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Misread email subject line accidentally freezes Trump DOJ's work with top ally
The Justice Department accidentally stopped working with Canada after a division chief misunderstood instructions to reschedule a meeting, The Wall Street Journal reported.According to a Friday article, the DOJ's antitrust division was instructed to halt all work with the Canadian government after an email was sent out with the subject line, "Pause on Canada." The chief of the antitrust division's international section, Lynda Marshall, sent out the email after she was told to reschedule a meeting.The email ordered DOJ officials in the division to stop all cooperation on cases and engagement on policy issues with Canadian authorities, according to The Journal. Marshall didn't offer any reasoning in her email for why the division had to stop working with Canada, but she wrote that she would "circle back if the guidance changes," The Journal reported.A follow-up email was sent on Friday to section chiefs within the division demanding lists detailing areas of cooperation with Canada by the end of the day, according to The Journal. In yet another email from Marshall that came later that day, she told staff in the division that she had been mistaken and cooperation with Canada could continue.Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Covington told The Journal that the directive to stop cooperation came after Marshall misunderstood a directive. Covington explained that Marshall had been told to push back a scheduled meeting, The Journal reported. The mix-up came as the Trump administration and Canada are in a dispute after trade talks broke down last month, with both the U.S. and Canada imposing tariffs on each other.According to The Journal, the DOJ division has resumed working with Canada. Representatives from Canada or its Competition Bureau didn't respond to The Journal's request for comment.The Journal noted that Canadian and U.S. antitrust authorities have multiple agreements in place to increase cooperation and have collaborated on major investigations since the 2000s. The two countries worked together on investigations into price-fixing in the auto parts and air cargo industries as well as on cases about mergers in tech, aerospace, and other industries.
Marco Rubio buried an investigation he later claimed never happened: report
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly helped shut down a federal investigation into a businessman involved in President Donald Trump’s massive Venezuelan oil deal —then publicly said there was no investigation against him.Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt had spent years under investigation by the Justice Department as part of a sprawling billion-dollar money laundering case, according to a new CNN report. But prosecutors in Miami recently closed the probe after receiving direct orders from then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.“The move came as part of an effort by Trump White House officials and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to enlist Betancourt to engineer a massive new oil deal with Venezuela’s government,” the report said.Rubio, in an interview this week with a Venezuelan broadcaster, took credit for helping arrange Betancourt’s role in the oil deal and went on to defend the businessman as having been fully vetted.“We thoroughly investigate what we know within our system,” Rubio said. “Obviously, if these individuals were under investigation in the United States, and we have checked that with all the authorities, there was no investigation within our system against him.”But, according to CNN, Rubio did not disclose that he “played a key role in why Betancourt is no longer under investigation.” The Justice Department disputed that Blanche personally directed prosecutors to shut the case, calling the claim “a complete fabrication,” the Friday report said. Betancourt, who is now a partner in Trump’s Venezuelan oil plan, was never charged with a crime. “Now we have an opportunity to do something that I believe is going to benefit everyone,” Rubio said in the interview. “But specifically, in the long term, benefit the Venezuelan people.”
'Blood boiling': Trump infuriates after dismissing his war as 'small potatoes'
President Donald Trump downplayed the severity of the Iran war when pressed by reporters in the Oval Office during an executive order signing ceremony on Friday."The Vice President said yesterday that he would not describe the conflict with Iran as a war…If this is not a war, what exactly is it?" asked ABC's Rachel Scott. Trump replied, "I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing."When Trump was reminded that 18 people have died and are facing "record-long deployments," Trump shot back, "Why is it record long? How long were we in Vietnam? We're in 5 months now."The president's flippant comments earned instant outrage from commenters on social media."A quote — 'small potatoes' — that Republicans would absolutely hang over the head of a Dem president if he uttered it," wrote The Bulwark's Sam Stein. "Underscores the disparity in the messaging machines between the two parties.""Ordering Americans into harm’s way is maybe the most solemn and serious responsibility of the Commander in Chief. And this guy calls it small potatoes?" wrote Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), himself a veteran of the Iraq War. "Every chicken hawk cheerleading this reckless war owns his disrespect of our troops and their patriotism.""Every day he does the most un-American thing possible, and every day it's something new," wrote Tucson-based attorney Joe St. Louis. "I thought I was numb to his callousness, but God this makes by blood boil."
'He's lost it': Trump's 'chaotic' under-the-radar interview sparks slew of new concerns
President Donald Trump's "incoherence" in a little-noticed exclusive interview with GB News caught the eye of a British journalist who was startled by what he witnessed, he said Friday. During the interview, a rambling Trump managed to touch on subjects ranging from immigration to Meghan Markle's return to Britain, prompting iPaper columnist James Ball to argue the president was an “elderly man” who no longer had a grasp of reality.“Trump has always been a little chaotic, with at best a loose relationship with the truth," he wrote. "But based on his remarks in an extended interview with GB News, the US President is only getting worse. In the space of minutes, he managed what amounted to little more than a concentrated stream of nonsense about the UK, Iran, and even the Falkland Islands.” Ball took umbrage with Trump's claim that he was "saving your country" — arguing the U.S. president was doing something very different.“The US President seems fixated on securing the gratitude of British and European politicians for a war they didn’t want him to start, which never secured congressional approval, and for which he’s never formally set out any goals," the columnist wrote. "It also doesn’t seem to have made us any safer – quite the opposite.”According to Trump, England stood at risk of an imminent nuclear threat from Iran, to which Ball replied, “This is an odd way to understand a nuclear capability.”“Countries don’t immediately launch nuclear missiles as soon as they obtain them – instead, they generally use them to try to deter invasion by their adversaries,” he reasoned. “Why Iran would immediately launch its theoretical nukes against European nations who hadn’t involved themselves in the war against it is never spelt out by Trump.”Ball pointed out that US presidents rarely give interviews to foreign media, and only when they have ”something important to say, or a serious message that he needed to make sure reached the people of that country.”On that count, Trump failed, Ball argued.“Instead, it was a display of an increasingly elderly and incoherent man, ranting only semi-coherently about world affairs," he wrote. "Trump used to be a man who wanted to look in control at all times. Now, though, he just looks like he’s lost it." - YouTube youtu.be
UN votes to adopt new world map that shows Africa’s true scale
Togo-sponsored resolution called to phase out traditional map that depicts continent as similar size to GreenlandThe United Nations has voted to adopt a resolution for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa’s size.In a session at its headquarters in New York, the UN general assembly officially retired the 16th-century Mercator projection in favour of one based on the more accurate 2018 Equal Earth design. Continue reading...
Trump hurls unhinged threat to blow up global trade: ‘The president has an absolute right’
President Donald Trump issued a menacing threat Friday to blow up the United States’ global trade in an attempt to coerce the Federal Reserve to cave to his demands.“We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like ‘the old days.’ Without the United States agreeing to allow them their big surpluses, and we could stop that immediately, they would no longer be considered financially ELITE!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.“LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT, which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its ridiculous and very costly Tariff decision, strongly acknowledged ‘the President’ has an absolute right to do. ITS BETTER THAN TARIFFS! The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart - BE PATRIOTS for a change.”Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller said Thursday that a possible interest rate hike was in play and would be determined by a forthcoming inflation report set to be published next week. Meanwhile, rising oil prices sparked by Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran have inflated costs and deepened inflation concerns among experts.“High interest rates put the U.S.A. at a very unfair disadvantage, and I won’t allow that to happen!” Trump continued.
Trump panics over 'serious flub' after official 'forgets' American deaths in Iran
President Donald Trump made the unusual move of publicly correcting his own commerce secretary after he claimed no Americans had died in the Iran war, a conflict that has killed 18 U.S. service members.The correction came in a Truth Social post published about 7:30 a.m. Thursday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had appeared on CNBC the day before and said the war had resulted in no American deaths, while arguing to investors that the conflict would be good for the bond market."I think the way the president is playing Iran, right, there's not — there haven't been American deaths," Lutnick said. "It's really just an economic choke out, which the administration is now executing more broadly, and I think it'll be very effective."Lutnick used the phrase to describe squeezing Iran's economy rather than defeating it on the battlefield. He told CNBC that the strategy was working, and he tied it to his forecast that borrowing costs would fall."So I'm very optimistic that the bond market will treat us very well," Lutnick said, predicting in the same interview that interest rates would stabilize within a couple of months. The war, which began on Feb. 28, is now in its seventh month.On Thursday, Trump insisted that Lutnick had been thinking about a country that the commerce secretary never named."Sec. Lutnick had Venezuela on his mind when he said nobody was killed. 18 people were killed in Iran!" Trump wrote.Trump's reference to Venezuela pointed to a different operation, in which U.S. forces struck targets across that country on Jan. 3 and captured President Nicolás Maduro with few American casualties, according to the Congressional Research Service.Lutnick had named Iran directly. He also credited the administration's handling of Iran with his optimism about the bond market, according to the interview transcript. The Pentagon's casualty database contradicts the claim, listing 18 service members killed and 757 wounded since the war began, CNN reported last month.The military quietly added 60 injuries to the count in a single week in late August, The Intercept reported.That raised the combined total of dead and wounded to 776. Some 345 of those casualties have come since a second ceasefire collapsed on July 7, according to the outlet. One U.S. government official called the sudden increase "an accounting trick" and accused the Pentagon of slow-walking the number.Mario Nawfal, who runs a large news aggregation account on X, posted the clip roughly half an hour after Trump's message and called it a "SERIOUS flub.""[P]eople in the administration like Lutnick can easily forget, or intentionally ignore, the men and women who've been killed or wounded," a USA Today opinion column argued.Trump's own allies made a nearly identical charge against President Joe Biden during the 2024 campaign. Biden falsely said at a CNN debate that no American troops had died on his watch, Fox News reported."[T]he stumbling, bumbling buffoon that we have in the White House had the audacity to say that under his watch that no military members have died," Darin Hoover, the father of a Marine killed in the 2021 Kabul airport bombing, told Fox News Digital.Two years later, support for the war Trump ordered has fallen to 31 percent, its lowest level since the early weeks of the fighting, Al Jazeera reported, citing a Reuters/Ipsos poll.Pollsters found 83% of those surveyed said they expect the fighting to continue for a long time. Gasoline now costs more than a dollar a gallon above pre-war levels, the outlet reported.Trump's overall approval stands at 32 percent, with 64 percent disapproving, in a national poll released Monday by the University of Massachusetts Amherst."With the midterm elections just two months away, the clock is ticking for President Trump and the Republican Party to offer solutions to the nation's most pressing problems," said Tatishe Nteta, the poll's director and a political science professor at the university.
Spain’s PM says no evidence ‘whatsoever’ Morocco behind Ceuta border breach
Pedro Sánchez continues to defend Rabat after police report claiming border forces helped 70,000 cross borderEurope live – latest updatesSpain has seen no evidence “whatsoever” that Morocco planned or facilitated a mass border breach into its north African territory of Ceuta, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has told parliament.The address on Thursday followed the emergence of a police report, commissioned by a judge and widely quoted in the media, claiming Moroccan border forces had actively aided about 70,000 people to cross the border in late July. Continue reading...
Dozens of trapped hydropower tunnel workers in Nepal could still be alive, official says
About 46 people believed to be trapped in ‘room-like’ structure inside hydro plant tunnel on Nepal-Tibet borderAfter the flood: human suffering on an unfathomable scale in Nepal’s worst-hit districtsNepal authorities have said they are “confident” that dozens of workers in Nepal’s Rasuwagadhi hydropower plant are still alive, more than a week after deadly flash floods left them trapped in an underground chamber.Authorities said that at least 639 workers were still missing from hydropower plants built along Nepal’s Bhote Koshi and Triushuli rivers. Continue reading...
Gloria Steinem, feminist icon, dies at 92
Gloria Steinem — the iconic feminist journalist who revolutionized work for generations of women to come — has died. She was 92.Steinem passed away in her New York City home on Wednesday, surrounded by those who loved her, The Gloria Steinem Foundation announced Thursday morning."Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard," the foundation stated. "Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor."The cause of death was not revealed.Steinem dedicated her life to causes such as reproductive freedom, domestic violence prevention and workplace gender inequalities.She became a household name in 1963, when she went undercover as a Playboy bunny and exposed the poor conditions workers faced in Hugh Hefner’s clubs.In her later years, Steinem hosted talking circles in her home and wrote a forthcoming book, "???????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????," according to the foundation."Gloria loved the tradition of lighting signal fires on hills to light the way to the other side of the mountain," they stated. "Lighting your own candle for Gloria makes you part of this global and celestial community circle."Read more about her life and work here.
‘We continue to suffer’: victims of apartheid-era Sharpeville massacre demand compensation
Claim relating to 1960 attack on hundreds of protesters part of wave of litigation over apartheid crimes in South AfricaThe day dawned brightly on 21 March 1960, as residents of the South African township of Sharpeville gathered to protest against pass laws, which forced “Black, Indian and Coloured” South Africans to carry documents at all times specifying where they were allowed to be.Abraham Mofokeng joined the march, one of dozens organised nationwide by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a breakaway group from the African National Congress (ANC). “The weather was very nice, the sun was out. You could not have suspected that the day would go so horribly,” said Mofokeng, who was then a 20-year-old factory worker. Continue reading...
Barclays faces complaint over backing for power plant near world’s largest mangrove forest
Bangladeshi complainants allege Rampal power station’s pollution and climate risks threaten the Sunderbans, a world heritage siteBarclays Bank is facing a formal complaint over its financial links to a coal-fired power station near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and home to millions of people in Bangladesh and India.Three complainants from the region have submitted a case to the UK government’s Office for Responsible Business Conduct, alleging that the British bank breached international guidelines by underwriting companies involved in the emission-heavy Maitree super thermal power project, also known as the Rampal power plant. Continue reading...
