Currentaffairsnews (Headlines)

A California man was caught and arrested by police Saturday morning, but not before he managed to elude them for two hours while hiding inside a corn maze.

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Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, says he met Ukrainian officials in Madrid, Paris and Warsaw this year as he pushed an investigation into one of Trump's main political rivals in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden. Giuliani has emerged as a central figure in a scandal that has now engulfed Trump and left him facing an impeachment inquiry into whether he misused his office for his own political gains. One of the key questions is who financed Giuliani's globe-trotting as he pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden had tried to fire Ukraine's then chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him investigating an energy company on which his son Hunter served as a director.

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Former Cathay Pacific staff who say they were fired for supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters accused bosses on Monday of carrying out a "Cultural revolution" style political purge. The Hong Kong-based airline has had a torrid few weeks after Chinese state media and authorities blasted the company because some of its 27,000 employees had taken part in -- or were sympathetic to -- anti-government protesters. China's aviation regulator barred staff supporting protests from working on flights to the mainland or traveling through its airspace, setting off chaos inside the company as it frantically tried to win back Beijing's favour.

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Former National Security Adviser John Bolton is out of the White House, but he's not done talking about the United States' foreign policy.Bolton spoke about the Trump administration's approach toward North Korea in less-than-glowing terms Monday during a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He reportedly said the U.S. should stop trying to organize summits between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and instead opt for a tougher path that could ultimately include regime change or even military force to halt North Korea's nuclear program."I don't think the North Koreans will ever voluntarily give up enough," Bolton said, referring to the negotiation strategy, which remains Washington's preferred option at the moment. "There is no basis to trust any promise that regime makes."Bolton also reportedly added that the White House is not being harsh enough when it comes to North Korea's United Nations Security Council violations.As The Washington Post notes, Bolton's comments are hardly surprising -- he has long held a reputation for favoring forceful foreign policy -- and his opinion, frankly, doesn't carry any actual decision-making weight at the moment. Still, his willingness to coyly, but publicly criticize the White House does raise some questions as to whether Bolton could eventually serve as a witness in the Democrats' impeachment inquiry, the Post reports. Read more at The Washington Post.

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China wants to do what it can to make sure an end to this issue is reached. We must emphasize though, that this problem is not ultimately our own.

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According to reports, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was one of the Trump officials on the Ukraine call at the center of the whistleblower complaint.

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Kayleigh Davis was hiking on a trail Friday evening at Antelope Island State Park in Utah chasing the sunset, when she was suddenly, violently, flipped into the air by a bison. When she looked up, the bison was hovering over her. The incident left her with a broken ankle and a gash on her leg.

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The video message posted on Twitter came in response to Democratic lawmakers' investigation of accusations that Trump tried to strong-arm the Ukrainian president into providing dirt on Joe Biden, one of the American President's main 2020 election rivals. In subsequent tweets, Trump repeated his charges that the impeachment investigation is a "Witch Hunt," adding that Democratic lawmaker Adam Schiff, who is leading the impeachment probe, had defamed and libeled him, and should resign from Congress.

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(Bloomberg) -- Six coal states are pressing the Trump administration to wrap up an almost two-year inquiry into whether coal and nuclear plant retirements are threatening the electric grid.In letters to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which overseas U.S. power markets, utility commissioners from Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming warned that plant closures are accelerating and “bringing increased attention to grid resilience and fuel security.”The appeal comes almost two years after the commission rejected a Trump administration bid to bail out money-losing coal plants, dismissing the proposal as unlawful. But the agency left the door open to future action, by opening an inquiry into whether regulatory changes are needed to keep the lights on. More than 200 comments have been filed with the commission since then, and more than a dozen coal-fired power plants have been decommissioned.Now the states hardest hit by coal’s decline are asking the energy commission to finalize its review of the electric grid and, again, consider imposing market rules that could curb the closure of fossil-fuel generation.They may find a sympathetic ear in commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee, a Kentucky Republican and a longstanding champion of the coal industry who has faced criticism for pushing an ill-fated proposal to curb coal retirements by paying generators for having fuel on-site. Chatterjee has since said that the independent agency can’t put its thumb on the scale to favor any one source.Chatterjee said he would address the issue of grid resilience this fall and, on Oct. 21, will co-host a University of Kentucky energy forum in the heart of coal country. Speakers include Bob Murray, the chief executive officer of coal producer Murray Energy Corp., who has repeatedly called on the Trump administration to take steps to revive the domestic coal industry.The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which represents coal producers, said it was time for the agency to take action to “help address concerns over grid resilience as a result of the continued retirement of fuel-secure coal units across the country.”To contact the reporters on this story: Stephen Cunningham in Washington at scunningha10@bloomberg.net;Ari Natter in Washington at anatter5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: David Marino at dmarino4@bloomberg.net, Catherine Traywick, Reg GaleFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Speaking to CBS News' "60 Minutes," the Saudi Crown Prince admitted that Khashoggi's murder was a "heinous crime" but denied his involvement.

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It is still unclear why President Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military and other aid to Ukraine from mid-July until Sept. 11 -- he has given shifting explanations, none of which seem to hold much water -- but it was his decision, and he acted alone, Fox News reported Sunday. The Pentagon, State Department, and Trump's National Security Council were "unanimous" in their support for giving Ukraine the aid, approved by Congress in the spring, Fox News' Chris Wallace reported Sunday. He also had some news on Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer.Giuliani has said the State Department asked him to intercede in Ukraine -- and his saved text messages apparently helped prompt the State Department's official Ukraine envoy, Kurt Volker, to resign on Friday -- but Fox News reports that Giuliani was working "off the books" with two other pro-Trump lawyers, Joe DiGenova and wife Victoria Toensing, to dig up Ukraine dirt on Joe Biden. The Trump administration wasn't involved, and only Trump knows the details of what the three lawyers were doing, Wallace said.Toensing denied that she and DiGenova were working with Giuliani, calling Fox News' reporting "categorically false," and Giuliani told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that he "didn't work with anybody to try and get dirt on Joe Biden," insisting it was handed to him. Wallace responded: "We stand by our story."DiGenova, interestingly, is a frequent Fox News guest, and last week he was an instigator of a rhetorical flame war between the news and opinion sides of Fox News, calling Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano a "fool" for saying Trump committed a crime in his Ukraine call. Given this schism and other considerations, Fox News' leadership is reportedly trying to figure out how the typically pro-Trump network will navigate the looming impeachment inquiry into Trump's actions. This appears to be a point for the news side.

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Republican leadership clarified that the Senate must take action if the lower chamber approves articles of impeachment against President Trump.

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Whistleblower Edward Snowden, currently promoting a new memoir, has claimed a surge in the use of private contractors by US intelligence agencies, has led to a “creeping authoritarianism”.Against the backdrop of the whistleblower complaint being examined by Congress that alleges Donald Trump pressured the leader of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, the 36-year-old Mr Snowden said private contractors – as he once was – had very few legal prohibitions on what they could do.

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REUTERSA delegation of Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee is traveling to Ukraine this week, a Democratic aide to the committee confirmed to The Daily Beast on Monday.The trip has been in the works for some time and includes stops elsewhere in Europe, but it is moving forward at a moment when Ukraine is dominating American politics. In the last week, an anonymous whistleblower’s allegation that President Trump repeatedly pressed the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden has gone public, and the expanding congressional probe into those claims is forming the basis of an official impeachment inquiry from House Democrats. The delegation is the first group of U.S. lawmakers to travel to Ukraine since early September, before any details of the whistleblower’s complaint were publicly known. The Democratic committee aide affirmed the trip is unrelated to the current Ukraine news, and said that lawmakers are heading there to perform oversight over the U.S. military’s European area of command, or EUCOM. The aide declined to go into more detail about the trip. Of course, a key detail of the  Trump-Ukraine saga falls under the purview of Armed Services Committee members: the Trump administration sat on $250 million in security assistance to the country—which has been sent without incident for each of the last four years—while the president and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pressed the newly-elected administration of Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. After bipartisan outcry, the administration suddenly released the aid on Sept. 12. Whether or not the security aid was the center of a quid-pro-quo arrangement sought by Trump remains a key question in Democrats’ investigation. Lawmakers on the House Appropriations and Budget Committees sent letters to the administration last Friday demanding a full explanation of how and why the funds were withheld.Send The Daily Beast a TipRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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A parade by China’s secretive military will offer a rare look at its rapidly developing arsenal, including possibly a nuclear-armed missile that could reach the United States in 30 minutes, as Beijing gets closer to matching Washington and other powers in weapons technology.The Dongfeng 41 is one of a series of new weapons Chinese media say might be unveiled during the parade marking the ruling Communist Party’s 70th anniversary in power.

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The jury in the trial of Amber Guyger, a former Dallas police officer who is charged with murdering her neighbor in his apartment, can consider the "Castle Doctrine" as part of Guyger's defense, Judge Tammy Kemp ruled Monday, hours before final deliberations in the murder trial.The Castle Doctrine, which was passed by the Texas Legislature in 2007, “presumes that the use of force is reasonable and necessary when someone is unlawfully and with force entering or attempting to enter your occupied home, car, or place of business, or when someone is committing or trying to commit a crime against you.”Guyger, who shot and killed Jean in his own apartment on Sept. 6, 2018, was initially charged with manslaughter, but the district attorney’s office subsequently reviewed the case and indicted her on murder charges, with the implication that the shooting could not be considered manslaughter because Guyger admitted it was intentional.The shift also allowed for Guyger’s defense to center its argument on the basis of “a mistake of fact,” as Guyger — who was returning from a 14-hour shift — claims she accidentally took Jean’s apartment to be her own, and mistakenly thought he was an intruder. Now, if jurors apply the Castle Doctrine, Guyger may walk free.“If a jury believes she was telling truth that she was mistaken, that is an excuse under Texas law,” defense attorney Brad Lollar told The Dallas Morning News last year in the buildup to the indictment. “By filing a manslaughter charge instead of murder, law enforcement is depriving her of defenses she would have under a murder charge.”The judge also announced in the meeting with lawyers on both sides that the jury would be allowed to consider manslaughter in any potential sentencing of Guyger.

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Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney "is on shaky ground in the wake of a bad week for President Trump," CNN reports, largely because he didn't immediately "have a strategy for defending and explaining the contents" of a reconstructed transcript of Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tried his hand Sunday with the White House's subsequent talking points. CNN's Jake Tapper wasn't having it.Jordan alleged that former Vice President Joe Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin to help out his lawyer son, Hunter Biden, who had recently gotten a seat on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma. "That's not what happened," Tapper said, noting repeatedly that Shokin was ousted because he wasn't prosecuting people and the Ukrainian investigations related to Burisma's owner were dormant when Hunter Biden was hired. Shokin "wasn't going after corruption -- do you understand what I'm saying?" Tapper asked.Jordan kept hitting on the younger Biden's reported salary, and Tapper eventually stopped him. "If you want to push a law saying that the children of presidents and vice presidents should not be doing international business deals, I'm all for it," Tapper said. "But you're setting a standard that is not being met right now." He gave examples from Trump's children."I'm just telling you what happened," Jordan said. "No, you're not," Tapper said. "It's amazing the gymnastics you'll go through to defend what --" Jordan began, and Tapper brought up accusations from Ohio State wresters that Jordan turned a blind eye to sexual abuse by the team doctor: "Sir, it's not gymnastics -- it's facts! And I would think somebody who's been accused of things in the last year and two would be more sensitive about throwing out wild allegations against people.""I understand you want to change the subject," Tapper said, after Jordan began jumping down 2016 rabbit holes, "but the president was pushing the president of Ukraine to investigate a political rival. I cannot believe that that is okay with you."If you are interested in the Hunter Biden story, a former New York Times reporter runs down at The Intercept how Trump, Giuliani, and "the right-wing spin machine" inverted his 2015 reporting on the Bidens, and The Washington Post has a longer look at the Bidens in Ukraine and this helpful explainer.

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A California man was caught and arrested by police Saturday morning, but not before he managed to elude them for two hours while hiding inside a corn maze.

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More than half of Americans — and an overwhelming number of Democrats — say they approve of the fact that Congress has opened an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. But as the inquiry begins, there is no national consensus on how to assess the president's actions.

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Heavy rains have killed at least 113 people in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states over the past three days, officials said on Monday, as flood waters swamped a major city, inundated hospital wards and forced the evacuation of inmates from a jail. India's monsoon season that begins in June usually starts to retreat by early September, but heavy rains have continued across parts of the country this year, triggering floods. An official said that at least 93 people had died in most populous Uttar Pradesh since Friday after its eastern areas were lashed by intense monsoon showers.

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In addition to Chernobyl, Russia has tried to hide the details of other nuclear incidents, including an explosion that killed seven people in August.

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Top aides to Donald Trump sought Sunday to turn the tables on Democrats pushing for his impeachment, insisting the president was the true "whistleblower" in urging Ukraine to investigate the son of rival Joe Biden for corruption. Trump's Republican allies have closed ranks as he battles the deepest crisis of his presidency, flatly denying he abused his power and seeking to discredit the anonymous whistleblower who exposed the scandal.

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Officer Brian Mulkeen was fatally shot, possibly with his own gun, in the Bronx during a struggle with an armed assailant, police said.

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Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/ReutersJoe Biden’s presidential campaign made an extraordinary request to executives of top news channels on Sunday, asking them to no longer book Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on their programs. In a letter addressed to the heads of the major news and cable networks, as well as top news anchors, two top Biden campaign advisers make the case that by peddling routine falsehoods about the work of Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, Giuliani’s presence on the airwaves is editorially untenable. “We are writing today with grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump. While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation,” the letter from top aides Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield reads.“We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative,” the letter continues.The Biden campaign letter goes on to note that “Giuliani is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves.” And it demands that if the former mayor is put on the airwaves, “an equivalent amount of time” be given “to a surrogate for the Biden campaign.”In a text response to The Daily Beast, Giuliani said the Biden letter “sounds like the usual left wing censorship. Everything I say is supported by such as today, affidavits and statements. They are the ones who have covered up pay for  play for at least 5 years.” In a tweet, Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale quipped, “Can we request the removal of Democrats on TV that push hoaxes? Wait, but then who would do the interviews?”Political campaigns have complained about bookings since the advent of politically-oriented television news. But rarely, if ever, has one campaign made an affirmative demand that a top aide to a rival candidate no longer be given a platform. Trump-Supporting Lawyers diGenova and Toensing Teamed Up With Giuliani to Dig Up Ukraine Dirt on Biden: ReportBut Giuliani has pushed the bounds in ways few guests have before. The former New York City mayor and presidential candidate has been a repeat guest in recent days on numerous networks, during which he has peddled debunked-arguments about Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s efforts to remove a prosecutor in that country. During the course of those appearances, Giuliani has ignored that the prosecutor was facing pressure from much of the global community to resign and that the case against Hunter Biden—who was serving on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma—was dormant during the time Joe Biden demanded that the prosecutor step down.From there, Giuliani’s appearances have delved into the conspiratorial, so much so that Trump’s former top homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, admonished him during his own news hit on Sunday. According to a Biden campaign source, the letter was sent to all of the major network heads including NBC President Noah Oppenheim, CBS News President Susan Zirinsky and CNN President Jeff Zucker, along with hosts like CNN’s Jake Tapper, NBC’s Chuck Todd and Fox News’ Chris Wallace. While some Democrats have reveled in Giuliani’s news tour, noting that he has managed to implicate several top State Department officials in his scheme to pressure Ukraine leadership to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, the Biden campaign clearly does not share that schadenfreude.Pompeo Grapples for Ways to Outlast Hurricane Rudy“Your obligation is to provide the American people with an informed, fact-based and responsible coverage and debate of critical issues,” their letter reads. “Rudy Giuliani has made very clear that his only obligation is to protect Donald Trump, and that he will willingly lie to do so. While you have been aggressive in pushing back on him in real time, it is well known that the dedicated liar always has the advantage, pushing out outlandish falsehoods and disinformation in the knowledge that it is hard for the corrections to catch up.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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China's tightly choreographed 70th birthday bash next week risks being upstaged by pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which offer a starkly different take on the strength and power of the Communist Party being feted in Beijing. As President Xi Jinping gets ready to preside over a huge military parade and gala event on Tuesday, the former British colony is in tumult over the erosion of its special freedoms by Beijing. Hong Kong has been rocked by the worst political unrest since its handover to China in 1997, with another round of clashes between protesters and riot police on Saturday and Sunday.

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The whistleblower who filed an anonymous complaint about President Donald Trump asking Ukraine to investigate a political rival has reached an agreement to testify before Congress.

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A potential Senate impeachment trial is a long way away, but there is already some speculation that, if the House does wind up voting to impeach President Trump after launching an inquiry, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could deploy some stall tactics, Politico reports.McConnell has said in the past that the Senate would have "no choice" to hold a trial if Trump were ever impeached, but not everyone is convinced. For starters, there is some disagreement over whether the Senate is required by the Constitution to hold a trail if a president is impeached. "The Senate makes the decision," Don Ritchie, a retired Senate historian, said. Others have argued that the law is actually not ambiguous, and that it would require a lot more work for the Republicans to try to prevent a trial rather than to defeat a conviction.> This is wrong. The rules allowed the Senate to not act on Garland (they also allowed any senator to force a vote in relation to that decision). The rules do not allow Senate to ignore impeachment. That would require new rules. New rules require a vote. https://t.co/ZddV6B7Ej8> > -- James Wallner (@jiwallner) September 28, 2019But, if McConnell does have the power to delay a trial, some observers point to how he handled former President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. McConnell stalled the vote because elections were coming up and the senator felt the next president should appoint the new justice. The timeframe could be somewhat similar in the case of impeachment, Politico reports."You're going to start hearing that argument and much more loudly, because we're not too far away from the moment when voters start voting," Michael Steel, a longtime GOP operative and aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, said. "You've got to make the case why it matters and why it rises to the level of removing an elected president of the United States from the White House." Read more at Politico.

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French police repeatedly used tear gas and water cannons to break up a protest Saturday by nearly a 1,000 yellow vest demonstrators in the southwest city of Toulouse. Police there said four officers were slightly injured and nine demonstrators arrested for offences including throwing projectiles. A police statement in Toulouse said officers made five arrests after being targeted by missiles thrown by some of the protesters.

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The White House is accused of trying to cover up Trump's call with Ukraine by storing the transcript in a system housing the country's top secrets.

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Back home in the Bronx is where I first heard the old saw about the Irishman who, coming upon a donnybrook at the local pub, asks a bystander: “Is this a private fight or can anybody join?”I was a much younger fellow then. The prospect becomes less alluring with age, so I have some trepidation stepping in between two old friends, Andrew Napolitano and Joe DiGenova. Through intermediary hosts, the pair -- Napolitano a former New Jersey Superior Court jurist and law professor, DiGenova a former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and prominent defense lawyer -- brawled this week on Fox News (where I, like they, contribute regularly).I’m going to steer clear of the pugnacious to-ing and fro-ing. Let’s consider the intriguing legal issue that ignited it.Judge Napolitano argues that the July 25 conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky contains the makings of a campaign-finance crime. He highlights Trump’s request for Ukraine’s help in investigating then–vice president Joe Biden. In 2016, Biden pressured Kyiv to drop a corruption investigation of Burisma, a natural gas company that paid Biden’s son, Hunter, big bucks to sit on its board.Biden, of course, is one of the favorites for the Democratic presidential nomination. Napolitano reasons that the information Trump sought from Ukraine would be a form of “opposition research” that could be seen as an in-kind donation to Trump’s reelection campaign, which should be deemed illegal because the law prohibits foreign contributions and attempts to acquire them. (Napolitano also raised the “arguable” possibility of a bribery offense, on the theory that Trump was withholding defense aid as a corrupt quid pro quo to get the Biden information. But he emphasized the foreign contribution issue. That is his stronger argument, and I am focusing on it, given that the Trump-Zelensky transcript does not support a quid pro quo demand; plus bribery, in any event, raises the same “thing of value” proof problems addressed below.)DiGenova strongly disagrees. Though there wasn’t much time to elaborate, he is clearly relying on the lack of past campaign-law prosecutions on similar facts. DiGenova is also voicing the prudent conservative hostility to campaign-finance laws: Any expansion of criminal liability would necessarily restrict political speech, the core of First Amendment liberty.I’m with DiGenova on this, but it’s a closer question than he suggests. Napolitano’s construction of the campaign laws, while not wholly implausible, is purely academic. It ignores real-world concerns about free speech and the prosecutor’s burden to prove intent.Most of the commentary on this has been very politicized (surprise!). For dyed-in-the-wool anti-Trumpers, no technicality is too trifling to be a felony. For the Trump base, it’s all a witch hunt. In light of this, the most helpful source we can turn to is the Mueller Report. (File in: Sentences I’d Have Bet My Life I’d Never Write.)Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team overflowed with partisan Democrats, and their report could have been entitled “Roadmap to Impeachment.” While they faced complications (that I’ve addressed) in making a case against the president, the prosecutors were not inhibited when it came to other subjects of the investigation. They’d have loved to nail Donald Trump Jr. But the only thing they had was the notorious Trump Tower Meeting of June 2016, when Don Jr. orchestrated a meeting with a Kremlin-tied lawyer (Natalya Veselnitskaya) in an effort to obtain Russian dirt to be used against Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya supplied information, but it was a dud.The campaign-finance offense that Napolitano urges be charged against President Trump appears to be the same one Mueller considered charging against Don Jr. The Mueller team’s analysis (Vol. 1, pp. 186-187) is thus on point. And it is frustratingly ambiguous -- as befits the constitutionally dubious campaign-finance laws.Two offense elements proved to be stumbling blocks for the prosecutors. The first is the question whether opposition research is a “thing of value” under federal law. Mueller’s team assumed that, in theory, it might be (the Napolitano view), but that to interpret it as such would break new ground and raise troubling First Amendment issues (the DiGenova position).The second problem was the intent element. As I’ve observed before, regulatory crimes are not innately wrong (in contrast to, say, murder or robbery). They are illegal only because we choose to make them illegal (for you Latinists out there, they are malum prohibitum). Because the conduct is not wrong in itself (malum in se), the law requires a higher degree of malevolent intent before it can be criminalized. Prosecutors must prove willfulness, which very nearly reverses the adage that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” The defendant must be shown to have known that his intentional conduct was illegal -- not merely unsavory but actually prohibited by law. The Mueller team concluded that they could not have hoped to prove willfulness beyond a reasonable doubt.So, while there might be some conceivable scenario in which acquiring information from a foreign source for use in a campaign could be a federal crime, it is highly unlikely -- so unlikely that some Type A prosecutors wisely decided that the huzzahs they’d have gotten for indicting the president’s son were outweighed by the humiliation they’d endure when the case inevitably got thrown out of court.The Mueller report is also worth considering because the campaign-finance charge the prosecutors rejected is stronger than would be any similar charge against President Trump arising out of the Zelensky call. That, no doubt, is why the Justice Department summarily declined prosecution.To hear the media-Democrat complex tell it, DOJ declined because it is beholden to the president and Attorney General Barr is acting as Trump’s lawyer, not the government’s chief prosecutor. No one who actually took five minutes to read the relevant section of the Mueller Report would see it that way. Moreover, the fact that the president is president complicates matters not only politically but legally.Trump detractors hyper-focus on the president’s request that President Zelensky provide Attorney General Barr with any information Ukraine might have about Biden twisting arms to quash an investigation involving his son’s cashing in on dad’s influence. I say “hyper-focus” because there was a lot more to it than that. Long before the conversation came around to the Biden topic, the “favor” that Trump asked for was Zelensky’s assistance in Barr’s ongoing investigation of the genesis of the Trump-Russia investigation.No matter how much Democrats seek to discredit that probe and the AG overseeing it, it is a legitimate investigation conducted by the United States Department of Justice, which has prosecutors assigned and grand jury subpoena power. It is examining questionable Justice Department and FBI conduct. It is considering whether irregularities rise to the level of crimes. It will be essential to Congress’s consideration of whether laws need to be enacted or modified to insulate our election campaigns from politicized use of the government’s counterintelligence and law-enforcement powers.I mention all this because it is a commonplace for the government to seek assistance from foreign counterparts for ongoing federal investigations.Indeed, as Marc Thiessen pointed out this week in an important Washington Post column, Democratic senators pressured Ukraine to cooperate with the Mueller probe -- notwithstanding the obvious potential electoral ramifications and the specter of “foreign interference in our democracy.” These requests for assistance often occur at the head-of-state level. When I was a federal prosecutor in the mid-nineties, for example, the FBI and Justice Department asked President Clinton to intervene with Saudi authorities to assist the investigation of Iranian complicity in the Khobar Towers bombing.There is nothing wrong with our government’s requesting the assistance of foreign governments that have access to witnesses and evidence relevant to an ongoing Justice Department investigation. The president is the democratically elected, constitutionally empowered chief executive: There is nothing his subordinates may properly do that he may not do himself (it is his power that they exercise). And the president is never conflicted out of executive branch business due to his political interests. There is no legal or ethical requirement that the Justice Department be denied potentially probative evidence because obtaining it might affect the president’s political fortunes.There was no impropriety in President Trump’s asking Ukraine’s president to assist the Justice Department’s investigation of Russiagate’s origins. Okay, you say, but what does that have to do with Biden?Well, Biden was the Obama administration’s point man in dealing with Kyiv after Viktor Yanukovych fled in 2014. That course of dealing came to include Obama administration agencies leaning on Ukraine to assist the FBI in the investigation of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman. So, Biden’s interaction with Ukraine is germane: The fact that he had sufficient influence to coerce the firing of a prosecutor; the fact that, while Biden was strongly influencing international economic aid for Kyiv, a significant Ukrainian energy company thought it expedient to bring Biden’s son onto its board and compensate him lavishly -- although Hunter Biden had no experience in the industry.That aside, I do not understand why there has not been more public discussion of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in light of the instances of Hunter Biden conveniently cashing in with foreign firms while his dad was shaping American policy toward those firm’s governments. As we saw with the collusion caper, it does not take much evidence of any crime for the FBI and the Justice Department to open an investigation and scorch the earth in conducting it. And if it would have been legit for the Justice Department to open an FCPA investigation of one or both of the Bidens, then it was appropriate for President Trump to ask President Zelensky to help the Justice Department determine if an FCPA crime took place – even if doing so could have affected the 2020 fortunes of Biden and Trump.Don’t get me wrong: I am not rooting for Joe Biden or his son to be subjected to investigation and prosecution. I agree with Attorney General Barr that there has been too much politicization of law enforcement and intelligence. In the absence of a concrete, patent, and serious violation of the criminal law, I want the Justice Department and the FBI out of politics – which would be better for them and for politics. If you think there is an indecorous heavy-handedness to the way Donald Trump and Joe Biden conduct foreign policy, that’s fine – go vote against them on Election Day. We don’t need creative prosecutors deciding elections by testing the boundaries of abstruse statutes.Neither, however, do I believe in unilateral disarmament. There is at least as much basis for opening an FCPA investigation against the Bidens as for opening campaign-finance investigations against the Trumps. If I had my druthers, all of this nonsense would end. But as I detailed earlier this week, we have one candidate for the presidency -- a once-serious legal scholar and practitioner -- who publicly and straight-faced says Trump’s call with Zelensky could rate the death penalty. As we saw in the late 1990s, when Bill Clinton got to experience the independent-counsel statute up close and personal, maybe it takes Democrats being hoisted on their own petard before we finally say: This has to stop.

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From frantic journalists swarming lawmakers to a news cycle that wouldn't slow, members of Congress saw a week of consequence and chaos that made impeaching President Donald Trump a possible reality.

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Giuliani told Politico he believes he deserves whistleblower protection, but his attempts to defend himself have only further incriminated him.

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Famous murals celebrating Iran's Islamic revolution daubed on walls of the former US embassy in Tehran have been erased to make way for new paintings to be unveiled on the fortieth anniversary of the hostage crisis. Three workers were on Sunday afternoon seen removing the original artwork with a sandblaster against the wall of Taleqani avenue, bordering the south side of what was once dubbed a US "spy nest" in central Tehran. On November 4, 1979, less than nine months after Iran's last shah was toppled, pro-revolution students took Americans hostage at the embassy to protest the ex-shah's admission to hospital in the US.

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Former British Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday supported the explanation offered as to why Vice President Joe Biden pressured the president of Ukraine in 2015 to crack down on corruption. Supporters of President Donald Trump — particularly his attorney Rudy Giuliani — have argued that Trump’s much-criticized July 25 phone call with the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was appropriate because Biden had been corrupt in pushing Poroshenko to get rid of the state prosecutor.

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Russia has warned the US against publishing private conversations between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as it emerged the White House may have restricted access to the president’s conversations with multiple world leaders. The comment was in response to the White House’s decision to publish a transcript of Mr Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after Democrats announced the beginning of a formal impeachment investigation into whether the US president pressured his counterpart to interfere in the 2020 election. Asked if Moscow is worried about transcripts of Mr Trump’s calls with the Russian President being similarly released, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "we would like to hope that it wouldn’t come to that in our relations, which are already troubled by a lot of problems." "The materials related to conversations between heads of states are usually classified according to normal international practice," he added. The publication of the call, in which Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky made critical comments about German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, has drawn acerbic comments from other Russian officials. "We are waiting for the party to continue," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. "Let them publish transcripts of conversations between NATO allies. It would also be useful to publish minutes of closed meetings at the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon. Put it all on air!" Ms Zakharova also scoffed at Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to open an impeachment inquiry based on the call. "Is it the Democrats' job to make a laughing stock of the United States?" she said. "It's exactly what Ms Pelosi has done to Congress, the White House and other state institutions." A whistleblower complaint at the centre of the Ukrainian scandal claimed White House lawyers had ordered a verbatim transcript of the call between Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky to be stored on a separate computer system to limit the number of people who could access it. US media reports suggest similar tactics were used with Mr Trump’s calls with other leaders, including Mr Putin and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman. Current and former administration officials told CNN that at least one phone call with the crown prince in the aftermath of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was never circulated to the officials who would usually be given access to it. Access to at least one transcript of a call with Mr Putin was also tightly restricted, according to a former Trump administration official. The White House has not yet commented on the claims.

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White House senior adviser Stephen Miller defended President Trump’s attempts to have the Ukrainian president open an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, claiming on Sunday that the scandal was a “political hit job” by the “deep state” and that Trump was really the “whistleblower.”

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Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal, the county's first Sikh officer, was killed Friday during a traffic stop near Houston. Police have arrested Robert Solis.

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An Iowa newspaper reporter who exposed racist tweets by a charity fundraiser has found himself out of a job after his own offensive posts were uncovered.  Aaron Calvin, a journalist for the Des Moines Register, began looking into sports fan Carson King when his jovial plea for beer money turned into a national fundraiser for a children's hospital. But his profile of Mr King led to a public backlash and the newspaper was forced to hire extra security after receiving threats. Public scrutiny turned to Mr Calvin himself, who left the newspaper after it emerged he had made comments mocking same-sex marriage and used a racial slur. Mr King gained national fame on September 14, when his hand-drawn sign for donations for his "Busch Light Supply"  at an Iowa State University American football game was featured in the background of a TV broadcast.  He initially received around $600 (£488) from amused spectators but as donations topped $1 million (£814,650), Mr King said he would donate the money to a University of Iowa children's hospital. Carson King raised $1.8m for a local children's hospital The company behind Busch Light lager offered their own donation along with a year's supply of beer for Mr King in with his face printed on the limited-edition cans.  By way of thanks for the $1.8m (£1.5m) funding, Iowa's governor declared September 28 would be "Carson King Day", saying his "volunteerism and selflessness defines Iowans by nature". At around the same time, Mr Calvin began writing his profile on the 24-year-old casino security guard and found that Mr King had tweeted two racist jokes about black people while in high school.  Hey Everyone! Just a quick appreciation post for ya ☺️ ForTheKidspic.twitter.com/y0Gdj2V3Tl— Carson King (@CarsonKing2) September 26, 2019 Before the piece was published Mr King held a press conference to apologise, saying "I am so embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was 16-years-old". He emphasised that the Des Moines Register "has been nothing but kind in all of their coverage, and I appreciate the reporter pointing out the post to me". "Thankfully, high school kids grow up and hopefully become responsible and caring adults," he added.  The Register is aware of reports of inappropriate social media posts by one of our staffers, and an investigation has begun.— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) September 25, 2019 The development led Busch Light to distance itself from Mr King, thought it said it would still honour its $350,000 donation. However online supporters of Mr King turned on the newspaper, criticising its decision to cover his teenage posts. Attention turned to Mr Calvin's own Twitter profile and it emerged the reporter himself had made offensive comments about race, same-sex marriage and domestic abuse. Mr Calvin deleted the tweets and apologised "for not holding myself to the same high standards as the Register holds others."  The paper's editor, Carol Hunter, announced that Mr Calvin was no longer with the paper and that its "social media vetting" for employees would be re-examined.

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China's tightly choreographed 70th birthday bash next week risks being upstaged by pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which offer a starkly different take on the strength and power of the Communist Party being feted in Beijing. As President Xi Jinping gets ready to preside over a huge military parade and gala event on Tuesday, the former British colony is in tumult over the erosion of its special freedoms by Beijing. Hong Kong has been rocked by the worst political unrest since its handover to China in 1997, with another round of clashes between protesters and riot police on Saturday and Sunday.

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Kurt Volker, the State Department's special envoy for Ukraine, resigned Friday amid a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump and his communications with the Ukrainian government, including the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Volker did not provide a public explanation for leaving his post, but a source familiar with his decision said Volker concluded he could not perform the job effectively as a result of the recent developments.One person familiar with the matter told NBC News that Volker's resignation will likely enable him to be much freer in what he can say about his time at his post if he is called at some point to testify before Congress.The whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry alleges that Volker went to Kiev to help guide Ukrainian officials on how to handle Trump's alleged demands that the government investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter. He also reportedly spoke with Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an attempt to "contain the damage" to U.S. national security.Giuliani has said Volker encouraged him to meet with Ukrainian officials regarding the Biden family. That indeed appears to be the case, but The New York Times reports Volker was acting at the request of the Ukrainians, who were reportedly concerned about how Giuliani's attempts to procure information about the Bidens and other Democrats might affect their relationship with the U.S. Read more at NBC News and The New York Times.

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The man who slammed his SUV into a suburban Chicago mall has been formally charged with terrorism and criminal damage to property, authorities said.

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Wildlife officials found three more dead wild elephants in central Sri Lanka Saturday, raising the number believed to have been poisoned by angry villagers to seven. The animals were found at a forest reserve near Sigiriya, a fifth-century rock fortress and UNESCO-protected heritage site, police said. "Since Friday, we have found the remains of seven cow elephants, including a tusker," police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said.

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Hong Kong protesters are to join a global "anti-totalitarianism rally" on Sunday, following another night of violent clashes with police after weeks of pro-democracy unrest in the Chinese-ruled city. Police fired tear gas and water cannon on Saturday night to disperse protesters who threw petrol bombs and rocks, broke government office windows and blocked a key road near the local headquarters of China's People's Liberation Army. Thousands, young and old, gathered peacefully on Saturday at a harbourside park to mark the fifth anniversary of the "Umbrella" pro-democracy movement which gridlocked streets for 79 days in 2014.

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Expert Steven Amstrup says ‘the longer the sea ice is gone from the productive zone the tougher it is on the bears’This year’s annual minimum of the Arctic sea ice tied with the second-lowest extent on record. Photograph: Chase Dekker/Getty ImagesThe loss of Arctic ice from glaciers, polar land and sea is declining faster than many scientists expected, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on oceans and the cryosphere said this week.That’s bad news for polar bear populations, a top expert involved in field studies on the endangered animals has told the Guardian.This year’s annual minimum of the Arctic sea ice tied with the second-lowest extent on record, a mere 1.6m sq miles, and badly affected polar bear populations that live and hunt on the north slope of Alaska, plus those that live on the ice floes in the Bering Sea.“Now the ice has gone way offshore we know that the bears aren’t feeding, and the bears that are forced on to land don’t find much to eat. The longer the sea ice is gone from the productive zone the tougher it is on the bears,” said Polar Bears International’s Steven Amstrup.In 2015, the group reported that the polar bear population in the Beaufort Sea had declined by 40% over the previous decade. “We can only anticipate that those declines have continued,” Amstrup said.The loss of sea ice this year was so pronounced early in the season that tagging crews from the US Geological Survey (USGS) concluded that the sea ice offshore in the western arctic was too thin and unstable to be able to conduct their studies – the first time the team have pulled their studies because of safety issues.That’s a far cry from the two decades to 2010 when Amstrup did two two-month field studies a year. In recent years, the spring season has also been severely hampered by open water, fog and bad weather.This year, the trends were repeated. Amstrup said: “The ice in the spring … was really tough this year. What ice was there was thin and rough this year. That’s part of progressive trend that we’ve seen over several years.”The circumstances of global heating in the Arctic region, from record heatwaves in Alaska to the loss of more than 60bn tons of ice from Greenland’s ice cap during a five-day heatwave this summer, including the biggest loss in a 24-hour period since records began.For both polar bear populations, the circumstances are grim. Those that live on shore aren’t finding much to eat, says Amstrup, and those that live permanently on the pack ice don’t appear to be feeding much either.“They’re having a long fast in the summer and there’s a limit to how long that fast can last. We’re already seeing indications in terms of poorer cub survival in the Beaufort Sea. An adult bear has a lot of body mass, and maybe can get through a long summer fast, but young bears don’t have the body mass or hunting skills to survive,” he said.But because 2019 did not set a record in terms of sea-ice loss, Amstrup stressed, we should not be fooled into thinking that, short of an extreme event, circumstances have stabilized or improved.Amstrup said funding cutbacks and the fact that biologists cannot get out and study the bears means it may never be able to collect the necessary data to assess “just how bad this year was”.Instead, Amstrup says this bad ice year and record warm summer are symbols of what the future will bring. Bad years like this will be increasingly frequent and the bad years will be increasingly worse – as long as we allow CO2 levels to continue to rise.“We know that as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise it’s going to be warmer and we’re going to have less and less sea ice until polar bears disappear,” he said.

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The U.S. Justice Department filed a statement saying the First Amendment protects the right of the Archdiocese to apply Catholic doctrine.

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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is denying his country would interfere with the upcoming U.S. presidential election and says his government doesn't have a preference in the race. The interview took place in New York, which Zarif visited this past week to attend meetings at the United Nations. "We don't interfere in the internal affairs of another country," Zarif said later.

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Kurt Volker, the State Department's special envoy for Ukraine, resigned Friday amid a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump and his communications with the Ukrainian government, including the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Volker did not provide a public explanation for leaving his post, but a source familiar with his decision said Volker concluded he could not perform the job effectively as a result of the recent developments.One person familiar with the matter told NBC News that Volker's resignation will likely enable him to be much freer in what he can say about his time at his post if he is called at some point to testify before Congress.The whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry alleges that Volker went to Kiev to help guide Ukrainian officials on how to handle Trump's alleged demands that the government investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter. He also reportedly spoke with Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an attempt to "contain the damage" to U.S. national security.Giuliani has said Volker encouraged him to meet with Ukrainian officials regarding the Biden family. That indeed appears to be the case, but The New York Times reports Volker was acting at the request of the Ukrainians, who were reportedly concerned about how Giuliani's attempts to procure information about the Bidens and other Democrats might affect their relationship with the U.S. Read more at NBC News and The New York Times.

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(Bloomberg) -- After four months of unprecedented violent demonstrations in Hong Kong and no end in sight, the city’s beleaguered leader has one more thing to worry about: the suspect in the murder case that led to the social unrest could soon walk free.When Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed amending the extradition law in February, she cited the case of Chan Tong-kai, wanted in Taiwan in connection with the February 2018 slaying of his girlfriend, Poon Hui-wing. Chan was sentenced by a Hong Kong court in April to 29 months for money-laundering after he used Poon’s bank card for ATM withdrawals, but no legal framework exists for him to be returned to Taiwan to face the murder charges.While Lam was forced to eventually say she would withdraw the extradition bill, it wasn’t enough to appease the protesters who’ve since broadened their demands to include an independent inquiry into police conduct and a more democratic form of governance. Meanwhile, Chan could be released as early as October on good behavior, Hong Kong’s security head John Lee said in April. “This administration has all the reasons to bring Chan to justice -- not only was his alleged conduct serious and lethal, but also it was this administration who presented the victim’s mourning family as a moral motive to push the now-withdrawn extradition bill,” Alvin Yeung, a barrister and pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong, said this week. “Now the chief executive has abandoned the murder case and the victim’s family.”Emails to Ronnie Leung, a lawyer who represented Chan in Hong Kong, and to the Secretary for Justice’s Office went unanswered. A spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Security Bureau said Friday that the exact date for Chan’s release depended on different factors, including his discipline while incarcerated.Chan and Poon, both Hong Kong residents, went to Taiwan on vacation in February 2018, the South China Morning Post reported. When Poon failed to return, her parents filed a missing persons report and her father traveled to Taiwan to find her, it said. Poon’s decomposed body was found by Taiwan police on March 13, the day Chan was arrested, according to the Post.Hong Kong police said that Chan confessed under caution to killing his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan, the Morning Post said. Chan said that after an argument he strangled Poon and stuffed the body in a suitcase, which he later disposed of in a park, according to the report, citing evidence at his trial. He was remanded in custody for 13 months, it said. Reports gave their ages at around 19 and 20.Judicial Assistance“I suppose he will be a free man but I doubt he can stay in Hong Kong with such attention on his every move,” said Bernard Chan, a top adviser to Lam and convener of the executive council.Taiwan officials made requests to Hong Kong for judicial assistance in March and April 2018, and in December asked that the suspect be sent to Taiwan for investigations, Chiu Chih-hung, deputy chief prosecutor in Shilin district, said in a phone interview on Sept. 23. They received no reply, he said.Still, the government in Taiwan made it clear that it would not agree to the extradition bill, which it said could infringe on its sovereignty. President Tsai Ing-wen in June said she rejected Hong Kong’s use of individual extradition “as an excuse to make legal amendments.”“We cannot work together to crack down on crime using laws that infringe on human rights as a precondition,” she said. “We will not be an accessory to the passage of this unconscionable law.”Lam’s proposed law sparked protests because it would have permitted the extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China, opening the possibility that Hong Kong residents could become subject to its laws. In the 1984 joint declaration, Britain and China agreed among other things that the city would follow English common law under a “one country, two systems” arrangement for 50 years.Taiwan SympathizersIn Taiwan, sympathizers of Hong Kong’s protests have held their own rallies since June, ranging from small gatherings to several thousands of demonstrators surrounding the legislature. Others have rallied to the cause by donating tear gas masks and helmets to be shipped to the Hong Kong activists, according to the Taipei Times.Poon’s family has lobbied the government to return Chan to Taiwan to face justice. Her mother appeared in February in front of the press in a baseball hat, mask and sunglasses and urged the administration to take action. While the parents initially backed the plan for an extradition bill, after the protests erupted her father asked Lam in a letter on June 26 to consider a one-off arrangement or other measures, instead of a introducing a new law, HK01 reported.Both Lam’s office and Poon’s family declined to comment on the report, HK01 said.The Hong Kong Law Society said in an 11-page submission in June that the government should consult all stakeholders and the community before rushing into legislation regarding extraditions to China, Taiwan and Macau, which was proposed in the bill.“The circumstances which have now purportedly given rise to this sudden need for legislation are not persuasive, notwithstanding the repeated reliance by the government on a murder case in Taiwan,” the society said in the submission.Yeung was one of three lawmakers who submitted alternative proposals for Chan to be sent to Taiwan, which were rejected by the administration in July. He said he was “disappointed and dismayed” at the administration’s refusal to embrace alternatives.“What is happening now politically and on the streets does not necessarily prohibit the administration from pursuing other legislative proposals” to bring Chan to justice, he said.There is no law in the city enabling the government to surrender fugitive offenders to Taiwan, the Security Bureau spokeswoman said.Hong Kong’s Lam Takes Blame for ‘Entire Unrest’ Rocking CityThe government’s initial reluctance to withdraw the bill allowed protests to develop beyond the original demand and increase in intensity. Almost every week for about four months police have fired tear gas, pepper spray and non-lethal firearms to disperse demonstrations. There have been almost 1,500 arrests, and extensive damage to train stations and government buildings since the civil unrest began.“The entire unrest is caused by the government’s work in amending the extradition law,” Lam told a town-hall style meeting in Hong Kong on Thursday.When Lam suspended the bill on June 15, she said she told the Poon family the government has “done their best” to deal with the murder case, drawing an angry response from protesters.“The case has only been an excuse to introduce the extradition bill,” said Ventus Lau, a 25-year-old protester and organizer for the rallies.“From our perspective, our priority is not this case,” he said. “I don’t believe the movement will come to a halt if the Chan Tong-kai case has been dealt with.”(Adds Security Bureau comment in sixth paragraph f4om end.)\--With assistance from Stanley James.To contact the reporters on this story: Natalie Lung in Hong Kong at flung6@bloomberg.net;Adela Lin in Taipei at alin95@bloomberg.net;Blake Schmidt in Hong Kong at bschmidt16@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Stanley JamesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump took to cable news and Twitter on Friday morning as the first week of the impeachment battle came to a close in Washington.

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(Bloomberg) -- Fung, a 24-year-old doctor, seems an unlikely candidate to stand on the front line of Hong Kong’s most violent civil unrest in half a century. Before this year, he never took part in a protest, and during Hong Kong’s last major pro-democracy uprising, the 2014 Umbrella Movement, he only stopped by to take photos.Now, Fung is part of a cell of 20 protesters who face off each weekend against police on the streets of Hong Kong in clashes that have escalated from peaceful marches to flying bricks, tear gas, Molotov cocktails and, more recently, live ammunition fired into the sky. Fung, who acquired bullet-resistant body armor to wear under his black T-shirt, says the violence needs to escalate even further if protesters are to persuade Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam -- and her backers in Beijing -- to accede to their demands.“If you can’t give pressure to police, the police won’t give any stress to Carrie Lam,” Fung said in an interview in his home. “We, the frontliners, always lose when facing those police. We never win.” He shows his armored vest. “Maybe someone will die next week. I hope the one getting shot is me, since I got this. But not all the frontliners have this to protect them.”Fung’s willingness to accept a potentially bloody escalation and his belief that the movement will ultimately succeed show that the weeks of clashes have created a hard core of determined teams of protesters whose tactics are shifting as clashes become militarized. Fung, like others interviewed for this story, declined to be quoted by their full name for fear of arrest in a city where merely participating in an unauthorized protest could mean years in prison.The front-line protesters’ hardhats, gas masks and black clothing have become the movement’s uniform, lionized in street art and internet memes. But their hard-line tactics have also divided the former British colony: More moderate protesters credit them with forcing concessions from a recalcitrant government, while Chinese officials denounce them as “rioters,” showing signs of terrorism.Even some opposition leaders warn that the radicals risk alienating support from investors and citizens inconvenienced and endangered by the chaos. More extreme tactics, including smashing train station windows, attacking police officers with batons and lighting bonfires in the streets have helped damage Hong Kong’s reputation as one of Asia’s safest big cities.After some hard-line demonstrators detained and beat two men they suspected of being undercover cops during a protest at the airport last month, some activists circulated a proposed code of conduct for front-line protesters, including no beating medical personnel or journalists, on social media forums.Police have escalated, as well, deploying tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons and, one night last month, pointing their fire arms at a larger crowd of protesters who were attacking them with sticks. Lam told reporters earlier this week that it was “remarkable” that no one had died, although many protesters blame the government for suicides among demonstrators and are suspicious that authorities are withholding information on other serious injuries.Although the protests have tapered off in recent weeks, tensions could flare again as Hong Kong confronts two politically fraught dates: The fifth anniversary of the Occupy movement Saturday and the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Tuesday. Both occasions -- one the government would like to forget and other it plans to celebrate -- will be marked by protests just the same.One of the key principles of the movement has been to abandon their roadblocks once police move in -- summed up in the slogan “Be water.” But Fung argues that there need to be more protesters who will stand their ground and fight back. “Why don’t you give a fight?” he said.Such fearlessness is not universal.“You have to know when to run and when to fight,” said Vincent, a 26-year-old designer who first joined political protests in Hong Kong at the start of the Umbrella Movement, the last major pro-democracy movement in the city. “You can’t stand face-to-face against the police.” Asked how he responds when police move in to attack, he laughed. “Run faster!”Vincent and Fung are part of separate teams, highlighting the leaderless nature of the current wave of protests, which have continued since June, despite more than 1,500 arrests. Those arrests have included high-profile pro-democracy figures such as Joshua Wong, leading some protesters to wonder whether the police are trying to identify leaders where there aren’t any.“I agree with the small-group strategy,” said Vincent. “Every time there is a leader, the leader gets arrested.”Vincent and Fung reveal a highly decentralized structure, where groups of about 20 protesters operate independently, yet share information and often copy each other’s tactics. When a proposal is made between groups for violent action, the key principle is respect for others’ decisions, Fung said.“If it really works, maybe we’ll follow you. That’s the most important principle in this movement,” Fung said. “If someone sees, ‘O.K., when I throw the Molotovs, the police really step back -- it’s useful. Why don’t we make more?’ It’s why you see more and more Molotovs in the front line.”Police said on Sept. 2 that at least 100 petrol bombs had been used by protesters on the previous Saturday. Two days later, Lam announced her intention to formally withdraw the contentious extradition bill that originally sparked the protests.The move did little to reduce the unrest. The following weekend the subway station in the city’s central business district became a target for arson and another 80 petrol bombs were thrown, according to police.Although police have arrested hundreds of protesters, including some on a strict rioting charge that carries a sentence as long as 10 years, many end up back on the street while awaiting trial. Only 14% of those arrested had undergone judicial proceedings.Protesters have elevated their injured members into martyrs, including a woman who was allegedly struck on Aug. 11 by a police bean-bag round that penetrated her goggles and injured her right eye. Initial reports said she lost the eye, although the South China Morning Post newspaper later reported, citing a hospital source, that she retains at least some some sight in it.“‘Eye for an eye’ is not just a slogan,” Vincent said. “It will have to be a fact to frighten the police.”Like other demonstrators, Fung’s journey from passive bystander to frontline protester was triggered by the escalating violence. He said he only became a frontliner after July 21, when TV footage showed passengers at a train station being attacked by white-shirted mobs, with no apparent help coming from the police,“We can’t accept this; white-shirt gangsters hitting people,” Fung said. “And I can’t accept why police” delayed for 39 minutes.Police later defended the delay in responding to emergency calls as a consequence of their limited resources that night, given the large-scale protest that was ongoing in another district of Hong Kong.In more recent weeks, Chinese authorities have attempted to distinguish between more moderate protesters who mustered hundreds of thousands to march peaceful and the “few thugs” who adopt the frontliners’ tactics. Protesters see the shift as part of a “divide and rule” strategy, assuming that people will eventually tire of the radicals and turn against them.But the do or die attitude of frontliners like Fung and Vincent is based on a feeling that this could be the endgame for Hong Kong’s democratic struggle.“The failure of the Umbrella Revolution gave some kind of lesson,” Vincent said. “Everyone knows if you fail this time, there will not be another chance. That’s why Hong Kongers fight like they’re not afraid, because they realize that if they fail, the only thing waiting for them is worse than death.”After guns were pointed at the protesters in Tsuen Wan, Fung decided to buy body armor. He insists that the movement must go on until the five demands are met, but acknowledges that he has written a will.“I have already prepared to die in this movement,” he said.To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Mc Nicholas in Hong Kong at amcnicholas2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Adam MajendieFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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