Opposition: Airstrikes in northern Syria kill 10 militants

Opposition: Airstrikes in northern Syria kill 10 militants
Airstrikes in the northern Syrian province of Idlib killed at least 10 suspected al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria on Wednesday, the latest in a spate of targeted attacks against the group, activists said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 10 were killed when missiles struck two vehicles and three motorcycles in the airstrike in Saraqib, in the rebel-stronghold province of Idlib. The Observatory said it was not clear if all killed were members of Fatah al-Sham Front, the powerful al-Qaida-affiliate in Syria. The group said militants from other groups may be among those killed, including non-Syrians.

Idlib Media Center, a local opposition group, said the airstrikes killed 15, all but one were member of Fatah al-Sham. One of the killed was a member of the local police, according to the center. Footage posted by the center and by the opposition Qasioun news agency shows two badly mangled vehicles as fire fighters clear the area and wash the streets from the airstrike aftermath. The vehicles were traveling on a highway south of Saraqib.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The U.S. has killed some of al-Qaida’s most senior commanders in Syria over the past two years in airstrikes, and has recently also increased its targeting of Islamic State militants in the country. The Syrian government and its ally Russia have also targeted militants in Syria. On Friday, a senior member of Fatah al-Sham was killed in an airstrike in Idlib.

A cease-fire across Syria since Dec. 30 doesn’t include Fatah al-Sham, the government says. The cease-fire was brokered by Russia and Turkey.

Also on Wednesday, airstrikes resumed on a Damascus suburb despite the cease-fire, killing at least one woman and injuring several others, opposition activists said.

At least six airstrikes Wednesday hit villages in al-Marj in the eastern Ghouta suburb, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian Civil Defense in Damascus suburbs. Since the cease-fire came into effect on Dec. 30, fighting has raged in the area as government troops attempted to gain ground. The Observatory said it was the first time airstrikes were launched there since the cease-fire. The government is often suspected of carrying airstrikes in the fertile area where it has in recent months been encroaching on opposition fighters, amid a tightening siege on the eastern Ghouta suburbs.

Fighting has raged in and around Damascus despite the cease-fire, including in the water-rich Barada Valley. The government and opposition groups exchanged blame for violating the truce.

Turkey bogged down in Syria as it realigns with Russia
Nearly two months into the assault, Turkey has become bogged down in an unexpectedly bloody fight to retake the Islamic State group’s last stronghold in northern Syria. It has been forced to pour in troops, take the lead in the battle from its Syrian allies and reach out to Russia for aerial support.

The fight for al-Bab underscores the precarious path Ankara is treading with its foray in to Syria, aimed against both IS militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters. The assault on the town had already driven a wedge between Turkey and the United States, and now the realignment toward Moscow — which supports the government in Syria’s civil war — further tests Ankara’s alliance both with Washington and with the Syrian opposition.

The battle itself has proven grueling.

Nearly 50 Turkish soldiers have been killed in its Syria operation, most of them since the al-Bab assault began in mid-November — including 14 killed in a single day. The militants have dug in, surrounding the town with trenches, lining streets with land mines and carrying out painful ambushes and car bombings against the besieging forces. Each time Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters have thrust into the city, they’ve been driven out. More than 200 civilians are believed to have been killed since the attack began Nov. 13. Mud and cold rain have only made it more of a slog.

« The battle for al-Bab has been mostly about killing civilians and destroying the city, whether by Daesh or the Turks, » said Mustafa Sultan, a resident of al-Bab and a media activist who has been covering the fight. He used the Arabic acronym for IS.

« The town is almost half destroyed. Daesh takes cover in hospitals, schools and these end up getting targeted, » he said. The Turkish military says it takes great care not to harm civilians, halting operations that could endanger non-combatants.

Capturing al-Bab is essential to Ankara’s goals in Syria.

Turkey, which for years supported the Syrian opposition drive to oust President Bashar Assad, has recalibrated its priorities toward fighting Islamic State militants who turned their terror against the Turkish state and thwarting Kurdish aspirations for autonomous rule along Syria’s border with Turkey.

If al-Bab is retaken, it would break the IS presence near the border and plant a Turkish-backed presence between Kurdish-held territory to the east and west, preventing them from linking.

For the U.S., the al-Bab assault risks causing direct confrontation between Turkish troops and Syrian Kurdish forces, which are leading a U.S.-backed offensive toward the de facto IS capital, Raqqa. Washington supports and relies on the Kurds in the fight against IS the past two years.

Last month, Ankara protested to Washington that its NATO ally was providing no help in al-Bab. A day later, Turkey said Russia carried out three airstrikes in the al-Bab area.

In the short term, Turkey is likely to sending a message to the United States before President-elect Donald Trump takes office that it has other options if Washington keeps backing the Syrian Kurds, considered by Ankara as terrorists linked to a Kurdish faction that has carried out bombings in Turkey.

In the long term, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be exploring his options with Russia, which currently holds the key to Syria militarily and diplomatically. Russia helped Assad’s forces crush the opposition enclave in the northern city of Aleppo in December. Then Moscow and Ankara joined to broker a ceasefire, which is supposed to lead to negotiations later this month.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday the U.S. has seen no indication of Russian-Turkish coordination, only independent Russian airstrikes in al-Bab.

« I don’t think the United States is very worried about Erdogan flipping from NATO to Moscow, but they are worried about Turkey’s general drift into instability and rash decisions. Erdogan bungling his foreign policy to the point where he must turn to Putin for help is certainly part of that broader concern, » said Aron Lund, a fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation.

Following Turkey’s protest, U.S. officials said discussions with Ankara continue over al-Bab, an important effort against IS. Turkey said on Dec. 30 that the U.S.-led coalition carried out an airstrike in the al-Bab region.

The offensive has also revealed how unprepared Turkish-allied Syrian rebels are for a protracted fight against IS.

Ankara increased its initial deployment of 600 soldiers — which included special forces and mechanized battalions — to at least 4,000 today, according to Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military adviser who served in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Iraq and is now an independent security analyst. Turkish troops now outnumber the Syrian opposition fighters who were supposed to be « the primary ground force, » Gurcan wrote in Al-Monitor.

He said some Syrian fighters have withdrawn, « and because of their lack of discipline in the field, Turkish commandos are now engaged in front-line fighting against IS. »

Unlike the IS-held town of Jarablus, which Turkey’s allies entered almost without a fight in August, the militant group prepared to defend al-Bab. IS fighters have taken positions on hilltops, used drones and have repeatedly shown a capability in waging pitched battles.

After Turkish troops and Syrian fighters secured a strategic hilltop on the town’s edge in late December, IS launched a surprise counteroffensive, killing 14 Turkish soldiers and over two dozen Syrians.

One Syrian opposition commander said there were three different battles around the hill. « We had to pull out more than once because they encircled us and we had many martyrs, » he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss battlefield details.

Another battle on the eastern side of al-Bab lasted 15 hours, starting from hilltops and ending in a valley at close range with dozens killed and many damaged armored vehicles. Sultan, who arrived afterward, was startled by the silence as bodies were cleared away.

The Turkish-backed fighters, who number around 2,000, have repeatedly entered al-Bab and each time are driven out by the militants, estimated to number around 3,000, said Sultan. « The fighters frankly are afraid of the mines, which cause most of the deaths, » Sultan said.

Al-Bab had a prewar population of 60,000 and it’s not known how many remain there. Despite the tight IS seal, some still try to escape.

A resident who goes by the name of Abul-Ful for fear for his safety said his sister and her family fled Monday after IS fighters took over their farmland north of the town to use as base. The family of seven moved from one farm to the next undetected until they reached shelter in a village north of al-Bab.

She was lucky, Abul-Ful said. He said his older sister was killed 10 days earlier as she tried to escape with her family. While hiding in farmland, they were caught in crossfire: IS fired on Turkish-backed forces, then moved, and Turkish artillery responded, hitting the family and killing her.

Her family buried her at the spot where she died, then continued their escape, he said.

Turkish legislators scuffle in debate over Erdogan’s powers

Scuffles have erupted between ruling and opposition legislators in Turkey’s parliament during deliberations over a controversial package of constitutional amendments that would greatly expand President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.

Lawmakers on Wednesday were seen pushing each other and exchanging blows during a round of voting on Wednesday.

The opposition accuses the ruling party of breaching constitutional rules that call for a secret ballot. Several ruling-party legislators have been displaying their votes, leading to accusations that the party is pressuring them to vote in favor of the amendments and is curbing their ability to vote independently.

Erdogan has long pushed for the amendments, insisting that a strong leadership will make Turkey stronger.

Critics fear that the changes will give Erdogan too many powers with few checks.

Top Iraqi commander: Mosul could be liberated in 3 months

A top Iraqi commander told The Associated Press that the operation to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State group could be complete in three months or less.

« It’s possible » that Mosul will be liberated in in that time frame, Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati said in an interview with the AP on Tuesday evening. However, he warned it is difficult to give an accurate estimate of how long the operation will take because it is not a conventional fight.

« There are many variables, » he said, describing the combat as « guerrilla warfare. »

On Wednesday, Iraqi forces announced that three more neighborhoods in eastern Mosul had been retaken from IS fighters. Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil of Iraq’s special forces estimated about 85 percent of eastern Mosul was now under Iraqi control.

The massive offensive involving some 30,000 Iraqi forces was launched in October and Iraqi leaders originally pledged the city would be retaken before 2017. However as the fight enters its fourth month, only about a third of the city is under government control.

Iraqi forces — largely led by special forces — have slowly advanced across Mosul’s east. Fierce IS counterattacks have killed and injured hundreds of Iraqi troops and inflicted considerable damage to Iraqi military equipment. Repeatedly, after what appeared to be swift progress on the ground, Iraqi forces have been pushed back by IS counterattacks overnight.

However, Shaghati said the counterattacks — specifically car bombings — have slowed. He estimated his forces are seeing less than half the number of IS car bomb attacks on the front than they were faced with when the operation first began.

The U.S.-led coalition bombed the bridges spanning the Tigris river connecting Mosul’s east and west in November in an effort to stop the flow of car bombs to Iraqi frontline positions in the eastern half of the city.

Shaghati, the top commander of Iraq’s special forces and the Commander of Iraq’s Joint Military Operation said that while many forces are participating in the Mosul fight, Iraq’s special forces are the only troops with the skills to fight IS.

« The forces who have the skills to fight guerrilla warfare is only the CTS, » he said using an alternative acronym for Iraq’s special forces who are also called the counter-terrorism forces. « They have flexibility and can act quickly, » he said.

For the Mosul operation to continue, Shaghati said Iraqi forces need to continue to receive support and equipment from the U.S-led coalition. Since the Mosul operation began, the coalition says its planes have launched thousands of airstrikes in and around Iraq’s second largest city.

Although Shaghati said he believes that the beginning of the Mosul operation marked the end of IS in Iraq, the country will likely struggle with terrorist threats long after IS is defeated in Mosul.

Also on Wednesday, bombings in Baghdad largely targeting commercial areas of the capital killed 11 people and wounded 40.

When asked if he expected levels of support to change when U.S. president-elect Donald Trump takes office this month, he said: « We believe that the support of our American friends is continuing and ongoing. »

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Iraqi forces push further into northeast Mosul – Iraqi forces made new advances against Islamic State in eastern Mosul and fought the militants in areas near the Tigris river on Wednesday, military officials said, keeping up the momentum of a renewed offensive in the jihadists’ last major Iraqi stronghold.

Elite troops have pushed into several neighbourhoods in the east and northeast of the city in the past few days as they tried to reach the Tigris River bisecting Mosul before launching an offensive on the west, all of which the militants still hold.

The counter-terrorism service (CTS) were advancing into the northeastern Sadeeq and 7th Nissan districts, according to a senior commander on the ground.

A Reuters reporter in eastern Mosul saw CTS forces fighting Islamic State militants in Sadeeq, firing towards Mosul University and into the adjacent Hadba area, which army units advancing from the north had breached a day earlier.

The forces are expected to meet somewhere in between.

« Operations are ongoing and this district will be liberated very shortly, God willing, » Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi told Reuters on the front line in Sadeeq, one block from the strategically important university complex.

Tank shells, machinegun fire and air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition backing the Iraqis targeted Islamic State gunmen holed up in a handful of buildings nearby. The militants detonated several car bombs and returned gunfire.

During their attack, Iraqi soldiers repeatedly diverted their attention to the sky to fire their machine guns at white commercial drones circling at a few hundred metres in the air.

They were unable to down the aircraft, which Islamic State uses for reconnaissance, to record its suicide attacks and to drop grenades behind its enemy’s lines.

PUSH TO THE RIVER Securing Hadba, Sadeeq and other nearby districts would allow the CTS to advance further towards the Tigris, control of whose eastern bank will be crucial to launching attacks on western Mosul.

Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said on Wednesday there were still some 750,000 people trapped in western Mosul. In the east, she said there were some 450,000 people, of which 400,000 were in areas recaptured by Iraqi forces.

She said the operation to retake the western part of the city could get underway in late February or March and that the United Nations was preparing for a possible siege or mass exodus of civilians from the area.

« Siege is a very real possibility. We don’t know if that will happen, but we’re worried that it might, » she told reporters in New York via video conference, adding that the United Nations was working to try and pre-position aid supplies.

Near Sadeeq and 7th Nissan, in the Sukkar district, a plume of white smoke rose from the site of an Islamic State suicide bomb on Wednesday morning, while charred limbs and car parts from an earlier explosion were scattered along a carriageway.

Some residents streamed out of areas where clashes took place, waving white flags and towing suitcases behind them.

But many civilians have stayed in their homes, watching the military’s advance from behind curtains and locked doors before walking out cautiously to greet soldiers and offer them tea.

Grande said Islamic State militants were still using civilians as human shields and also targeting civilians, who she said account for half the casualties in Mosul.

« They have been shot as they try and leave the city and they have been shot as they try and secure food and other resources, » she said.

CTS forces also clashed with the militants further south, a military statement said, seeking to build on gains along that part of the river bank, which they reached last week for the first time in the nearly three-month campaign.

Troops from the rapid response division, an elite Interior Ministry unit, with the backing of coalition air strikes also battled in the Sumer district in the south where they have faced fierce resistance since they entered it this week.

The U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State out of Mosul involves a 100,000-strong force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish fighters and Shi’ite militias.

Colonel Brett Sylvia told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that Islamic State militants were using drones to drop munitions on Iraqi forces. He said the U.S.-led coalition had helped bring down almost a dozen Islamic State drones.

Masrour Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Security Council, said on Twitter that Islamic State was « on the verge of collapse ». His region’s peshmerga forces are not fighting inside the city.

Islamic State’s loss of Mosul would probably spell the end of the Iraqi part of its self-styled caliphate, which straddles Iraq and Syria, but the militants could pose a guerrilla threat in both countries and continue to plot attacks on the West

Divided Cyprus’ leaders conclude ‘historic’ map exchange
The rival leaders of ethnically divided Cyprus exchanged maps Wednesday outlining the zones the island’s Greek and Turkish communities would control in a hoped-for federation, the first time such a swap has occurred after decades of reunification talks.

The maps now have been locked in a United Nations vault due to the sensitive nature of the proposed boundaries, which indicate how many people displaced by the nation’s division may be eligible to reclaim lost homes and property relatively quickly.

Discussions to thrash out a single, compromise map will be scheduled for a later date, government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said.

He said it would be up to Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anasastaides and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci to decide when those negotiations take place.

« This is not the end of the road, » Christodoulides told reporters. « This is the beginning of negotiations on a very important chapter of the Cyprus problem. »

Turkish Cypriot spokesman Baris Burcu said both maps conformed to already agreed upon criteria for how much of the island’s land would go to the Turkish Cypriot zone — between 28.2 and 29.2 percent.

In the meantime, the talks will move in an international direction on Thursday. The foreign ministers of Cyprus’ so-called guarantors — Turkey, Greece and former colonial power Britain — are set to join a discussion on the pivotal issue of post-unification security arrangements.

Anastasiades and Akinci have been meeting in Geneva since Monday to discuss a number of outstanding issues that could restore unity to the island split by ethnic divisions for almost 43 years.

Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 in response to a coup aiming to unite the island with Greece. Many residents were stripped of homes and property when Cyprus divided into an official Greek Cypriot south and a breakaway Turkish north where Turkey has more than 35,000 troops stationed.

Top leaders from the European Union, which counts Cyprus as a member, are also expected to join the talks Thursday that will concentrate on how to ensure and who will oversee post-settlement security.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters on Wednesday that the talks were « the very last chance to see the island being recomposed in a normal way. »

However, United Nations envoy Espen Barth Eide, who is facilitating the talks, sought to downplay expectations. Eide said that the process remains on track to overcome major obstacles.

He pointed to « historic » advances happening at the summit, such as the exchange of boundary maps and the participation of the three guarantor powers at such a high-level.

But a deal likely won’t emerge immediately from the summit since important technical details need to be sorted out before Cyprus’ Greek and Turkish communities can vote on an overall agreement, Eide said.

« So don’t expect that we will be walking home from Geneva — or rather flying — to Cyprus with a comprehensive settlement in our hands, » Eides told reporters. « But we will go home with a sense that it is coming. »

Libyan military chief visits Russian aircraft carrier

A Libyan military chief has visited a Russian aircraft carrier off the coast of the troubled North African country.

The Russian Defense Ministry says Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter visited the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier Wednesday. The carrier and accompanying ships are coming home from a mission off Syria’s coast.

The ministry said Hifter was given a tour of the ship and had a video call with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to discuss « acute issues of fighting international terrorist groups in the Middle East. »

It is the strongest sign yet of Russian support for Hifter, who is allied with an eastern-based parliament that is at odds with a Western-backed government in the capital, Tripoli.

Mali military: 5 soldiers killed, 3 hurt by roadside bomb

Authorities in Mali say five soldiers were killed and three others wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb.

Military spokesman Col. Diarran Kone says the attack took place early Wednesday in central Mali.

Another military official who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to journalists said the deaths happened on the road between Diafarabe and Macina.

There was no immediately claim of responsibility, though al-Qaida-linked militants regularly stage attacks on the Malian military in that area.

A French-led military operation forced jihadists from power in major towns across Mali’s north in 2013. Since then, remnants have continued to launch attacks and the violence has moved farther south.

72 countries to attend Mideast peace summit in Paris

French authorities are expecting 72 countries to attend Sunday’s Middle East peace conference in Paris — but not Israel or the Palestinians.

Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said Wednesday both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been invited to come to France after the conference to be informed of its conclusions. Netanyahu has declined the invitation — saying only direct negotiations will produce a solution.

Abbas is expected to visit the French capital at the end of the week on the sidelines of the conference. It was unclear whether he would meet French President Francois Hollande.

Participants will include U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

France wants « to restart the (negotiation) process at a moment when it has been largely abandoned, » Le Foll said.

Israeli Arabs urge general strike after house demolitions
Hundreds of protesters from Israel’s Arab minority took to the streets Wednesday in response to the demolition of 11 homes built without proper permits by Israeli authorities, while Israeli Arab leaders called for a general strike in all their towns and villages.

Yousef Jabareen, an Arab member of Israel’s parliament, called the demolition in the central city of Kalansua « unprecedented » and vowed to fight further measures.

He said the source of the problem were long-standing barriers placed by the state that prevent Arabs from acquiring proper building permits.

Hundreds of protesters in Kalansua chanted in Arabic: « Netanyahu coward, this is our land and we are here. »

The Israeli government has recently vowed to crack down harder on illegal Arab building.

It comes after criticism from Jewish West Bank settlers who faced a court-ordered evacuation of an illegally built outpost and who demanded the law be enforced equally.

Arabs make up a fifth of Israel’s population. They enjoy full citizenship but frequently face unfair treatment in areas like jobs and housing.

Arab-Israelis have risen to prominence in sports, politics, entertainment and the judiciary. But the community has long been viewed by many with suspicion, seen as untrustworthy, with loyalties torn between their Israeli citizenship and their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israel: Hamas lured soldiers with photos of women The Israeli military on Wednesday said it had uncovered a plot by the Hamas militant group to spy on soldiers by hacking their mobile phones after posing as women and befriending them on social media.

A senior intelligence official said Wednesday that Hamas tracked down soldiers through Facebook, and then, posing as young women, would send pictures to their mobile phones to strike up a friendship. Soldiers were then persuaded to download a chat application that in reality gave Hamas access to their smartphones.

The military said the photos belong to real women whose photos and personal details were stolen from their Facebook profiles. In a presentation to reporters, it showed photos of the women, some of them wearing swimsuits or stylish sunglasses, along with copies of the flirtatious text messages exchanged with soldiers.

In a short video clip released by the army, an unidentified soldier, whose face was covered by a shadow to protect his identity, said he had been approached by a woman in a Facebook message and struck up a friendship.

« The connection got stronger with time, » he said. At her suggestion, he said he downloaded an application to talk, but the app didn’t work. « Suddenly I discovered that she isn’t a girl. She is Hamas, » he said.

The senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said dozens of soldiers had fallen for the trick. « It had potential for great damage. Until now, the damage was minimal. But we wanted to prevent it from happening, » he said.

Hamas declined comment.

A look at the stakes if US moves Israel embassy to Jerusalem

The Palestinians are ringing alarm bells over Donald Trump’s stated intention to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel to contested Jerusalem, fearing quick action once he takes office as U.S. president next week. They say an embassy move would kill any hopes for negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and rile the region by undercutting Muslim and Christian claims to the holy city.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Jerusalem forms the core of rival, religiously tinged national narratives of Israelis and Palestinians. Both sides claim it as a capital, and disagreement over how to divide Jerusalem helped derail previous U.S.-led talks on establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

From Israel’s founding in 1948 until the 1967 Mideast war, Jerusalem was divided into a western sector that served as Israel’s capital and an eastern, traditionally Arab sector run by Jordan. Israel captured east Jerusalem in 1967, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and annexed an expanded east Jerusalem to its capital.

Today, more than 37 percent of 850,000 city residents are Palestinians. East Jerusalem’s Old City houses major Jewish, Muslim and Christian shrines revered by billions around the world. The Palestinians seek a state in the lands captured by Israel, with east Jerusalem as a capital.

WHY ARE THE PALESTINIANS UPSET?

The Palestinians argue that moving the embassy, now located in Israel’s metropolis of Tel Aviv, amounts to U.S. recognition of all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. They say this would close the door to negotiating a « two-state solution » because it would pre-judge the outcome of one of the most explosive disputes in the conflict and disqualify Washington as mediator. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he could never accept a deal in which Israel keeps the entire city. An embassy move could further weaken the 81-year-old Abbas politically.

WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL?

Many Jews view Jerusalem as their religious and cultural center. Israeli government spokesman David Keyes says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu « thinks it would be great » for the embassy to move to Jerusalem. Netanyahu had tense relations with outgoing President Barack Obama, in part because of Israel’s settlement expansion on occupied lands. Netanyahu has said he is willing to negotiate a border deal with the Palestinians, but that Jerusalem is off the table. Two of Netanyahu’s predecessors had engaged in negotiations with the Palestinians on a partition of the city.

AGGRIEVED JORDAN?

In unusually blunt language, Jordan warned last week that an embassy move is a « red line » and would inflame the Arab and Muslim worlds. Jordan serves as custodian of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest site of Islam, located in east Jerusalem on the same spot that Jews revere as the Temple Mount. The compound, home to the biblical Jewish Temples, is considered the holiest site in Judaism.

A U.S. embassy move could be seen as diminishing Jordan’s special religious role in Jerusalem, a pillar of legitimacy of the kingdom’s Hashemite rulers who trace their ancestry back to Prophet Muhammed. Tensions with the U.S could undermine their military alliance, including the fight against Islamic State extremists in neighboring Syria and Iraq. Jordan’s discreet security ties with Israel also could be at risk.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER ARAB AND MUSLIM STATES?

They have been less outspoken. Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit has said an embassy move would be a « huge setback » to peace efforts. League spokesman Hossam Zaki said the 22-state organization hopes Trump will become more aware of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once in office, but that « the new U.S. administration’s positions toward Palestine don’t look good. » Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, has warm relations with both Israel and Trump and has remained silent. The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation has urged the U.S. to refrain from steps that could create tensions in the region.

IS TRUMP SERIOUS?

Like presidential contenders before him, Trump made a campaign promise to relocate the embassy. Unlike the others, he has since signaled that he is serious about it. Adviser Kellyanne Conway has said that moving the embassy is a « very big priority » for Trump. A U.S. official has said Trump’s transition team asked the State Department for logistics advice on a move. Trump’s designated ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, backs an embassy move.

DOES THIS GO AGAINST INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS?

The U.N. Security Council last month affirmed east Jerusalem’s status as occupied territory, part of a resolution that condemned Israeli settlement activity as illegal. Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that an embassy move could trigger « an absolute explosion in the region. » On Sunday, representatives of dozens of countries, including Kerry, will affirm support for a negotiated two-state solution at a Mideast conference in France.

DO THE PALESTINIANS HAVE A PLAN?

For now, they hope to generate international pressure on Trump. Abbas asked Trump in a letter to reconsider and urged world leaders to intervene. On Saturday, Abbas is meeting Pope Francis in hopes of a supportive statement. The Vatican has said it seeks an internationally guaranteed status for Jerusalem that safeguards its sacred character. An Abbas aide heads to Moscow for talks Friday with Russia’s foreign minister. The Palestinian foreign minister is to raise the issue at a Jan. 19 conference of OIC, the alliance of Islamic countries. This weekend, the Palestinians have called for regional mosque and church prayers in a show of protest.

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AND IF THE EMBASSY IS MOVED?

Palestinian officials say they would seriously consider voiding a 1993 mutual recognition agreement that created the basis for negotiations with Israel. The deal included a pledge to resolve all issues, including Jerusalem, through negotiations. It paved the way for the establishment of the Palestinian autonomy government in parts of the West Bank, and ending it would put the financial burden of providing services of some 2.3 million Palestinians on Israel.

Israeli official: Cooperation strong with Egypt
An Israeli defense official on Wednesday confirmed that the country has developed a new policy in recent years to allow Egypt to quickly beef up its forces in the volatile Sinai peninsula as part of a shared struggle against Islamic militants.

The official spoke days after Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh el-Sissi said there are about 25,000 Egyptian troops operating in Sinai. It was the first time an Egyptian leader has commented on the number of troops battling militants there.

His comments, made Monday night in a telephone call to a live TV talk show, underlined the depth of his commitment to the fight against militants, but also reflected the immense challenges Egypt faces. In addition to the troops, Egypt’s military is also known to have deployed F-16 fighter jets as well as Apache helicopter gunships and tanks in northern Sinai. Egypt’s close coordination with Israel in the fight against IS in Sinai is widely believed to be helping to fuel the insurgency.

Israel, which is bitter enemies with the Hamas militant group in the neighboring Gaza Strip, sees Egypt as an important ally in the battle against Islamic militant groups in the region and the two countries have close security and intelligence ties.

While their historic 1979 peace agreement limited the number of Egyptian forces in the border area near Israel, it includes provisions to allow Egypt to increase its forces if Israel agrees.

The Israeli defense official said that Israel used to treat such requests with caution, but that in recent years has taken on a new policy to approve requests much faster in a reflection of the growing friendship and joint interests.

« We do have a new policy and that has to do with terrorism over there, » he said. « It’s a common threat and a common interest. »

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was unable to provide firm numbers on Egyptian troop levels in Sinai, but said they were « significant. »

« There’s a need on the ground that we more than acknowledge, » he said.

Egyptian court upholds asset freeze of 3 activists

An Egyptian court on Wednesday upheld an earlier ruling to freeze the assets of three prominent rights activists, the latest chapter in a widening government crackdown against civil society groups.

The verdict targeted Mozn Hassan and her group, Nazra for Feminist Studies, as well as Mohammed Zaraa and Atef Hafez, both of the Arab Organization for Criminal Reform.

The freezing of their assets and those of five other rights campaigners in September is part of a wider case against at least 12 rights groups that dates back to 2011, but which was revived in 2015.

The eight face allegations they illegally obtained foreign funds which were subsequently used to destabilize Egypt, where authorities have since the 2013 ouster of an Islamist president killed hundreds of Islamists and jailed thousands more.

Since his election in 2014, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has been focused on reviving Egypt’s ailing economy, upgrading its rickety infrastructure and battling Islamic State militants in the Sinai Peninsula. A career army officer, el-Sissi has defended his country’s human rights record, arguing on several occasions that it should not be judged by Western standards and that the right to education, decent housing and health care is just as important as freedom of expression.

However, authorities have steadily moved to erode many of the freedoms won by the 2011 popular uprising that toppled the regime of long-ruling autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Ironically, a new constitution ratified in a 2014 referendum is by far the most liberal and progressive Egypt ever had, but clauses in that document guaranteeing freedoms, privacy or human rights have largely been ignored by authorities.

UAE mourns 5 diplomats killed in mysterious Afghan bombing

The killing of five diplomats from the United Arab Emirates in a bombing in southern Afghanistan marks the deadliest attack ever for the young nation’s diplomatic corps, though it’s too soon to tell who was behind it or if the Gulf envoys were even the targets.

The federation of seven sheikhdoms, founded in 1971 on the Arabian Peninsula, said it would fly the nation’s flag at half-staff for three days in honor of the dead from the attack Tuesday in Kandahar.

The Taliban denied planting the bomb, even as the insurgents claimed other blasts Tuesday that killed at least 45 people. No other group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Kandahar, a province in Afghanistan’s Taliban heartland.

The bomb targeted a guesthouse of Kandahar Gov. Homayun Azizi, who was wounded in the assault along with UAE Ambassador Juma Mohammed Abdullah al-Kaabi. The attack killed 11 people and wounded 18, said Gen. Abdul Razeq, Kandahar’s police chief, who was praying nearby at the time of the blast.

Razeq said investigators believe someone hid the bomb inside a sofa at the guesthouse. He said an ongoing construction project there may have allowed militants to plant the bomb.

« Right now we cannot say anything about who is behind this attack, » he told The Associated Press, while adding that several suspects had been arrested.

On Wednesday, broken glass from the powerful blast still littered the blood-stained ground outside of the guesthouse, with thick black soot still visible on the building. Some furniture sat outside, apparently moved as part of the construction.

Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also the UAE prime minister and vice president, offered condolences for the families of the dead and condemned the attack.

« There is no human, moral or religious justification for the bombing and killing of people trying to help » others, he wrote on Twitter.

On the Afghan side, authorities said the dead included two lawmakers, a deputy governor from Kandahar and an Afghan diplomat stationed at its embassy in Washington.

The attack inside the heavily guarded compound represents a major breach of security, even in Afghanistan, a country long torn by war. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday condemned the attack and ordered an investigation.

The Taliban is usually quick to take credit for attacks, particularly those targeting the government or security forces. They claimed attacks earlier on Tuesday in Kabul at a compound of government and legislative offices that killed at least 38 people and wounded dozens. Another Taliban-claimed suicide bombing on Tuesday killed seven people in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.

But on Wednesday, the Taliban issued a short statement blaming an « internal local rivalry » for the Kandahar attack.

The Taliban have denied some attacks in the past that diplomats and security forces later attributed to the group. Other insurgent groups, including an Islamic State affiliate, also operate Afghanistan.

A Taliban attack targeting Emirati officials would be surprising. The UAE was one of only three countries, along with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to recognize the Taliban government during its five-year rule of Afghanistan.

Emirati combat troops deployed to Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaida before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. The UAE had troops there for years as part of the NATO-led mission, training members of the Afghan armed forces and often winning the support of locals by praying with them in community mosques and respecting their traditions as fellow Muslims.

Multiple daily commercial flights link the countries, with Dubai serving as an important commercial hub for Afghan businessmen. Over the years, Taliban and Afghan officials also have met in Dubai to try to start peace talks.

Although the UAE is only 45 years old, Emirati diplomats have come under attack in the past, some felled by assassins’ bullets.

Saif Ghubash, the UAE’s first minister of state for foreign affairs, died after being shot in an October 1977 attack at Abu Dhabi International Airport, an attack that apparently targeted Syrian Foreign Minister Abdul-Halim Khaddam. Khaddam later blamed the attack on Iraq.

In 1984, the UAE’s ambassador to France was assassinated outside his Paris home by a gunman. A diplomatic club was named in honor of the slain envoy, Khalifa al-Mubarak, in the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi, in 2015.

Another Emirati diplomat was wounded in a shooting in Rome in 1984. Reports at the time linked those two attacks to the Arab Revolutionary Brigades, a Palestinian militant group.

Abu Dhabi’s powerful crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said Tuesday’s attack wouldn’t stop the UAE’s humanitarian efforts abroad.

He wrote on Twitter: « We will not be discouraged by despicable terrorist acts carried out by the forces of evil and darkness. »

Dubai’s DAMAC confirms offering $2B in deals to Trump
Dubai-based developer DAMAC Properties said Wednesday it recently offered $2 billion in deals to President-elect Donald Trump’s company, which rejected them.

The developer already has partnered with the Trump Organization to manage and run two golf courses in the glamorous city in the United Arab Emirates. One will open just weeks after his inauguration as America’s 45th president.

DAMAC spokesman Niall McLoughlin told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the offer to Trump’s firm involved « a variety of different properties deals. »

McLoughlin declined to be more specific, other than to say that « the discussions took place as stated in the media briefing. »

Trump said Wednesday at his first news conference since his election that he had turned down the deal, offering the decision as evidence of his commitment to avoiding conflicts of interest.

« Over the weekend, I was offered $2 billion to do a deal in Dubai with a very, very, very amazing man, a great, great developer from the Middle East, » Trump said. « And I turned it down. I didn’t have to turn it down. … But I don’t want to take advantage of something. »

DAMAC is run by Dubai-based billionaire Hussain Sajwani — not Hussain Damac as Trump said at the news conference.

One of the Trump Organization’s subsidiaries received from $1 million to $5 million from DAMAC, according to a Federal Election Committee report submitted in May.

Iran will send delegation to Saudi Arabia to discuss hajj

An Iranian official says a delegation will visit Saudi Arabia next month to discuss plans for this year’s hajj pilgrimage.

The official IRNA news agency Wednesday quoted a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying the Feb. 23 visit comes in response to an invitation from Saudi Arabia.

The representative, Ali Qaziaskar, expressed hope that the visit would lead to a « clear cut » conclusion, saying « we will not attend the hajj ceremony until the situation is resolved. »

Iran did not sent its pilgrims to the 2016 hajj after a stampede and crush of pilgrims during the previous year’s pilgrimage killed at least 2,426 people, according to an Associated Press count. Iran had the highest death toll with 464 killed.

Germany: 280,000 new migrants last year, far lower than 2015
Germany saw about 280,000 new asylum-seekers arrive last year, less than a third of the previous year’s huge influx of 890,000, the interior minister said Wednesday.

While new arrivals declined, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that the number of rejected asylum-seekers who left Germany was up — though still not to authorities’ satisfaction. In total, 80,000 people either left voluntarily or were deported, he said.

Arrivals declined sharply with the closure of the Balkan migrant route in March and the subsequent agreement between the European Union and Turkey to stem the flow across the Aegean Sea to Greece.

Asylum applications have lagged well behind arrivals and many people who came to Germany in 2015 applied only last year.

Wednesday’s figures showed that 745,545 formal asylum applications were made last year — 268,869 more than in 2015. Those included 268,866 applications from Syrians, 127,892 from Afghans and 97,162 from Iraqis, the biggest single groups by far.

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, which has been beefed up in the course of Europe’s migrant crisis, decided last year on more than 695,000 asylum applications, more than twice as many as in 2015. Nearly 60 percent of applicants were granted either full refugee status or a lesser form of protection. The agency has also cut the average time required for an asylum decision to under three months, and introduced a nationwide database to combine identity records for all asylum-seekers.

De Maiziere said that about 55,000 migrants returned home voluntarily last year, compared with the previous year’s 35,000. Another 25,000 were forcibly deported.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faces a national election later this year and still draws criticism for her welcoming approach to migrants in 2015, has promised a « national effort » to ensure that people who aren’t entitled to stay go home.

The number of returns is still too low, de Maiziere said, adding that talks are underway with state authorities — who are responsible for returns — to push it up.

De Maiziere rejected the suggestion that the drop in new arrivals was the result of Europe’s efforts to prevent people reaching the continent, but acknowledged that Germany was working to ensure refugees stay in their home region.

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Photo of dead Syrian boy boosts fundraising 100-fold – study – An iconic photo of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi washed up dead on a Turkish beach had a greater impact on fundraising efforts for Syrian refugees than hundreds of thousands of deaths, a study has shown.

The photo of Kurdi appeared in media across the world in the days after he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in September 2015. His family were Syrian refugees of Kurdish origin, attempting to flee the war to Europe.

« People who had been unmoved by the relentlessly rising death toll in Syria suddenly appeared to care much more after having seen Aylan’s photograph, » said the report, from science research institute ‘Decision Research’.

The study used fundraising data from the Swedish Red Cross, which showed a significant increase in donations after news of Kurdi’s death, as well as data from Google Trends, which showed a major spike in searches for the terms « Syria » and « refugees ».

Both the number of donors and the total raised increased after the photo circulated.

In the week after Kurdi’s death, the study said the average number of daily donations to a Syrian refugee fund run by the Swedish Red Cross rose 100-fold. Before the photo circulated, the charity received fewer than 1,000 donations in a day; afterwards, it rose to almost 14,000.

It said the average amount raised each day by the fund was 55 times higher, netting an extra 1.9 million crowns ($210,730) per day. While the surge in interest faded quickly, long term donations did rise.

The study, authored by Paul Slovic from the University of Oregon, found the « newly created empathy waned rather quickly » after the initial burst of interest in Kurdi’s story, but Kurdi’s death prompted a 10-fold rise in those signing up for regular monthly donations. Only 0.02 percent of these donors had cancelled by January 2016.

« The main take-home message of this paper is that emotional reactions … can influence actual donation behaviour strongly, » Arvid Erlandsson, a contributor to the report, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

« Emotional reactions are … prone to fade out quickly, thus resulting in sharp increases and decreases in helping behaviour, despite the existing need being very stable. » Erlandsson went on to suggest that charities and governments could try harder to channel « emotional reactions » into their fundraising efforts.

The image of Kurdi joins other iconic photos that have come to symbolise human conflicts and tragedies, including Sharbat Gula, or ‘Afghan Girl’, whose image on the front cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985 is among the most famous of the Soviet-Afghan War.

Similarly, the 1972 image of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam came to symbolise the horrors of the Vietnam War.

Kurdi died in September 2015, along with his five-year-old brother. Their family had fled from their home in the northern Syrian town of Kobani.

Shots of the small boy’s body being cradled by a Turkish policeman circulated worldwide and galvanised several governments into policy changes, with the German government agreeing to admit thousands of refugees then stranded in Hungary only two days later.

Over 5,000 refugees were killed in 2016 while travelling across the Mediterranean, according to the Missing Migrants Project. ($1 = 9.0162 Swedish crowns)
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Poll sees Fillon beating far-right’s Le Pen easily in French runoff – French conservative Francois Fillon will beat far-right leader Marine Le Pen by 63 percent to 37 percent if they meet head to head in a presidential election runoff in May, a poll showed on Thursday.

The POP 2017 poll was in line with the findings of other surveys showing Fillon, a former prime minister, losing momentum with his share of the vote in the first round, falling to 24 percent from as much as 27.5 percent a month ago.

The poll showed him trailing National Front (FN) leader Le Pen by one or two percentage points in the first-round vote on April 23, but picking up enough votes from other defeated candidates, including from centrists among the Socialists, to defeat her comfortably in the May 7 knockout.

However, the poll also appeared to confirm that Emmanuel Macron, a popular former economy minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande who is running as an independent, might still be in a position to pull off a surprise.

Macron is seen as coming in third place in the first round with 16-20 percent of the vote, the poll showed, depending on which candidate the Socialists pick for the party ticket in their primaries this month.

But he might be able to count on scooping up much of the 5 percent of the votes that the poll attributed to centrist Francois Bayrou if the latter decides not to run.

Bayrou, a former education minister and currently mayor of Pau, has social policies which are close to those of Macron and so his supporters may throw their weight behind the former investment banker. Bayrou has not yet said whether he will run.

The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.3 percent, was conducted by Internet from Jan. 6-8 and was based on a sample of 946 people registered to vote.
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Presidential hopeful Fillon says France needs immigration quotas – France’s presidential election frontrunner Francois Fillon vowed on Wednesday to take back control of immigration including by imposing quotas on non-European Union nationals as he looks to win votes from the far-right National Front party.

Immigration and security are key issues in the campaign for this year’s vote with the leader of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, promising to be tough on immigration, radical Islam and to exit the EU’s border-free area.

Fillon is seen beating Le Pen if they meet in a runoff vote in May in the election and was campaigning on Wednesday in south-eastern France, a region where Le Pen has garnered support largely down to her stance on immigration and Islam.

« France is generous, but it is not a mosaic and a territory without limits. It is one nation that has a right to chose who can join it and a right that foreigners accept its rules and customs, » Fillon told a rally of some 2,000 supporters.

Outlining his proposals, the former prime minister said he wanted parliament to adopt annual quotas limiting the number of foreigners admitted to the country based on economic needs and capacity to integrate, a move that he said would discourage entire families from coming to France.

« We have six million unemployed and nearly nine million poor people. Immigration must be firmly controlled and reduced to a strict minimum, » he said, adding that he would be ready to revise the constitution and take on European institutions to implement changes.

He said he would also deny social benefits to immigrants who have legally resided in France for less than two years.

Urging the European Union to tighten its asylum and immigration policy to counter threats from Islamist militants, he said he would cut down the time to process asylum requests and increase the period illegal immigrants could be held in detention centres.

Development aid and the allocation of visas for countries would depend on whether illegal immigrants were taken back by their country of origin, he said.

Fillon, who was speaking in Nice where 86 people where killed in July in a truck attack claimed by Islamic State, did not back an exit from the EU’s Schengen border-free area.

However, he stressed that attacks in Europe, most recently in Berlin where the assailant was able to travel easily across the continent before being gunned down, showed that Schengen needed to be reviewed.

« Within the context of war on Islamic totalitarianism, as long as Europe’s borders are not protected by our partners, France will re-establish lasting controls at its borders, » he said.

Fillon’s immigration plans, along with his embrace of free market economic policies, have drawn criticism from rivals on the left who say they will deepen divisions in French society.
Leader of tiny Malta sees tough EU exit talks for Britain

The leader of the European Union’s smallest nation warned Britain on Wednesday that it can only lose by leaving the EU and that no member state is likely to break ranks and negotiate with London until it has departed.

« We want a fair deal for the UK, but that fair deal needs to be inferior to membership, » Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told reporters as his country assumed the EU’s rotating presidency in the first half of a year likely to prove rocky for Europe.

Britain is set to become the first member country ever to leave the EU, probably in 2019, and Prime Minister Theresa May has said she would officially trigger two years of exit talks by the end of March.

As the British economy shudders and the pound fluctuates, London also is seeking to launch bilateral talks with each of its 27 European partners. So far, they are holding out, determined to protect their interests and the EU’s future.

« There will be a united front from the European side on dealing with this resolutely and in a fair manner, » said Muscat, whose Mediterranean island state has close historic and cultural links with Britain. « I have rarely been at a discussion of any other subject where the 27 member states have basically the same position. »

Tiny Malta faces a challenging six months at the EU’s helm. Elections are due in heavyweight members France and Germany, and citizens have become increasingly critical of a unified Europe due to the bloc’s failure to manage the refugee crisis and to keep citizens safe from extremist attacks.

The problems have fueled support for far-right, anti-immigrant parties, particularly in France and the Netherlands, where parliamentary elections will be held this year. The far-right could also enter the German Parliament for the first time since World War II.

« We are facing a perfect storm, » Malta’s Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech said.

« The next 12 months are a defining moment for Europe, » Grech warned, saying that nations have been too slow to act on their promises. « Citizens believe that national solutions are more effective than European solutions. »

Europe: heavy snow brings more misery, deaths, travel delays
Authorities dug out stranded residents as heavy snow blanketed Eastern Europe Wednesday as people struggled with travel delays, power outages and sub-zero temperatures. Homeless people and migrants were among those most at risk.

The recent cold snap has now been blamed for at least 66 deaths, and seen the lowest temperatures for decades in some parts.

Poland, the country hit hardest by the deep freeze, reported two more deaths Wednesday as havoc spread to many countries across the region.

Greece’s navy sent a ship to the island of Lesbos to house some 500 refugees and migrants. A medical association on the island said conditions at the main camp there were « inhuman » with migrants in tents exposed to freezing temperatures.

Swathes of northern and eastern Bulgaria were paralyzed by snowdrifts that blocked roads and left 117 towns and villages without electricity. The main highway linking the capital Sofia with the Black Sea port of Burgas was closed.

Bulgarian soldiers used heavy machinery to clear major roads, rescue stranded people and supply remote villages with food and water. The energy ministry said that it had turned down emergency requests for power from neighbors Greece and Turkey to avoid the possibility of having to ration electricity for domestic customers.

In Kosovo, police said a homeless man was found dead, apparently from hypothermia, the second cold-related fatality reported in that country.

As temperatures plummeted to -25 Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit), there were power outages in many areas. Meteorologists said it was the coldest weather since 1963, when the eastern city of Gjilan recorded a low of -32.5 Celsius.

Snow continued to cut off communities in southern Albania where the death toll stood at five, most of them homeless people. Army helicopters and emergency authorities were distributing aid to remote mountain areas, while military and civil heavy vehicles helped clear snowbound roads in the coldest weather since 1985.

In Romania, blizzards closed more than 130 roads and caused huge delays and cancellations on the railways.

Thousands of commuters rode the Bucharest subway, while others walked on the streets as snow piled high on the sidewalks. Several people were seen skiing.

In Serbia, where six deaths were blamed on the recent cold, authorities evacuated 130 snowbound residents. Dozens of vehicles rescued people stuck in snowdrifts.

Schools were closed in the worst-affected areas of Serbia and Romania and also on the Greek island of Lesbos.

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U.S. deploys high-tech radar amid heightened N.Korea rhetoric -official – A high-tech sea-based U.S. military radar has left Hawaii to monitor for potential North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test launches, a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that the isolated, nuclear-capable country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the radar, known as the Sea-based X-band radar (SBX), left on Monday and would reach its destination, about 2,000 miles (3,218 km) northwest of Hawaii, towards the end of January.

The radar is able to track ICBMs and differentiate between hostile missiles and those that are not a threat.

On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the U.S. military might monitor a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test and gather intelligence rather than destroy it, as long as the launch did not pose a threat.

« If the missile is threatening, it will be intercepted. If it’s not threatening, we won’t necessarily do so, » Carter said, « Because it may be more to our advantage to, first of all, save our interceptor inventory, and, second, to gather intelligence from the flight, rather than do that (intercept the ICBM) when it’s not threatening. » Carter’s remarks came just over a week after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump vowed that North Korea would never fulfill its threat to test an ICBM. Trump said in a Jan. 2 tweet: « It won’t happen! » « The SBX’s current deployment is not based on any credible threat; however, we cannot discuss specifics for this particular mission while it is underway, » Commander Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

Obama not slipping away quietly from presidency
Barack Obama is not leaving his presidency quietly.

Besides his farewell address to the nation Tuesday night, Obama has been on a media blitz during his final weeks in office. The biggest broadcast networks have all been granted interviews, culminating in a full-circle talk Sunday on CBS’ « 60 Minutes. » The History network airs a two-hour interview special on Sunday and next week CNN shows its own two-hour film, « The End: Inside the Last Days of the Obama White House. »

Obama also gave lengthy interviews to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for a Vanity Fair feature and to Jann Wenner for his 10th Rolling Stone magazine cover. First Lady Michelle Obama gave Oprah Winfrey an exit interview and she’ll appear on NBC’s « The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon » on Wednesday.

« I don’t remember (an exit) that has been as orchestrated and fulsome as this one, » said David Gergen, co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and an aide to four presidents.

Gergen also can’t recall a president-elect who so forcefully promised to undo the achievements of his predecessor, so he understands Obama’s motivation to get his message across.

Obama was the 10th president to deliver a formal farewell address, and his speech in Chicago was the first one before a public audience, said Gleaves Whitney, director of Grand Valley State University’s Center for Presidential Studies.

The first three farewell messages weren’t speeches at all — they were written and submitted to the press, Whitney said. Harry Truman began the modern tradition of televised addresses, which have been intermittently followed.

Historically, farewells by George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower are considered the most impactful because they offered warnings to the country. Washington, in a message published in 1796, talked about how excessive political factionalism could threaten the nation’s unity. Former World War II commander Eisenhower, speaking in 1961, spoke about the danger of giving the military-industrial complex too much power. Obama spoke about dangers to democracy from within.

But the traditional farewell is far from the only way Obama is trying to leave an impression.

« President Obama has taken the legacy theme to a new level, » Whitney said on Wednesday. « The election of Donald Trump is the biggest rebuttal and rebuke that anyone can imagine. No one saw it coming. I think he and many people in his party are stunned by the rebuke.

« He wants to squeeze every opportunity with the bully pulpit to make his case that, you know, the last eight years were not that bad, » he said.

Obama is benefiting from the media’s sense of nostalgia that is common for exiting two-term presidents, said Gergen, also a CNN commentator. He’s leaves on a high note in popularity: a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed him with a 55 percent approval rating, compared to 37 percent for Trump.

The president is also intent on spreading his viewpoint « because in the next few weeks there’s going to be a deluge coming the other way, » Gergen said.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos featured his Obama interview on his Sunday political talk show, « This Week. » NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed Obama on Air Force One and in a restaurant in Chicago’s Hyde Park on Tuesday. The network is already showing portions of the interview, with the bulk reserved for a prime-time hour on Friday, « Barack Obama: The Reality of Hope. »

Television’s most popular newsmagazine, « 60 Minutes, » will devote its full hour on Sunday to Steve Kroft’s interview with Obama that took place Monday in the White House. Kroft and Obama have a history: Obama gave him the first television interview after he was elected in 2008.

« 60 Minutes » also landed Trump’s first postelection interview, with Lesley Stahl.

Twitter: Obama’s ‘thank you’ tweet his most popular ever
President Barack Obama’s tweet following his farewell address to the nation has become the most popular post on the presidential account.

Obama tweeted from the @POTUS account Tuesday night: « Thank you for everything. My last ask is the same as my first. I’m asking you to believe_not in my ability to create change, but in yours. »

As of midday Wednesday, the message had been retweeted more than 500,000 times. Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio says that outperforms his previous top tweet, a message posted after the Supreme Court’s June 2015 decision to overturn state bans on gay marriage.

The @POTUS account has more than 13 million followers. Obama’s personal @BarackObama account has more than 80 million followers.

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Obama pushes values and prods Trump in final, emotional address – With a final call of his campaign mantra « Yes We Can, » President Barack Obama urged Americans on Tuesday to stand up for U.S. values and reject discrimination as the United States transitions to the presidency of Republican Donald Trump.

In an emotional speech in which he thanked his family and declared his time as president the honor of his life, Obama gently prodded the public to embrace his vision of progress while repudiating some of the policies that Trump promoted during his campaign for the White House.

« So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are, » Obama told a crowd of 18,000 in his hometown of Chicago, where he celebrated his election in 2008 as the first black president of the United States.

Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, proposed temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country, building a wall on the border with Mexico, upending a global deal to fight climate change and dismantling Obama’s healthcare reform law.

Obama made clear his opposition to those positions during fiery campaign speeches for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but has struck a more conciliatory tone with Trump since the election.

In his farewell speech, he made clear his positions had not changed and he said his efforts to end the use of torture and close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were part of a broader move to uphold U.S. values.

« That’s why I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans, » he said in a clear reference to Trump that drew applause.

He said bold action was needed to fight global warming and said « science and reason » mattered.

« If anyone can put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we’ve made to our healthcare system that covers as many people at less cost, I will publicly support it, » he said in another prodding challenge to his successor.

Trump has urged the Republican-controlled Congress to repeal the law right away.

RACE AND NOSTALGIA Obama, who came to office amid high expectations that his election would heal historic racial divides, acknowledged that was an impossible goal.

« After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America, » he said. « Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society. » However, Obama said he remained hopeful about the work that a younger generation would do. « Yes we can, » he said. « Yes we did. » In an indirect reference to the political work the Democratic Party will have to do to recover after Clinton’s loss, Obama urged racial minorities to seek justice not only for themselves but also for « the middle-aged white guy who from the outside may seem like he’s got advantages, but has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change. » Trump won his election in part by appealing to working-class white men.

First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, his wife Jill Biden, and many current and former White House staff members and campaign workers attended the speech. Obama wiped his eyes as he addressed his wife and thanked his running mate. They all appeared together on stage after the address.

The Chicago visit is Obama’s last scheduled trip as president, and even the final flight on the presidential aircraft was tinged with wistfulness.

It was the president’s 445th « mission » on Air Force One, a perk he has said he will miss when he leaves office, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

All told, Obama will have spent more than 2,800 hours or 116 days on the plane during his presidency.

Obama plans to remain in Washington for the next two years while his younger daughter, Sasha, finishes high school. Sasha, who has an exam on Wednesday, did not attend the speech but her older sister Malia was there.

The president has indicated he wants to give Trump the same space that his predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush, gave Obama after leaving office by not maintaining a high public profile.

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Mexico lays out cards for high stakes talks with Trump – Mexico said on Wednesday it would throw its relationship with the United States wide open in talks with the incoming Trump administration, putting security, migration and trade on the table as it seeks to avoid a major economic shock.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to tear up a trade agreement that underpins Mexico’s export model if he cannot renegotiate its terms in his favor, battering the peso currency and fueling uncertainty over foreign investment.

President Enrique Pena Nieto said Mexico would take a broad approach to the challenge, seeking a settlement that would benefit both Mexico and the United States as he looks to carve out a platform that gives him room for maneuver in talks.

« All the issues that define our bilateral relationship are on the table, including security, migration and trade, » Pena Nieto said in a speech to diplomats in Mexico City, sketching out his negotiating position for the first time.

Reuters reported last month that Mexico’s government aimed to use security and migration to gain leverage over the United States in its talks with Trump, and could offer to reinforce its borders to get a better deal on trade.

Pena Nieto said Mexico would invest in a more secure border, but repeated his posture that it would not pay for the border wall Trump plans to build.

During the campaign, Trump threatened to have Mexico fund the wall by blocking remittances from Mexicans living in the United States. Pena Nieto said he would work to ensure those funds continued to flow freely across the border.

Pena Nieto said the U.S. government shared responsibility for migrants seeking to reach the United States, and should also work to stop the southward flow of weapons and illicit funds that help finance Mexican organized crime.

Mexican officials point to a jump in deportations of illegal immigrants under Pena Nieto, and to the country’s importance in working with U.S. law enforcement to combat rising U.S. demand for lethal drugs such as heroin smuggled in from Mexico.

If Trump seeks to hurt Mexico on trade, there is little incentive for the Mexican government to go out of its way on behalf of the United States on other issues, they argue.

TRADE DIVERSIFICATION Mexico sends 80 percent of its exports to the United States and is eager to uphold the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the two nations and Canada that acts as a conduit for the bulk of foreign direct investment in Mexico.

Trump has called NAFTA a « disaster » and vowed to scrap or recast it in the hope of bringing jobs back to America.

Mexico, meanwhile, must work to reduce its dependency on the United States, economists and policymakers have said.

Pena Nieto said his government would seek to diversify business ties with Asia and Latin American countries where it had room for improvement, such as Brazil and Argentina.

Mexico also aims to wrap up talks with the European Union on updating a joint trade accord in the next 12 months, he added.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Trump said he would soon begin talks with Mexico on the border wall and would make Mexico reimburse the United States for construction costs.

Trump also promised a major border tax on companies that moved jobs outside the United States, giving the example of firms relocating plants to Mexico.

Trump’s pick for top diplomat takes tough line on Moscow
Barraged by questions about Russia, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state promised a far more muscular approach toward the Kremlin on Wednesday, abandoning much of the president-elect’s emphasis on improving ties between the Cold War foes. Instead, Rex Tillerson suggested the outgoing Obama administration responded too softly to Moscow’s takeover of Ukrainian territory.

The surprising shift in tone by Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil CEO and Russian « Order of Friendship » recipient, reflected the difficulty Trump will have in persuading Democrats and Republicans to broach a broad rapprochement with President Vladimir Putin’s government. Calling Russia a « danger » to the United States, Tillerson said he would keep U.S. sanctions in place and consider new penalties related to Russian meddling in the presidential election.

Although he said he hadn’t read last week’s classified assessment by the U.S. intelligence community, Tillerson said it was a « fair assumption » that Putin would have ordered the operation that purportedly included hacking, propaganda and internet trolls to harm Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and advance Trump’s. But in a puzzling revelation, Tillerson conceded he hadn’t yet talked with Trump about a Russia policy.

« Russia today poses a danger, but it is not unpredictable in advancing its own interests, » Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He added that Trump’s administration would be committed to the defense of America’s NATO partners, an obligation the president-elect called into question during the campaign if allies failed to meet defense spending pledges.

While his prepared statement reflected some of Trump’s desire for improved ties, Tillerson quickly pivoted under pressure from both sides of the aisle. On Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea region, he said, « That was a taking of territory that was not theirs. »

Still, he criticized President Barack Obama’s sanctions on Russia, which ended up costing Exxon hundreds of millions of dollars. And he declared that he would have responded by urging Ukraine to send all available military units to its eastern border with Russia and recommending U.S. and allied support through defensive weapons and air surveillance, to send a message to Moscow.

« That is the type of response that Russia expects, » he said in a response to questions from Sen. Marco Rubio, Tillerson’s toughest GOP inquisitor, who later lectured the oil man on human rights and hinted he might withhold his support. « If Russia acts with force, » Tillerson said, « they require a proportional show of force. »

Trump offered a sharply different account of Ukraine during the presidential campaign and never proposed a show of U.S. military force in Ukraine. In an August interview, he claimed Russia would not enter Ukraine, not seeming to know Russian troops were already there. He suggested Crimea didn’t count because the peninsula’s people preferred being part of Russia, restating Putin’s reason for taking the territory in 2014.

Like Trump, Tillerson vowed complete support for Israel, which he called America’s « most important ally » in the Middle East. He said the new administration would undertake a full review of the Iran nuclear deal to deny the Islamic republic the ability to acquire an atomic weapon. He said that might only be possible if Iran can no longer enrich uranium, which the accord permits under strict constraints and without which Tehran wouldn’t have made the deal.

Some of the questioning reflected the traditional friction between a Congress that wants to prescribe foreign policy and an executive branch that traditionally seeks to maintain broad flexibility in its international affairs, tinted by Tillerson’s vocal opposition to economic sanctions as a business leader.

Addressing some of Congress’ most experienced architects of U.S. economic pressure, Tillerson called sanctions « a powerful tool » in deterrence that could, however, also project weakness if applied poorly.

He said neither he nor Exxon had lobbied against sanctions. But the company did try to influence sanctions legislation on Russia two years ago, congressional records and data from the Center for Responsive Politics show, and Tillerson made numerous White House visits, to no avail. Given a second chance on the subject, Tillerson sought to clarify his answer by saying he had expressed concerns related to security in shutting down an Exxon operation newly prohibited under the sanctions.

Tillerson represents a break in a longstanding tradition of secretaries of state with extensive military, legislative, political or diplomatic experience. Yet his supporters point to Tillerson’s lengthy career as a senior executive in a mammoth multinational company as proof he has the management and negotiating skills to succeed in the State Department’s top post, particularly when facing tough foreign governments.

« It’s brilliant what he’s doing and what he’s saying, » Trump said of Tillerson during a news conference in New York that occurred as Tillerson was testifying. « He ran incredibly Exxon Mobil. When there was a find, he would get it. »

His Exxon experience, however, has been criticized by Democrats for possible conflicts of interest because of the company’s far-flung business dealings. Tillerson, who stepped down as CEO at the end of 2016, said he understood being secretary of state meant different responsibilities. He pledged to be a steward for U.S. national interests rather than corporate ones.

« He is not prepared to be our secretary of state, » said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat.

If all 10 Democrats on the committee vote against Tillerson, and Rubio or any other Republican joins them, the nomination would then be referred to the full Senate with « no recommendation. » That would be an embarrassment for such a high-profile Cabinet nominee and could signal a larger confirmation battle.

« He’s got to convince me he sees Russia for who they are, » said Sen. Lindsey Graham, another skeptical Republican. On Tillerson’s proposed response to the election hacking charges, Graham said, « Real fuzzy answer. »

Trump’s Treasury pick boosted an investment with TV talk

resident-elect Donald Trump’s choice to become Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, will sell 43 assets to avoid conflicts of interest in office, according to new filings made public Wednesday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Statements Mnuchin made in a November television interview may already have boosted the value of one of them.

Mnuchin, an investment banker and financier with a disclosed net worth of at least $166 million, holds investments of between $1 million and $2 million in the Paulson Advantage Fund, a hedge fund managed by fellow Trump supporter John Paulson. Among the fund’s most prominent bets is the common stock of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-backed housing guarantors that were effectively nationalized as part of a $187 billion bailout during the financial crisis. Speculators such as Paulson have bet heavily that the mortgage giants will be reprivatized.

Mnuchin’s exposure to the companies is small in the broader context of his net worth. But Mnuchin — who as Treasury secretary would play a large role in any such privatization process — sparked a rally in the stocks’ price when he told Fox Business News on Nov. 30 that privatizing the companies would be a priority for the Trump administration.

« It’s right up there in the top 10 list of things we’re going to get done, » he said.

The companies’ respective stock prices rose more than 40 percent each that day. A Bloomberg article credited the companies’ stocks for a 9 percent monthly gain in the value of Paulson’s holdings.

The Associated Press asked Mnuchin spokesman Barney Keller whether Mnuchin had anticipated the effect of his comments on Fannie and Freddie stock. In response, Keller sent a link to Mnuchin’s ethics agreement outlining his intended divestitures.

Mnuchin pledged to sell a lengthy list of assets, including Paulson’s fund, within 90 days. He also submitted a declaration that he will not participate in any matter that would have « a direct and predictable effect » on the value of his holdings.

Aside from the Paulson funds, Mnuchin’s holdings reflect his time in investment banking, the entertainment business and private equity. His single largest holding — worth at least $50 million — is stock in CIT Group, which bought out OneWest Bank, a company he once led. Other investments include between $25 million and $50 million in a Goldman Sachs Treasury bond fund, an agreement with Warner Bros. worth at least $1 million and a stake in a Willem de Kooning oil painting worth between $5 million and $25 million.

Despite Mnuchin’s substantial fortune, he would be neither the richest Treasury secretary in recent history nor the wealthiest member of Trump’s Cabinet. George W. Bush’s choice, former Goldman Sachs chief executive Hank Paulson, sold more than $500 million in Goldman stock following his confirmation. Trump’s choices for the Education and Commerce departments, Betsy DeVos and Wilbur Ross, are each worth billions.

Trump says for first time: I think Russia hacked Dems
President-elect Donald Trump speculated Wednesday that U.S. intelligence agencies might have leaked details about a classified briefing with him that included unsubstantiated allegations that Russia had collected compromising sexual and financial information about him.

He said any such information was not true: « It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen. »

« I think it’s pretty sad when intelligence reports get leaked out to the press, » Trump said.

His comments marked his latest round of insults thrown at U.S. intelligence agencies, the same agencies he will have to rely on to help him make major national security directions once he takes the White House next week.

Trump was referring to a dossier that contained unproven information about close coordination between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, including details about Russian hacking into Democratic accounts as well as unsubstantiated claims about unusual sexual activities by Trump, attributed to anonymous sources. The Associated Press has not authenticated any of the claims.

On Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey refused to say whether the FBI was investigating any possible ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign, citing a policy not to comment on what the FBI might or might not be doing.

There is nothing to suggest the intelligence agencies told news outlets that a summary of the dossier was included in Trump’s classified briefing last week about Russian election meddling. President Barack Obama was also briefed on the dossier last Thursday.

A summary of the allegations was included as an add-on to a classified assessment of Russia’s suspected election- interference efforts. That classified report tied Russian President Vladimir Putin to the hacking of email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Trump acknowledged Wednesday, for the first time, that he believed Russia was responsible for the hacking.

« As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, » Trump said. « But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people. »

Trump condemned what he said was « maybe » leaks by U.S. intelligence agencies.

It would be a « tremendous blot on their record if they in fact did that. A tremendous blot, because a thing like that should have never been written, it should never have been had and it should certainly never been released, » Trump said at a news conference.

He likened the release to Nazi Germany, saying it is « disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information — that turned out to be so false and fake — out. »

The CIA and the office of the director of national intelligence declined to comment. Although they had not been able to verify details in the dossier, the belief in the intelligence community was that it needed to be shared with Trump, given how many media outlets were already aware of the file.

The briefing about the separate dossier was first reported Tuesday by CNN.

Shortly after news reports were published about the dossier, Trump tweeted: « FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! »

Before he was even briefed on the intelligence agencies’ findings last week, Trump called the focus on the Russian hacking a political witch hunt, as well.

Similar denunciations came from Moscow. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the dossier as a « complete fabrication and utter nonsense. » He insisted that the Kremlin « does not engage in collecting compromising material. »

Collecting such material — known as kompromat in Russia — is standard operating procedure for the Kremlin.

« Kompromat is the life blood — one of the many life blood tactics of Russian intelligence agents, » said Laura Galante, a Russia expert and director of intelligence analysis at cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. « Needless to say, the Russians are not going to say that they have compromising information about Donald Trump. »

The unsubstantiated dossier on Trump, which has been circulating in Washington for months, was compiled by a former Western intelligence operative, identified Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal as Christopher Steele of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. Efforts to reach him or the company for comment were not immediately successful.

The dossier was part of an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client who opposed Trump, and later funded by Democrats, according to Mother Jones, which published an article about the report in October and said the operative had turned over the report to the FBI. The New York Times reported the operative had previously worked for British intelligence.

Steven Hall, a retired chief of Russia operations at the CIA, said it was unlikely that intelligence agencies told Trump about the report as payback for his regular criticism.

« In my 30 years of briefing some pretty senior folks downtown in the national security structure, I’ve never seen politicization like that where you use the threat of some sort of retaliation, or some sort of, ‘things are going to get very difficult for you in the future if you somehow mess with the intelligence community.’ I’ve never seen that, » Hall said.

Hall said senior intelligence officials were likely in a no-win situation.

If they decided not to share the information with Trump, the details still would likely get out, and they would be accused of withholding evidence, he said. « If you do brief it, then you of course put the imprimatur of some sort of believability, some sort of veracity to it. »

Trump’s attacks on the intelligence agencies have been « stinging » said former CIA counsel Jeffrey Smith.

« Most president-elects or presidential candidates are very suspicious to the CIA or hostile to it, » Smith said. « Once they become president and discover that it’s their CIA, the attitude changes. »

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Trump accuses U.S. spy agencies of Nazi practices over ‘phony’ Russia dossier – President-elect Donald Trump escalated a fight with U.S. spy agencies on Wednesday, just nine days before he takes over their command as president, and accused them of practices reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

The Republican said leaks from the intelligence community led to some U.S. media outlets reporting unsubstantiated claims that he was caught in a compromising position in Russia.

« I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. I think it’s a disgrace, and I say that … that’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do, » Trump told a news conference in New York.

Trump acknowledged for the first time that Russia likely hacked the Democratic National Committee and the emails of top Democrats during the 2016 presidential election. « I think it was Russia, » he said, pointing out that other countries were also hacking the United States.

Trump’s comments about spy agencies such as the CIA are likely to intensify tensions between the intelligence community and the president-elect, who initially disparaged its conclusion that a Russian hacking campaign was aimed at boosting his candidacy against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, called a dossier that makes salacious claims about him in Russia « fake news » and « phony stuff. » U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he spoke with Trump on Wednesday evening and told the president-elect he did not believe the media leaks came from the intelligence community.

« I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security, » Clapper said in a statement.

He defended including the dossier in the intelligence report Trump received on Friday, saying « part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security. » Clapper said he emphasized to Trump that the dossier was not produced by the U.S. intelligence community and intelligence officials have not judged whether the information is reliable.

MEMO AND REPORTS Two U.S. officials said the allegations about Trump, which one called « unsubstantiated, » were contained in a two-page memo appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that was presented last week to Trump and to President Barack Obama.

Trump said, without offering evidence, that the news he had been briefed on the memo « was released by maybe the (U.S.) intelligence agencies. Who knows? But maybe the intelligence agencies which would be a tremendous blot on their record if they in fact did that. » CNN reported on Tuesday about the existence of the memo. BuzzFeed published a fuller 35-page document produced by Christopher Steele, a former British foreign intelligence official, that outlined the allegations of compromising behavior by Trump and alleged links between him and people in Russia.

The claims were included in opposition research reports that were made available to Democrats and U.S. officials last year.

One U.S. official said investigators had so far been unable to confirm material about Trump’s financial and personal entanglements with Russian businessmen and others whom U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded are Russian intelligence officers or working on behalf of Russian intelligence.

Some material in Steele’s reports has proved to be erroneous, the U.S. official said.

In the news conference, Trump declined to answer whether anyone connected to him or the campaign had contact with Moscow during the presidential campaign, and said he had no loans or business deals with Russia.

He defended his goal of better ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. « If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability, » he said.

The New York real estate developer complained about leaks from meetings he has with intelligence agencies and suggested they were to blame.

« I have many meetings with intelligence. And every time I meet, people are reading about it. Somebody’s leaking it out, » he said.

PROTESTS, CHEERS The long-awaited news conference was a freewheeling affair, with Trump aides cheering from the sidelines at one point and the president-elect angrily refusing to take questions from a CNN reporter.

Outside, about a dozen protesters gathered behind a police barricade across the street from Trump Tower, holding signs with the slogans « Dump Trump » and « Allegiance To America Not Russia » as Fifth Avenue traffic streamed by.

It was Trump’s first news conference in about six months and about 250 reporters jammed into the lobby at his Manhattan offices.

Questions extended to many issues that will face him when he takes office. He vowed to soon begin negotiations with Mexico on building a border wall and said he will nominate a Supreme Court justice to fill the seat left by the death of conservative Antonin Scalia within two weeks of taking office.

He also said he would offer a plan to repeal and replace Obama’s signature health care law once his choice for health and human services, Tom Price, is confirmed by the Senate.

Trump gestured to large stacks of manila folders as he described how he will separate himself from his global business operations, which includes hotels and golf courses as well as assets like a winery and modeling agency, to avoid conflicts of interest once he takes office.

He also talked about how he plans to bring manufacturing jobs back from overseas plants, slamming drug companies for « getting away with murder » on pricing.

U.S. stocks slipped to session lows, before recovering ground, as healthcare stocks took a beating following Trump’s comments on drug pricing.

Newly leaked dossier on Trump circulated in DC for months

It was a bombshell story, emerging on the eve of Donald Trump’s first news conference as president-elect: U.S. intelligence officials had presented Trump with unsubstantiated claims that Russia had amassed compromising personal and financial allegations about him.

The purported Russian efforts were described in a newly released and uncorroborated dossier produced in August. But they had circulated more widely in Washington in October — following early reports and opaque warnings from elected officials that something was afoot involving the Kremlin and Trump.

In October, Mother Jones magazine described how a former Western spy — assigned to look into Trump’s Russian ties for a private American firm — had presented his findings to the FBI in August. Those findings, the magazine said, were produced for political opposition research and said that Russian intelligence had compromised Trump during his visits to Moscow — information that, if true, could be used to blackmail him or undermine his presidency.

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday identified the dossier’s author as Christopher Steele, a director of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., whom the Journal said declined repeated requests for interviews through an intermediary. Another Orbis director told the Journal he wouldn’t « confirm or deny » that Orbis had produced the report.

Efforts to reach him by The Associated Press were not immediately successful. There was no answer after hours at Orbis Business Intelligence, at a five-story stone building across from London’s Lower Grosvenor Gardens, about two blocks from Buckingham Palace. There was no listed number for Steele’s address in Wokingham, about 30 miles west of London.

CNN reported Tuesday night that Trump had been briefed in a classified setting about a summary of the investigator’s findings.

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed published the 35-page dossier Tuesday night. The website defended publishing the report because it said Americans « can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect. » Other news outlets withheld publishing most details about the unverified claims because they couldn’t confirm them.

Shortly after reports were published late Tuesday about the dossier, Trump tweeted: « FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! » The president-elect said at a combative news conference Wednesday that the allegations were « phony stuff » leaked by « sick people. »

In October, then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote to the FBI asking it to publicly disclose what it knew about any Trump campaign ties to Russia.

« It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information, » Reid wrote on Oct. 30.

He said he learned of the information from FBI Director Jim Comey and from other top U.S. national security officials. It wasn’t immediately clear how much Reid knew specifically of the compromising information versus Russian hacking activity in general.

A few weeks later, in mid-November, Sen. John McCain became aware of the allegations but decided it was impossible to verify them without a proper investigation, according to a report Wednesday by The Guardian. The newspaper reported McCain was reluctant to get involved because it could be seen as payback for insults Trump made about the Arizona Republican during the campaign.

The summary of the dossier allegations was appended to a classified assessment of Russia’s suspected attempts to meddle in the U.S. presidential election. Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the intelligence community’s findings last week.

Compromising material appears frequently in Russian politics

Blurry video of highly placed men engaging in sexual acts, audio recordings of influential figures profanely insulting their nominal allies — in Russia these appear enough that a special word has evolved: « kompromat, » or « compromising material. »

In the wake of unsubstantiated allegations that Russia has gathered kompromat against President-elect Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov brushed them off as an attempt to undermine potentially improved U.S.-Russia ties once Trump takes office.

« The Kremlin does not engage in collecting compromising information, » he told reporters on Wednesday.

But such material has shown up in Russia for decades. Recent examples of kompromat often support Kremlin interests or appear via media believed to have close ties to President Vladimir Putin’s administration.

Some notable examples:

VICTORIA NULAND

As demonstrations against Ukraine’s Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych spiraled in February 2014, an audio recording emerged apparently of Nuland, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing which opposition leaders Washington would like to see as prime minister.

The recording’s initial release was presented as evidence of open American instigation in the turmoil. But what attracted much of the attention was Nuland’s obscene dismissal of the European Union, whose envoys the U.S. regarded as indecisive and slow-moving in the crisis.

The recording was widely believed to have been made by Russia. Nuland herself called it « impressive tradecraft. »

MIKHAIL KASYANOV

Kasyanov was Putin’s first prime minister before becoming one of the more prominent figures in Russia’s beleaguered and fragmented opposition. His party was running in last year’s parliamentary election and he also has been seen as a possible dark horse challenger to Putin in the 2018 presidential election.

In March 2016, grainy video was broadcast that appeared to show Kasyanov and a woman identified as an opposition activist having sex and speaking dismissively of other opposition figures. The video appeared on NTV, a state-controlled TV channel noted for especially vehement criticism of the opposition and support for Putin.

BORIS NEMTSOV

Before he was assassinated on a bridge near the Kremlin in 2015, Nemtsov was one of the most determined and charismatic of Putin’s opponents. He was a leading figure in the massive anti-Kremlin demonstrations in Moscow in late 2011 following parliamentary elections plagued by allegations of fraud.

The size and persistence of the demonstrations apparently caught officials by surprise and sent them scrambling for ways to tamp them down without mass arrests.

On the eve of one of the planned protests, the website Life News, closely connected with the Kremlin and Russian security services, released recordings of Nemtsov apparently insulting other notable opposition figures. The recordings reinforced the personal and tactical disagreements that have undermined the opposition.

Nemtsov said some of the recordings were manipulated or faked but acknowledged that some were authentic.

YURI SKURATOV

In 1999, Boris Yeltsin was president while Putin headed the FSB security agency, apparently positioning himself to take over from Yeltsin.

Skuratov, at that time Russia’s prosecutor-general, had been investigating corruption in the Yeltsin administration; Yeltsin tried to fire him, but the parliament refused.

A videotape appeared on state television of a man resembling Skuratov apparently having sex with prostitutes, prompting parliament to suspend him. Putin publicly identified the man as Skuratov.

Weeks after Putin became acting president on New Year’s Eve 1999, the parliament dismissed Skuratov.

Trump’s long-awaited news conference quickly turns combative

A shouting match with a reporter. A long unexplained prop. An unexpected interlude from a lawyer.

Donald Trump’s raucous first news conference as president-elect bore little resemblance to the usually staid and choreographed sessions with the occupant of the Oval Office. It was a 58-minute display of how some of the old rules of journalism will be tested in the Trump era.

More than 250 journalists packed Trump Tower for the celebrity businessman’s first full-fledged news conference since July, which was billed as a forum to discuss his separation from his business but quickly turned into a loud, wide-ranging free-for-all about U.S. intelligence, Russian hacking and, eventually, some of Trump’s policy plans after he takes office on Jan. 20.

Only one seat was saved by a Republican National Committee aide, a front-row spot for a reporter from Breitbart, the conservative news outlet until recently run by Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon. Other reporters scrambled to save their seats. Reporters shouted and waved their arms at Trump to get his attention, rather than the president calling on questioners from a list, as is often the practice.

Trump stood at a podium next to a pile of manila folders on a table. But only well into the press conference did he later explain the papers were documentation of his new business arrangement, details of which were explained only when Trump abruptly ceded the stage to his lawyer. Trump staffers blocked reporters from examining the folders.

The business announcement aside, Trump really came ready to do battle with press. Coming hours after news reports revealed intelligence officials had presented Trump with unsubstantiated and salacious allegations regarding his relationship to Russia, Trump and his team opened the news conference by condemning news organizations that disclosed details, calling out CNN and BuzzFeed as « disgraceful. »

He later refused to let CNN reporter Jim Acosta ask a question, saying, « Your organization is terrible » and demanding that he be « quiet » and allow another reporter a turn.

« I am not going to give you a question, » Trump said, ignoring Acosta’s requests. « You are fake news. »

Such exchanges became somewhat predictable during Trump’s campaign, during which Trump used his combative relationship with the press to fire up his supporters. But there are few recent examples of a sitting-president and a journalist abandoning decorum to duke it out on live television. The episode — which was condemned by The New York Press Club — was a sign that Trump may not intend to change his demeanor when he takes office later this month.

Trump isn’t the only one questioning BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the material. The dossier contains unproven information largely attributed to anonymous sources. The Associated Press has not authenticated any of the claims and Trump has strongly denied all of the accusations.

A CNN spokesman said in a statement: « We are fully confident in our reporting. It represents the core of what the First Amendment protects, informing the people of the inner workings of their government. »

BuzzFeed News’ editor-in-chief said in a statement that the online outlet published the document because its mission is to be « transparent in our journalism. »

In turn, Trump was transparent in how he plans to deal with this press corps.

When he called on the Breitbart reporter, he was asked his thoughts on media ethics and so-called « fake news. »

« Some of the media outlets that I deal with are fake news more so than anybody. I could name them, but I won’t bother, but you have a few sitting right in front of us. They’re very, very dishonest people, but I think it’s just something we’re going to have to live with, » he said. « I guess the advantage I have is that I can speak back. »

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Trump news conference sets worldwide social media afire – In his first news conference since the Nov. 8 election, President-elect Donald Trump set social media ablaze on Wednesday with remarks including harsh criticism of the press and a defense of his goal to improve ties with Russia.

The session, held in the lobby of his Trump Tower headquarters in Manhattan, featured a number of viral moments, like an exchange with a reporter whom Trump accused of peddling « fake news. » « I’m not going to give you a question, » Trump told the journalist from CNN, which reported on Tuesday that the Republican president-elect had been briefed by U.S. intelligence agencies about allegations that Russian operatives had compromising information about him.

« You are fake news! » he told the reporter in a moment that reverberated on Twitter.

Trump’s comment that reporters were « the only ones who care » about whether he released his tax returns stirred up 165,000 tweets during the session. Social media users asked others to « retweet if you’re not a reporter and still care about seeing Trump’s tax returns. » In Russia, the hashtag #TrumpPressConference was a top-trending topic during the news conference and for several hours afterward.

« If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability because we have a horrible relationship with Russia, » Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, said in reference to the Russian president.

« I don’t know that I’m going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there’s a good chance I won’t, » Trump said, prompting thousands of tweets from people in Russia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have said Russia was behind a hacking campaign aimed at boosting Trump’s presidential candidacy against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

There were some 80,000 tweets worldwide stamped with the #TrumpPressConference tag during the hour-long session with about 250 reporters.

Twitter sentiment regarding Trump during the event was 14 percent positive, 63 percent neutral and 23 percent negative, according to global digital marketing technology company Amobee.

Also stirring Twitter reaction were Trump’s comments about the wall he has pledged to build on the U.S.-Mexican border and to have Mexico pay for.

He said he would not wait for negotiations with Mexico before beginning construction, but added: « Mexico in some form … will reimburse us. » In response, former Mexican President Vicente Fox tweeted: « Neither today, nor tomorrow nor never Mexico will pay for that stupid wall. »

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‘You are fake news!’ Trump presides over turbulent news conference – The drama started early at Donald Trump’s first news conference as president-elect.

Trump, who spent much of his U.S. presidential campaign bashing the news media for what he called unfair coverage, kicked off with uncharacteristic praise for the New York Times and other media organizations.

The reason? The Times, and others, had held back on reporting salacious and unsubstantiated allegations that suggested Trump could be blackmailed by Russia.

The praise did not last long. For those organizations that he said had crossed the line – BuzzFeed, which released an unsubstantiated memo about the allegations, and CNN, which was one of the first to report on the broader story – he delivered a scathing critique.

« You are fake news, » Trump said to CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, calling his organization terrible and declining to take a question from him despite Acosta’s several attempts to shout one.

That dust-up was one of many theatrical moments at the first news conference in six months for Trump, a businessman and reality TV star-turned-politician who enters the White House on Jan. 20.

There was turbulence even before Trump took the lectern in the lobby of his Manhattan tower. The president-elect’s team had set out about 80 chairs, not nearly enough for the roughly 250 journalists who were present.

Trump’s team created some suspense when beforehand four aides walked to the front of the room and placed thick stacks of paper on a table. Trump would get to that later.

CHEERING SECTION When the president-elect arrived, a group of staff and supporters standing in a space near the elevators in the Trump Tower lobby applauded. That group would act as Trump’s personal cheering section during the news conference, clapping and whooping whenever he made points they liked. The press does not normally cheer the president at such events.

At the start, Trump stood off to the side with his three oldest children while he had two introductions – one from his incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, and one from his running mate, Mike Pence. Both slammed media organizations for reporting the unsubstantiated allegations.

CNN later released a statement about its reporting.

« CNN’s decision to publish carefully sourced reporting about the operations of our government is vastly different from BuzzFeed’s decision to publish unsubstantiated memos, » it said. « The Trump team knows this. » BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti in a memo to employees defended the decision to publish the dossier, referring to it as a « newsworthy document. » Trump stood in front of a row of American flags, using a presidential and patriotic display as a backdrop.

As the questioning grew more intense, he brought up an attorney, who gave a long and detailed pitch on live television about how the business owner would attempt to avoid conflicts of interest.

The lawyer’s presentation acted as a brief intermission to the frenzied pace.

Once Trump was ready to end, he pointed to the stacks of paper by the lectern. He said he was unsure it had been properly explained that they represented some of the paperwork he had filled out to begin placing his business in the hands of his sons so long as he is president, a maximum of eight years.

If after eight years of running his business he found the sons had not done a good job, he would tell them, « You’re fired, » Trump said, using a catchphrase from « The Apprentice, » the reality TV show he hosted.

US ethics chief blasts Trump plan to keep business profits

The director of the federal government’s ethics agency Wednesday blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to maintain his business empire by turning it over to his sons instead of selling off all his corporate assets and placing remaining profits in a government-approved blind trust.

U.S. Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub took the rare step of commenting publicly about a presidential ethics decision, warning that Trump’s solution to a potential cascade of conflicts spurred by his global business holdings breaks 40 years of precedent by presidents from both parties.

Shaub, a 2013 Obama appointee who also worked at the agency during the George W. Bush administration, openly pleaded with Trump to reconsider his plan before his inauguration. Shaub said Trump should commit to « divestiture, » a process under which he would sell his corporate assets and place the profit in a blind trust administered by a neutral trustee approved by the OGE.

Emails between the OGE and the Trump transition team obtained by the Associated Press show that Shaub repeatedly tried to engage with Trump’s aides late last year to persuade the president-elect and his Cabinet choices to agree to divestiture as the cleanest way to clear aware potential ethics conflicts posed by their investments and businesses.

But while lawyers for several Trump picks, including prospective Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and senior adviser Jared Kushner, have worked closely with the OGE in shaping divestiture plans, Trump’s own lawyers and aides gave the federal agency no official advance notice of his plan to turn over his global empire to his sons, according to an official familiar with interactions between the two sides.

The official, who requested anonymity to detail the sensitive contacts between the two sides, said that Shaub met once with Trump’s prospective White House counsel, Don McGahn, in recent weeks, but only to discuss ethics plans for several of Trump’s picks, not for Trump’s own plan to deal with his holdings.

An outside attorney for Trump, Sheri Dillon of firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius, said that Trump plans to have his companies’ operations directed by his two sons, but they would pursue new deals only in the U.S., not abroad. Additionally, Dillon said, Trump would put his business assets in a trust but would hand over management of his international real estate firms to a management company based in New York.

Shaub said during a rare appearance at the Brookings Institution that he was « especially troubled » by Dillon’s comment that Trump’s liquid assets from stock and investment sales he made in recent months before the presidential election would be placed in a « diversified portfolio of assets » approved by the OGE.

« No one has ever talked to us about the idea, and there’s no legal mechanism to do that, » Shaub said. He added that the only OGE-approved method is the government-qualified blind trust set by the Ethics in Government Act.

Shaub said his agency’s unusual Twitter comments last year complimenting Trump for considering divesting his assets was his decision, made to « use the vernacular of the president-elect’s favorite social media platform to encourage him to divest. »

Shaub said he now worries that Trump has no intention to go through government-approved divestiture, a move that risks « creating the perception that government leaders would use their official positions for profit. » Shaub said he had been initially encouraged by a Trump tweet last year that « no way » would he allow any conflicts of interest.

« Unfortunately, » Shaub said, « his current plan cannot achieve that goal. »

Trump leaving his global business _ to be run by his sons

Breaking with presidential precedent, Donald Trump said Wednesday he will continue to profit from his global business empire after he enters the White House this month.

The Trump Organization, which will be run by the president-elect’s adult sons and a longtime company executive, will pursue new deals in the U.S. but will not enter new foreign arrangements while he is in office, his lawyer said at a news conference.

Trump will put his business assets in a trust but will hand over the management of his international real estate development, property management and licensing company based in New York, said the lawyer.

Trump and the company are taking steps to assure Americans that he is « not exploiting the office of the presidency for his personal benefit, » said Sheri Dillon of the firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius.

Yet, the arrangement, which tracks closely with plans Trump has described in recent weeks, falls short of calls by some ethics experts — and the Office of Government Ethics — for him to sell off his businesses and put the proceeds in a blind trust overseen by an independent manager.

« Firewalls work in businesses, not in families, » said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. « Trump’s plan doesn’t prevent his business interests from benefiting him or his family while he’s in office or interfering with his presidential duties. »

Dillon said the company will add an ethics adviser to its management team who must approve deals that could raise concerns about conflicts. And the company plans to donate money spent by foreign governments at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury, she said.

Trump himself was breezier in his comments. He said U.S. conflict-of-interest restrictions don’t apply to presidents, and « I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. »

But « I don’t like the way that looks, » he said.

« My two sons who are right here, Don and Eric, are going to be running the company. … They’re not going to discuss it with me. »

« I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, oh, you did a good job. Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I’ll say, ‘You’re fired.' »

The announcement, made at Trump Tower in New York during Trump’s first news conference since July, appeared to walk back a broader promise he made last month in a Fox News interview and a tweet that the company would do « no new deals » at all while he is in office.

Although presidents are not subject to the same conflict-of-interest provisions as their Cabinet members and other government employees, they have typically followed those rules as a best practice.

For example, President Jimmy Carter sold his Georgia peanut farm when he took office. Trump’s dealings are far more complex; He has struck deals involving hotels, office buildings, golf resorts and residential towers in about 20 countries.

Dillon said it was impractical for Trump to sell off the company as some have called for because it is so enmeshed with Trump himself. Trump, she said, « should not be expected to destroy the company he built. »

Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. will run the company along with Allen Weisselberg, the current chief financial officer. Weisselberg began work with the Trump family when the president-elect’s father, Fred, ran the business.

The president-elect’s new hotel in the nation’s capital, not far from the White House, has been under the spotlight since he opened it late last year. There were news reports that diplomats were choosing to stay there and throw parties in an apparent attempt to curry favor.

Government ethics employees have urged Trump to take bigger steps.

Walter Shaub, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, told transition officials late last year in emails that the only effective way to ward off potential conflicts was to go through the process of « divestiture, » selling off all investments and corporate assets and then placing them in a blind trust overseen by neutral trustees approved by the agency.

In November, the agency, at Shaub’s direction, according to an internal email, tweeted that « OGE is delighted that you’ve decided to divest your businesses. Right decision! »

OGE officials did not say why they had made that assertion on social media.

Good government groups in Washington widely decried Trump’s plan as ineffective.

« His decision has created a direct path by which U.S. and foreign interests, including foreign governments, can exert influence over him through his companies or holdings, » said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center.

Norman Eisen, who was President Barack Obama’s chief ethics counselor when he took office in 2009, called Trump’s plan an « ill-advised course that will precipitate scandal and corruption. »

Standing aside a mound of papers prepared to separate Trump from his business, Dillon argued that he had taken significant steps at great personal sacrifice to separate himself from the business. She said he had already canceled more than 30 deals in the works around the world.

US seeks changes to coal program, but Trump could alter path U.S. officials said Wednesday that a yearlong review shows coal sales from public lands need to be modernized to deal with climate change and give taxpayers a fair return, but it’s uncertain whether the incoming Trump administration will follow through.

The Interior Department imposed a moratorium on new coal sales last year following longstanding complaints from federal investigators and members of Congress that the program was shortchanging taxpayers.

In a preliminary report released Wednesday as part of a broad review of U.S. coal sales, Interior officials said they were considering raising coal royalty rates and requiring compensation from mining companies to offset the climate change effects of burning the fuel.

Publicly owned coal accounts for 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.

It is being bought by mining companies sometimes for less than a dollar per ton — a fraction of the cost of coal from private reserves, outgoing Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said.

« Increased emissions of carbon into our atmosphere are having a profound impact and if we don’t get on this, future generations will pay a heavy price, » Jewell said during an appearance at Columbia University. .

Most federal coal comes from six states — Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah, North Dakota and Oklahoma. Production has fallen sharply in recent years as coal companies have struggled to compete with cheap natural gas.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to rescind the sales moratorium. He’s described it as part of a broader effort by the administration of President Barack Obama to kill the coal industry.

But Jewell said even after the Obama administration is gone, the public will demand that the government deal with subsidized fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.

She also suggested the report’s findings could be used in lawsuits, presumably from environmentalists, that could be filed to challenge any end to reform effort she began.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond emailed messages seeking comment. Trump’s Interior appointee, Rep. Ryan Zinke, is from Montana, which holds some of the world’s largest untapped coal reserves.

Montana U.S. Sen. Steve Daines dismissed the Interior report as « laughable » and predicted the moratorium would be overturned.

Deficits and debt seem not atop GOP priorities these days

For decades, congressional Republicans have pushed to slash the budget and reduce the size of the federal government, especially during the eight years Democratic President Barack Obama was in office.

Now that Republican President-elect Donald Trump is poised to take charge, deficits and debt have slid down the GOP’s list of priorities.

The first significant piece of legislation under unified Republican rule is a budget measure that, as a prerequisite for a speedy repeal of the Affordable Care Act, endorses deficits adding almost $10 trillion to the debt over the coming decade.

Soon to follow is the health repeal measure itself, which could erase more than $1 trillion in « Obamacare » taxes that the party has previously counted on in earlier budget plans to promise to balance the budget.

Republicans will also turn to a huge, $1 trillion-plus spending bill to wrap up unfinished Cabinet agency budgets. It’s likely to carry add-ons for Trump — billions of dollars for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and even more for the Pentagon.

Trump and incoming top White House officials such as his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, are making it clear that the new administration doesn’t support tackling the financial problems of the huge benefit programs that are the biggest drivers of future debt, Social Security and Medicare. A more pressing priority is a huge infrastructure spending plan.

« The presidential campaign, the entire Congress, there really hasn’t been discussion of debt, deficits and government spending, » said Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C. « And yes, that’s a problem. »

« It’s sort of disappeared from the radar screen, » said former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who had been budget panel chairman.

GOP leaders maintain that the pending budget plan is simply a « shell » that’s being used to set in motion an « Obamacare » repeal without the threat of a filibuster by Democrats.

Some of Trump’s appointees, including his designated budget director, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., and his choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., come from the ranks of deficit hard-liners in the House.

« Why some folks here in Washington would be willing to let these programs go bankrupt is beyond me, » Price said during a budget debate in 2015. « Medicare and Social Security are going broke. »

Price and Mulvaney could offer a counterbalance to more cautious voices like Priebus, who on Sunday said Trump doesn’t want to « meddle with Medicare or Social Security. »

Top Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan are no longer in the habit of issuing bold promises about balancing the budget or curbing the rapid growth of Medicare. Ryan’s major fiscal project for later this year isn’t cutting spending; it’s reforming the loophole-cluttered tax code.

« One of the things that we’re focusing on is getting people back to work, is economic growth, » Ryan told reporters Tuesday. « You can’t ever balance the budget if you don’t get this economy growing. »

But in his first year as Budget Committee chairman, in 2011, Ryan sounded a different tune in questioning Obama’s priorities.

« The country’s biggest challenge, domestically speaking, no doubt about it, is a debt crisis, » Ryan said then. « Presidents are elected to lead, not to punt. And this president has been punting. »

Last year, when Obama submitted his final budget, Price and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo, issued a statement saying, « Rather than spend time on a proposal that, if anything like this administration’s previous budgets, will double down on the same failed policies that have led to the worst economic recovery in modern times, Congress should continue our work on building a budget that balances and that will foster a healthy economy. »

Some longtime foes of spending and deficits have moved on to other tasks than cutting the budget.

« We’ll wait and see what the budget is, but my first priority is defending the nation, and the cuts that we enacted have put the security of the nation in danger, » said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz.

Asked Tuesday if Republicans would use fast-track procedures to cut spending later in the year, No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn of Texas said, « Tax reform is the one that I hear mentioned most often, but that hasn’t been finally decided. »

World Economic Forum says capitalism needs urgent change Reforming the very nature of capitalism will be needed to combat the growing appeal of populist political movements around the world, the World Economic Forum said Wednesday.

Getting higher economic growth, it added, is necessary but insufficient to heal the fractures in society that were evident in the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

In a wide-ranging report from the organizer of the annual gathering of political and business leaders in the Swiss resort of Davos, the WEF identified « rising income and wealth disparity » as potentially the biggest driver in global affairs over the next ten years.

As an example of this growing inequality, the WEF highlighted the massive increases in CEO pay at a time when many people in advanced economies have struggled to make ends meet following the global financial crisis.

« This points to the need for reviving economic growth, but the growing mood of anti-establishment populism suggests we may have passed the stage where this alone would remedy fractures in society: reforming market capitalism must also be added to the agenda, » it said in its latest Global Risks Report.

« The combination of economic inequality and political polarization threatens to amplify global risks, fraying the social solidarity on which the legitimacy of our economic and political systems rests, » it added.

That’s some conclusion from an organization that’s sought to play a central role in the globalization process of the past couple of decades and that is closely identified with some of the world’s richest people.

As well as getting growth higher, the WEF identified four areas that need to be addressed urgently: the need for long-term thinking in capitalism; a recognition of the importance of identity and inclusiveness in political communities; mitigating the risks and exploiting the opportunities of new technologies such as driverless cars; and strengthening global cooperation.

It added that a failure to address the underlying causes of the populist tide poses a threat to mainstream politicians and raises the risk that the globalization trend will go into reverse.

« Some people question whether the West has reached a tipping point and might now embark on a period of de-globalization, » it said.

Although anti-establishment politics have tended to blame globalization for the loss of traditional jobs, the WEF said rapidly changing technologies have had more of an impact on labor markets.

« It is no coincidence that challenges to social cohesion and policymakers’ legitimacy are coinciding with a highly disruptive phase of technological change, » the WEF said.

Other key drivers identified in the survey of global risks related to climate change, rising cyber dependency and an aging population.

The 2017 report, the 12th annual report, is based on an assessment of 30 global risks by 750 experts from a variety of backgrounds, including business, academia and non-governmental organizations.

Scientists: Moon over the hill at 4.51 billion years old

It turns out the moon is older than many scientists suspected: a ripe 4.51 billion years old.

That’s the newest estimate, thanks to rocks and soil collected by the Apollo 14 moonwalkers in 1971.

A research team reported Wednesday that the moon formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system. Previous estimates ranged within 100 million years, all the way out to 200 million years after the solar system’s creation, not quite 4.6 billion years ago.

The scientists conducted uranium-lead dating on fragments of the mineral zircon extracted from Apollo 14 lunar samples. The pieces of zircon were minuscule — no bigger than a grain of sand.

« Size doesn’t matter, they record amazing information nonetheless! » lead author Melanie Barboni of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an email.

She noted that the moon holds « so much magic … the key to understand how our beautiful Earth formed and evolved. »

The moon was created from debris knocked off from Earth, which itself is thought to be roughly 4.54 billion years old.

Some of the eight zircon samples were used in a previous study, also conducted at UCLA, that utilized more limited techniques. Barboni said she is studying more zircons from Apollo 14 samples, but doesn’t expect it to change her estimate of 4.51 billion years for the moon’s age, possibly 4.52 billion years at the most.

« It would be more a double-checking than anything else, » she explained. She and her colleagues — whose work appeared Wednesday in the journal Science Advances — are eager to learn more about the moon’s history and, in turn, the evolution of early Earth and the entire solar system.

Apollo 14’s Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell collected 92 pounds of rocks and used tubes to dig up soil while exploring the moon’s Fra Mauro highlands in February 1971. They conducted two spacewalks, spending nine hours altogether out on the lunar surface.

It’s the second major moon study this week.

On Monday, Israeli scientists suggested our Earth’s constant companion may actually be a melting pot of many mini-moons. Rather than one giant impact that shaved off a chunk of Earth and formed the moon, a series of smaller collisions may have created multiple moonlets that eventually merged into one, according to the researchers.

Barboni said regardless of how the moon came to be — one big strike at Earth, many smaller ones or even none at all — « you still end up at the end solidifying the moon as we know it today. »

The giant impact theory holds that the resulting energy formed a lunar lava ocean that later became solid. It’s this solidification age that Barboni and her team have now ascertained.

« We finally pinned down a minimum age for the moon formation, » she said, « regardless of how it formed. »

Scientists closer to solving mystery of Earth’s core

Japanese scientists say that silicon is likely the mystery element in the Earth’s inner core, claiming progress on solving one of the planet’s deepest secrets.

Consensus has long been that the centre of the planet is composed of about 85 percent iron and 10 percent nickel, with sulphur, oxygen and silicon prime candidates for the other five percent.

But geophysicist Eiji Ohtani at Tohoku University in northern Japan and his research team suggest that silicon is the most likely candidate.

Ohtani’s team conducted experiments on iron-nickel alloys mixed with silicon, subjecting them in the lab to the kinds of high temperatures and pressure found in the inner core.

It discovered that the data for the mixed material observed with X-rays matched seismic data — namely, sound velocity, or seismic waves — obtained for the inner core.

« Our latest experiments suggest that the remaining five percent of the inner core is composed mostly of silicon, » Ohtani told AFP on Wednesday.

He said that the finding helps understand whether the Earth’s surface was rich in oxygen in its early formation before photosynthesis began as oxygen has been another potential candidate for the mystery element in the Earth’s inner core.

Ohtani cautioned that more work needs to be done to confirm his findings on silicon.

Some scientists say that if the Earth’s inner core contains silicon then it means the rest of the planet must have been relatively oxygen rich at the time of its formation, because oxygen that they believe existed when the planet was formed was not confined to the inner core.

But if the mystery element in the core is oxygen then the rest of the Earth was oxygen-poor in the beginning.

Ohtani said he does not think oxygen now exists in the inner core, citing the difficulty for silicon and oxygen to co-exist in the same place.

« But it doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of the planet was oxygen rich because there is a possibility that oxygen did not exist as an element of the Earth at its formation in the first place. »

The Earth is believed to be made up of three main layers: the solid outer layer where creatures including humans live, the mantle which is made up of hot magma and other semi-solid materials, and the core at the centre.

The core comprises an outer layer of liquid iron and nickel, and an inner layer — a hot dense ball of mostly iron.

Ohtani presented his team’s work at a meeting in December of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, and is preparing to submit a research paper to a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The presentation used a method similar to that applied by his team in a study published in February last year in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.