Hip-hop in the 21st century so often presents as a music of excess – large crews, busy production, bling. Into the maximalist melee steps Long Beach rapper Vince Staples: tonight, a lithe cypher silhouetted against a glowing backdrop, intense to the point of abstract expressionism. He might be wearing trainers and black jeans and a T-shirt; it’s hard to tell. Non-hip-hop audiences might recognise Staples’s voice from Ascension, a standout cut from the most recent Gorillaz album, which – against the odds – actually slots into Staples’s electrifying set without friction.Honed by festival appearances, and backlit for an entire hour or so, Staples is a masterful absence, a compelling ascetic who delivers fat-free banger after fat-free banger. There’s no support act, no hype man; there are no dancers and no pyrotechnics – just juddering electronic playback, clever lights, tightly wound kinetic energy and Staples’s deadpan, nasal California delivery, imbued with a west coast bounce that harks back to Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre but is beholden to no one.From the first bars of Party People – lifted from his most recent album, Big Fish Theory – the entire venue is on its feet. “Party people, I like to see you dance,” runs the chorus. Despite setting off two moshpits, the song is no mindless anthem to hedonism. Rather, the verses reveal how Staples is still occasionally suicidal despite his success.Staples identifies as a “Norf Norf soldier”; his gangland backstory in North Long Beach – as told on his official debut, Summertime ’06, and since – is at once chilling and heart-rending. Staples’s music, though, transcends many hip-hop cliches, and Big Fish Theory shifted Staples’s unflinching gaze away from his time as a Crip to hip-hop’s many contradictions, not to mention wider issues such as race and politics. There’s an anthem still waiting to happen in the hard-hitting BagBak. “Tell the 1% to suck a dick because we on now,” Staples yells in the chorus. “Tell the president to suck a dick because we on now.”These newest Staples tunes borrow widely from UK rave and electronica. Stark, springy sounds come in thick and fast from left field. Big Time – off Staples’s intervening Prima Donna EP (2016) – boasts bass that rattles both hair and clothing. Its series of bloops, clanks and rattles are the production work of our own James Blake. Not long after comes Samo, and an even more abstract set of trap signifiers that squeak and tickle, the work of London pop deconstructor Sophie. Somehow, a party atmosphere holds out throughout, thanks to the rubberiness of Staples’s delivery. When Staples isn’t rapping, he lets his songs play out, often with his back to the crowd, giving the music and the colours ample space to breathe.Many of the better-known Summertime ’06 tunes get the bigger reactions – Lift Me Up, for one, with its powerful depiction of how Staples’s “pain is never over”. There is no encore, but the set ends with the mighty Norf Norf, a barely-there tune that showcases Staples’s pitiless flow. “I ain’t never ran from nothin’ but the police,” he offers in the chorus. The song gained greater notoriety last year when a Christian woman went on a Facebook rant against it, exemplifying mainstream America’s ignorance of the realities of racism. (Typically, Staples defended her right to react as she saw fit.)But Big Fish – the album’s (nearly) title track – supplies an onomatopoeic thrill that is nothing short of sublime. The hook is Juicy J’s, but Staples excels on the verse. He is “reminiscin’, sitting in that Benz, of the 22 bus stop way back when”. Specifically, on one of the best lines of the year, he’s looking out for anyone likely to pull a gun on him. Live, Staples’s syllables ricochet around the room, worth the ticket price alone. “With the 22, five shot eyes on scan/ For the click, clack, clap or the boop, bop, bam.” Topics Hip-hop The Observer reviews

A view of the area from a small hotel that was covered by mud after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano MachadoSAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian miner Vale SA (VALE3.SA) hired law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP to organize an investigation into a deadly dam burst last week that likely killed hundreds of people in Brazil, the company said in a securities filing on Thursday. Vale said that the law firm would select investigators to look into the causes of the disaster and could provide legal opinion based on their conclusions. Communication with the firm and the findings of the chosen investigators will be covered by attorney-client privilege, according to the filing. Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Bill BerkrotOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The Narendra Modi government has just received a pat on the back from a heavyweight—credit rating agency Moody’s.Moody’s has upgraded India’s ratings after a gap of 13 years in a report released on Nov. 16. The country’s sovereign rating has now moved a notch above Baa3, the lowest investment grade and just a level above junk rating, to Baa2. Although Moody’s acknowledged that the Indian economy has taken a beating as a result of the goods and service tax (GST) and demonetisation, it reckoned that both would turn out to be worthwhile in the long run. “Government efforts to reduce corruption, formalise economic activity, and improve tax collection and administration, including through demonetisation and GST, both illustrate and should contribute to the further strengthening of India’s institutions,” said the report.As a result, GDP growth in this financial year may moderate to 6.7%, compared to 7.1% last year, the report stated. However, as the effects of the disruptions fade away and the economy gets back on track, Moody’s estimates that India will grow at 7.5% in the next fiscal year. “(In the) longer term, India’s growth potential is significantly higher than most other Baa-rated sovereigns,” added the report.Apart from the GST and demonetisation, the other reforms that will help India’s economic fortunes include an improved monetary policy framework, steps taken to address the ballooning bad-loan problem, the Aadhaar system of biometric accounts, and targeted delivery of benefits through the direct benefit transfer system, Moody’s said. Meanwhile, other major ratings agencies, S&P (BBB- Stable) and Fitch (BBB- Stable) are yet to upgrade India.“The question now is whether or not S&P and Fitch follow. Our bias is that they will likely wait for the government’s fiscal position to actually improve before making any changes (on outlook, followed by rating), but directionally we believe India is headed the right way,” brokerage firm Nomura said in a report.The Modi government has been obsessed with ratings agencies for some time now, and had reportedly lobbied hard for an upgrade from Moody’s last year. But when that didn’t happen, the government changed tack and harshly criticised the methodology adopted by global credit rating firms, calling their analysis “egregious” and “compromised.”Now, having got the upgrade it sought, Modi and Moody’s are on the same page.

Davos, SwitzerlandIn a radical departure from his fiery campaign rhetoric, Donald Trump delivered a new type of “America First” speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos today (Jan. 26), to a packed room of CEOs and world leaders.Trump championed his economic programs, indicated he would consider rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, and thanked the men and women who work to make a “better world for everyone.”Since he took office a year ago, Trump has catered primarily to his right-wing, nationalistic base, quitting TPP negotiations in his first week, threatening to cancel NAFTA, yanking the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, and alienating top trading partners with Twitter rages and often fact-free insults.In Davos he made an abrupt turnabout, urging the assembled elite to come to the US to hire and invest.“At least he wasn’t disturbing,” said one German CEO afterwards. “There was no fire and no fury.”“There has never been a better time to hire, to build, to grow in the United States,” Trump told the crowd. “America is open for business and we are competitive once again.”Trump said he would always put “America First,” just as other world leaders should prioritize their own countries, adding: “‘America First’ does not mean America alone. When the United States grows, so does the world.”That went over well with a European diplomat: “I am surprisingly positive. I never thought I would say that.”The typical pitch of a world leader at Davos is to set out their country’s case for a global leadership role, but Trump’s remarks were overwhelming focused on encouraging inbound investment, instead of any outward-looking initiatives beyond combating terrorism. “Today I’m inviting you to become a part of this incredible future we are building together,” he said. “We look forward to seeing you in America.”Trump took the stage in front of a military band that played the Swiss anthem, slowly striding onto stage with WEF president Klaus Schwab, wearing his trademark wide red tie and loose dark suit. The two stood silently while the band played, then walked together toward the podium, until Schwab indicated Trump should turn around and walk back to a chair.When it was time for him to speak, Trump mostly read the 20-minute speech in a flat monotone. The night before, White House economic advisor Gary Cohn, a long-time investment banker, said that he wrote the address. It was, in essence, Goldman Sachs with “America First” characteristics.Trump saved his toughest talk for the media: “How nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be,” he said, to hisses from the audience. He also took a thinly veiled shot at China. “We support free trade but it needs to be fair and it needs to be reciprocal,” Trump said, pledging not to turn a blind eye to countries that engage in “massive intellectual property theft, industrial subsidies, and pervasive state-led economic planning.”The US is prepared to negotiate “mutually beneficial” agreements he said. “This will include the countries in TPP, which are very important. We would consider negotiating with the rest individually or perhaps as a group, if it was in the interest of all. “His presence at the meeting of globalists Trump pilloried during his 2016 campaign is part of a push to soften the harder aspects of his “America First” policies. Earlier in the week, Trump’s top economic and trade advisors suggested a more nuanced approach, based on re-negotiating existing global-trade norms, rather than tearing them all up. Trump dined with European CEOs last night, calling them “15 new friends,” and met with other world leaders.“Better than I expected,” said Ishmael Sunga, a South African union leader outside the Congress Hall. Instead of “bashing things up,” Trump tailored his message to the crowd, he said. It was the performance of a “mark-to-market president,” said a financier who was in the crowd. “It was the most scripted speech he’s ever given,” remarked another delegate.The crowd at Davos responded to his speech with polite applause. A smattering of people sitting with White House officials in the front gave him a standing ovation.

As the majority of the so-called adults in charge across the globe begin to mirror the villains I grew up reading about, I find myself going back through old, worn favourites as well as buying plenty of new releases that help keep me sane. Kids’ literature, after all, is probably the best place to look for advice on dealing with monsters. I don’t know where I’d be without them.Currently, I’m re-reading the accurately absurdist Alice in Wonderland, and the elaborate riddles and rabbit holes feel very 2017. Many quotes from the legendary Queen of Hearts (possibly one of the world’s first corporate feminists) remain lodged in my mind, but “why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast” is especially sticky. Returning to the literature that I loved as a kid isn’t just a comforting regression when times are tough. I find that when things feel weirder than usual, I need to find a literary weirdness that’s capable of unscrambling my present tense. Kids’ books offer ways to make sense of a world that is suddenly spinning so quickly we’re permanently dizzy; it’s one of the few formats that helps you do everything at once in the way the internet landscape demands; escape, understand and take action. But as much as we need them more than ever, we’re still making the mistake of thinking that kids’ books are transient; that they only serve to get through a bedtime, or prep a child for the responsibilities of being a grown-up. There’s two things wrong with this.Firstly, it pretends that kids in 2017 aren’t absorbing what adults do (albeit through a different filter) every single day. Secondly, it pretends that there is even such a thing as an adult in the first place. I know I feel like I’m impersonating a “grown-up” right now, and I imagine you feel like that, too.Maybe we delineate between books for adults and books for children because there is no greater comfort than pretending that the trajectory of time is linear and easy: we start out young and daft, and wait to become older and wiser. Really, though, it’s all just chaos. We are constantly jumping back and forth between different selves. Some days I go from 31 years old to six in a matter of minutes.In 2017, it’s helpful to have as many spaces as possible in which this eerie grown-up world is refracted, not reflected. Nothing can leave you at that magical place where clarity meets absurdity like children’s literature. In my mind it’s a sort of wiggly venn diagram, at the centre of which the complex inevitabilities of life: love, loneliness, death are rendered with an astounding simplicity. Better still, the themes, plots and characters aren’t afraid to confront how random and arbitrary life is.At least that’s what I felt the first time I read Matilda, or flicked through Ruth Krauss’ A Hole is to Dig. A crocodile makes his way through a busy city to his job in a zoo enclosure, where he must remove his suit to become an appropriate spectacle for everyone else. That strange randomness of existence feels momentarily fathomable.Great children’s books are always uniquely frightening, hopeful and mad, not unlike the world we live in now. Thanks to all that strange literature I’ve absorbed I can’t look at a jam sandwich without thinking of an infuriated wasp, or a onesie without feeling Max’s unrelenting fury as he stomped with the Wild Things in Maurice Sendak’s famous book. Raised on a strict diet of Roald Dahl, I still consider all Pelicans to be called “Pelly” and can’t help but imagine the grim things that are probably hidden in hipster beards. EB White has plenty to answer for, too: when it comes to spiders, depending on the size, I find myself wondering if it might be on first name terms with a nervous pig. Crucially, kids’ books remind me that everything has an interior life, not just me. Children’s books keep us humble, with their wonderful logic and endless empathy, reiterating that more of the world is unknown than it is known. There’s nothing better to help ease that stagnant, “grown-up” solipsism. • Kat Patrick is author of the children’s books I am Doodle Cat and Doodle Cat Is Bored.What are some of your favourite kids books to re-read as an adult? Let us know in the comments. Topics Books Children and teenagers Roald Dahl Australian books comment

Kate Winslet has called the allegations surrounding the film producer Harvey Weinstein “deeply shocking” and has admitted to having heard similar accounts during her time in Hollywood, but having hoped they were without foundation.In a statement released to Variety, the actor – who won an Oscar in 2009 for The Reader, a film produced by The Weinstein Company – called the allegations “deeply shocking” and praised the “incredibly brave” women who have spoken out.“The fact that these women are starting to speak out about the gross misconduct of one of our most-important and well-regarded film producers, is incredibly brave and has been deeply shocking to hear,” the statement began. “The way Harvey Weinstein has treated these vulnerable, talented young women is not the way women should ever, ever deem to be acceptable or commonplace in any workplace.”She added that she had heard similar allegations but wanted them to be apocryphal. “I had hoped that these kind of stories were just made up rumours, maybe we have all been naive,” she wrote.“I have no doubt that for these women this time has been, and continues to be extremely traumatic,” added Winslet. “I fully embrace and salute their profound courage, and I unequivocally support this level of very necessary exposure of someone who has behaved in reprehensible and disgusting ways. His behaviour is without question disgraceful and appalling and very, very wrong.”Winslet is the latest big-name Hollywood star to give support to the women who have come forward to make allegations of sexual misconduct by the film producer over the course of three decades. Meryl Streep and Judi Dench both condemned the producer, who played a prominent role in their careers. Meanwhile, Lena Dunham, Patricia Arquette and Mark Ruffalo all used Twitter to criticise the producer. The British actor Romola Garai told the Guardian about an incident with Weinstein when she was an 18-year-old starting out in the business that left her feeling “violated”. “Like every other woman in the industry, I’ve had an ‘audition’ with Harvey Weinstein, where I’d actually already had the audition but you had to be personally approved by him,” said Garai. “So I had to go to his hotel room in the Savoy, and he answered the door in his bathrobe. I was only 18. I felt violated by it, it has stayed very clearly in my memory.”Weinstein was fired by the directors of the Weinstein Company on Sunday after they said new information about his “misconduct” had emerged. The producer, who is famous for his work on Pulp Fiction and Gangs of New York, was already on a voluntary leave of absence and denies some of the allegations made against him. Topics Harvey Weinstein Kate Winslet Sexual harassment news

The New York State Office of Court Administration issued new rules Wednesday curtailing the ability of federal immigration officials to arrest immigrants in state courthouses without warrants.The rules are the latest development in the ongoing controversy over the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in state and local courthouses to arrest immigrants appearing there on unrelated cases.The directive requires ICE agents to show a federal judicial warrant or order to a New York judge or court attorney before the arrest."This rule change is a big win for thousands of immigrants and their families across New York State who will no longer be sitting ducks in the courtroom," said Terry Lawson, director of the Family and Immigration Unit at Bronx Legal Services, the Bronx office of Legal Services NYC, in a statement. "We can now advise the women, men, and children we represent that ICE cannot arrest them in New York State courts without a warrant with their name on it, signed by a judge."ICE agents often rely on administrative warrants that are issued by the agency rather than judicial warrants, approved by a court.Under the Trump administration, there has been a sharp increase in the number of immigrant arrests by ICE in New York state courthouses. In 2016, there were 11 arrests. Last year, there were 178 arrests, according to a report by the Immigrant Defense Project. The majority of the arrest reports came from New York City.The report say ICE courthouse operations discourage noncitizens from reporting crimes, including domestic abuse and human trafficking, and pursuing civil remedies such as in cases of tenant-landlord conflicts."Judges can't do their jobs unless people come to court," said Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks as quoted by The Associated Press.ICE did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.Late last year, dozens of former state and federal judges called on ICE to consider courthouses as "sensitive locations" that are usually off-limits to immigration agents.In January, ICE issued a memo saying "officers and agents will conduct enforcement actions discreetly to minimize their impact on court proceedings." But, it added, "courthouse arrests are often necessitated by the unwillingness of jurisdictions to cooperate with ICE in the transfer of custody of aliens from their prisons and jails."

The death toll from last Saturday's huge truck bombing in the Somali capital Mogadishu has risen to 358, the information minister says.Some 56 people are also still missing, Abdirahman Osman says.Officials have blamed the Islamist al-Shabab group, allied to al-Qaeda. But the group has not said it was behind the attack.The truck exploded at a busy junction, destroying hotels, government offices and restaurants. Anger boils over in Mogadishu The victims: Searching for clues However it is unclear if the junction was the intended target or if the driver detonated the explosives because suspicions about the truck had been raised. It blew up next to an oil tanker, which intensified the blast.The blast left 228 people injured, of whom 122 had been flown to Turkey, Sudan and Kenya for treatment, Mr Osman said.Somalia has appealed for blood to treat the wounded.More than 150 of the victims were burned beyond recognition and were buried by the government on Monday. Why 'Pray for Mogadishu' isn't trending Who are al-Shabab? Somalis in Mogadishu have demonstrated against al-Shabab following the attack, with many wearing red cloth around their foreheads to show solidarity with the victims.A 22,000-strong African Union force is in the country trying to help the government recapture territory from al-Shabab, whose fighters are active in much of rural southern Somalia.

Richard Nixon would have told Donald Trump he had overstepped his powers and risked impeachment if he ordered the prosecution of Hillary Clinton and the FBI chief James Comey, a former top lawyer to the disgraced late president has said.“This is the sort of stuff of a banana republic,” John Dean, White House counsel to Nixon, said of a report late on Tuesday that Trump had to be talked out of commanding the justice department to bring charges against the two, whom he saw as his political enemies.“If I had to channel a little of Richard Nixon, I think he’d tell this president he’s going too far. This is what an autocrat does,” Dean said on CNN on Tuesday night.He added: “This is a level that Richard Nixon never went to, where you went after somebody’s personal wellbeing by a criminal prosecution.”Dean said that while Nixon broke the law by his involvement in the Watergate scandal, resulting in the president’s resignation in 1974, the idea that Trump would try to get Clinton and Comey prosecuted, as the New York Times reported late Tuesday, amounts to “really very, very heavy sledding”.“I never heard him do it [break the law] by turning on his enemies and trying to put them in jail,” Dean said of Nixon.Trump told the then White House counsel, Don McGahn, in the spring of 2018 that he wanted a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server while secretary of state, and against Comey alleging a leak of classified material, the Times said, citing two unnamed people familiar with the conversation.McGahn reportedly had a memo drawn up attempting to dissuade Trump, noting that the potential consequences for such an action could include impeachment. It is not clear if Trump read the memo, but he did not order such a move by the DoJ, although he apparently continued to mention in private his desire to prosecute the two.Trump fired Comey in May 2017 and appointed Christopher Wray to replace him.But the account of Trump exploring options to order the DoJ to prosecute Clinton and Comey or appoint a special counsel to investigate them brings into further stark relief his decision the day after the midterm elections to fire the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and name a loyalist, Matt Whitaker, as acting attorney general with the assumption from the White House that he would now oversee the Trump-Russia investigation by Robert Mueller. Sessions had recused himself, leaving the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, overseeing Mueller, much to the chagrin of Trump.“It’s not news that Trump wants DOJ to investigate or prosecute Clinton or Comey,” Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith tweeted on Tuesday night. “He’s long expressed that opinion on Twitter and elsewhere … The President has nearly complete formal authority over DOJ. But the remarkable lesson of the last 2 years is that Trump nonetheless has practically no effective authority to use these tools to harm his political enemies. When it comes to using DOJ, Trump is incompetent and weak.”“Jack’s got a point,” replied the Georgetown University law professor Marty Lederman.“More importantly,” wrote Lederman, Trump’s influence presumably is now stronger, with [acting attorney general Matt] Whitaker in place.”Former top FBI lawyer Jim Baker, a friend of Comey, wrote in Lawfare, a legal blog published in cooperation with the Brookings Institution, that the House judiciary committee concluded Nixon’s close contact with officials in the DoJ when it was investigating Watergate amounted to an impeachable misuse of executive power. Topics Donald Trump Hillary Clinton James Comey Watergate news

Large protests were held last weekend in response to the alleged gang rape and killing of an8-year-old Muslim girlin Jammu and Kashmir state. Police have arrested eight suspects in connection with her death, all of whom are Hindu. Investigators allege the men plotted the girl's abduction as a means of scaring predominately Muslim nomads into leaving the region.As public outrage grew, two senior members of Modi's party who had participated in the protests in support of the accused were forced to resign amid accusations of political interference and religious discrimination.That case, along with rape accusations against a ruling party lawmaker in the state of Uttar Pradesh, has put pressure on Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. The lawmaker, Kuldeep Singh Sengar, denies the allegations that involve a teenage girl. Women join a protest this week in New Delhi in support of victims following high-profile rape cases.The head of the Delhi Commission for Women, Swati Maliwal,began a hunger strike on April 13 to push for stricter laws for rape in India, including the death penalty.She welcomed news of the new ordinance via Twitter but said her protest was not over."I congratulate people of this country for this victory," she said. "Very few protests have achieved so much in such less time. But until something concrete happens, I will not give up. Until a system is there which ensures safety for the last girl, I won't give up."Following outcry over the 2012gang rape and deathof 23-year-old physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh, the central government passed legislative reforms, commonly known as the Nirbhaya Act. The act saw increased penalties for sexual violence, including extending the length of prison sentences and introducing the death penalty in certain cases.However, incidents of sexual violence continue to shock the country. Around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police in India every day, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. There were nearly 39,000 alleged attacks in 2016, an increase of 12% over the previous year.Public outrage has threatened to engulf Modi, who will seek re-election next year, as the demonstrations transform into a conduit for growing anger over the country'streatment of womenandminority groups.Despite reforms, sexual assault survivors face systemic barriers in IndiaAfter several days in which he failed to address the issue publicly, Modi finally broke his silence during an April 13 speech in Delhi, promising justice for "our daughters." However, critics accused him of doing too little, too late.Law students demonstrate Wednesday in Srinagar over the rape and killing of an 8-year-old girl.The furor also threatened to overshadow Modi's visit this week to Britain. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Downing Street and the UK Parliament waving placards reading "go home Modi" and "hang the rapists" as he prepared to meet with UK Prime Minister Theresa May.Addressing selected members of the Indian diaspora in London, Modi called on society to do more while urging against politicizing the issue."A rape is a rape. How can we tolerate this torture with our daughters? You are always questioning your daughters, why don't you ask the same questions to your sons? I believe this is the evil of not just the individual but also of the society," he said.

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

Donald Trump faces a test of temperament on Wednesday as he visits Las Vegas, the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, with Democrats stepping up political pressure for tighter gun laws.It has become a grim ritual for American presidents to visit the scenes of mass murder and gun violence, burdened by expectations that they will be dignified, rise above party politics and perform the unifying role of head of state.But Trump is already notorious for divisive rhetoric at key national moments, including after the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. The National Rifle Association was crucial to his election and he was the first sitting president since Ronald Reagan to address its annual conference, where he vowed to defend the second amendment.Since the gunman, identified by police as Stephen Paddock, opened fire from his hotel room, killing at least 59 victims and injuring more than 500 at a country music festival on Sunday night, Trump has struck a measured tone. But on the ground in Las Vegas, where he is expected to meet the state governor and city mayor, and possibly visit survivors in hospital, there will be no shortage of opportunities for a jarring remark. On Tuesday, visiting hurricane hit Puerto Rico, he joked: “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack. But that’s fine because we’ve saved a lot of lives.”Democrats intend to throw down the gauntlet before Trump’s plane touches down by staging a high-profile event on the front steps of the US Capitol building in Washington. Congressman and civil rights veteran John Lewis and former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived a shooting in 2011, will be among those calling for the immediate passage of legislation to strengthen background checks on gun buyers, as well as creating a bipartisan select committee on gun violence.In a Republican-controlled Congress, Democrats know the odds are against them. But they think they may have an unlikely ally in Trump, whose views on gun control have shifted since he ran for president as a Republican. Past incidents – such as visceral TV images of children killed by poison gas in Syria – suggest that Trump can be swayed by direct appeals to the heart. On Tuesday the president said: “We’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by.” In a floor speech, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, called on Trump to bring together leaders of Congress as a sign to both sides that he is “ready and willing to address this issue of gun safety head-on”. Activists and even comedians have called on Trump, who ran as an anti-Washington outsider, to act. Late-night TV host Stephen Colbert said: “You do not owe the Republicans anything. You know the Republicans tried to stop you from being president; well screw ’em. You want to make America great again, do something the last two presidents have been unable to do: pass any kind of commonsense gun control legislation that the vast majority of Americans want.”Democrats are weary from years of political stalemate over gun control. Senator Chris Murphy, from Connecticut, was visibly frustrated on Tuesday when he condemned members’ “utter silence” in response to ever-rising toll of mass shootings and called their inaction “unintentional complicity”. “In the minds of these mad men when they see Congress doing absolutely nothing, shooting after shooting – they read that as quiet acceptance of the carnage,” Murphy told reporters on Capitol Hill. “It has to stop.” Joined by four colleagues, the Democratic senators outlined “a menu” of gun control measures they planned to introduce, including to expand background checks and to restrict people convicted of domestic violence from obtaining a gun. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California also plans to reintroduce a bill that would ban bump stocks and similar devices, which Murphy said he believes could attract bipartisan support. Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, cited himself as an example of how one incident can change hearts and minds. Before the 2012 massacre of 26 young children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, Casey opposed additional gun restrictions. He said he realised then that opposing the slate of gun control measures brought forward that session meant accepting that nothing could change. He said: “I think we have to ask ourselves the same question again. Is there nothing that we can do? No law? Nothing that we can do? … I don’t think that’s acceptable.”But there has been little sign that the horror of Las Vegas will budge congressional Republicans. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, dismissed the debate as “premature” and chastised Democrats for raising the issue of gun control so soon after the attack.“I think it’s particularly inappropriate to politicize an event like this,” McConnell said. “It just happened within the last day and a half. It’s entirely premature to be discussing legislative solutions – if any.” He added: “We’re in the middle of an investigation. We’ll see what that reveals and at the end of that will be an appropriate time to discuss it. In the meantime, our priority is tax reform.”Schumer also called on Republicans to drop a bill that would make it easier to purchase a silencer. Republicans postponed a hearing on the bill in June when members were attacked by a gunman during a congressional baseball practice.“When two mass shootings force you to delay a bill that would make those mass shootings harder to detect and stop, maybe that’s a sign you ought to let go of the bill, once and for all,” Schumer said. On Tuesday, Ryan said the bill was not currently scheduled to come to the floor. The deeply entrenched partisan divide on gun control are illustrated by two former House colleagues who were both grievously injured in mass shootings. Congressman Steve Scalise on Tuesday joined his Republican colleagues for a weekly press conference. It was his first time at the podium since returning to Washington after he was grievously injured in the June shooting. Scalise urged prayer and did not raise the issue of gun control. In a Fox News interview later on Tuesday, Martha MacCallum asked Scalise if his experience being shot on a baseball diamond had changed his views on the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right of citizens to “bear arms”. Scalise, a strong supporter of gun rights, replied: “I think it’s fortified it.”Scalise is one of only a handful of members of Congress who have been injured while serving in office. Another is Giffords, now a prominent advocate for stricter gun control.Paddock had an arsenal of 23 guns in his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. The retiree had no criminal record and his motive remains a mystery as the criminal investigation continues. On Tuesday Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of Clark County said detectives were in contact with 64-year-old Paddock’s girlfriend Marilou Danley, who is in the Philippines and considered “a person of interest”.Trump has described Paddock as a “very, very sick individual” and said “we’re looking into him very seriously.” Topics Las Vegas Las Vegas shooting Gun crime Donald Trump news

That darned demonetisation did rock the boat last November, but India’s love affair with cash is well and truly back on track.In fact, the romance has returned with such vigour that the currency with the Indian public at the end of October 2017 stood at Rs15.48 lakh crore, the latest data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) shows. That’s only about 9% less than the Rs16.98 lakh crore the public held on Oct. 14, 2016, only a few weeks before demonetisation. This is proof that the Narendra Modi government’s move to render two high-value currency notes illegal has done little to reduce India’s dependence on cash. On Nov. 08, 2016, the Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes accounted for 86% of the currency in circulation by value. The government’s key rationale for demonetisation was to curb the circulation of black money and making India’s economy less cash-dependent. “Our dream is that there should be (a) cashless society. This is correct that 100% cashless society is never possible,” Modi said in his Mann Ki Baat radio programme on Nov. 27, 2016. “But we can make a start with less-cash society—then cashless society will not be a far-off destination.”While the jury is still out on demonetisation’s overall efficacy, the government has stressed on the boost to digital transactions. But now even the growth in electronic payments is declining and back to the pre-currency ban levels. ”The only long-term gain (of demonetisation) is probably the less use of cash. However, this push towards digitisation could have been done in a less dramatic and painful way,” Jayati Ghosh, professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Quartz in September. “Incentivising the customers to use plastic or digital money would have been more effective.”

Professor Christine Blasey Ford was a teenager when she says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her. You know the story by now. She didn’t report it at the time, but has come forward now that Kavanaugh is close to being confirmed as a justice to the highest court in the land. On Friday morning, President Trump tweeted that he had “no doubt” that if it had happened, Blasey Ford would have reported it right away.That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. I know this because this is my story, too, and the story of millions of people. Don’t believe me? Look at Twitter today. Look at the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport. Read the cacophony of stories—each different but the same. Stories of assault by strangers, friends, family members, teachers. The hashtag exposes the sheer banality of rape in America. Sexual assault is not rare. It’s common. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, there were 320,000 sexual assaults in the US in 2016. And 77 percent of people who experienced rape or sexual assault say they did not tell police.That number is likely much higher. Though the NCVS data is the best the US has for now, critics have long warned that in addition to suffering from the risk of underreporting that befalls all self-reported surveys, its methodology specifically discourages reporting. In a study from five years ago, the National Academy of Sciences found that the government’s survey was probably vastly undercounting sexual crimes. That report found that a separate survey devoted to sexual assault and rape would have more accurate results.Tweets are not a replacement for this data. But they can augment it. The stories told today give texture to the statistics that tell us this is common. Three hundred and twenty thousand—even if that number is low—is too big and abstract a number to really fathom. But the tweets shared this morning are real, and individual, and impossible to forget.In an era of misinformation and bots on social media, when we have daily coverage of the pain that can be inflicted by social media, this hashtag is a reminder of how powerful these mediums can be in bringing people together. (Of course, it was also Twitter that the president used to share the tweet that so startled sexual assault survivors this morning.)But it’s also worth remembering that a hashtag doesn’t tell the whole story of sexual assault in America. Not everyone is on Twitter, and many people aren’t comfortable sharing their stories—even vaguely—in such a public place. But for some, it’s a crucial outlet to validate our identities at a time when it feels like those in power would like us to be silent. Or invisible.I say our, because I am included in this. When I read Trump’s tweet this morning, first I stopped breathing. When the most powerful person in the land denies your lived experience, it feels like someone punching you in the diaphragm.When I breathed again, I paced the room, thinking about when I was a teenager, three years older than Ford at the time of her alleged assault. I was in college, and a boy I trusted date raped me in his room. I told a few friends and then didn’t mention it for years. I didn’t report it. I had a lot of reasons not to, but chief among them was: I didn’t think anyone would care. Why were you in his room, I thought they’d ask. I had previously reported a much less serious sexual assault—groping—in high school, and nothing had happened. Why go through the public embarrassment of that again? I didn’t even tell my family about it for 15 years.This morning, I picked up my phone and tweeted about that incident. I wanted to speak directly to the president, or anyone reading his tweet and thinking it sounded right. Like the women and men who took to Twitter this morning, I wanted to declare: I exist, here is my story.Reading through the tweets on the hashtag drives home the innumerable reasons people do not report these events. Chief among them is that they won’t be believed, and then they’ll be punished by whoever has an interest in protecting the status quo. Yet, the collectivism in a hashtag gives us all solidarity. Though it is at once the most public airing of our most personal story, it somehow feels less intimate to tweet about this kind of experience than to sit across the table from a family member or friend and tell them.Why don’t people report? Here’s what some said.I’m a man and it would make me seem weak.It would ruin my career before it had even begun.Nothing happened the first time I reported.The person who raped me is the person I would have needed to report to.They were a friend and I was in denial.He told me he’d kill me if I told anyone.Men are tweeting about how, for them, the stigma of coming out and reporting their sexual assault was too much to bear. That’s in line with research that’s been saying the same thing for years. People are sharing about how they didn't report professors or bosses who had power over their professional lives. Or how they didn't report family members on whom they literally depended for everything. They’re tweeting about police officers and administrators whom they did tell, but who doubted and blamed them.This hashtag has power. After I had tweeted and I later saw the trending hashtag, I felt like my story was a raindrop in a lake, at once singular but part of something bigger. I was grateful. I was floored by what so many people have gone through, even while not being surprised. The specifics of their pain: “He held my face so I couldn’t breathe.” “He was stronger than me, and my cousin.” “I was 13.”Every woman and many men I know have a story. Or many stories. In 2016, in the weeks after the Access Hollywood tape came out, I wrote a list of the sexual assault and harassment in my life that I could remember. It wasn’t exhaustive, but it was exhausting. It had never occurred to me to write them down before because that kind of experience is so much an accepted part of life for women. “After we are leered at and groped, we get off the train, and go to work, and we don’t mention it, because why would we? This is part of being a woman,” I wrote at the time. I assumed everyone knew.But everyone doesn’t know. That’s what the #metoo movement, and the backlash to it, has taught us. And that’s why so many people are reliving their own assaults today to share their stories. It hurts to educate people about the ordinariness of sexual assault. It means having to think about something someone might not want to think about. It means remembering the reasons you felt stifled from sharing in the first place. For many of us, it means remembering how violated and embarrassed and guilty, and above all, alone we felt.I hesitated to tweet this morning. Even though I’d already written about my experience and told my family, and even though I really don’t feel as traumatized by it as I used to, I worried it could in some way seem unprofessional to tell my story. But this thing that happened to me when I was 18; it’s a truth I carry inside me every day.Even now, telling feels dangerous, despite the fact that the story being told is so universal, which is exactly the point. These are our stories to tell.Tech disrupted everything. 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A Russian billionaire who has emerged as a central figure in the controversy surrounding the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Kremlin is under investigation in Monaco.Dmitry Rybolovlev, who is president of Monaco football club, is expected to be formally charged for allegedly violating the privacy of one-time confidant and friend Tania Rappo, in a case that has raised questions about whether the tycoon used his political influence to wage a legal campaign against his former art dealer.The development comes as Rybolovlev, who paid Donald Trump $95m for a beachfront property in Florida in 2008, has caught the attention of congressional and federal investigators in the US who are examining alleged dealings between Russian operatives and members of Trump’s inner circle.The allegations in Monaco against the Russian tycoon, who made his fortune as a fertiliser magnate, are unrelated to the ongoing federal investigation in the US into whether or not the Kremlin colluded with the Trump campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.Rybolovlev has never been active in Russian politics and has spent most of the past two decades living abroad. He is known to be close to Yuri Trutnev, a senior adviser to Vladimir Putin and a former mayor of Perm, the city in the Urals where Rybolovlev grew up and had his business until he sold it in 2010. At the heart of the complicated Monaco case lie claims and counterclaims about Rybolovlev’s art collection and whether the Russian oligarch was swindled by his former art dealer, Yves Bouvier.Questions have swirled around Bouvier’s alleged dealings for years, but the focus of the scandal has now turned on Rybolovlev himself, who Bouvier has claimed used his political clout to coordinate attacks against him by law enforcement officials.Monaco’s former justice minister, Philippe Narmino, resigned in September and faced questions from prosecutors after it was alleged in press accounts that he might have received gifts from Rybolovlev as the Russian launched fraud claims against Bouvier.The formal investigations into Rybolovlev are not centred on allegations of corruption. They relate to claims by Bouvier’s assistant, Rappo, who has said that a conversation she had with an attorney was illegally recorded as part of Rybolovlev’s campaign to prove that he had been defrauded by Bouvier.Rybolovlev denies wrongdoing. His adviser told the Guardian that the Russian tycoon had only had one intention: to uncover fraud that had been committed against him.“We have no doubt that we will succeed in doing it and our experience will be very useful for the investors in this market,” Sergey Chernitsyn said.Rybolovlev also claimed to have full confidence in Monaco’s justice system, which he called “independent and professional”.“I am very comfortable about the outcome of the current probes and convinced that the judicial system of Monaco will do its work, which we are waiting for impatiently,” he said in a statement.Rybolovlev is at the centre of attention in the US because of the ongoing investigation by the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia.In 2008 Rybolovlev bought Trump’s seaside Florida mansion – Maison de L’Amite – for $95m. Trump made a $50m profit, having bought the property just four years earlier. The sale at the peak of the global financial crisis raised eyebrows. Rybolovlev never set foot inside and eventually demolished the villa, which had a serious mould problem. His spokesman said Rybolovlev had made a good enough investment, with the territory eventually divided into three lots, two of which have since sold for large sums.There are also questions about whether Rybolovlev ever had personal interactions with Trump. During the US election campaign Rybolovlev’s distinctive private Airbus jet – with the call-sign M-KATE – was spotted in the same place as Trump’s during election rallies. The two planes landed within an hour of each other in early November 2016 at Charlotte International airport in North Carolina. Trump addressed an election rally nearby. Rybolovlev has said this was “pure coincidence” and that he has never met Trump.The oligarch travels extensively in the US, including New York and LA, for reasons of “business and pleasure”, his spokesman said. Additionally, Rybolovlev’s luxury yacht, “My Anna”, was spotted in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in August 2016, at the same time that Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were visiting on holiday. Rybolovlev says he has never met Kushner, who is a senior White House adviser. Topics World news Trump administration Monaco (Football) Russia Monaco (World news) Donald Trump

Once quiet, civilised Bangalore is shaken to the core by the news of the shocking murder of its most famous journalist, Gauri Lankesh. In big cities and small towns across India thousands of people are protesting at the murder of a gutsy woman who fought for the marginalised, who called Dalit victims her sons, and who protested against injustice and venal politics in the face of death threats.When you know someone, their death hits you harder. Lankesh was the recipient of endless hate mail from Hindu extremists. She was vilified on two fronts. She dared to take on the powerful Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), currently ruling most of India. She criticised them and their cohorts for attacking minorities and creating a culture that enabled lynching, mob violence and hate crimes. She also defended Dalit rights, provoking the ire of many dominant-caste Indians across the political spectrum.I have been told off for comparing the current political climate to Nazi Germany. “Don’t go over the top, you’ll lose credibility,” critics advise. Yet for 16-year-old Junaid, a hapless Muslim youth recently stabbed more than 30 times on a public train when he had merely gone out to buy festive clothes for Eid, the pattern is chillingly similar to films we’ve watched on the attacks on Jews in Hitler’s Germany. JJunaid and his friends were first pushed, then abused as “dirty Muslims”, then told to vacate their seats, their distinctive skull caps thrown on the ground. They tried to escape but Junaid was held down while his assailant stabbed him multiple times. The other boys, who were merely beaten or stabbed, were the lucky ones. They escaped with their lives.Harsh Mander, former civil servant and activist writer, has appealed to the majority of peace-loving Hindus of India to stop the violence, to stand with the minorities. Even as Lankesh was being lethally mown down, a peace pilgrimage, or yatra, had been initiated in faraway Assam. Called the caravan of love, Karwan e Mohabbat (Kem), it aims to atone for the violence against minorities, and beg for peace and harmony to replace the politics of hate. Currently Muslims, tribal groups (the Adivasi), Dalits and Christians have been singled out in violent attacks.A US state department report quoted in The Hindu says: “Authorities frequently did not prosecute members of vigilante ‘cow protection’ groups who attacked alleged smugglers, consumers, or traders of beef, usually Muslims, despite an increase in attacks compared to previous years.”Kem proposes to travel across India, to meet the families of people victimised, attacked, raped and murdered for being minorities. It began on 4 September when Mander and other activist writers visited two women whose teenage sons had been brutally killed.The cousins, Riyaz and Abu, had gone fishing on their day off. Someone screamed that they were cattle thieves. Within minutes a mob assembled. The boys were thrashed mercilessly while pleading for their lives. Their mutilated bodies came home with eyes gouged out and ears cut off. Two carefree, laughing boys left home promising their mums a fish feast. Instead the women received the worst news possible for any parent: their children had been murdered.Kem urges Indians to fight to uphold the values of the Indian constitution, which promises its citizens liberty, justice, equality and fraternity after centuries of oppression. Now we appear to be turning into that which we hated, that which we fought against: oppressors, cruel tyrants, intolerant murderers.In the last two decades, the voices of Hindu extremists have become more vocal, frighteningly shrill. They’ve become emboldened with the culture of impunity which seems all-pervasive. When minorities are killed, often falsely accused of trading, eating or carrying beef, by cow vigilantes, our most vocal, always tweeting Prime Minister Modi says not a word. The silence is deafening. This has encouraged the fanatics to lynch, attack and kill people.Shockingly, the fanatics glorify Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Gandhi, because he believed Gandhi had caved in to Muslim demands by allowing the creation of Pakistan. The once-banned Godse cult is now thriving. Social media are powerfully used to propagate lies, hate and distorted facts.Critics of Hindu nationalists’ fanaticism are being murdered to scare all dissenters into silence. Two years before Lankesh’s death, the eminent intellectual MM Kalburgi was also shot dead outside his home. That same year, Govind Pansare another vocal critic of extremist Hindu groups, was murdered. In August 2013, the Dalit campaigner and atheist Narendra Dabholkar killed. All of these martyred Hindus were fighting for the idea of India. They were battling to save Hinduism from bigots and charlatans.All over India, people are waking up to the reality that their beloved country could be destroyed. Never has the country witnessed the flood of hatred and vitriol currently being openly spewed. The voices of sanity plead: “Stop the descent. We cannot become Kosovo or Rwanda.”Mander issued a challenge to India, but especially to the Hindu majority. “It’s a call of conscience to India’s majority,” he says. “We need our conscience to ache. We need it to be burdened intolerably.” Silence can mean complicity. The silent majority needs to speak up. And to speak out now. Otherwise the Hindu stalwarts who fought for justice will have been martyred for nothing.In spite of these dark, dismal days, hope has not died. People are protesting: “Not in my name.” And India’s supreme court has just ordered all states and union territories to appoint police officers in every district to track down and prosecute cow vigilante groups. Perhaps sanity will be restored. Perhaps peace will return to this beleaguered nation again. Perhaps Lankesh and the martyrs who preceded her will not have died in vain.• Mari Marcel Thekaekara is a human rights activist and writer based in Gudalur, Tamil Nadu Topics India Opinion South and Central Asia Hate crime Hinduism Religion Narendra Modi comment

The first big interview with the fired FBI director James Comey is blazing toward a broadcast on Sunday night, but for the Donald Trump presidency, multiple meteors have already hit.In Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty, obtained by the Guardian on Thursday from a bookseller in New York before publication, the former official casts Trump as both “unethical” and “untethered to truth” and compares his presidency to a “forest fire”.Likening Trump to a mafia boss, Comey describes a meeting in the Oval Office which gave him flashbacks to his career as a young prosecutor. “As I found myself thrust into the Trump orbit, I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob,” Comey writes. “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and the truth.”The Republican party has launched a concerted effort to get its rebuttal in before the book is published, with a Trumpian web site dedicated to branding the former director “Lyin’ Comey”.But A Higher Loyalty is an instant bestseller online and will be supported by a media blitz to begin Sunday night with an hour-long broadcast on ABC News. Trump called Comey a “weak and untruthful slime ball” on Friday in a Twitter response to the first reports from the book. But Comey is not the only former FBI chief giving Trump a migraine – the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign has been accelerating and is also enraging the president.The sky began to fall in for Trump on Monday, when FBI agents raided the offices and a hotel room used by Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen. The raids were a strong sign that prosecutors might soon charge one of Trump’s fiercest loyalists with a serious crime or crimes, legal experts said.“It’s a disgraceful situation,” Trump said. “It’s a total witch-hunt … It’s an attack on our country, what we all stand for.”As the implications of those raids continue to sink in, Trump may be lured towards the kind of drastic action that would send fissures through the executive branch and beyond, multiple former White House and justice department officials interviewed by the Guardian said.“The raid of Michael Cohen’s office was a seismic event, for any presidency,” said Andrew Wright, a former White House associate counsel and a professor at Savannah Law School. “I think he [Cohen] is in very serious trouble. “And sure enough, the president appears to have really come pretty unhinged at that news, so I think that’s incredibly significant.”Even for a White House that can seem to cycle from crisis to extreme crisis, the current pressure on Trump, and the resulting peril for his presidency and the country, is acute, according to seasoned prosecutors. “The pressure on the president is actually unimaginable to me,” said Betsy de la Vega, who was a federal prosecutor for more than 20 years.While the public has no way of knowing how far along Mueller is in his work, De la Vega said, the decision to conduct the Cohen raids, given their high stakes, could indicate that prosecutors had completed significant work behind the scenes.“They would have to know that setting it in motion would cause great consternation, to say the least, on the part of Donald Trump and his pals, so that gives me the sense that the pace is increasing.”Cohen, who has denied all wrongdoing, could face charges including bank fraud, wire fraud, campaign violations, tax crimes or other charges relating to payments made to multiple women in advance of the 2016 election, and communications thereafter with at least one of those women.The prospect of such an indictment is clearly weighing on the president’s mind. In the week since the Cohen raids, Trump has lashed out at Mueller and his superior, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. “Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein...),” Trump tweeted in a Wednesday morning tirade against “the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama”.Mueller has indicted or reached plea agreements with 19 individuals, including four former senior Trump campaign aides, plus three companies in Russia. He is a Republican, as is Rosenstein. So are Comey and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general.But none of Mueller’s targets has been as close to Trump as Cohen, who is a friend of the family, has been involved with the Trump children on real estate deals around the world, and who could have a lot to tell prosecutors about operations inside the Trump Organization.The visceral threat of a prosecution so close to his company and his family could drive the president to take a step that the White House asserted last week was within his power: removing Mueller, or perhaps Rosenstein.“There’s a clear pattern of the president seeming to think that the department of justice belongs to him,” said Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law School professor specializing in criminal prosecution issues. “And that’s deeply concerning. These threats to fire Sessions or fire Mueller or fire Rosenstein all fit into that.“It’s a remarkable disregard for the rule of law. The precedent that this is setting, what this means for our country and our future, is very concerning.”The combined pressures from the investigation, and a media cacophony with outlets such as Fox News touting an imminent Trump “personnel decision,” could be driving Trump toward a dangerous step, said Wright.“It feels like there are people that are really trying to tempt the president to take drastic action to try and shut down these investigations, and I think that would just really send us into political convulsions in this country, and I think that would not solve the president’s problems, it would worsen them,” Wright said.“I’m quite concerned about the precarious situation we find ourselves in right now.”Members of congress in both chambers have said they support passing legislation to protect the special counsel, but such legislation is moving slowly.Trump, meanwhile, appears not to have been shaken in his basic faith that the best way to handle the prosecutions swirling around him is to fight back with all the power the presidency can muster.“No Collusion or Obstruction (other than I fight back), so now they do the Unthinkable, and RAID a lawyers office for information! BAD!” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.“It’s the thing he hasn’t learned from the beginning,” said Wright, discussing Trump’s relationship with the prosecution. “It’s like being wrapped by a boa constrictor. The more you struggle, the more likely you’re going to die quickly. And the less you struggle, the more likely you might be able to slip out of its clutches. “And instead the president is just wiggling and wiggling and wiggling.” Topics James Comey Donald Trump Trump administration US politics Michael Cohen news

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He has mocked women as idiots and as tramps, as unworthy of rape, let alone equal pay. Within weeks he could be crowned president of a country that is home to 108 million of them.But with Brazil’s highly polarized 7 October election looming, huge numbers of Brazilian women are now mobilizing to derail the presidential bid of the far-right frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro, who is leading polls with about 26% of intended votes.“We need everyone to pull together to stop this disaster happening to our country,” said Maíra Motta, a 40-year-old philosophy teacher from the city of Vitória da Conquista.Motta is one of more than 2.5 million women who have in recent days joined a Facebook campaign to stop Bolsonaro in his tracks. Ludimilla Teixeira, a 36-year-old advertising executive, said she had founded the group – Mulheres Unidas Contra Bolsonaro or Women United Against Bolsonaro – on 30 August as a platform to coordinate protests against politicians with “misogynist, prejudiced and truly fascist” ideas. Within 24 hours it had accumulated 600,000 members.Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo falsely dismissed the group as “fake news” being peddled by the Guardian, and after suffering repeated attacks by hackers, the group’s administrators turned it into a secret group on Sunday.Teixeira, from the north-eastern city of Salvador, called herself “a tiny spark” that had set off “a powder keg of indignation” across Brazil. “We thought it would grow but never that it would be so fast.”Motta and Teixeira said members hailed from all corners of the country and all walks of life: elderly women, lawyers, housewives, trans women, doctors, authors and civil servants. They were united by a collective dread that a man with such toxic views on women and minorities might become their leader.“It is terrifying to think we might have a president who doesn’t care about gender equality, who supports the idea that women should be paid less than men,” said Teixeira.“We are not against Jair Bolsonaro the human being … We vehemently repudiate the attack he suffered,” she added. “But we cannot allow someone with such highly anti-democratic positions on women’s rights to reach the highest job in Brazil.”Teixeira said she was particularly worried about Bolsonaro’s apparent desire to make abortion laws even more draconian, but warned the “poisonous” views of a politician notorious for making racist and homophobic statements were not just a menace to women. She said: “We are his main target but we are not the only ones. Many other communities are having their rights threatened.”Although Bolsonaro, a former army officer, has been confined to hospital since he was stabbed during a rally earlier this month, polling suggests he is holding on to a firm lead over his nearest rivals, the Workers’ party’s Fernando Haddad and centre-leftist Ciro Gomes.But Bolsonaro’s unpopularity among female voters presents a serious challenge to his presidential aspirations. Women represent 52% of Brazil’s 147 million-strong electorate and polls show 49% oppose his candidacy compared with just 37% of men.“He’s the candidate who has the biggest discrepancy between his male vote and his female vote in the history of Brazil,” said José Roberto de Toledo, a political journalist from the magazine Piauí, who said that in some states Bolsonaro has 75% less support among women than among men.Bolsonaro is not totally without female support: polls show 17% of female voters back him – less than the 32% of men, but a significant number nevertheless.Female fans post photos on an Instagram account called Bolsolindas (Bolsobeauties) and have a Facebook page of their own, Mulheres Com Bolsonaro (Women With Bolsonaro), with more than 30,000 followers.“I love him,” said Katarina Abreu, a 59-year-old retiree who was among dozens of Bolsonaro supporters gathered at a recent beachside campaign event in the north-eastern city of Recife.Asked about Bolsonaro’s controversial statements on women, Abreu replied: “Everyone is a little bit [sexist], aren’t they? There’s no point in lying.”Cassya Marques, a 32-year-old advertising student at the same rally, rejected claims her candidate was a misogynist.“He’s never said that he doesn’t care about women, that women are worth less – he never said that,” she insisted as she waved a white flag reading: ‘Presidente Bolsonaro’.“He’s a God-fearing, family man … he’s a guy with a good heart and that’s what matters.” Topics Brazil Americas Women Jair Bolsonaro features

The UN security council failed to agree after a second day of intensive talks on a proposed 30-day ceasefire across Syria to allow for emergency humanitarian deliveries and medical evacuations.Backroom negotiations continued throughout the day on Friday. One deadline passed after another, as other council members tried to persuade Russia to agree to a resolution. The talks at the UN headquarters in New York followed an appeal by French and German leaders to Vladimir Putin, asking for Russia to stop blocking the measure’s passage, pointing to the dire situation of the trapped civilian population in the rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. The draft resolution calls for a nationwide truce to come into force within 72 hours of its adoption, but it is not clear how forces in Syria would respond even if it were passed. Eastern Ghouta has come under particularly intense regime bombardment in recent days as the government of Bashar al-Assad seeks to crush the resistance in the district, home to an estimated 400,000 people. Reports from the area said that more than 400 civilians had been killed there this week, and that hospitals and clinics had been targeted.The security council negotiations on Friday were focused on addressing Russian objections to the version put forward by Sweden and Kuwait. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, had signaled earlier in the day that Russia would consider supporting the 30-day ceasefire if the US would guarantee that rebel groups would stick to it. “There are no guarantees that [the rebels] will not continue shooting at Damascus residential areas,” Lavrov said in a briefing.“That’s why, for the resolution to be efficient – and we are ready to agree on the text which would make it so – we propose a formula which would make the ceasefire real, based on the guarantees of all who are inside eastern Ghouta and outside eastern Ghouta.”Supporters of the ceasefire resolution had hoped for a vote on Thursday. When Russian opposition became apparent, it was put off until 11am local time in New York. As the bargaining continued, it was postponed again until 2.30pm while diplomats discussed the text behind closed doors, with the US adding edits aimed at addressing Russian demands. The 2.30pm deadline passed with no sign of a compromise and ultimately a decision was made to put off a vote to Saturday, with no clarity on whether Moscow was close to accepting a ceasefire or whether the Russian government was playing for time while its Syrian allies pressed on with their offensive on eastern Ghouta.Meanwhile in Washington, Donald Trump was asked about the situation in eastern Ghouta and delivered an unusually harsh attack on Moscow.“What Russia and what Iran and what Syria has done recently is a humanitarian disgrace. I will tell you that,” Trump said. The 10 non-permanent, elected members of the council said they were united behind the draft ceasefire resolution and wanted it passed on Friday. Mansour al-Otaibi, the envoy from Kuwait, who co-wrote the resolution, said the council was “so close” to adopting the resolution.A 2016 ceasefire agreed with Russia, intended to safeguard the citizens of Aleppo, collapsed on the day it was supposed to take effect, as regime forces pressed on with an offensive that ultimately led to the fall of the rebel enclave.The letter Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel sent to Putin on Friday said the continuing attacks on civilian populations represented “clear violations of international humanitarian law”.A statement by the French president’s office said: “In the face of the suffering of the people of eastern Ghouta, France and Germany call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and the implementation of a humanitarian truce to allow aid to be provided to civilian populations and emergency medical evacuations to take place, as has been requested by the United Nations. France and Germany call on Russia to assume its full responsibilities in this regard.”Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, called on Friday for an immediate ceasefire and aid deliveries in eastern Ghouta after more than 400 civilians were killed there since Sunday.“The massacre in eastern Ghouta must stop now,” Mogherini said. “The European Union is running out of words to describe the horror being experienced by the people of eastern Ghouta.”On Friday, for a sixth straight day, warplanes flown by Syrian government forces and their allies pounded densely populated eastern Ghouta, the last rebel bastion near Damascus. The civilian casualties and devastation there are among the worst in Syria since the government captured rebel-held parts of Aleppo in intense fighting in 2016. At least 436 people have been killed and many hundreds injured in less than a week, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. The dead include at least 99 children.Previous attempts at a cessation of hostilities in Syria have quickly unravelled.This week’s sustained air campaign has led to strident criticism from aid agencies, but until Friday had generated little diplomatic momentum despite repeated claims that the attacks constituted war crimes. Topics Syria Middle East and North Africa United Nations Russia France Germany news