Bloomberg President Donald Trump claimed an “absolute right†to share information about terrorism with Russian officials, but some lawmakers in both parties expressed alarm over reports he had disclosed highly classified material in an Oval Office meeting last week and demanded a fuller accounting. “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I ...
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Israeli minister: Time has come to assassinate Assad
Bloomberg President Bashar al-Assad should be eliminated to stop the atrocities taking place in Syria, according to an Israeli minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Gallant, a retired major general who led the Israel Defense Forces’s southern command, which includes the Gaza Strip, pointed to U.S. allegations that the Assad regime built a crematorium at a ...
Read More »Macron draws up cabinet with help from new premier
Bloomberg President Emmanuel Macron was spending Tuesday selecting his cabinet with new Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. Just back from meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Macron is huddling with Philippe throughout the day with the list of ministers is due to be released at 3 p.m. on Wednesday in Paris. Macron this month became the first French president to ...
Read More »Eight candidates quizzed for FBI chief amid uproar over Comey
Bloomberg The two top officials at the Justice Department have interviewed eight candidates to replace the fired James Comey amid demands from lawmakers of both parties for Donald Trump to turn over any recordings he may have made of his meetings with the former FBI director. Washington continued to be roiled by Trump’s firing of Comey on May 9, citing ...
Read More »Erdogan welcomes decisive Trump meeting amid ‘row’
Bloomberg Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he’s looking forward to a “decisive meeting†with his US counterpart Donald Trump, whose decision to arm Kurdish groups against IS in Syria has stoked tensions between the two NATO members. “If we are strategic allies, then we should make decisions in alliance,†the Sabah newspaper cited Erdogan as telling reporters on Sunday ...
Read More »Travel ban faces second round at West Coast appeals court
Bloomberg Attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department will again come before a federal appeals court to try to salvage President Donald Trump’s order banning travel from six mostly Muslim nations, after a judge said it appeared to be discriminatory. The hearing gets underway at 9:30 a.m. in Seattle. It’s the second time a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court ...
Read More »North Korea fires missile in test for South Korean president
Bloomberg North Korea fired a ballistic missile early Sunday, its seventh such test this year, just days after South Korea elected a president who vowed to engage with Kim Jong Un’s regime to defuse tensions over its nuclear weapons program. The missile was launched at 5:27 a.m from the city of Kusong, northwest of the capital Pyongyang, and flew about ...
Read More »Russian election meddling well documented: Tillerson
Bloomberg Russian interference in the 2016 US election has been “well documented,†but it’s still in the interests of the US to attempt to improve relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. “I don’t think there’s any question that the Russians were playing around in our electoral processes,†Tillerson said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press ...
Read More »Macron takes charge of divided France as youngest president
Bloomberg Emmanuel Macron became the youngest president of France on Sunday, leading a country where economic malaise and security concerns drove extremist parties to their highest-ever scores in this year’s election. Macron is the eighth directly elected president of the Fifth Republic, after assuming the role in a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris. “For decades France has doubted ...
Read More »White House refuses to say ‘if Trump tapes conversations’
Bloomberg The White House repeatedly refused to say whether President Donald Trump secretly records his official conversations, after Trump suggested in a tweet that he had “tapes†of discussions with former FBI director James Comey. Trump issued a series of inflammatory Twitter posts, including a barely veiled threat against Comey, an assertion that it’s “not possible†for his spokesmen to ...
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