Wednesday 31 January 2018

Mueller’s latest witness will reportedly give new details about Trump’s role in writing Don Jr.’s false Russia statement

Former Trump legal spokesman allegedly had concerns about possible obstruction of justice.

By OP 
Photo by Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images
Reports in recent months have indicatedthat Special Counsel Robert Mueller is very interested in President Donald Trump’s role in drafting his son’s false statement about a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin’s government.
Now, a report by the New York Times’ Jo Becker, Mark Mazzetti, Matt Apuzzo, and Maggie Haberman confirms Mueller’s focus, and reveals that Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for Trump’s legal team, has agreed to be interviewed by the special counsel.
This is a big deal because, according to the Times, Corallo has some information to share about White House Communications Director Hope Hicks:
Mr. Corallo is planning to tell Mr. Mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call with Mr. Trump and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, according to the three people. Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians — “will never get out.” That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice, the people said.
On an Air Force One flight, Trump reportedly dictated the statement to Hicks that said Don Jr.’s June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russians “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” The statement, released on July 8, was attributed to Don Jr., and was later proven to be false, after the emails revealed Don Jr. had accepted the meeting after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s efforts to bolster Trump in the US election.
Trump’s involvement in creating the misleading statement isn’t a revelation — but Corallo’s information represents the latest development in the investigation into whether the president or his close aides attempted to obstruct justice.
Corallo reportedly told colleagues that he informed Trump and Hicks that the false statement would backfire because documents showing the true purpose of the meeting would leak. Hicks dismissed this, saying the documents wouldn’t get out. Corallo reportedly told colleagues at the time that he was alarmed by Hick’s statements, which seemed to indicate that she was either “being naïve or was suggesting that the emails could be withheld from investigators.”
Corallo did not dispute the Times’ report, but didn’t offer additional comment.
An attorney for Hope Hicks denied the report, telling the Times: “She never said that. And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false.”

Wait, who is Mark Corallo?

Mark Corallo is the latest person to join the cast of characters in the unfolding drama of the Trump-Russia investigation. Corallo worked as a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, until quitting in mid-July —- after the events allegedly transpired on Air Force One.
Corallo pops up for a brief, but notable, cameo in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury — the gossipy White House tell-all that won’t go away. As Vox’s Andrew Prokop writes, “Wolff’s book claims, with vague sourcing, that Corallo “quit” after “privately confiding that he believed the meeting on Air Force One represented a likely obstruction of justice.”
The likely confidant was former chief strategist Steve Bannon, one of the main sources for Wolff’s book. And indeed, the New York Times says that Corallo informed Bannon of his conversation between Hicks and Trump, along with other colleagues.
Mueller is likely interested in Corallo’s testimony as part of his larger examination of Trump’s role in drafting this false Russia statement. This matters, as Vox Zack Beauchamp’s explains, because it all points to Trump’s intent:
Lying to the press is not a crime. But there’s a reason Mueller seems to be focusing so much on this statement anyway: The circumstances around its drafting may be a uniquely good source of evidence of obstruction of justice, committed either by Trump or by his close associates. It’s the kind of evidence that could be used to support impeachment charges against the president and criminal charges against some of his associates.
Trump has yet to speak with special counsel Mueller. The president has said he is “looking forward” to it, and his lawyers are reportedly negotiating the terms of a potential sit down.
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Sheriff's office deputy shot in Texas; standoff underway

By OP
Hostage negotiators were trying early Thursday to coax out a handcuffed suspect who fired on two Harris County Sheriff's Office deputies Wednesday night, injuring one of them.
One deputy was shot in an arm while responding to a disturbance call before midnight Wednesday, and another narrowly escaped injury when a bullet grazed his pant leg, authorities said.
A second person, uninvolved in the altercation, also was shot after the two Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the call before 10 p.m., the Houston Chronicle reported. 
The officers identified a suspect and put handcuffs on him. The suspect then took a gun from his waistband and began firing at the deputies, Houston's ABC 13 reported. 
The officer shot in an arm was alert as he was transported to a nearby Memorial Hospital in the Woodlands, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said.
By 11 p.m. more than a dozen officers had arrived at the scene, closing off nearby streets to traffic. 
"Expect large police presence," Sheriff Ed Gonzalez tweeted. "Avoid the area."
By 11:30 p.m. the Harris County Sheriff’s office tweeted, “UPDATE: Deputy involved in Kipland Way shooting was wounded in the arm and is alert, en route to Memorial Hermann in The Woodlands. Suspect believe to be inside home. #HouNews”
The suspect barricaded himself in a home where hostage negotiaters were trying to coax him out. 
The motive for the shooting was not immediately known.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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AP Exclusive: AP confirms 5 unreported Myanmar mass graves

By OP
  • Image 1 of 2

BALUKHALI REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh –  The faces of the men half-buried in the mass graves had been burned away by acid or blasted by bullets. Noor Kadir could only recognize his friends by the colors of their shorts.

Kadir and 14 others, all Rohingya Muslims, had been choosing players for the soccer-like game of chinlone when the gunfire began. By the time the soldiers stopped shooting at the Myanmar village of Gu Dar Pyin, only Kadir and two teammates were still alive.
Days later, Kadir found six of his friends lying among the bodies in two graves.
They are among more than five mass graves, all previously unreported, that have been confirmed by The Associated Press through multiple interviews with more than two dozen survivors in Bangladesh refugee camps and through time-stamped cellphone videos. The Myanmar government regularly claims massacres like Gu Dar Pyin never happened, and has acknowledged only one mass grave containing 10 "terrorists" in the village of Inn Din. The AP's findings, however, suggest not only the military's slaughter of civilians but the presence of many more graves with many more people.
The graves are the newest piece of evidence for what looks increasingly like a genocide in Myanmar's western Rakhine state against the Rohingya, a long-persecuted ethnic Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist country. Repeated calls Wednesday and Thursday to Myanmar's military communications office were unanswered. Htun Naing, a local security police officer in Buthidaung township, where the village is located, said he "hasn't heard of such mass graves."
Myanmar has cut off access to Gu Dar Pyin, so it's unclear just how many people died, but satellite images obtained by the AP from DigitalGlobe show a village decimated. Community leaders have compiled a list of 75 dead so far, and villagers estimate the toll could be as high as 400, based on testimony from relatives and the bodies they've seen in the graves and strewn about the area.
Almost every villager interviewed by the AP saw three large mass graves at Gu Dar Pyin's northern entrance, near the main road, where witnesses say soldiers herded and killed most of the Rohingya. A handful of witnesses confirmed two other big graves near a hillside cemetery, and smaller graves scattered around the village.
In the videos obtained by the AP, dating to 13 days after the killing began, blue-green puddles of acid sludge surround corpses without heads and torsos that jut out from the earth, skeletal hands seeming to claw at the ground.
Survivors said soldiers planned the Aug. 27 attack, and tried to hide what they had done. They came to the slaughter armed not only with rifles, knives, rocket launchers and grenades, but also with shovels to dig pits and acid to burn away faces and hands so that the bodies could not be recognized.
After more than 200 soldiers swept into Gu Dar Pyin around noon, Mohammad Sha, 37, a shop owner and farmer, hid in a grove of coconut trees near a river with more than 100 others. They watched as the military searched Muslim homes and dozens of Buddhist neighbors, their faces partly covered with scarves, loaded the possessions they found into about 10 pushcarts. Then the soldiers burned down the homes, shooting anyone who couldn't flee, Sha said.
Mohammad Younus, 25, was crawling on his hands and knees after being shot twice when his brother carried him to some underbrush, where Younus lay for seven hours. At one point, he saw three trucks stop and begin loading dead bodies before heading off toward the cemetery.
Buddhist villagers then moved through Gu Dar Pyin in a sort of mopping-up operation, using knives to cut the throats of the injured, survivors said, and pitching the young and the elderly into fires.
Thousands of people from the area hid deep in the jungle, stranded without food except for the leaves and trees they tried to eat. From about 10 miles away another group of villagers watched from a mountain as Gu Dar Pyin burned, the flames and smoke snaking up into the sky.
In the days and weeks after the attack, villagers braved the soldiers to try to find whatever was left of their loved ones. Dozens of bodies littered the paths and compounds of the wrecked homes; they filled latrine pits. The survivors soon learned that taller, darker green patches of rice shoots in the paddies marked the spots where the dead had fallen.
Bloated bodies began to rise to the surface of the rain-saturated graves.
"There were so many bodies in so many different places," said Mohammad Lalmia, 20, a farmer whose family owned a pond that became the largest of the mass graves. "They couldn't hide all the death."
Eleven days after the attack, Lalmia was fleeing soldiers patrolling near the mosque when he discovered a human hand sticking out of a cleared patch of earth. Lalmia counted about 10 bodies on the grave's surface and estimated it held at least another 10.
Lalmia and other villagers also saw another large grave in the area, and smaller graves containing as many as 10 bodies scattered about the village.
On Sept. 9, villager Mohammad Karim, 26, captured three videos of mass graves time-stamped between 10:12 a.m. and 10:14 a.m., when soldiers chased him away, he said. In the Bangladesh refugee camps, nearly two dozen other Rohingya from Gu Dar Pyin confirmed that the videos showed mass graves in the north of the village.
On Sept. 9, villager Mohammad Karim, 26, captured three videos of mass graves time-stamped between 10:12 a.m. and 10:14 a.m., when soldiers chased him away, he said. In the Bangladesh refugee camps, nearly two dozen other Rohingya from Gu Dar Pyin confirmed that the videos showed mass graves in the north of the village.
About 15 days after the massacre, Rohima Khatu, 45, searched for her husband in the graves at Gu Dar Pyin's northern entrance, trying to identify him by his clothes.
"There were dead bodies everywhere, bones and body parts, all decomposing, so I couldn't tell which one was my husband," Khatu said. "I was weeping while I was there. I was crying loudly, 'Where did you go? Where did you go?'"
"I have lost everything."
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India man ends protest after social media movement

Sreejith in front of the Kerala secretariatImage copyrightVIVEK R NAIR
Image captionSR Sreejith was demanding an independent inquiry into the death of his brother
A man from the south Indian state of Kerala has ended a 782-day protest after a federal agency began investigating his brother's death.
SR Sreejith alleges his brother was murdered by police who arrested him on the charge of stealing a mobile phone.
His demand for an independent inquiry into his brother's death picked up in recent months through the social media movement #JusticeforSreejith.
He ended the protest after federal investigators recorded his statement.
In the face of mounting public pressure, state lawmakers ordered an internal police investigation into his brother's death. But Mr Sreejith refused, insisting that the case be transferred to India's federal investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Police had said Sreejeev, 26, committed suicide in custody after he was arrested, but his family says he was killed because he was in love with a woman who happened to be related to one of the police officers.
He was arrested one day before she was scheduled to get married to someone else. He died in hospital the following day where he was admitted as a result of the "suicide attempt".
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in an August report on India that suicide and illness are common causes listed by authorities to cover up deaths likely caused by police torture.
In a country only too familiar with police brutality and custodial deaths - India's National Crime Records Bureau says 591 people died in police custody between 2010 and 2015 - his protest generated particular resonance.
In the past few weeks and months, pictures of him and his protest have been shared widely on Facebook and Twitter along with messages of solidarity, including from some very high profile figures in the state.
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Kevin Rudd: Ex-PM sues Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Kevin RuddImage copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionKevin Rudd says he has commenced legal action
Former Australian leader Kevin Rudd has launched legal action against the country's main public broadcaster over a report he says is "a lie".
On Tuesday, the Australian Broadcasting Corp said that Mr Rudd had been warned while prime minister about risks relating to a home insulation scheme.
The deaths of four men under the scheme led to an inquiry in 2014. It made no adverse findings against Mr Rudd.
The ABC has defended its report, which followed a high-profile file discovery.
The broadcaster has used confidential Cabinet documents, found in a second-hand shop, to publish a series of exclusives this week about recent governments.
One said Mr Rudd and government ministers Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner had been warned of "critical risks" about the insulation programme in 2009.
Cabinet papers did not specify whether these were safety concerns, the ABC said.
In announcing his legal action, Mr Rudd said the risks referred to in the Cabinet documents were financial and administrative matters - not safety risks.
He said those documents had already been examined by a royal commission inquiry.
"The Royal Commission concluded that there was no finding to made against me, and in fact that while serving as Prime Minister 'there was no warning given of the very many problems with the program' (p.271 of the final report)," he said in a statement on Thursday.
ABC news director Gaven Morris said the broadcaster "stands by the reporting we've done".
The insulation scheme was introduced by Mr Rudd's government in 2009 as part of a larger plan to stimulate the economy in response to the global financial crisis. It was discontinued in 2010.
The royal commission found the scheme's poor design and implementation directly contributed to the deaths of four young workers from electrocution and hyperthermia in separate incidents.
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Genetic secret of English salmon

By OP
Chalk-stream salmonImage copyrightSAM BILLINGTON, ENVIRONMENT AGENCY
Image captionChalk-stream salmon look the same as other salmon but their genes tell a different story
The salmon from the chalk streams of southern England appear to be genetically distinct from others.
Evidence published in the Journal of Fish Biology suggests they may be a separate sub-species of Atlantic salmon.
Scientists argue that the fish may need greater protection, because they would be impossible to replace with salmon from elsewhere in Europe.
Many chalk streams are designated sites of special scientific interest.
These meandering streams that flow through chalk hills generally have clear, slow-flowing water and are more alkaline than other waters.
Scientists think the geology and chemistry of the rivers may affect the distribution of different salmon populations.
Researchers studied salmon in stretches of five rivers in Hampshire and Dorset, where salmon have returned to breed for thousands of years.
The rivers include the Frome, Piddle, Avon, Test and Itchen.
The study found salmon in the rivers were genetically distinct from those in non chalk-stream rivers close by.
"The fish in the chalk streams of Dorset and Hampshire are as different from their cousins elsewhere in Britain as they are to cousins much further afield, such as the Baltic," said Dr Jamie Stevens of the University of Exeter.
The Frome: A chalk streamImage copyrightUNIVERSITY OF EXETER
Image captionChalk streams are an important habitat for fish
Populations of salmons in chalk streams have plummeted in recent decades.
The researchers say the rivers are under "massive pressure" from human activity.
"The fish in these rivers seem to contain a unique component of the overall genetic diversity of the species," said Dr Stevens.
"This makes them highly valuable; and it also makes them vulnerable. Because if they were to be lost through effects on their habitat or pollution it would be almost impossible to restock those chalk streams."
Like other salmon, those from chalk streams spend long periods at sea and swim hundreds of miles, but return to the rivers where they were born.
Most of the world's chalk streams are found in the UK, but they are at risk of pollution as they pass through urban areas and through farmland.
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Average age of first stroke in England falls, figures show

By OP
BBCImage copyrightROB GOODWIN
Image captionRob Goodwin had none of the risk factors associated with stroke before he became ill
The average age of people in England who have a stroke for the first time has fallen over the past decade, new figures show.
It dropped from 71 to 68 for men and 75 to 73 for women between 2007 and 2016, Public Health England data shows.
Over the same period, the proportion of first-time strokes suffered by 40 to 69-year-olds rose from 33% to 38%.
PHE said the data showed strokes do not just affect the elderly and urged more people to be aware of its symptoms.
The Act FAST campaign tells people to phone 999 if they spot any signs of the condition in the face, arms or in speech to reduce the risk of disability or death caused by delayed treatment.

'Fast acting essential'

Rob Goodwin, from Nottingham, had been a fit 48-year-old when he had a stroke in 2016.
A keen cyclist, Mr Goodwin had none of the risk factors associated with stroke, such as high blood pressure, when he suddenly fell to the floor while getting dressed.
It was because of his partner quickly recognising his symptoms and his 17-year-old stepdaughter phoning 999 that he was able to receive treatment within 40 minutes of his stroke and make an almost full recovery, he said.
"If my partner and stepdaughter hadn't acted quickly then I would undoubtedly be in a very different situation. That fast acting is essential."
Philippa Haslehurst and her daughter
Image captionPhilippa Haslehurst said her stroke could have killed her were it not for her daughter
Philippa Haslehurst, from Chingford, north London, was 47 when she suffered a major stroke in 2014, caused by a hole in her heart.
She said it could have killed her were it not for her teenage daughter Beth, who recognised her symptoms from a previous Act FAST TV advert, enabling her mother to receive treatment quickly.
Mrs Haslehurst said awareness of stroke symptoms was as important as recognising a heart attack.
"It could happen to anybody. It happens to young people, it happens to children. I was a healthy person and I had a hole in my heart."
Strokes, which occur when the blood supply to the brain is cut off, are the third most common cause of premature death and a leading cause of disability in the UK.
It is estimated some 57,000 people in England suffered their first stroke in 2016.
PHE found the rate of first-time strokes in the population had fallen by 8% since 2007.
During that time, the percentage of first-time strokes suffered by over-70s went from 64% to 59%, while for those aged 40 to 59 it increased from 15.3% to 20%.
Graph of change of proportions of strokes among 40-69-year-olds and over-70s
PHE said the drop in the average age of first strokes could be down to better healthcare for the elderly, including health checks that help them monitor stroke risk factors.
Prof Julia Verne, Public Health England's director, said the findings showed "everyone needs to be aware of the signs".
"Calling 999 as soon as you see even one of the symptoms develop - in the face, arms and speech - is essential. Speedy treatment will help prevent deaths and disability."
X-ray scan of brainImage copyrightGETTY IMAGES
PHE called on more people between the ages of 40 and 74 to get an NHS health check, which can identify early signs and those who are at risk of a stroke.
Health Minister Steve Brine said: "Strokes still claim thousands of lives each year, so the message of this Act FAST campaign remains as relevant as ever."
The campaign will feature in TV and radio adverts and posters on buses.

Act FAST campaign - what to look for

  • Face - Has their face fallen on one side? Can they smile?
  • Arms - Can they raise both their arms and keep them there?
  • Speech - Is their speech slurred?
  • Time - Time to call 999
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