Mueller witness bragged about access to Clintons secured with illegal campaign cash, says Justice Department

An emissary for two wealthy Arab princes boasted to unnamed officials of a Middle Eastern government about his direct access to Hillary and Bill Clinton while funneling more than $3.5 million in illegal campaign contributions to the former secretary of state's 2016 presidential campaign and Democratic fundraising committees, according to a federal indictment announced by the Justice Department this week. Wonderful meeting with Big Lady. Can't wait to tell you all about it,” George Nader allegedly wrote to an official of one of the foreign governments he advises in the Middle East after attending a political fundraiser with Hillary Clinton on April 16, 2016.

California congressman Duncan Hunter announces resignation after corruption plea

U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter will resign from Congress following his guilty plea to a federal charge of conspiring to misuse campaign funds, he said on Friday. Hunter's announcement that he would step down came days after the leading California lawmaker, a former U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran, entered his guilty plea in federal court in San Diego. "Shortly after the Holidays I will resign from Congress," Hunter, 42, said in a written statement released by his communications director.

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  GOP Congressman Duncan Hunter to Resign After Holidays

  Bloomberg
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  Rep. Duncan Hunter to resign shortly after the holidays

  ABC News

Reddit has said that Russia likely posted leaked UK trade documents as part of a vast covert influence campaign

Reddit has said that leaked documents on US-UK trade deal discussions were likely posted on the site as part of a Russian influence campaign. The documents were cited by Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK's opposition Labour party, as evidence that his opponent in the UK general election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was poised to sell out the NHS in trade negotiations with the US. Researchers earlier in the week said that the accounts that posted the documents on Reddit indicated links to a vast Russian influence campaign uncovered on Facebook dubbed Secondary Infektion.

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  Tory minister says 'we should be concerned' about Russian election interference, but report on Russian interference cannot be published before election

  The Independent
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  Leaked trade documents cited by Jeremy Corbyn linked to 'Russian disinformation campaign'

  Evening Standard

Bloomberg says he shouldn't have called Booker 'well-spoken'

Mike Bloomberg on Friday expressed regret for calling fellow Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker “well-spoken” earlier in the day, after the New Jersey senator said he was “taken aback” by the racially loaded remark from the former New York mayor. “I probably shouldn't have used the word,” Bloomberg told reporters at a campaign event in Georgia. Booker had charged that Bloomberg's descriptor, which generated significant criticism on social media, was representative of a failure by some of the party's leading White House hopefuls to energize black voters and communicate effectively on issues of race.

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  A shortcut on the Bloomberg terminal sent users to the billionaire presidential candidate's website, where a campaign ad autoplayed. It was quickly changed.

  Business Insider
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  Bloomberg on his Democratic rivals: 'Trump will eat 'em up'

  Reuters

Germany's Merkel voices 'shame' during 1st Auschwitz visit

German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced a feeling of deep shame” during her first-ever visit on Friday to the hallowed grounds of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Adolf Hitler's regime murdered more than a million people. Merkel noted that her visit comes amid rising anti-Semitism and historical revisionism and vowed that Germany would not tolerate anti-Semitism. She said Germany remains committed to remembering the crimes that it committed against Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and others.

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  Angela Merkel visits the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial

  Reuters Videos
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  German Social Democrats give Merkel coalition a chance

  Reuters

13 Mythical Creatures, Ranked

Did your favorite make the list? From Popular Mechanics

Tennessee executes blind death row inmate Lee Hall by electric chair for 1991 murder of girlfriend

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee executed death row inmate Lee Hall in the electric chair Thursday night, marking the fourth time the state has used the method since 2018. Hall, 53, was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. CST, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction. Media witnesses described what appeared to be a faint trail of white smoke rising from Hall's head as the lethal current coursed through his body.

• UPDATE 1-Tennessee executes man convicted of 1991 murder of ex-girlfriend

  Reuters
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  Blind man executed in US for killing ex-girlfriend

  AFP

Two school shootings a day apart: Wisconsin reckons with impact of armed guards

Shootings a day apart at two high schools in Wisconsin have shaken the state and sparked a renewed debate over how to combat violence in American schools. An Oshkosh police department resource officer shot a 16-year-old student Tuesday after the boy stabbed him in the officer's office at Oshkosh West high school. A day earlier, a resource officer at Waukesha South high school helped clear students out of a classroom after a 17-year-old student pointed a pellet gun at another student's head.

Should America Fear the Chinese H-20 Stealth Bomber?

Key point: The United States is beginning to lose its footing in East Asia. In October 2018, Chinese media announced that the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) would publicly unveil its new H-20 stealth bomber during a parade celebrating the air arm's seventieth anniversary in 2019. Prior news of the H-20's development had been teased using techniques pioneered by viral marketing campaigns for Hollywood movies.

Virginia Commission Calls for Repeal of ‘Explicitly Racist’ and ‘Segregationist’ Laws

A Virginia state commission released a report Thursday calling for the official repeal of “deeply troubling” state laws still on the books that contain “explicitly racist language and segregationist policies. The Commission to Examine Racial Inequity in Virginia Law published a lengthy report saying that the outdated laws should not “remain enshrined in law” despite no longer being in effect. The commission believes that such vestiges of Virginia's segregationist past should no longer have official status,” the report states.

• Virginia still has dozens of racist and discriminatory laws on its books, report says

  USA TODAY
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  Panel calls for Virginia to purge dozens of old racist laws

  Associated Press

Employee shot at a Virginia post office

Authorities say a postal worker has been shot at a northern Virginia post office by an agent for the Postal Service's Inspector General's office. News outlets report that it happened Wednesday morning at the parking lot of the Lovettsville post office in Loudoun County.

Suspect in deadly shooting at Florida naval base was reportedly a Saudi pilot in the US for training

The suspect in a deadly shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida on Friday is reportedly a foreign national who was in the US for training. Citing law-enforcement officials, NBC first reported that the suspect was a foreign national. The Associated Press cited a US official as saying the suspect was a Saudi aviation student.

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  Mohammed Alshamrani: What we know about suspected Pensacola naval station shooter

  WABC – NY
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  NAS Pensacola shooting: Suspect was Saudi student; at least 3 dead, 7 hurt, gunman killed

  KABC – Los Angeles

Russian spies used French Alps as 'base camp' for hits on Britain and other countries

Fifteen Russian spies, including those accused of the Salisbury nerve agent attack, used the French Alps as a “base camp” to conduct covert operations around Europe over a five-year period, according to reports. The revelations came as Germany expelled two Russian diplomats after prosecutors said there was “sufficient factual evidence” linking Moscow to the killing of a former Chechen rebel commander in central Berlin. According to Le Monde, British, Swiss, French, and US intelligence have drawn up a list of 15 members of the 29155 unit of Russia's GRU military spy agency who all passed through France's Haute-Savoie mountains close to the Swiss and Italian borders.

'Dark money' ties raise questions for GOP Sen. Ernst of Iowa

An outside group founded by top political aides to Sen. Joni Ernst has worked closely with the Iowa Republican to raise money and boost her reelection prospects, a degree of overlap that potentially violates the law, documents obtained by The Associated Press show. Iowa Values, a political nonprofit that is supposed to be run independently, was co-founded in 2017 by Ernst's longtime consultant, Jon Kohan. It shares a fundraiser, Claire Holloway Avella, with the Ernst campaign.

Trump Administration Authorizes 'Cyanide Bombs' to Kill Predators Again, Months After Backlash

The Trump Administration will reauthorize the use of so-called “cyanide bombs” to poison coyotes, foxes and feral dogs that could threaten private livestock. The decision comes four months after halting their authorization amid public backlash. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Thursday it would include new safety requirements to protect humans and pets, such as additional signs and increased distances the distance the “cyanide bombs” must be from homes and roads.

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  US re-authorizes 'cyanide bomb' anti-predator devices

  AFP
• EPA rejects ban on poison bombs against cattle predators

  Associated Press

Trump says the EPA is looking 'very strongly' at 'sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms' because people are flushing their toilets 10 to 15 times

At a Friday meeting at the White House, President Donald Trump spoke at length about water and energy conservation in bathrooms. He said, "We're looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms" because, among other reasons, "people are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times." Earlier in the meeting, Trump also jokingly complained that energy-saving lightbulbs made him look bad, saying, "Of course, being a vain person, that's very important to me."

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  Trump takes aim at trickle-down toilets, faucets

  Reuters
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  Trump complains low-flow toilets are flush with problems

  Associated Press

Bombs Away! The Powerful B-52 Bomber Is Getting Even More Deadly

Key point: The Pentagon may end up flying the B-52 for 100 years. Sixty-seven years after the U.S. Air Force received its last B-52 from Boeing, the flying branch finally has firmed up plans to fit the heavy bomber with new engines. Air Force magazine in its January 2019 issue took a deep dive into the re-engining effort.

Iraqis protest to defy 'slaughter' in Baghdad as drone hits cleric's home

Iraq's anti-regime protesters gathered in the capital and south on Saturday, grieving but defiant after 17 were killed in an attack demonstrators described as "slaughter". The protest movement faced another worrying turn on Saturday after an armed drone targeted the home of Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr, an attack his office said could lead to "civil war." The dramatic developments have threatened to derail the anti-government rallies rocking Iraq since October, the largest and deadliest grassroots movement in decades.

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  Baghdad shooting: Fifteen dead after gunman opens fire on protesters, officials say

  The Independent
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  Iraqi officials raise toll to 25 killed in Baghdad bloodshed

  Associated Press

Bloomberg says ending 'nationwide madness' of gun violence drives his presidential bid

Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday he wants to become president to end "the nationwide madness" of U.S. gun violence, calling it evil and saying he would allow its victims to file lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

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  A shortcut on the Bloomberg terminal sent users to the billionaire presidential candidate's website, where a campaign ad autoplayed. It was quickly changed.

  Business Insider
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  Bloomberg on his Democratic rivals: 'Trump will eat 'em up'

  Reuters

Judge Allows Criminal Trial to Proceed against Pro-Life Investigators

A San Francisco judge ruled Friday that the criminal trial may move forward against the pro-life investigators who went undercover to record abortion industry executives talking about procuring fetal body parts. Judge Christopher Hite deemed the evidence sufficient to send to trial the case against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress, who are charged with nine felony counts, one count of conspiracy and eight counts of illegal taping. Daleiden, 30, and Merritt, 64, several years ago surreptitiously recorded executives from Planned Parenthood and other organizations haggling about compensation for the procurement of fetal parts for researchers who request them.

Chaos Ensues as Nigerian Secret Police Rearrest Buhari Critic

Sign up to our Next Africa newsletter and follow Bloomberg Africa on Twitter Nigeria's secret police rearrested publisher Omoyele Sowore, a prominent critic of President Muhammadu Buhari, in chaotic scenes at the country's Federal High Court. Scuffles broke out in the court room as armed Department of State Services operatives detained Sowore and co-defendant Olawale Bakare, his lawyer Femi Falana said. His arrest came less than a day after he was freed from state custody following a court ruling demanding his release.

Germany: 'No understanding' for Russia outrage on expulsions

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff is urging Russia to support the investigation of a killing prosecutors say appears to have ordered by Russian or Chechen authorities, and says he has “no understanding" for outraged reactions from Moscow. Germany expelled two Russian diplomats on Wednesday over the brazen killing of a Georgian man on the streets of Berlin in August. German federal prosecutors said evidence suggested the slaying was ordered either by Moscow or authorities in Russia's republic of Chechnya.

Why Texas’s fossil fuel support will ‘spell disaster’ for climate crisis

In the same month that Greta Thunberg addressed a UN summit and millions of people took part in a global climate strike, lawmakers in America's leading oil- and gas-producing state of Texas made a statement of their own. Texas's Critical Infrastructure Protection Act went into effect on 1 September, stiffening civil and criminal penalties specifically for protesters who interrupt operations or damage oil and gas pipelines and other energy facilities. The new Texas law is emblematic of the unyielding loyalty of conservative lawmakers to the fossil fuel industry in a state stacked with influential climate science deniers or sceptics such as the US senator and former Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz and which named a pipeline tycoon to its parks and wildlife conservation commission.