Author: aejay_wp

Theresa May has said she is “determined” to deliver Brexit on time, ahead of talks on the Irish backstop.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the prime minister said she would return to Brussels with a “fresh mandate, new ideas and a renewed determination”.

MPs have voted to seek an “alternative arrangement” to guarantee the Northern Ireland border stays open after Brexit.

Read: Cherry tomatoes could cost 10% more ‘within a week of Brexit’

But the Irish deputy prime minister has said “there are no credible alternative arrangements” to the proposal.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Simon Coveney said: “The EU will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and there will be no withdrawal agreement without the backstop.”

The backstop forms part of the withdrawal agreement negotiated by the UK and EU and is aimed at keeping the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic open after Brexit.

Read: EU rejects calls to reopen Brexit deal

The UK is due to leave the EU at 11:00 GMT on Friday 29 March, when the two-year time limit on withdrawal negotiations enforced by the Article 50 process expires.

Some MPs have suggested Britain will need more time to negotiate its exit to avoid crashing out of the EU without a deal.

‘Critical legislation’

Mr Coveney said the backstop was required to “ensure the protection of the Good Friday Agreement” which ended 30 years of armed struggle in Northern Ireland.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt conceded on Thursday that “extra time” might be needed to get “critical legislation” related to Brexit through Parliament.

But Mrs May has insisted the departure date will not change, writing in the Telegraph that she would “deliver Brexit on time”.

Mrs May said she rejected the suggestion “that seeking alternative arrangements for the backstop constituted ‘ripping up the Good Friday Agreement’”.

The prime minister added that MPs wanted the government to go back to Brussels to renegotiate the deal after the Commons voted in favour of Tory backbencher Sir Graham Brady’s amendment on Tuesday that called for “alternative arrangements” to be found.

The backstop is an “insurance policy” – designed to avoid a hard border “under all circumstances” between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Under the current Brexit deal, the 310-mile Irish border would become the only land border between the EU and the UK.

This would probably mean checks on goods crossing it, unless both sides could reach a comprehensive trade deal.

If such an agreement could not be reached, then to avoid those checks and border posts or other infrastructure, the backstop would come into force.

It would keep the UK in a “single customs territory” with the EU and leave Northern Ireland effectively in the EU’s single market for goods.

A number of MPs fear the UK could be “trapped” in this arrangement for years, leaving it unable to strike its own trade deals on goods with the rest of the world.

Mrs May wrote: “While replacing the backstop with alternative arrangements was one option, [Sir Graham] would also be happy with the current backstop if there was a time limit or unilateral exit mechanism.”

Source: www.bbc.com

Tributes are pouring in for three pupils killed by a collapsing bridge at a school in South Africa.

The structure gave way just after morning assembly at Driehoek High School in Vanderbijlpark, 70km (43m) south of Johannesburg.

Another 23 pupils are injured, and officials say five are critical.

An investigation has been launched into the cause of the collapse, while messages of support are being posted with the hashtag HöerskoolDriehook.

On Friday morning Panyaza Lesufi, provincial education minister for the Gauteng area, confirmed the deaths.

Since the collapse, people have been posting heartfelt tributes to social media – including South African TV presenter Andile Ncube.

Driehoek High School, which has 1,060 pupils, is now closed indefinitely while officials investigate the scene.

#LearnerDeaths parents gathered inside #HoërskoolDriehoek holding a prayer session. Classes have been cancelled for the day. pic.twitter.com/T3YH8UQj4S

— silindelo masikane (@Slindelo_M) February 1, 2019

Family members and people from the community reportedly gathered together to form a prayer circle in the school grounds.

Mr Lesufi told a press conference that the school was working on identifying the three pupils who had died, and was in the process of notifying their next of kin.

Four of the injured pupils, thought to be aged between 13 and 18, had to be airlifted to the hospital for emergency medical treatment.

Two boys and one girl were killed, Mr Lesufi added.

There were pupils both on top of and underneath the bridge when it collapsed. Those who need it will be offered trauma counselling.

Source: bbc.com

Days before his annual State of the Union address, US President Donald Trump has renewed his threat to declare a national emergency in order to obtain funds for a wall on the US-Mexico border without congressional approval.

“I think there’s a good chance we’ll have to,” Trump told reporters on Friday, a week after a record-long partial government shutdown ended without Democrats approving funds for a border wall.

That demand – $5.7bn to build the wall along the border – led Trump to allow the government to shut down on December 22. Trump initially said that the shutdown could last “months or even years”, and later threatened to skirt congressional approval by declaring a national emergency,

Under pressure from fellow Republicans to reset his contentious presidency, Trump plans to offer a conciliatory tone during his annual State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

He signalled on Friday that the address will include extensive remarks about his standoff with Democrats over his proposed border wall.

Dwelling at length on this could undermine any attempt by Trump to strike a compromising tone, which many Republicans, including some close to the White House, are urging him to offer in an effort to temper his rhetoric and move past the shutdown fight.

Beyond the wall, a senior White House official told Reuters news agency, Trump will outline what he sees as areas where Republicans and Democrats may be able to find agreement.

These include a plan to fund infrastructure improvements across the country, lower the cost of prescription drugs and work to resolve long-standing differences over healthcare.

Whether the two sides are prepared to work together in any significant way is far from clear, with tensions still high over the shutdown fight and another deadline approaching on February 15.

‘Offer a choice’

“He will offer a choice of either working together and doing great things or fighting each other and doing nothing,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The speech comes as Trump begins the second half of his first term facing major challenges: a long-running probe into whether his 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia; investigations by House Democrats of his presidency and his business ventures; and difficult trade negotiations with China, among many others.

He and his advisers do not believe the shutdown fight will give him lasting scars.

Many Republicans are urging him to focus on the US economy in his speech and beyond to try to broaden his appeal beyond a hardcore conservative base of voters that make up about a third of the electorate.

“I would hope he would choose the pathway of broadening his appeal to voters who might want to consider voting for him in the next couple of years,” said Lane Chen, a Hoover Institution fellow who advised the presidential campaigns of Republicans Marco Rubio in 2016 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

Presidential aides said Trump would still talk about immigration and his demand for a border wall in his speech. “Some of it will be border-related,” said one.

Nancy Pelosi, who took over as the Speaker of the House of Representatives after Democrats won big in November elections, has vowed not to support funding for a border wall, and the issue has increased partisan tensions across the board.

‘Needs to change the subject’
Trump’s speech was delayed from January after a fight with Pelosi that stemmed from the dispute on border wall funding.

Republicans anxious about the 2020 election – not just holding the White House, but also control of the Senate – are urging him not to get bogged down in immigration in his speech.

“Trump really needs to change the subject. This is an opportunity to get back on offence on his terms,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed.

“As opposed to being reactive to the Democrats in the House, I really see the State of the Union for Trump as a potential reset, because like it or not the government shutdown was a political loser and it hurt a lot of people.”

Trump is also expected to cover foreign policy. He said on Thursday he will likely announce the site of his late-February summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the speech, with Hanoi a leading candidate.

He may also cite progress in peace talks between the government in Afghanistan and Taliban fighters.

Trump has signalled that a peace deal would allow the US to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

He and his advisers have been discussing withdrawing half of the US troops from Afghanistan, officials have said, a steep drop that could prompt criticism that Trump is putting the US gains in the volatile country in jeopardy.

Trump is expected to declare in his speech that the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) in Syria is largely complete, reinforcing his decision to pull 2,000 troops out, another abrupt move that angered many in his own party.

Trump, along with chief speechwriter Stephen Miller, plans to work on the address during a trip this weekend to his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Florida, aides said.

Source: aljazeera.com

Armed group Boko Haram killed at least 60 people when it renewed its attack on the northeast Nigerian town of Rann on Monday, rights group Amnesty International has said.

“This attack on civilians who have already been displaced by the bloody conflict may amount to possible war crimes, and those responsible must be brought to justice,” Osai Ojigho, Amnesty International’s Nigeria director, said in a statement on Friday.

“Witnesses told us that Nigerian soldiers abandoned their posts the day before the attack, demonstrating the authorities’ utter failure to protect civilians,” Ojigho said.

The attack, one of the bloodiest in Boko Haram’s decade-long conflict, came two weeks after it had overrun the same town, driving out Nigerian soldiers and marking its re-emergence as a force capable of taking army bases.

A security source told Reuters news agency that Nigerian troops had returned to Rann, as well as Cameroonian troops from a Multi-National Joint Task Force, after the first attack, on January 14.

After the Cameroonians went back across the border, the Nigerian soldiers left, because they didn’t have enough troops, weapons or equipment, the source said.

Boko Haram has for several months been intensifying attacks on military targets, overrunning bases, killing troops and stealing weapons.

More than 27,000 people have been killed and some two million others displaced in Nigeria’s northeast alone in the past 10 years due to the violence.

The conflict has spilled into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis in the region.

Poll preparations in disarray

Nigeria’s presidential election is scheduled for February 16 but insecurity is rampant across Africa’s most populous nation – with 190 million people – and its largest oil producer.

Buhari, who was also Nigeria’s military ruler for 20 months in the 1980s, was elected in 2015 partly on a promise to restore security.

In the northeast, a surge in attacks by Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West African Province, is throwing election plans into chaos.

Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes since December in a region already sheltering 1.8 million displaced people, according to United Nations figures.

In Nigeria’s central states, clashes between farmers and nomadic herders over dwindling arable land have killed thousands of people and displaced tens of thousands more.

Thousands have also fled in the northwest, rendering swaths of the region inaccessible even to the military.

Election observers worry that people streaming into displacement camps could exacerbate vote-rigging. There was widespread vote-buying in such camps in the 2015 election.

A singer who had a tattoo of Harry Styles on her cheek says it’s a fake.

Kelsy Karter made headlines around the world – including in a story by Radio 1 Newsbeat – when she shared the photo of her new face ink on Instagram.

The singer, who’s from New Zealand, had tweeted to say that she was planning something special for Harry’s birthday on 1 February.

She’s now admitted it was a stunt to publicise her latest single about the former One Direction singer.

Kelsy shared the photo of Harry’s face tattooed on her cheek a few days ago with the caption “mama, look what i made me do”.

People couldn’t believe that she’d had the ink done on her face, and many were critical of the design itself.

She’d released a song about Harry Styles and many thought she was a crazy fan.

“Harry, I’m gonna make you love me,” she sang.

“You gonna make me breakfast. It’s a secret just between us. We can keep it low-key. I ain’t being funny. You should be so lucky, to put your velvet arms around me.”

But now Kelsy, who lives in Los Angeles, says the tattoo is fake.

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

mama, look what i made me do

A post shared by Kelsy Karter (@kelsykarter) on Jan 26, 2019 at 8:11pm PST

She’s posted a video on YouTube explaining the whole idea behind the tattoo.

“In April 2018 I was going through the hardest time of my life,” she writes in the video.

My dog Diva died, my relationship ended and the last thing I wanted to do was to write another sad song about it.”

Instead, she decided to write a song about Harry Styles.

A week later, Kelsy says she directed, produced and edited the accompanying music video “for $300” (£229).

“Then we shelved it for six months and wrote the rest of the record.”

Fast forward to 2019 and with Harry’s birthday approaching – in a (successful) attempt to get noticed, Kelsy decided to get Harry’s face tattooed on erm… her face.

She had help from celebrity tattoo artist, Romeo Lacoste, to make it look real.

He’s previously tattooed celebrities including Kendrick Lamar, Swae Lee and Justin Bieber.

Kelsy also had help from a make-up artist.

“BTW, we know it looked ridiculous. That was the point,” she says in the video.

“The tattoo has gone. All that’s left is the music, Which is what my rockstar team and I had planned all along.”

Source: bbc.com

A Chilean former left-wing militant, renowned for a daring prison escape in 1996, has returned to his country after 23 years in exile.

Patricio Ortiz Montenegro fought against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and in 1991 was jailed for 10 years for killing a policeman.

But with three other prisoners he escaped from a high-security prison in a basket suspended from a helicopter.

Read: Wildfires tear through Chile

A warrant for his arrest was annulled late last year.

A group of about 50 supporters, friends and relatives greeted Ortiz when he arrived at Santiago International Airport on a flight from Switzerland. Some of them carried the red flags of the Patriotic Front of Manuel Rodriguez (FPMR), of which he was a member.

“I am very excited, very excited, I really wasn’t expecting this welcome,” he told reporters.

“I return to my country. I return with dignity. I return after 23 years to re-unite with all my comrades. I am part of the resistance in this country,” he added.

Ortiz is expected to stay in Chile for about three weeks before returning to Switzerland, where he has lived for more than 20 years as a political refugee.

Read: Chile bans plastic bags for businesses

He was sent to prison for killing a police officer during violent clashes in Santiago.

But he and three others escaped in spectacular style when a helicopter hovered over the prison and lowered a basket into which they all jumped.

Chile has previously urged Switzerland to send Ortiz back to serve out the rest of his sentence. However, in December the Chilean Supreme Court accepted an appeal by his lawyers that invalidated his arrest warrant.

Last year, Chile pressed France to extradite another of the escapees, Ricardo Palma Salamanca, who was arrested in Paris after 22 years on the run.

An estimated 3,200 people were murdered and 28,000 tortured by agents of the state during General Pinochet’s dictatorship, which ended in 1990. More than 1,000 people are still listed as missing.

Source: bbc.com

The mother of a three-year-old girl has become the first person in the UK to be found guilty of female genital mutilation (FGM).

The 37-year-old woman from Uganda was convicted following a trial at the Old Bailey.

Her 34-year-old partner was acquitted by the jury.

Read: Malian asylum seeker narrates perilous trip to Spain

Spells and curses intended to deter police and social workers from investigating were found at the woman’s home, the trial heard.

The defendants, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, denied FGM and an alternative charge of failing to protect a girl from risk of genital mutilation.

The mother wept in the dock as she was convicted.

The cost of cherry tomatoes could increase by more than 10% if there is a no deal Brexit, say growers in southern Spain.

Earlier this week, I visited a vast site near Alicante, where 60 million kilograms of cherry tomatoes are grown, picked and shipped every year and a third of them are bound for the UK.

But growers are worried that a no deal Brexit is going to push up the price we pay for them in the shops.

Jorge Brotons is the commercial director for Bonnysa and deals with all the big UK supermarkets. The business has been growing tomatoes for the UK since 1956.

“We’re trying to understand what the different scenarios can be. If there is no deal, we’ll have to trade in a different way as tariffs will be applied, new inspections and this means we add new processes to current situations,” he says.

Ultimately it means more work, more time, more people to make checks and all that means more costs.

“The cost in agriculture and margins are very very tight, and the history of prices shows tomatoes haven’t increased in 15 years,” he says.

“With all costs increasing our margins are so tight – we can’t absorb any more cost and any more costs in that chain means losses and having to decide to do something else.”

We start the day at Bonnysa’s vast greenhouse complex which spans a huge valley in northern Alicante. The sun shines brightly and the temperature is around 15 degrees, a reminder of why salad growing here is much easier than in the UK in January.

In the greenhouse we visit, we meet two pickers undertaking the fortnightly harvest. Within 15 minutes they’ve gathered trays of their bright red bounty and it is on to the factory for processing.

The pickers have no idea how many cherry tomatoes pass across the factory floor per year – they laugh when I ask. And it’s not hard to understand why. They’re everywhere.

One sorting line spreads them, then photographs them and another separates them. We see all of the big UK supermarkets’ labels on the boxes bound for the UK, but I can’t tell you who they are as the firms requested confidentiality. For them, it is too sensitive to be heard talking about Brexit – even when it’s just tomatoes.

Angel Jiminez is director of exports at Trota, a logistics firms that sends 200 lorries of tomatoes to the UK every week.

So how would a no deal Brexit affect their business? “Right now there is no paperwork involved to cross the border and we can cross easily, but more paperwork means delays. Time is money, more days is more time – and it is the final buyer who pays for everything.”

He also says the haulier industry is no where near prepared enough: “Brexit is not going to be easy at the beginning.”

Uri is one of the many Trota drivers that transport Bonnysa’s cherry tomatoes to the UK. It’s Monday and he’s just about to begin the 2,000km journey from the Alicante plant, across Spain and France, and on to Britain through the Channel Tunnel.

Eurotunnel is the preferred crossing for most perishable food items, and by volume the tunnel carries more food than car parts because of its speed and access to market. For Bonnysa it is vital that it continues to function smoothly after Brexit, whatever deal is achieved.

At least according to the company that operates the tunnel, firms need not worry.

“Here at Eurotunnel we’re ready, soft Brexit, hard Brexit we’ve been preparing for two and a half years. We’ve taken the worst case scenario as our goal all the way through,” says John Keefe, director of public affairs at Eurotunnel.

“We will be able to deliver our transport system from day one from both sides.”

I join Uri in the truck from Calais and we head through the tunnel and into Folkestone for the final leg of his journey – on to the supermarket distribution centre. All in all, it takes just over two and a half days to transport a tomato from Bonyssa’s vines to sub-zero temperatures in Dartford.

They’ll be on the supermarkets on Friday in time for your weekend salad.

There is zero friction on our journey (apart from some snow), but the concern from Spain is that the introduction of new checks and customs at any point in the trip will add new costs if there’s a no deal Brexit – and that means higher prices for UK shoppers, a thought shared by Justin King, former boss of Sainsbury’s.

“The nature of our very efficient food supply chain is there is little surplus cost or margin along the way,” he says. “The more inefficient it becomes, the ability of suppliers and retailers to absorb that is very limited. They will be passed on to consumers and really quite quickly.”

Source: bbc.com

Australia recorded its hottest month ever in January, with average temperatures exceeding 30C (86F) for the first time.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the extreme heat was “unprecedented” during the country’s summer period.

At least five January days were among the 10 warmest on record, with daily national temperature highs of 40C.

The heat has caused wildfire deaths, bushfires and a rise in hospital admissions.

Several wildlife species have also suffered, with reports of mass deaths of wild horses, native bats and fish in drought-affected areas.

The new record surpasses conditions recorded in 2013, previously considered the nation’s worst heatwave.

What do meteorologists say?

“We saw heatwave conditions affect large parts of the country through most of the month,” climatologist Dr Andrew Watkins said.

Records were broken for both duration and also individual daily extremes, he said. Rainfall was also below average for most areas.

Australia has increasingly endured hotter summer temperatures. Last year Sydney experienced its hottest day since 1939, with a maximum temperature of 47.3C.

“The warming trend which has seen Australian temperatures increase by more than one degree in the last 100 years also contributed to the unusually warm conditions,” Dr Watkins said.

How bad has it been?

A large swathe of the state of New South Wales bore the brunt of the fortnight of extreme heat, with temperatures also soaring in parts of Queens, South Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory.

* In Tasmania, fire crews battled more than 50 bushfires fuelled by dry conditions and strong winds

* Health authorities said 44 people had come in for treatment in the space of 24 hours in South Australia

* Several tennis matches at the Australian Open in Melbourne were suspended The city of Adelaide broke its own records twice in the month, first reaching 47.7C and then 49.5C

* More than 90 wild horses were found dead or dying in Northern Territory

* Snakes have sought shelter and water in people’s bathrooms, with one python climbing up a shower, according to a snake catcher in Queensland

How is climate change affecting Australia?

Officials have confirmed that 2018 and 2017 were Australia’s third and fourth-hottest years on record respectively.

The Bureau’s State of the Climate 2018 report said climate change had led to an increase in extreme heat events.

Even if global temperatures are contained to the Paris accord limit of a 2C rise above pre-industrial levels, scientists believe the country is facing a dangerous new normal.

Parts of eastern Australia suffered their worst drought in recent history last year, while thousands of Australians fled their homes when bushfires swept through Queensland in November.

Source: bbc.com

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has ridiculed his opponents’ use of social media to organise recent protests against his rule.

“Changing the government or presidents cannot be done through WhatsApp or Facebook. It can be done only through elections,” he told his supporters.

He was speaking as fresh demonstrations were held in the capital Khartoum.

The protests started over cuts to bread subsidies in December but have since morphed into anger at Mr Bashir’s rule.

The Sudanese government says 30 people have been killed in clashes since the unrest began. Human rights groups put the death toll at more than 40.

Read: Bashir says Sudan protesters trying to emulate Arab Spring

What did President Bashir say?

Mr Bashir used a rally of his supporters in the eastern city of Kassala to mock his political opponents.

He said only elections could bring about a change of government.

“This is our pledge and commitment before the Sudanese people. The decision is your right, the masses of the Sudanese people,” the president said.

The Sudanese authorities have tried to block social media in the country.

But a medic in Khartoum told the BBC earlier this week that people have been bypassing the blockade by using Virtual Private Networks (VPN), which can hide a user’s location.

In Kassala, near the Eritrean frontier, Mr Bashir also said that Sudan was reopening its border with Eritrea after about a year-long closure.

The eastern frontier was shut after Sudan declared a state of emergency in two regions to tackle weapons trafficking.

What’s the latest on the protests?

As Mr Bashir was speaking in Kassala, new rallies broke out in the capital and elsewhere.

Read: Sudan protests spread as death toll rises to 29

Riot police fired tear gas at crowds in Khartoum, a witness told the AFP news agency.

Protests were also held in several villages south of the capital.

The demonstrations are being led by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which represents health workers, lawyers, teachers and others.

The protests started over cuts to bread and fuel subsidies, but now demonstrators are calling for the 75-year-old president to resign.

Mr Bashir, who has won elections several times since coming to power in a coup in 1989, has struck a defiant note.

On Wednesday, the Sudanese armed forces – who back the president – warned they would not allow a collapse of the state.

Source: BBC 

US President Donald Trump has dismissed the federal investigation into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election and talks about a proposed border wall.

His lawyers had been reassured he was not a target in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, he said.

Talks in Congress about wall funding – the issue behind the recent government shutdown – were a “waste of time”.

Mr Trump was interviewed by the New York Times, a paper he repeatedly described as “failing” in the past.

The paper’s interview with Mr Trump came after he contacted its publisher, AG Sulzberger.

Read: Trump announces deal to lift shutdown

Mr Sulzberger asked the president to stop his attacks on the media last year, saying they could “lead to violence” against journalists.

The interview with Mr Trump covered a wide range of topics:
1) The border wall

“I’ll continue to build the wall, and we’ll get the wall finished,” the president said, dismissing the talks between congressional Republicans and Democrats over the impasse and implying he could declare a national emergency to ensure the barrier is built.

Tapping into emergency presidential powers could enable Mr Trump to bypass Congress and access the money and resources needed to complete the project.

Critics have said the situation at the border does not constitute a true emergency and invoking one would be an abuse of power.

Mr Trump has sought $5.7 billion (£4.4bn) for a wall on the southern border. The Democrats refuse to provide it, arguing it is immoral and ineffective.

The divide led to the longest government shutdown in US history, which will resume on 15 February if no budget can be agreed.

Mr Trump slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the interview over the border wall.

“I’ve actually always gotten along with her, but now I don’t think I will any more,” he said. “I think she’s doing a tremendous disservice to the country.”

Ms Pelosi told reporters on Thursday there would be no money for a wall in planned border security legislation.

The Failing New York Times wrote a story that made it seem like the White House Councel had TURNED on the President, when in fact it is just the opposite – & the two Fake reporters knew this. This is why the Fake News Media has become the Enemy of the People. So bad for America!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2018

2) The Russia inquiry

Speaking to two New York Times reporters in the Oval Office, the president said he had received assurances from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“Rod told me I’m not a target of the investigation,” Mr Trump said. He then suggested that he may not have spoken to him in person, adding: “The lawyers ask him. They say: ‘He’s not a target of the investigation’.”

It is not clear when Mr Rosenstein made the comments attributed to him by Mr Trump. Mr Rosenstein oversaw Mr Mueller’s investigation until last November, when the president transferred control to acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker.

Mr Rosenstein and Mr Mueller have not said whether Mr Trump is a target in the investigation.

Some reports have suggested that the term “target” would not be used for Mr Trump because sitting presidents are immune from prosecution.

Mr Mueller’s investigation is still ongoing and it is unclear when he will submit his findings to the attorney general.

The president also insisted he “never did” speak to his long-time associate Roger Stone about stolen Democratic emails published by Wikileaks in 2016.

Mr Stone has been charged with seven counts in the Mueller inquiry related to the emails – charges he denies.

President Trump did however attack the FBI raid on Mr Stone’s home, calling it “a very sad thing for this country”.

“I like Roger, he’s a character,” Mr Trump said.

3) Trump’s Moscow project

The president said his lawyer Rudy Giuliani had been “wrong” to say that talks over a project to construct a Trump building in Moscow had continued up to the 2016 US election.

Mr Giuliani had already rowed back on the comments, saying that he had been mistaken.

Mr Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress at least three times about the project – including telling Congress that the project was dissolved in January 2016.

In fact, negotiations continued through June 2016, when Mr Trump was already the Republican presidential nominee.

Read: Trump offers ‘compromise’ to end government shutdown

Last month Mr Mueller’s office disputed a claim in a Buzzfeed report that said Mr Trump had told Cohen to lie to Congress about when the Moscow project had ended.

The Buzzfeed report also said Mr Trump had allegedly encouraged Cohen to plan a trip to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin during the election campaign.

Mr Trump told the New York Times his last conversation about the project had been in “early to middle” 2016. He said Cohen might have been involved with the project “a little bit longer than that”.

“I was running for president; I was doing really well. The last thing I cared about was building a building,” he added.

4) His political future

“I love this job,” Mr Trump insisted, dismissing talk he might not run for re-election in 2020.

He did however tell the paper he had lost “massive amounts of money” working as president.

He also spoke of Democratic candidates in next year’s vote.

California Senator Kamala Harris has had “the best opening so far”, he said. She announced her plan to run for president last month.

But another possible candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, had been “hurt badly” by Mr Trump’s mockery of her claims to Native American heritage, he said.

Last year Mr Trump described her as a “fake Pocahontas” and challenged her to take a DNA test.

She did and the subsequent DNA report concluded that “the vast majority” of Ms Warren’s ancestry was European, but “the results strongly” supported a Native American ancestor.

“I may be wrong, but I think that was a big part of her credibility and now all of a sudden it’s gone,” Mr Trump told the New York Times.

Source: BBC 

Cameroon’s main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, has been charged with insurrection, his lawyers say.

If found guilty, Mr Kamto, who was arrested on Monday, could face a prison term of five years to life, the BBC’s Killian Ngala Chimtom reports.

The Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) leader lost to long-time ruler Paul Biya in last year’s presidential poll.

His party organised protests in four cities over the weekend, saying the election result was rigged.

Read: Ivory Coast MP jailed for tweeting ‘fake news’

The vote in October was marred by violence especially in the two English-speaking provinces, which have been hit by more than a year of violent protests and attacks by separatist rebels which have left hundreds dead.

Mr Kamto, who was detained in Doula along with 200 other protesters, could face further charges, including those of holding illegal gatherings and disturbing the peace.

Christopher Ndong, Mr Kamto’s lawyer, said his client denied the charges and that his right to the freedom of speech had been infringed.

Mr Kamto had been simply exercising his right to protest, he said.

“The government clampdown will not frighten anybody,” Mr Ndong added.

Read: Boko Haram threat displaces 30,000 from Nigeria’s Rann town

According to the AFP news agency, further marches, scheduled for Friday, Saturday and next week, have been banned by the authorities for the “preservation of public order”.

Mr Biya, who came to power in 1982, won a seventh term in office in polls last October marred by low turnout and voter intimidation.

Mr Kamto was his nearest challenger, gaining only 14.2% of the vote.

Across the country, about half of Cameroon’s voting-age population took part in the polls and tens of thousands of people were unable to cast their votes because of insecurity.

Voter turnout in the country’s two Anglophone regions – North West and South West – was as low as 5%, according to the International Crisis Group.

Source: BBC