said.Omer was two when he was diagnosed. “I was pottering about as a child and fell over in the kitchen and cut my lip. The bleeding didn’t stop. After one or two days of waking up in a pool of blood, I was taken to the hospital,” he said. Life for his parents in Romford then became one of anxiety and frequent trips to the Royal London Hospital.“They’d have to drive me to the Royal London and then hold me down to get the injection in,” he said. “I was back and forth every two or three weeks.” It got better when his mum was able to give him the infusions once he was six or seven and better still when he could do it himself, at the age of 11. “But you always have to be a little bit more careful than your mates when climbing trees or jumping over things on the bikes.” As an adult, he had to take holidays only in countries with excellent haemophilia centres, just in case. The bleeding that occurs into the joints caused arthritis in his ankles.“The gene therapy has changed my life,” he said. “I now have hope for my future. It is incredible to now hope that I can play with my kids, kick a ball around and climb trees well into my kids’ teenage years and beyond. The arthritis in my ankles meant I used to worry how far I would be able to walk once I turned 40. At 23 I struggled to run 100m to catch a bus; now at 29 I’m walking two miles every day which I just couldn’t have done before having the gene therapy treatment.” Topics Science Health Health & wellbeing

WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) - The United States on Monday announced sanctions on three Venezuelans and 20 companies with ties to socialist President Nicolas Maduro for narcotics trafficking, with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence calling for more nations to increase pressure on Caracas. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence addresses the Organization of American States at the OAS headquarters in Washington, U.S. May 7, 2018 REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueThe new sanctions continue a pattern of stepped-up U.S. measures on individuals connected to Maduro, who is blamed by President Donald Trump’s administration for a deep recession and hyperinflation that have caused food shortages in Venezuela and sent a exodus of migrants into neighboring countries. The individuals sanctioned on Monday are fairly low-profile and the move is unlikely to create major economic hardship. Trump has been considering but has so far opted not to impose sanctions on a Venezuelan oil services company and on insurance coverage for tankers carrying Venezuelan oil. Those measures are still under consideration, though, one administration official said on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Pence told the 35-nation Organization of American States - which includes Venezuela as a member - that they needed to take greater steps to isolate Maduro. “We believe it is time to do more, much more,” Pence said in an address to the OAS in Washington. “Every free nation gathered here must take stronger action to stand with the Venezuelan people and stand up to their oppressors.” Pence said the OAS should suspend Venezuela’s membership, and urged other members to cut off the nation’s leaders from financial systems and restrict their travel visas. He also called on Maduro to suspend elections scheduled for May 20, saying he expected voter intimidation and manipulation of data. “There will be no real election in Venezuela on May 20, and the world knows it,” Pence said. The suggestion was immediately rejected by Caracas. “There is zero possibility that elections will be suspended,” said Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, condemning Pence’s speech. Maduro, himself subject to sanctions last year, regularly laughs off Washington’s disapproval and blames the U.S. “empire” for his country’s economic woes, saying it is trying to undermine his administration. Of the newly sanctioned companies, 16 are based in Venezuela and four in Panama. They are owned or controlled by the three individuals, the U.S. Treasury said in a statement. The measures are aimed at having a “chilling effect” on other drug traffickers in Venezuela and are one in a series of many steps, said Carlos Trujillo, U.S. ambassador to the OAS. “I think the (Trump) administration is willing to do anything, whatever it takes, to make sure that Venezuelan people get to enjoy democracy and the liberties that come with it,” Trujillo said in an interview. Trujillo said he thinks Venezuela could leave the OAS by the end of 2018 - something he said was needed for the group to “be taken seriously.” “Venezuela has said in the past that they want to leave, but it seems they don’t find their way to the door,” he said. Reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington and Alexandra Ulmer in Caracas; additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The long, complicated saga known as the Never-Ending Rehabilitation of Mel Gibson unspools another chapter. Gibson is playing his most prominent on-screen role, in Daddy’s Home 2, since his obscenity-filled antisemitic meltdown on the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway on a hot July night in Malibu more than a decade ago.Given the serendipity of long-range movie-release schedules, how was Gibson to know that his latest bid for a soft landing back in the box-office charts, and back in the warm bosom of filmgoers worldwide, would take place during a tsunami of revelations of sexual chicanery and all-round vileness among top Hollywood figures and Washington politicians? Then again, Gibson may have accidentally done himself a huge favour by getting lost in the shuffle. Outrage about Harvey Weinstein’s predations shifts to those of Kevin Spacey, who has been airbrushed from his latest film, and then seeks newer problematic figures. In the US, where Daddy’s Home 2 has been in cinemas for several weeks, Gibson’s reappearance might have excited more comment had the film not instantly vanished into a vortex of terrible reviews. Certainly, his troubling transgressions – claiming, as he did to his arresting officer, that: “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” before asking her: “Are you a Jew?” – felt no less serious at the time. More menacing still was the tape of Gibson’s drunken fight with his partner Oksana Grigorieva in 2010, salted as it was with ugly, racist comments and threats.Gibson put his head down, stayed quiet awhile, and then began the long slow road back to something like respectability – if that was even possible. He’s been on it for 10 years now, and it’s been an interesting trajectory. He was helped somewhat by the worldwide success of Apocalypto, which he directed and produced but in which he did not appear, at the end of 2006. But, as long ago as 2010, I attended the junket for Edge of Darkness, perceived as a comeback for Gibson after a suitable interval of mourning. The movie flopped, no comeback. Loyal friend Jodie Foster directed him in another flop, The Beaver, so Gibson tried another tack.It’s one which often parallels that of his peer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, after his stint as governor of California. Schwarzenegger’s pre-gubernatorial film career had ended with a mid-campaign resurrection of every allegation of his boorishly handsy behaviour on various sets where he was all-powerful and impossible to fend off. He weathered further scandal as his governorship ended, with revelations that he fathered a child with his housekeeper, which resulted in his divorce from Maria Shriver.Schwarzenegger by then was as tarnished as Gibson, and in ways more relevant to the current scandals. But like Gibson, he is, to borrow TS Garp’s formulation, “pre-disastered” and is thus – in accordance with bone-deep American redemption narratives – unlikely to endure a second roasting by the tabloids … yet. Topics Mel Gibson Harvey Weinstein Hacksaw Ridge features

CARACAS (Reuters) - Members of Venezuela’s government and opposition coalition failed to reach a deal in a new round of talks in the Dominican Republic on Saturday aimed at resolving the OPEC nation’s protracted political crisis, but planned to meet in two weeks to try again. A general view of the Venezuelan government and opposition meeting in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic December 2, 2017. REUTERS/Ricardo RojasVarious mediation efforts have failed in recent years. Foes accuse President Nicolas Maduro of exploiting dialogue to buy time, while he says the opposition prefers violence. Few Venezuelans expect further talks to yield a breakthrough, with Maduro’s foes demoralized at seeing him consolidate power ahead of a likely re-election campaign in 2018. The disparate Democratic Unity coalition, which failed to dislodge Maduro in months of street protests earlier this year and then succumbed to infighting, is pressing primarily for a guarantee of free and fair voting next year. It also wants a foreign humanitarian aid corridor to alleviate one of the worst economic crises in modern history, as well as freedom for several hundred jailed activists and respect for the opposition-led congress. “This process is difficult, heavy, hard and full of debate and confrontation,” said Julio Borges, president of the opposition-led congress, adding he hoped the two sides could come closer on Dec. 15. The government and the opposition did not compromise on any key points, according to one participant in the talks who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to media. The opposition’s bargaining power has been weakened by a surprising defeat in October gubernatorial elections. Furthermore, the multi-party group is divided, with more militant sectors opposing the talks they say simply buy the government more time. However, debilitating U.S. sanctions against Maduro’s government have given his administration more impetus for the talks. Maduro wants any potential deal with the opposition to include joint pressure on Washington to back off. “We said the true aid should come from putting an end to the attacks on Venezuela’s economy,” said information minister and government negotiator Jorge Rodriguez, who struck a more positive tone than Borges and said his side was “deeply satisfied” with the two-day talks. There is no indication that U.S. President Donald Trump would be prepared to ease pressure on Maduro, whom he has called “a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator.” U.S. officials say Washington could strengthen sanctions unless Maduro enacts democratic changes. Foreign ministers from Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, Nicaragua and host Dominican Republic acted as guarantors at the talks held at the Foreign Ministry building in Santo Domingo. Reporting by Andreina Aponte, Corina Pons; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Meredith MazzilliOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

PODGORICA (Reuters) - A Yugoslav army veteran who manned anti-aircraft defenses during the NATO bombing in 1999 tossed a hand grenade into the U.S. embassy compound in Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, around midnight and then blew himself up, police said on Thursday. The embassy on its Facebook page said all its personnel were safe after the incident and there were no reports either of material damage. The Montenegrin man, aged about 41 and born in Serbia, was identified by police only by the initials D.J., though media named him as Dalibor Jaukovic, a decorated Yugoslav army veteran. “He was a real patriot during the NATO bombing. He served with the Yugoslav anti-aircraft defenses,” Milutin Dragicevic, who described himself as a distant relative told Reuters. In 1999 NATO planes bombed targets in Montenegro and Serbia which together formed rump-Yugoslavia at the time, to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s then southern province of Kosovo. Montenegro, the smallest of all former Yugoslav republics, became the 29th country to join NATO last May. At just before midnight, the man lobbed a hand grenade over the embassy compound fence and then blew himself up, assistant police chief, Enis Bakovic, told reporters. Bakovic said an investigation was underway to determine whether he had acted alone or with others. “We are searching social media together with the FBI,” he said. “There are no indications this was an act of terrorism,” prosecutor Lepa Medenica said. Policemen with submachine guns and police vehicles patrolled streets near the embassy building on Thursday morning following the incident. A neighbor who said her name was Branka told Reuters that Jaukovic “was an ordinary, normal man.” “He was always polite to me,” she said. Slideshow (11 Images)Though the embassy said all staff were safe, it closed for issuing visas on Thursday and told U.S. citizens to stay away until further notice. “The U.S. embassy in Podgorica advises U.S. citizens there is an active security situation at the U.S. embassy in Podgorica,” it said on its website. (Refiled to fix typo in paragraph 3) Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Additional reporting by Stevo Vasiljevic; Writing by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Richard BalmforthOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano has argued that Donald Trump did obstruct justice, with “unlawful, defenseless and condemnable” behavior related to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.In the opinion column Did President Trump obstruct justice?, the host of the Liberty File on Fox Nation argued that the Mueller report illustrates clear and intentional obstruction of justice, constituting legal grounds for impeachment.Napolitano, a former superior court judge in New Jersey, thereby contradicted the attorney general, William Barr, who decided there was insufficient evidence to establish that the president had committed obstruction of justice.Napolitano’s column was accompanied by a video, shot outside Fox News HQ in New York, which spread rapidly on social media. Trump is an avid viewer of the network and user of Twitter. He did not immediately respond.An FBI investigation into contacts between Trump aides and Russia began before Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. Mueller’s investigation expanded to include instances of possible obstruction, among them the firing of FBI director James Comey, who told investigators he believed Trump fired him after he refused to call off an investigation into the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.In his Fox News column, Napolitano argued that with the release this month of the redacted version of Mueller’s report, we “now know why Trump was so anxious for the FBI to leave Flynn alone”.Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about discussing sanctions with the then Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, a communication Napolitano said “could have been unlawful if it interfered with American foreign policy”.Trump fired Flynn but, Napolitano wrote, “in his plea negotiations with Mueller, Flynn revealed why he discussed sanctions with Kislyak – because the pre-presidential Trump asked him to do so.“An honest revelation by Trump could have negated Flynn’s prosecution. But the revelation never came.”Napolitano said Trump’s attempt to steer the FBI away from Flynn, successful or not, constituted obstruction, which he defined as attempts “to impede or interfere with any government proceeding for a corrupt or self-serving purpose”.Napolitano disagreed with the special counsel’s decision not to make a determination on obstruction of justice.“Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump,” he wrote, “from asking former deputy national security adviser KT McFarland to write an untruthful letter about the reason for Flynn’s chat with Kislyak, to asking [former campaign aide] Corey Lewandowski and then White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn to lie about it, to firing Comey to impede the FBI’s investigations, to dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen to stay silent, to ordering his aides to hide and delete records.”“The essence of obstruction,” he wrote, “is deception or diversion – to prevent the government from finding the truth.”Napolitano also claimed Mueller knew Barr would block any indictment of Trump along obstruction grounds because the attorney general “has a personal view of obstruction at odds with the statute itself”.Barr’s view, according to Napolitano, is that obstruction can only occur if someone is impeding an investigation into a crime they committed.“Thus, in this narrow view, because Trump did not commit the crime of conspiracy with the Russians, it was legally impossible for Trump to have obstructed the FBI investigation of that crime,” Napolitano wrote.He concluded that though such a position is at odds with broad law enforcement opinion and “wrong”, it provides Congress the opportunity to use Mueller’s report as grounds for impeachment, which would be a question of political viability, not evidence. Topics Fox News Donald Trump Trump-Russia investigation Robert Mueller TV news news

The row over whitewashing in Hollywood has taken a new turn after the actor Chloe Bennet said she had changed her name from Chloe Wang because Hollywood is “racist” and would not cast her in roles because of her surname.Bennet, who stars in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, said her original surname made Hollywood “uncomfortable”.Earlier this week the British actor Ed Skrein pulled out of his role in a forthcoming film reboot of Hellboy because the character he was playing has an Asian heritage.Bennet made her comments on Instagram in response to a follower asking why she had changed her name.“Changing my last name doesn’t change the fact that my blood is half-Chinese, that I lived in China, speak Mandarin, or that I was culturally raised both American and Chinese,” she wrote. “It means I had to pay my rent, and Hollywood is racist and wouldn’t cast me with a last name that made them uncomfortable. I’m doing everything I can with the platform I have to make sure no one has to change their name again just so they can get work.”Bennet praised Skrein for pulling out of Hellboy and “standing up against Hollywood’s continuous insensitivity and flippant behaviour towards the Asian American community”.She added: “There is no way this decision came lightly on your part, so thank you for your bravery and genuinely impactful step forward. I hope this inspires other actors/film-makers to do the same.”Skrein has said he was unaware his character, Maj Ben Daimio, had originally been drawn in comics as Asian, and he pulled out of the role after claims that it was another example of Hollywood whitewashing.“There has been intense conversation and understandable upset since that announcement and I must do what I feel is right,” he said in a statement.“It is clear that representing this character in a culturally accurate way holds significance for people and to neglect this responsibility would continue a worrying tendency to obscure ethnic minority stories and voices in the arts. I feel it is important to honour and respect that.”The producers of the film, Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin, subsequently made a joint statement with backers Lionsgate and Millennium to add their support to his decision. They have committed to recasting the role “with an actor more consistent with the character in the source material”.Other recent castings that sparked accusations of whitewashing in Hollywood were the choice of Tilda Swinton to play a Tibetan mentor, the Ancient One, in Doctor Strange, and Scarlett Johansson starring in Ghost in the Shell, which was based on a Japanese animated film. Topics Film industry Race news

The Senate confirmation hearing of Donald Trump’s choice to be the next judge on the US supreme court, ultra-conservative Brett Kavanaugh, has been a tumultuous affair. The event was marked by noisy protests, interruptions, “handmaids”, a grieving father, a squirming nominee, a document dump and a master class in evasion. Here are the highlights of the week.• Immediately before the hearing began on Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill, Democrats expressed outrage at the “historically secretive and opaque” vetting process of Kavanaugh, 53. Tens of thousands of documents about the judge’s track record were released just the night before and many more remained withheld.• Protesters dressed as handmaids, resembling the characters in the televised drama of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, staged a silent demonstration. Their presence spoke volumes about the perceived threat of a conservative-leaning court to the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision that effectively legalized abortion in the US.• A few moments into the hearing, Democrats on the Senate committee repeatedly interrupted the Republican chairman to demand an adjournment on the grounds of the late document dump. Requests denied. Chaos ensued as protesters in the room jumped up, waving women’s rights posters and screaming criticism of Kavanaugh and Trump. Seventy arrests were made during the morning inside and outside the hearing.• Kavanaugh spent most of the day taking notes or sitting with a strange expression of displeasure as Democrats attacked. It read as a mix of horror and dismay, badly disguised as po-faced, as if someone had passed him a note in class saying: “It’s worms for dinner. By the way, no one likes you.”• Further drama was only a lunch break away. As the hearing paused, the father of a student killed in the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, approached Kavanaugh, introduced himself and reached out to shake hands. Kavanaugh paused, stared at him, then turned abruptly without saying a word and walked out.• Kavanaugh faced hours of intense questioning on Wednesday. He declined to say how he would rule on the legality of abortion and similarly dodged on whether the president has the authority to pardon himself. The atmosphere was calmer, but there were outbursts such as: “Sham president, sham justice!” and “No Trump puppet!”• California’s Democratic senator and former attorney general, Kamala Harris, opened her blistering grilling of the nominee with: “Has the judge ever spoken with anyone at Kasowitz, Benson &Torres – the law firm of Donald Trump’s [former] personal attorney Marc Kasowitz – about the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller?” Kavanaugh visibly squirmed, then spluttered. “I’m asking you a very direct question – yes or no?” Harris said icily. Kavanaugh obfuscated.• Not to be outdone by handmaids, nine protesters stood outside the White House dressed in black judicial robes and Trump masks.• Late on Thursday, the inquisition was over for Kavanaugh personally. Friday’s session would hear from witnesses speaking against or in support of the judge.• After all the hurly-burly, Kavanaugh now faces a vote by the full Senate, expected later this month. Republicans have a wafer-thin majority, with 51 of the 100 seats, and Kavanaugh’s confirmation would be considered a major victoryfor the embattled president before the midterm election in November. Topics Brett Kavanaugh US Senate US supreme court Law (US) Protest news

France is to consider a change to its laws around sexual consent, according to the minister for gender equality. Marlene Schiappa said the government was considering setting a fixed age below which sex was automatically a serious offence.It comes after two cases where men were acquitted of raping two 11 year old girls.In France the age of consent is 15, but prosecutors still have to prove sex was non-consensual to prove rape. In an interview with French television programme BFM Politique, Ms Schiappa said that as a member of the government she "could not react to court decisions".But Ms Schiappa added she was looking at measures where "below a certain age...that there is no debate on the sexual consent of the child".Despite its age of consent, France currently does not have any law which defines sex with someone below a fixed age as rape.Currently in France if there is no violence or coercion proved, people may only be charged with sexual abuse of a minor and not rape - this has a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£66,000; $87,000). Sentences are the same for sexual assaults of minors and non-minors, but punishments for rape have much harsher sentences.Ms Schiappa said her government was debating a defined age for irrefutable non-consent, between 13 and 15, as part of a new anti-sexism and sexual violence bill to be introduced in 2018.A public prosecutor said on Saturday that a 30-year-old man had been acquitted of rape after having sex with an 11-year-old girl in Seine-et-Marne in 2009 when he was 22.The girl's family reportedly only found out about the incident after the girl became pregnant. Her child is now seven and is reportedly in foster care. Local reports said the man's defence was that the girl had lied about her age to him. Because there was no evidence of "threat or violence" a criminal court ruled that the man could not be charged with raping her.It closely resembles a case in September which also prompted calls to change the law.A 28-year-old man was acquitted when he was tried for having sex with an 11-year-old girl from Val-d'Oise, north of Paris. She reportedly followed the man home from a park, but prosecutors said there had been "no violence, no constraint, no threat, and no surprise" to constitute a rape charge - the court therefore ruled she had consented.Age limits vary around the world, and exist to protect people who are not yet legally or emotionally competent to consent to sexual intercourse. There is no official global limit for the age of consent but it tends be about 16, and the UN's Human Rights body encourages countries to protect children from sexual exploitation. In the US, the age of sexual consent varies by state but is between 16 and 18 years old. There are however "close in age exemptions" (so-called Romeo and Juliet laws) to allow for small age gaps in consenting sexual relationships, to protect people from being labelled as sex offenders where one party is slightly underage.However, because of some legal loopholes, people below these ages still get married. An estimated 200,000 minors were married in the United States from 2000 to 2015.Child marriage and laws that require people to marry their rapists can circumvent legal age consent limitations in national laws. Malaysia MP: 'Ok for rape victims to marry their rapists' Indian Supreme Court rules child bride sex is rape The wounded victims of Sri Lanka child marriage law In the UK the age of sexual consent is 16, but children under the age of 13 have additional legal protections that declare they can never consent to sexual activity. Other European countries like Germany and Portugal have a lower age of consent at 14.

Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device Video New Jersey: Cars destroyed in Newark Airport fire Fire crews have been tackling a fire on a parking deck at Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey.

One of India’s top hoteliers has decided to take the fight for the decriminalisation of gay sex to India’s top court.Keshav Suri, executive director of The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group, filed a petition with the supreme court on April 23 challenging Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that criminalises a consensual relationship between consenting adults of the same sex. The court has agreed to hear his plea and has sought a response from the government.The 33-year-old Suri is the son of the late hotelier, Lalit Suri, the founding chairman and owner of Bharat Hotels, which runs the Lalit Suri Hospitality Group. The company runs close to a dozen luxury properties in Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Bengaluru, London, and other cities.Suri reportedly identifies himself as a part of India’s LGBTQ community and is understood to be living with a partner of the same sex. He wants India to allow an individual the right to choose his or her partner.His counsel told the supreme court on April 23 that the “petitioner himself has suffered mentally and been stigmatised on account of his sexual orientation at personal and professional fronts…”India criminalises “unnatural” sexual intercourse under Section 377. Under this law, “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 10 years, and shall also be liable to fine.”Members of the LGBTQ community also face severe harassment in India’s widely conservative society. So much so that the associated taboo makes it hard for them to get equal job opportunities or pursue an open lifestyle. Indeed, homophobia costs the country billions of dollars, a 2014 World Bank report said.Section 377 was drafted by India’s British administration in the 1860s, and there have been many attempts in recent years to have it scrapped, citing it as a direct violation of the fundamental rights promised under the constitution.In 2013, the country’s LGBTQ community suffered a blow after the supreme court overturned a 2009 order by the Delhi high court that sought to legalise gay sex. However, the supreme court is now considering reviewing the section after a group of five petitioners again sought to get it scrapped in January this year.

Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device Video James Comey: No-one who can control Donald Trump's behaviour The former director of the FBI, James Comey, has told BBC Newsnight that he doesn't believe there is anyone around Donald Trump who can contain him.In his only UK broadcast interview, Mr Comey said there is no one around him to stop impulsive behaviour."We have become numb to it in the US," he added.You can watch the full Newsnight interview here.

Donald Trump has stepped up his rhetorical attack over immigration before next week’s midterm elections, using a White House address on Thursday to float what is possibly an unconstitutional clampdown on asylum seekers – and hinted that even people throwing stones near the US border could be targeted with military firepower.In a session lasting almost an hour in the Roosevelt Room, Trump talked tough on immigration but failed to deliver much in the way of specifics. White House aides had previously billed the even, inaccurately as a policy announcement.In lurid language that resembled one of his rally speeches more than a presidential address, he vowed to prevent the “violent” Central American migrant caravan heading to the southern border from “invading” the country. He said a comprehensive executive order would be released next week, though it was not clear what it would contain.Instead, he made vague pledges that thousands would be held indefinitely in “massive cities of tents” apparently now being built at the border with military assistance. He also implied that in future asylum seekers would only be able to petition the US for safe haven by approaching designated border posts.In echoes of his divisive rally speeches this election cycle, he pledged to detain those crossing the border unlawfully, rather than using the system known by the stark term “catch and release”, where migrants are released into the community after apprehension, pending their court case.“We are not releasing any more. Big change, as of a couple of days ago … we are going to catch but we are not going to release, they are going to stay with us until the hearing takes place,” he said.His most inflammatory remarks concerned the actions of US troops at the border, with 5,200 already deployed and possibly 10,000 more to follow. Trump was asked whether they might fire on migrants, and he replied: “I hope not.”Then he added: “Anybody throwing stones, rocks … we will consider that a firearm because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”There were some clashes between Mexican police in riot gear and migrants in the caravan as they pushed their way over the border with Guatemala last month. The caravan is still more than 800 miles from the US border.It is not clear whether the US president has the authority to order troops to respond to stone-throwing with live ammunition through an executive order. But Trump returned to the theme on Thursday night at his latest campaign rally in Columbia, Missouri.He said to his followers in an air hangar at Columbia airport: “Did you see what they did to the Mexican police and military in breaking through the border? These are tough people, they are not little angels and we are not letting them into our country.”Trump’s remarks suggest has decided to put most of his political eggs into the anti-immigrant basket. His White House comments came a day after he posted a new national political advertisement that attacked the Democrats in starkly racial terms.Produced on behalf of the Trump campaign, the ad showed court footage of Luis Bracamontes, who was convicted of killing two California police officers, having re-entered the US illegally following deportation. “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay,” the caption said.Politifact reported that both statements about the Democrats were untrue.Trump claimed at the White House that his administration had begun building a wall to secure the southern border with Mexico, when in fact investment has so far only gone into non-wall infrastructure. He also repeated a conspiracy theory that he has begun disseminating at campaign stops, that the caravans of Central American asylum-seekers were paid for by leftwing donors.He did not on this occasion mention the billionaire liberal donor George Soros, but he did say “there seems to be a lot of money passing” and that there was a “lot of professionalism involved”.Trump returned to the Soros conspiracy theory a second time at the Columbia, Missouri, rally. He told the crowd: “Does anybody think that it’s just by accident that the caravans are forming? I really think that somebody not on our side of the ledger was involved.”But his worst inaccuracy of his White House speech was that the number of undocumented immigrants in the US could be as high as 20 million. His own administration puts it at 12 million.Any executive order is certain to face numerous legal challenges through federal courts. Measures to ban travel into the US from Muslim-majority countries were similarly snarled up in the courts until the supreme court approved them in June.The president will find it difficult to use his presidential powers to overturn legislation from Congress. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, anyone entering the US as an immigrant can apply for asylum, whether or not they did so at a designated port of entry.The vitriolic rhetoric on immigration amounts to a huge gamble on Trump’s part that fear of an “invasion” of migrants fleeing violence, extortion and poverty in their home countries will be the factor that drives his conservative base to the polls.In recent days he has ordered troops to the US border and promised to scrap the right to US citizenship for those born in the country.But such a highly contentious strategy also carries potentially grave political risks. The latest polling suggests that the Democrats are well placed to take back the House of Representatives on Tuesday. Topics Donald Trump US immigration US politics US midterms 2018 news

The cacophony and chaos surrounding the White House have only grown in the 11 months since Donald Trump ordered the firing of James Comey. Like most doxologies, “no collusion, no obstruction” impresses only the faithful. Meanwhile, the president’s legal team stands in disarray as his legal woes mount.This past week, with court-approved warrants in hand, federal agents raided the office and abodes of Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer. Ominously for Trump, there is no indication that special counsel Robert Mueller is done probing or that exculpation is near. The 2018 midterm elections and the trial of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, loom as storm clouds.Enter A Higher Loyalty, in which Comey recounts the events that led to his dismissal as FBI director. As to be expected, he is unsparing in his disdain.Comey portrays Trump as a cataclysmic threat to the nation. As for Trump’s expectation of personal loyalty, he puts Trump on par with a mafia don, writing that Trump’s demand was like a “Cosa Nostra induction ceremony – with Trump in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a ‘made man’.”A Higher Loyalty contains little by way of stunning revelation, but offers additional details. It recounts how Trump sought to sway the FBI’s investigation of Michael Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser who later pleaded guilty to lying to the bureau. Comey posits that the president’s efforts may have risen to the level of obstruction of justice, but declines to unequivocally state that was in fact the case.Yet in Comey’s eyes, Trump’s greatest sin was conflating the presidency with himself and, in the process, disregarding constitutional and institutional norms. He brands the president as unethical, “untethered to the truth and institutional values”. Not surprisingly, in a meeting with then chief of staff Reince Priebus, Comey explained the need for separation between the White House and the FBI – only to be rebuffed.Similarly, Comey expresses his discomfort in socializing with presidents. Although he stood 6ft 8in and like Barack Obama enjoyed playing basketball, Comey believed that the two men did not belong on the hardwood together. “FBI directors can’t be that way with presidents,” he writes. “Everybody knows why.”Trump is not the only person on Comey’s mind. Hillary Clinton and her emails also receive their due. According to Comey, their relationship was strained from the get-go. Comey recalls that as younger prosecutor he was part of the team that in 2001 looked into possible wrongdoing surrounding Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, a fugitive oil trader. A year later, Comey was tapped to be federal prosecutor for the southern district of New York. In a departure from custom, New York’s junior senator, Hillary Clinton, refused to engage with Comey, something Comey regarded as “odd”.Unfortunately for Comey and Clinton, their paths would cross again. As Mark Giuliano, then deputy FBI director, told Comey in 2015: “You know you are totally screwed, right?” Comey admits that the task of investigating Clinton’s handling of classified information “sucked” and that it may also have cost Clinton the election.Candidly, Comey acknowledges that the perceived likelihood of Clinton’s victory may have made reopening the email investigation in late October 2016 that much easier. As Comey frames things: “I had assumed from media polling that Hillary Clinton was going to win. I have asked myself many times since if I was influenced by that assumption. I don’t know.”A Higher Loyalty is less sparing of attorney general Loretta Lynch and her attempts to steer Comey’s investigation from the shadows while refusing to recuse herself. Comey is particularly critical of Lynch’s effort to recast the investigation as a “matter” instead of acknowledging what it was – an investigation.Seeing the hand of the Clinton campaign in this kerfuffle over semantics, Comey relented. Looking back, he voices his regrets, writing that the FBI “didn’t do ‘matters’” and “it was misleading to suggest otherwise”.Comey emerges as a moralist, shaped by religious conviction. A former Sunday school teacher, he sprinkles into the text quotes from Martin Luther and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. For example, in a meeting with President George W Bush concerning Stellar Wind, a deeply contentious government data collection program, Comey, then deputy attorney general, quotes Luther and his speech to Emperor Charles V: “Here I stand, I can do no other.”At the time, Comey was fighting off demands from the president’s counsel and Vice-President Dick Cheney’s staff surrounding the continuation of the data program. Still, Comey is compelled to deny that he is in love with his own righteousness.After looking flat-footed in the face of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, the White House and its allies have aggressively sought to discredit Comey. The Republican National Committee has rolled out a rebuttal website, Lyin’ Comey. On Friday, Trump responded with a fusillade of frustration, calling Comey a “slime ball”, a leaker and a liar. Synchronously, Trump’s barrage coincided with his pardon of Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief-of-staff and a leaker, who was convicted of perjury.On 9 May 2017, Trump fired Comey. He also unleashed a whirlwind from which he has not recovered. Almost a year later, the Republicans appear on the precipice of losing control of the House of Representatives, and even the Senate may change hands. A poll released on Friday shows that a majority of Americans, a robust 69% at that, support the Mueller investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign, an effort first spearheaded by Comey.Comey may have left the building, but his ghost and Trump’s nightmares remain. Topics James Comey Donald Trump Trump administration Trump-Russia investigation US politics Republicans Politics books reviews

By Feb. 7, 2018 7:00 am ET India’s income tax department has issued 100,000 tax notices to cryptocurrency investors, in the latest sign of a government crackdown on the use of the digital money. “People who have made investments (in cryptocurrency) and have not declared income while filing taxes and have not paid tax on the profit earned by investing, we are sending them notices as we feel that it is all taxable,” Sushil Chandra, the head of India’s direct taxes department, was quoted as saying in a news release from an Associated Chambers of Commerce... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

Central American migrants approaching US-Mexico border crossing sites in recent days to apply for asylum are getting a taste of what may be ahead for the human “caravans” still hundreds of miles to the south, as Donald Trump further hardens his immigration policies and rhetoric.A normal scene in El Paso, Texas, finds US border agents, with handguns in holsters on their belts, routinely supervising migrants crossing a bridge from Mexico towards the port of entry on the US side. But earlier this week, individuals and small groups, including parents and children, found the agents with assault rifles instead, blocking their path and turning them back halfway across the bridge.Last Sunday, the border was closed temporarily while Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents ran drills in riot gear, to prepare for the kind of shutdown the president has threatened if migrant caravans crowd the southern border. And many thousands of active duty US troops are making their way to the border in armored vehicles.Meanwhile, a man and his son who were stopped at the halfway point of the bridge that connects Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, with El Paso, Texas, spoke to the Guardian, but were too afraid to give their names.“I have been two days here at the bridge. When we arrived, we were told to wait but they haven’t given us any information of how long we’ll have to wait,” the father said. He and his teenage son fled gang violence in their hometown of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, seven months ago, he said. The pair sat with a handful of others waiting for information, leaning against the wall of the path approaching the bridge. Volunteers from the lone migrant shelter in Ciudad Juárez, Casa del Migrante, and other samaritans from both sides of the border brought them some sandwiches, blankets and fresh clothes. They may be battling the odds, but as the Trump administration prepares for a fight with migrants, perhaps literally, American aid groups are gearing up, ready to go head to head with the authorities to protect people’s right to have their cases heard.“Under both international and US law, anyone who claims a fear of persecution in their home country has a right to apply for asylum,” said Robert Painter, director of pro bono services and communications at American Gateways, a Texas not-for-profit organization providing legal services to migrants.He added: “We expect the Department of Homeland Security to honor that right and ensure that everyone seeking asylum is put through a fair adjudication process.”Asylum-granting power lies with US immigration judges.Advocates fear the administration is trying to undercut the only legal avenue for migrants to make their asylum claims, as Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want to hear the migrants’ stories, instead threatening to cut aid to Central America, close the border and deploy as many as 15,000 soldiers, according to the latest report.“It’s the complete opposite of a smart response on migration. We see this idea of sending troops to the border as another attempt by the Trump administration to manufacture a crisis where there isn’t one,” said Shaw Drake at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Border Rights Center in El Paso. “We [already] have ample law enforcement presence at our borders. Migrants are certainly not a threat to anyone, much less a threat that requires troops to be deployed into the backyards of border communities.”The homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, said last week that troops were not intending to shoot migrants “right now”. But advocates are concerned.“My greatest fear is that US government officials will bring about more violence and suffering on families who have done nothing wrong – only sought safety and freedom in the United States,” said Conchita Cruz, co-founder of Asylum Seekers Advocacy Project. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on how federal officials are preparing to handle any large groups of migrants approaching the border.According to a report in the New York Times, the administration is considering multiple options, including a renewed version of the controversial family separation policy that would make parents entering the US with their children choose between surrendering the minors to foster care or being imprisoned as a family and waiving their children’s right to have detention limited to 20 days.The government is also weighing further tightening asylum rules, speeding up deportations and extending the use of GPS ankle monitors for those with court dates.And it is considering a temporary ban on all migrants from the Central American region entering the US, citing national security, according to the New York Times report, a move that advocacy and migrant rights groups say would be immediately challenged in court.“This is straight-up a Latino ban,” said Jess Morales Rocketto, chair of the advocacy group Families Belong Together, adding: “The Trump administration and the Republican party have become the party of cruelty to families … This goes against our values as Americans.”According to CBP data, in fiscal year 2018, about 520,000 undocumented immigrants were apprehended by CBP. The average number of annual arrests from 2000 to 2018 is approximately 741,000, 30% more than this year. The ACLU’s Drake said that DHS now has a “vastly greater” budget and number of immigration officials than at the time when arrests were double or triple the current levels.In April, another caravan of migrants made their way from Central America all the way to the San Diego and Calexico ports of entry in California. They were mostly allowed to enter and apply for asylum, but after that, Trump cracked down, with the controversial zero-tolerance and family separation policies.With the midterm election just days away and Trump keen to turn the national conversation away from domestic terrorism and an antisemitic mass shooting, Drake said: “There is no doubt they view this as an opportunity to ramp up and bring back some of the cruelest policies they’ve implemented,” adding: “The US is fully capable of processing and receiving migrants; our reaction will say more about who we are and who we want to be.” The ACLU will resort to court challenges wherever necessary, he said.Though the current caravan remains far from the border, in recent days more than 70 migrants from Guatemala and Cuba who intend to ask for asylum arrived at the Santa Fe International Bridge, which connects downtown Ciudad Juárez with El Paso.The father and son from Guatemala and small clutches of other migrants waited on the walkway. Most who were willing to talk were unaware of the larger caravan making its way from the south. They are aware of hostility from US leadership but say they are driven to make the dangerous trek to the US.“We left because of necessity. In Guatemala, there are no jobs. If I stayed in Guatemala, we would’ve run out of money and not have anything to eat,” said another man traveling with his wife and two children. “I want to come here to work. We’re not bad people.”A migrant at the bridge from Cuba was fleeing the oppression of the Castro regime, he said.He felt confident he would pass the “credible fear” asylum test because some of his friends and family are political prisoners in Cuba.While traversing the Chiapas region of Mexico two weeks ago, he saw the migrant caravan coming from Central America. Instead of joining it he rushed ahead, hoping to be admitted before any possible shutdown of the border, he said.A spokesman for CBP said the agency was monitoring the caravan.“We have been making – and will continue to make – necessary preparation. Regardless of the operational contingencies we may face, please know this: we will ensure border security – we will not allow a large group to enter the US unlawfully, we will act in accordance with the highest principles of law enforcement, and we will treat intending migrants humanely and professionally at all times.”Drake decried Trump’s election tactics. “The US is a beacon of hope and this administration is dragging us to the pit of anger and fear,” he said. Topics US immigration Texas Trump administration US midterms 2018 Migration US federal government shutdown 2019 features

Hurricane Harvey has dumped record amounts of rain onto the Texas city of Houston, leaving at least eight dead and thousands stranded and prompting an unprecedented rescue effort. As a result of the rains, swollen bayous and releases of water from reservoirs, large swaths of the fourth-largest city in the US is under water.These images from before the flooding show a very different cityscape. Use the sliders to see the affect Harvey has had. With Houston downtown in the backgroundTaken from high-rise in Memorial HeightsOutside a shopping centre in southeast HoustonNortheast HoustonWith graffiti Topics Hurricane Harvey Texas United States Houston Natural disasters and extreme weather