HONG KONG—Hundreds of bank customers demonstrating over frozen deposits were attacked by men in plainclothes in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, marking a violent end to one of China’s largest public protests in recent years.
Images of the clash, which was widely videotaped, spread quickly enough on Chinese social media to outrun the country’s army of internet censors, sparking a wave of online criticism.
The Justice Department revealed in an early Monday morning court filing that federal investigators interviewed former President Donald Trump’s attorney Justin Clark two weeks ago in connection with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt case.
Prosecutors say that Clark confirmed in the interview that at no point did Trump ever invoke executive privilege over Bannon’s testimony — and directly contradicted other claims made by Bannon’s defense team in their case.
Bannon was charged last year with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after defying a Jan. 6 subpoena, though he argued Trump’s privilege claim protected him. He pleaded not guilty and is set to go to trial next week.
Prosecutors say in Monday’s filing that they believe Bannon’s recent efforts in conjunction with Trump to offer to finally testify before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack are no more than an effort to try to make Bannon more of a sympathetic figure to the jury he’s set to face next week.
“All of the above-described circumstances suggest the Defendant’s sudden wish to testify is not a genuine effort to meet his obligations but a last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability,” prosecutors say.
“The Defendant’s timing suggests that the only thing that has really changed since he refused to comply with the subpoena in October 2021 is that he is finally about to face the consequences of his decision to default,” prosecutors said in the filing.
Regarding Bannon, the filing also said Clark told investigators that he “never asked or was asked to attend the Defendant’s deposition before the Select Committee; that the Defendant’s attorney misrepresented to the Committee what the former President’s counsel had told the Defendant’s attorney; and that the former President’s counsel made clear to the Defendant’s attorney that the letter provided no basis for total noncompliance.”
Neither representatives for Bannon or the Jan. 6 committee immediately responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
Bannon remained an outside adviser to Trump after helping to lead Trump’s first presidential campaign and serving a short stint in the White House. He was at a meeting at the Willard Hotel where lawmakers were encouraged to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in the lead-up to Jan. 6, the House Jan. 6 committee claimed in a 2021 letter to Bannon that accompanied his subpoena.
On his final night in office, Trump pardoned Bannon, who had been indicted on charges tied to an alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering related to a crowdfunding effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Prosecutors had accused Bannon of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to the “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign by falsely claiming that he and other organizers would not take a cut of any donated funds. Prosecutors alleged that organizers of the group, including Bannon, syphoned off at least $1 million for their own personal expenses.
Two of Bannon’s co-defendants in the case, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, who did not receive pardons from Trump, pleaded guilty. The trial for a third co-defendant, Timothy Shea, ended in a mistrial after the jury could not reach a verdict.
July 11 (Reuters) – With its excellent academic and music programs, Oberlin College in Ohio seemed like a perfect fit for Nina Huang, a California high school student who plays flute and piano and hopes to eventually study medicine or law.
But Huang, 16, said she crossed the college off her application list after Ohio enacted a near-total ban on abortion last month. She now plans to cast a wider net for schools in states with less restrictive laws.
“I don’t want to go to school in a state where there is an abortion ban,” she said.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide has some students rethinking their higher education plans as states rush to ban or curtail abortion, according to interviews with 20 students and college advisers across the country.
While it has long been the case that some students hesitated to attend schools in places with different political leanings than their own, recent moves by conservative states on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights have deepened the country’s polarization.
For some students, the restrictions raise fears that they won’t be able to get an abortion if they need one or that they will face discrimination for gender differences. Others said they worried about facing racial prejudice or being politically ostracized.
“I’m only in high school right now, and I’m still finding out who I am,” said Samira Murad, 17, who will be a senior this fall at Stuyvesant High School in New York. “I don’t want to move somewhere I can’t be myself because of laws put in place.”
It is too soon to determine whether such concerns will affect admissions in a measurable way, and evidence from other recent divisive state laws suggests there may be little overall impact.
But in the wake of Roe’s overturn, college counselors said abortion has figured prominently in many conversations with clients, with some going as far as nixing their dream schools.
“Some of our students have explicitly stated that they will not apply to colleges and universities in states which may infringe on their access to reproductive rights,” said Daniel Santos, chief executive of the Florida college counseling company Prepory.
‘TOPIC OF CONCERN’
Kristen Willmott, a counselor with Top Tier Admissions in Massachusetts, said students she works with have told her they are taking some top schools in Texas, Florida and Tennessee off their application lists due to their restrictive abortion laws.
Alexis Prisco, who is entering her senior year at Eastern Technical High School in Maryland, had planned to apply to her parents’ alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
She feels wary, however, after the state enacted a law effectively banning abortion.
“Now my mom has warned me that I need to be very careful when applying to schools in states with trigger laws,” said Prisco, 17, referring to bans designed to take effect once the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
Washington University declined to comment but shared a June 24 statement in which university leaders acknowledged the fears and frustration felt by some after the court ruling. Oberlin College did not respond to requests for comment.
Several students raised similar concerns about attending college in North Carolina after the state in 2016 passed a law restricting which bathrooms transgender people could use, said counselor Jayson Weingarten of New York-based Ivy Coach.
But he said many still chose to attend Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Admissions statistics from UNC show the number of applicants increased by 14% between 2016 and 2017 despite individual students’ unease.
Abortion is “a topic of concern for most of the students but not something that’s going to dissuade them from going to one of the most highly selective schools in the country,” Weingarten said.
Shahreen Abedin, a spokesperson for the University of Texas’ medical school, said the school had not seen a drop in applications that it could reasonably attribute to a state ban on abortions after six weeks that took effect in September.
For Maryland high school student Sabrina Thaler, however, the prospect of attending college in a state that bans abortion is unsettling.
Thaler, 16, recalled the question she posed to her high school class during a discussion in May after the decision that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade was leaked.
“What if I go to a college in a state where abortion is banned and I get raped and then I don’t have the option to have an abortion?”
Many Americans say college might not be worth the cost because the economy is rigged in favor of the rich and influential, according to a new poll from USA TODAY and Public Agenda.
Younger people, who historically have made up the majority of the college-going population, are especially dubious of higher education’s value.
“No, you don’t need a bachelor’s degree to get a good job, but your best shot at a good job is a bachelor’s degree,” said one expert.
Steve Bannon, the onetime strategist to Donald Trump who was involved in the former president’s efforts to invalidate his defeat in the 2020 election, has opened discussions with the House January 6 select committee about testifying to the inquiry into the Capitol attack.
The move by Bannon gives the select committee a prime opportunity to gain insight into the inner-workings of Trump’s unlawful push to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win even as it amounts to a final gambit days before he goes to trial for contempt of Congress.
Bannon signalled in an email to the select committee, first obtained by the Guardian, that he was prepared to initiate discussions about a time and place for an interview, after Trump said in a letter he would waive executive privilege if he reached an agreement to testify.
The email broadly reiterated Bannon’s legal defense that he was previously unable to comply with a subpoena from the panel because at the time, in a claim that has been disputed, the former president had asserted executive privilege over his testimony.
But with Trump now willing to waive executive privilege if Bannon and the select committee could secure an arrangement, Bannon was in a position to initiate negotiations about a potential interview, the email said, citing the letter from the former president.
The email specifically said it was Bannon’s preference to testify at a public hearing, but it is understood that Bannon would consider a closed-door, transcribed interview and that he also intends to comply with the document requests in his subpoena from last year.
The executive privilege arguments advanced by Bannon and his lawyers have been suspect, principally because at least some of what the select committee demanded in his subpoena were for matters not related to Trump and therefore not covered by the protection.
And while Bannon has pointed to a letter from Trump attorney Justin Clark as proof that the former president asserted executive privilege, a follow-up email from Clakr showed Trump’s legal team expressly did not think Bannon had “immunity” from the investigation.
Bannon’s lawyer, Robert Costello, also said in an interview with the FBI and the US attorney’s office for Washington DC that he believed ten of the 17 items requested in the subpoena were subject to executive privilege, leaving seven that were not.
The seven remaining items identified by Costello as not protected included discussions he said were protected by attorney-client privilege – though that privilege would have been “broken” since non-lawyers participated and because of things in the public domain, including podcasts.
Since the subpoena compelled Bannon to produce what Costello believed to be both privileged and non-privileged items, Bannon should have produced at the very least the non-privileged materials instead of simply ignoring his subpoena in its entirety.
Bannon has nonetheless argued that executive privilege was at the heart of his original subpoena non-compliance, saying he did not have to be a White House employee – which he was not for January 6 – to be a “close presidential advisor” subject to executive privilege.
He has also argued that while the DC circuit court has said a current president’s waiver for executive privilege overrules a former president’s assertion, Biden never formally waived Trump’s assertion. In fact, the select committee didn’t believe Trump asserted it in the first place.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, January 6 committee member and congresswoman Zoe Lofgren said she anticipated the panel would schedule an interview with Bannon.
“I expect that we will be hearing from him,” Lofgren said. “And there are many questions that we have for him.”
It was not clear on Sunday as to the extent or scope of Bannon’s potential testimony, though he was a witness to several key moments in the illicit effort on 6 January to stop the certification of Biden’s election win.
That would mean Bannon could, in theory, reveal to House investigators about his conversations with Trump ahead of the Capitol attack – Bannon spoke with Trump on the phone the night before – and strategy discussions at the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington.
The Trump “war room” at the Willard played a major role in the former president’s push to stop the certification. Bannon was based there in the days before the attack, alongside Trump lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, widely seen as the architects of that scheme.
Bannon’s offer to testify appears to be a strategic move ahead of his trial for criminal contempt of Congress, scheduled to start on 18 July, that comes after justice department prosecutors charged him for refusing to comply with the select committee’s subpoena last year.
The move to testify to the panel now would not “cure” his contempt since he faces criminal contempt and the prosecution is for the past failure to comply with the subpoena, according to former US attorney Joyce Vance.
But the email offering to testify could have the effect of reinforcing his legal defense that Trump did in fact assert a legitimate executive privilege claim in October 2021, and that he cannot be prosecuted because of that invocation, according to his letter on Saturday.
The offer to testify – and an actual agreement where he appears before the select committee – could also serve to defang the prosecution to some extent, making it a less attractive case for the justice department to pursue and one generally less appealing to jurors.
Regardless of what Trump now says in his letter, and in referring Bannon for prosecution, the select committee has maintained that Trump did not assert executive privilege – and even if he did, it did not cover Bannon, who was out of the Trump White House by 6 January.
The select committee has also said that Bannon was required to respond to the subpoena in some way, for instance by citing executive privilege on a question-by-question basis, and at least responding to questions that had nothing to do with Trump.
Bannon became one of two former Trump advisers charged by the justice department for contempt of Congress. Federal prosecutors also charged Peter Navarro but declined to prosecute the former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the deputy chief, Dan Scavino.
Mr. Bannon’s trial on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress is set for July 18. Each count carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.
It remains to be seen how Mr. Bannon’s new posture will affect the criminal proceeding, and how forthcoming he will be. He could refuse to speak about certain topics, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as some other witnesses have done. But the committee has repeatedly said that it needs to hear from Mr. Bannon and receive the documents it requested from him about plans to overturn the 2020 election.
“We got the letter around midnight from his lawyer saying that he would testify, and we have wanted him to testify,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, told CNN on Sunday. “So the committee, of course, has not yet had a chance to discuss it, but I expect that we will be hearing from him. And there are many questions that we have for him.”
Should Mr. Bannon ultimately appear for an interview, he would give his testimony behind closed doors like hundreds of other witnesses have done, Ms. Lofgren said. The committee has carefully choreographed its public hearings to make a streamlined presentation of its case, and has worked to avoid public sparring sessions with witnesses.
For months, Mr. Bannon has been perhaps the most bombastic and strident potential witness the committee has called to testify. He refused to turn over a single document or sit for a minute of testimony. For his intransigence, the House voted in October to hold Mr. Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress.
But the panel has insisted that Mr. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist and counselor, could help investigators better understand the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, which was meant to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory.
A leaked trove of confidential files has revealed the inside story of how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.
The unprecedented leak to the Guardian of more than 124,000 documents – known as the Uber files – lays bare the ethically questionable practices that fuelled the company’s transformation into one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports.
The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick, who tried to force the cab-hailing service into cities around the world, even if that meant breaching laws and taxi regulations.
During the fierce global backlash, the data shows how Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons.
French taxi drivers protesting against private hire services such as Uber. Photograph: Olivier Coret/Rex/Shutterstock
Leaked messages suggest Uber executives were at the same time under no illusions about the company’s law-breaking, with one executive joking they had become “pirates” and another conceding: “We’re just fucking illegal.”
The cache of files, which span 2013 to 2017, includes more than 83,000 emails, iMessages and WhatsApp messages, including often frank and unvarnished communications between Kalanick and his top team of executives.
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What are the Uber files?
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The Uber files is a global investigation based on a trove of 124,000 documents that were leaked to the Guardian. The data consist of emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the Silicon Valley giant’s most senior executives, as well as memos, presentations, notebooks, briefing papers and invoices.
The leaked records cover 40 countries and span 2013 to 2017, the period in which Uber was aggressively expanding across the world. They reveal how the company broke the law, duped police and regulators, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments across the world.
To facilitate a global investigation in the public interest, the Guardian shared the data with 180 journalists in 29 countries via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The investigation was managed and led by the Guardian with the ICIJ.
In a statement, Uber said: “We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values. Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”
In one exchange, Kalanick dismissed concerns from other executives that sending Uber drivers to a protest in France put them at risk of violence from angry opponents in the taxi industry. “I think it’s worth it,” he shot back. “Violence guarantee[s] success.”
In a statement, Kalanick’s spokesperson said he “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion he was involved in such activity would be completely false.
The leak also contains texts between Kalanick and Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was economy minister, allowing Uber frequent and direct access to him and his staff.
Macron, the French president, appears to have gone to extraordinary lengths to help Uber, even telling the company he had brokered a secret “deal” with its opponents in the French cabinet.
Privately, Uber executives expressed barely disguised disdain for other elected officials who were who were less receptive to the company’s business model.
After the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who was mayor of Hamburg at the time, pushed back against Uber lobbyists and insisted on paying drivers a minimum wage, an executive told colleagues he was “a real comedian”.
When the then US vice-president, Joe Biden, a supporter of Uber at the time, was late to a meeting with the company at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Kalanick texted a colleague: “I’ve had my people let him know that every minute late he is, is one less minute he will have with me.”
After meeting Kalanick, Biden appears to have amended his prepared speech at Davos to refer to a CEO whose company would give millions of workers “freedom to work as many hours as they wish, manage their own lives as they wish”.
The Guardian led a global investigation into the leaked Uber files, sharing the data with media organisations around the world via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). More than 180 journalists at 40 media outlets including Le Monde, Washington Post and the BBC will in the coming days publish a series of investigative reports about the tech giant.
In a statement responding to the leak, Uber admitted to “mistakes and missteps”, but said it had been transformed since 2017 under the leadership of its current chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi.
“We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values,” it said. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”
Kalanick’s spokesperson said Uber’s expansion initiatives were “led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber’s robust legal, policy and compliance groups”.
‘Embrace the chaos’
The leaked documents pull back the curtains on the methods Uber used to lay the foundations for its empire. One of the world’s largest work platforms, Uber is now a $43bn (£36bn) company, making approximately 19m journeys a day.
The files cover Uber’s operations across 40 countries during a period in which the company became a global behemoth, bulldozing its cab-hailing service into many of the cities in which it still operates today.
An Uber car in Moscow. Photograph: Fifg/Alamy
From Moscow to Johannesburg, bankrolled with unprecedented venture capital funding, Uber heavily subsidised journeys, seducing drivers and passengers on to the app with incentives and pricing models that would not be sustainable.
Uber undercut established taxi and cab markets and put pressure on governments to rewrite laws to help pave the way for an app-based, gig-economy model of work that has since proliferated across the world.
In a bid to quell the fierce backlash against the company and win changes to taxi and labour laws, Uber planned to spend an extraordinary $90m in 2016 on lobbying and public relations, one document suggests.
Its strategy often involved going over the heads of city mayors and transport authorities and straight to the seat of power.
In addition to meeting Biden at Davos, Uber executives met face-to-face with Macron, the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and George Osborne, the UK’s chancellor at the time. A note from the meeting portrayed Osborne as a “strong advocate”.
In a statement, Osborne said it was the explicit policy of the government at the time to meet with global tech firms and “persuade them to invest in Britain, and create jobs here”.
While the Davos sitdown with Osborne was declared, the data reveals that six UK Tory cabinet ministers had meetings with Uber that were not disclosed. It is unclear if the meetings should have been declared, exposing confusion around how UK lobbying rules are applied.
Taxis block Whitehall during a protest against a decision to grant Uber a licence to operate in London in 2016. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
The documents indicate Uber was adept at finding unofficial routes to power, applying influence through friends or intermediaries, or seeking out encounters with politicians at which aides and officials were not present.
It enlisted the backing of powerful figures in places such as Russia, Italy and Germany by offering them prized financial stakes in the startup and turning them into “strategic investors”.
And in a bid to shape policy debates, it paid prominent academics hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce research that supported the company’s claims about the benefits of its economic model.
Despite a well-financed and dogged lobbying operation, Uber’s efforts had mixed results. In some places Uber succeeded in persuading governments to rewrite laws, with lasting effects. But elsewhere, the company found itself blocked by entrenched taxi industries, outgunned by local cab-hailing rivals or opposed by leftwing politicians who simply refused to budge.
A demonstrator holds a flare during a Paris protest against Uber. Photograph: François Mori/AP
When faced with opposition, Uber sought to turn it to its advantage, seizing upon it to fuel the narrative its technology was disrupting antiquated transport systems, and urging governments to reform their laws.
As Uber launched across India, Kalanick’s top executive in Asia urged managers to focus on driving growth, even when “fires start to burn”. “Know this is a normal part of Uber’s business,” he said. “Embrace the chaos. It means you’re doing something meaningful.”
Kalanick appeared to put that ethos into practice in January 2016, when Uber’s attempts to upend markets in Europe led to angry protests in Belgium, Spain, Italy and France from taxi drivers who feared for their livelihoods.
Amid taxi strikes and riots in Paris, Kalanick ordered French executives to retaliate by encouraging Uber drivers to stage a counter-protest with mass civil disobedience.
Warned that doing so risked putting Uber drivers at risk of attacks from “extreme right thugs” who had infiltrated the taxi protests and were “spoiling for a fight”, Kalanick appeared to urge his team to press ahead regardless. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no? Agreed that right place and time must be thought out.”
The decision to send Uber drivers into potentially volatile protests, despite the risks, was consistent with what one senior former executive told the Guardian was a strategy of “weaponising” drivers, and exploiting violence against them to “keep the controversy burning”.
It was a playbook that, leaked emails suggest, was repeated in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
When masked men, reported to be angry taxi drivers, turned on Uber drivers with knuckle-dusters and a hammer in Amsterdam in March 2015, Uber staffers sought to turn it to their advantage to win concessions from the Dutch government.
Driver victims were encouraged to file police reports, which were shared with De Telegraaf, the leading Dutch daily newspaper. They “will be published without our fingerprint on the front page tomorrow”, one manager wrote. “We keep the violence narrative going for a few days, before we offer the solution.”
Kalanick’s spokesperson questioned the authenticity of some documents. She said Kalanick “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion that he was involved in such activity would be “completely false”.
Uber’s spokesperson also acknowledged past mistakes in the company’s treatment of drivers but said no one, including Kalanick, wanted violence against Uber drivers. “There is much our former CEO said nearly a decade ago that we would certainly not condone today,” she said. “But one thing we do know and feel strongly about is that no one at Uber has ever been happy about violence against a driver.”
The ‘kill switch’
Uber drivers were undoubtedly the target of vicious assaults and sometimes murders by furious taxi drivers. And the cab-hailing app, in some countries, found itself battling entrenched and monopolised taxi fleets with cosy relationships with city authorities. Uber often characterised its opponents in the regulated taxi markets as operating a “cartel”.
However, privately, Uber executives and staffers appear to have been in little doubt about the often rogue nature of their own operation.
In internal emails, staff referred to Uber’s “other than legal status”, or other forms of active non-compliance with regulations, in countries including Turkey, South Africa, Spain, the Czech Republic, Sweden, France, Germany, and Russia.
One senior executive wrote in an email: “We are not legal in many countries, we should avoid making antagonistic statements.” Commenting on the tactics the company was prepared to deploy to “avoid enforcement”, another executive wrote: “We have officially become pirates.”
Nairi Hourdajian, Uber’s head of global communications, put it even more bluntly in a message to a colleague in 2014, amid efforts to shut the company down in Thailand and India: “Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.” Contacted by the Guardian, Hourdajian declined to comment.
Kalanick’s spokesperson accused reporters of “pressing its false agenda” that he had “directed illegal or improper conduct”.
Uber’s spokesperson said that, when it started, “ridesharing regulations did not exist anywhere in the world” and transport laws were outdated for a smartphone era.
Across the world, police, transport officials and regulatory agencies sought to clamp down on Uber. In some cities, officials downloaded the app and hailed rides so they could crack down on unlicensed taxi journeys, fining Uber drivers and impounding their cars. Uber offices in dozens of countries were repeatedly raided by authorities.
Against this backdrop, Uber developed sophisticated methods to thwart law enforcement. One was known internally at Uber as a “kill switch”. When an Uber office was raided, executives at the company frantically sent out instructions to IT staff to cut off access to the company’s main data systems, preventing authorities from gathering evidence.
The leaked files suggest the technique, signed off by Uber’s lawyers, was deployed at least 12 times during raids in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Hungary and Romania.
Travis Kalanick speaking to students in Mumbai in 2016. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Kalanick’s spokesperson said such “kill switch” protocols were common business practice and not designed to obstruct justice. She said the protocols, which did not delete data, were vetted and approved by Uber’s legal department, and the former Uber CEO was never charged in relation to obstruction of justice or a relate offence.
Uber’s spokesperson said its kill switch software “should never have been used to thwart legitimate regulatory action” and it had stopped using the system in 2017, when Khosrowshahi replaced Kalanick as CEO.
Another executive the leaked files suggest was involved in kill switch protocols was Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, who ran Uber’s operations in western Europe. He now runs Uber Eats, and sits on the company’s 11-strong executive team.
Gore-Coty said in a statement he regretted “some of the tactics used to get regulatory reform for ridesharing in the early days”. Looking back, he said: “I was young and inexperienced and too often took direction from superiors with questionable ethics.”
Politicians now also face questions about whether they took direction from Uber executives.
When a French police official in 2015 appeared to ban one of Uber’s services in Marseille, Mark MacGann, Uber’s chief lobbyist in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, turned to Uber’s ally in the French cabinet.
“I will look at this personally,” Macron texted back. “At this point, let’s stay calm.”
Uber files reporting: Harry Davies, Simon Goodley, Felicity Lawrence, Paul Lewis, Lisa O’Carroll, John Collingridge, Johana Bhuiyan, Sam Cutler, Rob Davies, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Jennifer Rankin, Jon Henley, Rowena Mason, Andrew Roth, Pamela Duncan, Dan Milmo, Mike Safi, David Pegg and Ben Butler.
The House Jan. 6 committee Saturday issued a statement describing the input of an ex-White House lawyer as “reinforcing” alleged misconduct by former President Donald Trump.
The idea that the former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone might have confirmed other witnesses’ damning accounts in his much-anticipated private interview Friday was initially tempered by the possibility that he may have invoked executive privilege, a legal concept intended to allow presidents to speak freely with legal advisers.
Responding to multiple reports that Cipollone had invoked that privilege during his daylong testimony under subpoena, a committee spokesman suggested a different storyline.
“In our interview with Mr. Cipollone, the Committee received critical testimony on nearly every major topic in its investigation, reinforcing key points regarding Donald Trump’s misconduct and providing highly relevant new information that will play a central role in its upcoming hearings,” the statement from House Select Committee spokesman Tim Mulvey read.
It continued: “This includes information demonstrating Donald Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty.”
Trump and his representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Saturday.
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” which aired Sunday, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., a member of the committee, said that Cipollone “claimed privilege on conversations that related to the advice he provided directly to the president or conversations with the president.”
The committee “still got a lot of relevant information from him, and it provides us another perspective on what was happening in the White House in those weeks running up to January 6th that were so critically important,” she said.
Cipollone spoke to the committee about his “concerns” and “reservations” about Trump’s actions, including his unease with the then-president’s rally speech on Jan. 6, 2021, Murphy added.
Mulvey said Cipollone was never guided by the panel to avoid potentially privileged information. His statement suggests that in Cipollone, the committee got another voice to back up some of the vivid testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, assistant to former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
She testified that on Jan. 6, Trump was filled with rage and ordered his Secret Service detail to take him to the Capitol so he could join supporters who would eventually enter the complex and attack police while trying to reach lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence, all participating in certifying Trump’s loss.
She said Secret Service agents in a presidential SUV with Trump refused to take him, and the president lunged for the steering wheel from behind the front seats and then tried to grab the throat of one agent, claims Trump has denied.
She also testified that Trump showed no sympathy for Pence as the rioters were getting potentially life-threateningly close to the vice president and Trump allegedly had the time and the power to call them off. The former president has denied this as well.
On Saturday Mulvey said in the committee’s statement that Cipollone “corroborated key elements of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.”
The Jan. 6 committee will resume with fact finding during a hearing Tuesday.
Sonia Glenn from Fairfax, Virginia wears a Statue of Liberty costume at the rally in Lafayette Square park before the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., to protest the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
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Sonia Glenn from Fairfax, Virginia wears a Statue of Liberty costume at the rally in Lafayette Square park before the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., to protest the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The Women’s March protesters said they want the White House to do more to support abortion rights around the country.
At least nine states have banned abortion so far and a dozen more states are expected to prohibit or restrict the procedure in the coming weeks.
Here’s a look at Saturday’s protest in Washington, D.C.
Ashley Taylor, from Augusta, Ga., with yellow shirt and green bandana around her neck, chants at the rally.
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Ashley Taylor, from Augusta, Ga., with yellow shirt and green bandana around her neck, chants at the rally.
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The Women’s March made its way to the White House.
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The Women’s March made its way to the White House.
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Demonstrators tie their green bandanas to the White House fence.
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After tying bandanas to the fence, they staged a sit-in in front of the White House.
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Demonstrators embrace in front of the White House as the march arrives.
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Renea Delong from Bowling Green, Ky., stands in front of the White House as the march arrives. “I came here in hopes of meeting with Sen. Rand Paul to talk about the choices that women should have,” Delong said.
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Participants in the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., assemble in Lafayette Square park before the march.
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A Women’s March participant, right, confronts an anti-abortion protester, left, along the route.
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A demonstrator listens at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
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Protesters shout at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
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Protesters gather at a sit-in in front of the White House.
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The Women’s March proceeded to the White House through Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Japan’s ruling party has won a comfortable victory in elections overshadowed by the assassination of the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
Exit polls showed that the Liberal Democratic party (LDP), which Abe led until he resigned in 2020, had secured more than half the 125 seats being contested in the 248-seat upper house.
The LDP and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, were projected to win more than 63 seats, according to a Kyodo news agency exit poll. The public broadcaster NHK said the parties would win between 69 and 83 seats.
The coalition needed to secure 55 seats to retain their majority in the upper house – the less powerful chamber in Japan’s parliament.
“It’s significant we were able to pull this election together at a time violence was shaking the foundations of the election,” the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, an Abe protege, said after the exit poll.
The party had expected to perform well before Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was shot dead by a gunman as he delivered a campaign speech in the western city of Nara on Friday morning.
While the official result has yet to be declared, experts said Abe’s violent death, at 67, could boost turnout and support for his party.
A mourner on Sunday at the entrance of the Liberal Democratic party headquarters in Tokyo. Photograph: Toru Hanai/EPA
Kei Sato, the LDP candidate Abe had been campaigning for when he was killed, said: “Former prime minister Abe, who came to support me, was shot in an act of terrorism in the midst of our election campaign.
“But we continued our campaign in the belief that we must not cave in to terrorism or fear it – we must overcome it. I hope to travel to Tokyo tomorrow to tell former Prime Minister Abe himself of this victory,” added Sato, who was projected to win his seat.
Japanese government officials had urged people to vote to demonstrate the country’s refusal to be intimidated by violence, while newspaper editorials blasted Abe’s killing, carried out with a homemade shotgun, as an attack on democracy.
“We must never allow violence to suppress speech during elections, which are the foundation of democracy,” Kishida, said during a campaign speech on the eve of the vote.
The run-up to the election had been dominated by rising prices, energy shortages and security threats, including LDP plans to double defence spending to at least 2% of GDP in the face of a nuclear-armed North Korea and more assertive China.
The vote was being seen as a referendum on Kishida’s first 10 months in office; control of the government, which is decided in the lower house, was not at stake.
Tetsuya Yamagami is escorted by police officers as he is taken to prosecutors in Nara. Photograph: KYODO/Reuters
The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, has told police that he had originally intended to target the leader of a religious group to which his mother had made a “huge donation” that led to her bankruptcy. He reportedly admitted he had also wanted to kill Abe, whom he accused of having ties to the group.
Japanese newspaper and broadcasters have not named the organisation, but some Japanese media reports identified the group as the Unification Church, whose members are commonly derided as “Moonies”.
NHK said Yamagami had spent months planning the attack, having started by building explosives before deciding to construct “multiple” guns using skills he had learned during his three years in the maritime self-defence force.
Two days after Abe was gunned down in front of a railway station while addressing a small crowd, there was incredulity over how Yamagami, a 41-year-old resident of Nara, had managed to move freely behind Abe and fire two shots from close range before being wrestled to the ground by security officials.
On Saturday, the head of the Nara prefectural police force admitted security arrangements had been flawed and promised a thorough investigation into the lapse.
“I believe it is undeniable that there were problems with the guarding and safety measures for former prime minister Abe,” Tomoaki Onizuka told reporters.
“In all the years since I became a police officer in 1995 … there is no greater remorse, no bigger regret than this.”
Police numbers were noticeably high when Kishida appeared at a campaign event in a city south-west of Tokyo on Saturday, with attendees required to pass through a metal detection scanner – an unusual security measure in Japan.
The LDP’s victory has cleared the path for a “golden” three years in which Kishida, who has promised to build a “new capitalism”, will not have to face an election.
Some analysts said a particularly strong showing could even spur him to revise Japan’s “pacifist” constitution – a controversial measure that Abe, its most vocal champion, never realised due to lack of public support.
“In the months ahead, the government is certain to seek to strengthen domestic security,” said James Brady, a Japan analyst at the US-based Teneo consultancy. “By undermining the public’s general sense of safety and order, the event could also add further momentum to those key Abe causes like defence build-up and constitutional revision.”
Miu Komuro, who voted for the LDP in an eastern Tokyo constituency, said: “I wanted to vote for a party that has been stably in power.”
But Yuko Takeuchi, 52, a nurse in Tokyo who voted for the Japanese Communist party, said: “Of course, I am very sorry for his death, but this election must be separated from that.”
Attention will soon turn to Abe’s funeral, which will be held for family and close colleagues only at Zojoji temple in central Tokyo on Tuesday following a wake the previous night. As yet, no plans have been announced for a public memorial.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will visit Japan on Monday to offer his condolences, the state department said.
“The alliance between Japan and the United States has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for decades,” Blinken said Saturday after G20 talks in Bali.
“Prime Minister Abe really brought that partnership to new heights. The friendship between the Japanese and American people is likewise unshakable. So we’re standing with the people of Japan, with the prime minister’s family, in the aftermath of a truly, truly appalling act of violence.”
COLOMBO, July 10 (Reuters) – Leaders of Sri Lanka’s protest movement said on Sunday they would occupy the residences of the president and prime minister until they finally quit office, the day after the two men agreed to resign leaving the country in political limbo.
Thousands of protesters stormed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s home and office and the prime minister’s official residence on Saturday, as demonstrations over their inability to overcome a devastating economic crisis erupted into violence.
Rajapaksa will quit on July 13, while Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also said he would step down to allow an all-party interim government to take over, according to the speaker of parliament. read more
“The president has to resign, the prime minister has to resign and the government has to go,” playwright Ruwanthie de Chickera told a news conference at the main protest site in Colombo.
Flanked by other leaders helping coordinate the movement against the government, she said the crowds would not move out of the official residences of the president and prime minister until then.
Though calm had returned to the streets of Colombo on Sunday, throughout the day curious Sri Lankans roamed through the ransacked presidential palace. Members of the security forces, some with assault rifles, stood outside the compound but did not stop people from going in.
“I’ve never seen a place like this in my life,” 61-year-old handkerchief seller B.M. Chandrawathi, accompanied by her daughter and grandchildren, told Reuters as she tried out a plush sofa in a first-floor bedroom.
“They enjoyed super luxury while we suffered. We were hoodwinked. I wanted my kids and grandkids to see the luxurious lifestyles they were enjoying.”
Nearby, a group of young men lounged on a four-poster bed and others jostled for turns on a treadmill set up in front of large windows overlooking manicured lawns.
ECONOMIC CRISIS
The political chaos could complicate efforts to pull Sri Lanka out of its worst economic crisis in seven decades, triggered by a severe shortage of foreign currency that has stalled imports of essentials such as fuel, food and medicines.
The financial meltdown developed after the COVID-19 pandemic hammered the tourism-reliant economy and slashed remittances from overseas workers.
It has been compounded by large and growing government debt, rising oil prices and a seven-month ban on importing chemical fertilisers last year that devastated agriculture.
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A demonstrator walks in the garden at the Prime Minister’s residence on the following day after demonstrators entered the building, amid the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka July 10, 2022. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte
Petrol has been severely rationed and long lines have formed in front of shops selling cooking gas. The government has asked people to work from home and closed schools in an effort to conserve fuel. Headline inflation in the country of 22 million hit 54.6% last month, and the central bank has warned that it could rise to 70% in the coming months.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said any government in power would have to “work quickly to try to identify and implement solutions that will bring back the prospect of long-term economic stability, address the Sri Lankan people’s discontent, which is so powerful and palpable”.
“We would urge the Sri Lankan parliament to approach this with a commitment to the betterment of the country, not any one political party,” he said at a news conference in Bangkok.
India, Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour which has provided support of about $3.8 billion during the crisis, said it was watching events closely.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has been in talks with the government for a possible $3 billion bailout, also said it was monitoring events closely.
“We hope for a resolution of the current situation that will allow for resumption of our dialogue on an IMF-supported programme,” the global lender said in a statement. read more
WHERE IS PRESIDENT RAJAPAKSA?
Rajapaksa has not been seen in public since Friday has not directly said anything about resigning. Wickremesinghe’s office said he would also quit, although neither he nor Rajapaksa could be contacted.
Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said on Saturday Rajapaksa’s decision to step down was taken “to ensure a peaceful handover of power”.
Constitutional experts say if the president and prime minister resign, the next step would be for the speaker to be appointed as acting president and for parliament to vote for a new president within 30 days to complete Rajapaksa’s term.
Frustration with the economic crisis boiled over on Saturday when a huge crowd of protesters surged passed armed guards into the colonial-era presidential palace and took it over. Furniture and artefacts were smashed, and some took the opportunity to frolic in its swimming pool.
They then moved on to the president’s office and the prime minister’s official residence. Late in the evening, protesters set fire to the private home of Wickremesinghe.
Neither Rajapaksa nor Wickremesinghe were in their residences when the buildings were attacked.
About 45 people were brought injured into a main hospital on Saturday, a hospital official said, but there were no reports of deaths in the otherwise peaceful takeovers.
At least 14 people were killed and nine more injured in a shooting at a bar in the South African township of Soweto on Sunday, local authorities said.
The incident unfolded shortly after midnight, when a group of men armed with rifles and 9-millimeter pistols entered the bar in the Nomzamo informal settlement near Johannesburg and started shooting “randomly” at the patrons, Gauteng Police said in a statement.
Police said 23 people were shot in the establishment – 12 died at the scene and 11 were rushed to a nearby hospital with injuries. Two more people were declared dead at the hospital.
The police have opened investigations into 14 cases of murder and nine cases of attempted murder, according to the statement.
“It’s a bad scene. When you see the bodies [that] are piled up, you can see that every one of those people [was] struggling to get out of the tavern,” Gauteng Police Commissioner Elias Mawela told South African news channel ENCA.
Mawela said the police are yet to determine details on the motive or why the people at the tavern were targeted.
“I have no doubt that with the cooperation of the community here, we will be able to crack this case,” Mawela added.
The police called on witnesses to come forward, saying the suspects were still on the run.
The massacre in Soweto comes as the country still mourns the deaths of 22 young people – some of them as young as 13 – who died in as of yet unexplained circumstances at a tavern in East London last month.
CHASIV YAR/KYIV, Ukraine, July 10 (Reuters) – At least 15 people were killed and two dozen more are feared trapped after Russian Uragan rockets hit a five-storey apartment block in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, local officials said on Sunday as rescuers picked their way through rubble.
Ukraine also reported clashes with Russian troops on fronts in the east and south, while Moscow said its forces struck Ukrainian army hangars storing U.S.-produced M777 howitzers, a type of artillery, near Kostyantynivka in Donetsk region. read more
Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the strike on the apartment building took place on Saturday evening in the town of Chasiv Yar. The regional emergency service gave the death toll at 15 on Sunday afternoon, adding that 24 more people could still be under the rubble. read more
“We ran to the basement, there were three hits, the first somewhere in the kitchen,” said a local resident who gave her name as Ludmila, speaking as rescuers removed a body in a white sheet and cleared rubble using a crane as well as their hands.
“The second, I do not even remember, there was lightning, we ran towards the second entrance and then straight into the basement. We sat there all night until this morning.”
Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram that rescuers in Chasiv Yar had cleared nearly 99 tonnes of rubble from the site of the collapsed apartment block, and that rescue operations were still going on as of 4 p.m. local time (1300 GMT).
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in a Telegram post that the strike was “another terrorist attack”, and that Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism as a result.
Russia, which says it is conducting a “special military operation” to demilitarise Ukraine, denies deliberately attacking civilians.
Luhansk and Donetsk provinces comprise the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial region that has become Europe’s biggest battlefield for generations. Russia wants to wrest control of the Donbas on behalf of the separatists that it supports.
Moscow says ejecting the Ukrainian military from the region is central to its operation to ensure its own security, an offensive that has lasted for more than four months and which the West calls an unprovoked war.
AMERICAN HOWITZERS
Russian forces attacked Ukrainian positions near the town of Sloviansk in Donetsk but were forced to withdraw, Ukraine’s military said, adding that Russian forces had launched a cruise missile attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv from their side of the border. It gave no details of damage or casualties.
Luhansk region Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Russian forces were gathering in the area of the village of Bilohorivka, about 50 km (30 miles) east of Sloviansk.
“The enemy is … shelling the surrounding settlements, carrying out air strikes, but it is still unable to quickly occupy the entire Luhansk region,” he said on Telegram.
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A general view of a building damaged after a missile strike, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at a location given as Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, in this handout image released July 10, 2022. Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko/Handout via REUTERS
Russia claimed control over all of Luhansk province last weekend.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had destroyed two hangars near the Donetsk town of Kostyantynivka holding the U.S.-made M777 howitzers, which it said had been used to shell residential areas of Donetsk.
Russian news agencies cited separatist officials as saying on Sunday that Ukraine’s military had been shelling Donetsk using NATO-standard 155-mm artillery since the morning, wounding two residents.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield accounts.
Ukrainian military spokespeople were not immediately available for comment.
Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw.
In the south, Ukrainian forces fired missiles and artillery at Russian positions including ammunition depots in the Chornobaivka area, Ukraine’s military command said.
LAVROV WALKS OUT
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a trip to Asia, urged the international community to join forces to condemn Russian aggression. He said he had raised concerns with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, over Beijing’s alignment with Moscow. read more
The two met for more than five hours on the sidelines of a gathering of G20 foreign ministers on the Indonesian island of Bali. Russia’s Sergei Lavrov walked out of a meeting there on Friday, denouncing the West for “frenzied criticism”.
Shortly before the Russian invasion, Beijing and Moscow announced a “no limits” partnership, although U.S. officials have said they have not seen China evade U.S.-led sanctions on Russia or provide it with military equipment.
Zelenskiy dismissed several of Ukraine’s senior envoys abroad on Saturday, saying it was part of “normal diplomatic practice”. He said he would appoint new ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary. read more
Zelenskiy has urged his diplomats to drum up international support and high-end weapons to slow Russia’s advance.
Ukraine suffered a diplomatic setback on Saturday, when Canada said it would return a repaired turbine that Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom used to supply natural gas to Germany. Ukraine had argued that a return would violate sanctions on Russia. read more
“OK, copy. So like a repeat of yesterday,” the dispatcher reponded.
“That’s exactly what I’m getting that,” the pilot said. “So if we keep seeing that, we might have to knock it off. I don’t want to take a chance of busting a window on an airplane or hurting an aircraft for this.”
#WashburnFire interesting little chat. Near miss with a tree branch and Air Attack and Tanker 103. As civilians, we just see planes dropping loads. But listen to this choreography that goes on behind the scenes of fire. pic.twitter.com/Dn2CcTZ7qV
Wildfires are capable of creating their own weather, sometimes referred to as a firestorm. As the fire burns hot and intense at the ground level, heat rises rapidly and creates a vacuum. Air rushes in to fill that vacuum, and the resulting updraft is powerful enough to carry debris, form a firenado and make its own lightning.
“This was just confirmed to me directly by an airborne eyewitness!” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted. “Large debris from sequoia trees (including at least one branch >2 ft long) have been lofted hundreds or more feet vertically by #WashburnFire in Yosemite.”
The Washburn Fire burns in Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, Calif., on Friday, July 8, 2022.Noah Berger/AP
As of Sunday morning, the Washburn Fire is at 1,591 acres with no containment. Evacuation orders remain in effect for Wawona, the Mariposa Grove and Wawona Campground, but most of Yosemite National Park is still open. Officials warned visitors to expect delays of up to two hours at entrances in other parts of the park, as the southern entrance is closed and road closures are in place. Visitors are likely to see “smoky conditions and poor air quality” as the fire spreads.
The wildfire started on Thursday afternoon near the Washburn Trail in the southern end of the park. You can see the latest incident reports from Yosemite National Park here. A map being updated by the National Park Service shows where the Washburn Fire is burning within the borders of Yosemite:
“The fire is burning in difficult terrain with continuous heavy fuels in and around the fire,” Yosemire Fire wrote in its latest incident report. “Significant tree mortality from 2013-2015 has left significant dead standing and dead fallen fuels. This also presents significant safety hazards to firefighters. Fire scars from past fires located approximately one to three miles from the current fire perimeter will assist firefighters in slowing the growth of the fire. Firefighters will continue going direct when safe and will scout and prepare indirect lines.”
Temperatures are high in the region this weekend, with a warming trend in the forecast; a high of 86 is expected today and 91 on Monday.
According to the park service, the fire started around 2 p.m. Thursday near the Washburn Trail. One of the most popular visitor attractions in Yosemite National Park, Mariposa Grove has more than 500 mature giant sequoias. Giant sequoias are the largest trees in the world, and the grove holds trees that may be be thousands of years old. One of the best-known trees, the towering Grizzly Giant, is estimated to be 2,700 years old. Mariposa Grove was previously closed for three years, from 2015 to 2018, for a $40 million restoration project.
A firefighter protects a sequoia tree as the Washburn Fire burns in Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, Calif., on Friday, July 8, 2022.Noah Berger/AP
In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Valley Grant Act into law, protecting the land, including Mariposa Grove, for the public and future generations. The bill would inspire what would become the National Park System.
The Red Cross announced at 5 p.m. on Saturday that it has closed the evacuation site at 5089 Cole Road in Mariposa, after “caring for 10 displaced residents and tourists.” The shelter is currently in standby status. About 700 people have evacuated from areas affected by the fire, the Fresno Bee reported. An evacuation map can be found here.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. You can check AlertWildfire’s live cameras to monitor the progress of the fire.
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1of8A firefighter protects a sequoia tree as the Washburn Fire burns in Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, Calif., on Friday, July 8, 2022.Noah Berger/APShow MoreShow Less2of8Viewed from Oakhurst in Madera County, Calif., a plume rises from the Washburn Fire burning in Yosemite National Park on Friday, July 8, 2022.Noah Berger/APShow MoreShow Less3of84of8In this image released by the National Park Service, smoke from the Washburn Fire rises near the lower portion of the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, Calif., Thursday, July 7, 2022. Part of Yosemite National Park has been closed as a wildfire quintupled in size near a grove of California’s famous giant sequoia trees, officials said. (National Park Service via AP)Show MoreShow Less5of8
A view of the Washburn Fire, on Friday, July 8, 2022, currently burning in Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove, an area that is well-known as the largest grove of giant Redwoods in the park.
The police chief of the prefecture where Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated said he “take[s] responsibility” for security failures that resulted in the killing.
At a press conference on Saturday, Nara Prefectural Police Chief Tomoaki Onizuka said that Abe’s security followed his own approved plan.
“As the regional police chief responsible for safety and security of the region, I took necessary steps and built structures for security and guarding,” he said. “I believe it is undeniable that there were problems with the guarding and safety measures for former prime minister Abe.”
“After the first report of the incident came at 11:30 a.m., and the situation was revealed, it was the height of the guilt and regret I’ve felt in my 27 years in law enforcement,” he said. “I feel the weight of my responsibility.”
JAPAN-ABE/
A vehicle believed to be carrying the body of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives at his residence in Tokyo, Japan.
Abe, 67, was pronounced dead at at 5:03 p.m. local time on Friday, just over five hours after he was shot while delivering a campaign speech in front of a small crowd.
His alleged killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, used a homemade firearm in the attack and was taken into custody at the scene. Police are still investigating the motive for the killing.
The assassination sent shockwaves around the world given the attack happened in broad daylight in a country with one of the world’s lowest rates of gun related violence.
Japan’s National Police Agency has announced it will review security arrangements that were in place, according to NHK.
Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie Abe arrive on Air Force One at the Palm Beach International airport in 2017.
Abe’s body arrived back in Tokyo Saturday afternoon with his widow Akie Abe traveling with her husband’s body to their home. The car was reportedly met by throngs of people lining the streets near Abe’s home.
A funeral will be held over Monday and Tuesday, Abe’s office told CNN. A wake will be held on Monday, followed by a memorial service on Tuesday.
Japanese voters will go to the polls on Sunday despite Abe’s assassination.
A car carrying the body of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives at his home in Tokyo on Saturday, July 9. (Shiho Fukada for CNN)
The body of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Tokyo on Saturday after he was assassinated in the city of Nara. As Japan reels from the shocking shooting, here’s what we know so far.
Funeral arrangements for Abe: The funeral for Abe will be held over Monday and Tuesday, his office told CNN, with a wake will be held on Monday, followed by a memorial service on Tuesday. The funeral will be hosted by his widow Akie Abe in a temple in Tokyo, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported.
Police will review security: Japan’s National Police Agency said it will review security arrangements put in place before Friday’s shooting, according to NHK. Security was being handled by Nara prefectural police, which drew up a security plan for the former prime minister while he was in the city.
Nara Prefectural Police Chief Tomoaki Onizuka said he “can’t deny there were problems” with Abe’s security. In a press conference on Saturday, he said that authorities are looking into what went wrong in the lead-up to the former prime minister being shot. He added that he “take[s] responsibility” for the security failure that resulted in Abe’s killing.
Suspect used homemade gun: The suspect in Abe’s assassination said the weapon he used was homemade, Nara Nishi police told a news conference on Friday. Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, admitted to shooting Abe, police said. Yamagami, who is unemployed, told investigators he holds hatred toward a certain group that he thought Abe was linked to. Police have not named the group.
Yamagami made multiple types of guns with iron pipes that were wrapped in adhesive tape, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported, citing the police. The police found guns with three, five and six iron pipes as barrels. The suspect inserted bullets into the pipe of his homemade gun, parts for which he’d purchased online, NHK reported, citing police. Police believe the suspect used the strongest weapon he made in the assassination, NHK added.
Elections to take place Sunday: Japanese voters will go to the polls on Sunday despite the assassination of Abe just two days before elections were due to be held. At the time of the shooting, Abe was speaking in support of ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidates ahead of the election.
Colombo, Sri Lanka — President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has agreed to resign in the coming days, the speaker of Sri Lanka’s Parliament said on a tumultuous Saturday that also saw the prime minister say he would step down and the storming of both leaders’ residences by protesters angry over the nation’s severe economic crisis.
Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said in a televised statement that he informed Rajapaksa that parliamentary leaders had met and decided to request he leave office, and the president agreed. However Rajapaksa will remain until Wednesday to ensure a smooth transfer of power, Abeywardena added.
“He asked me to inform the country that he will make his resignation on Wednesday the 13th because there is a need to hand over power peacefully,” Abeywardena said.
Protesters storm in at the Sri Lankan president’s official residence, in Colombo, Sri Lanka , Saturday, July, 9, 2022. Protesters have broken into the Sri Lankan prime minister’s private residence and set it on fire, hours after he said he would resign when a new government is formed over a worsening economic crisis. It was the biggest day of demonstrations that also saw crowds storming the president’s home and office.
Eranga Jayawardena / AP
“Therefore there is no need for further disturbances in the country and I urge everyone for the sake of the country to maintain peace to enable a smooth transition,” the speaker continued.
Opposition lawmaker Rauff Hakeem said a consensus was reached for the speaker of Parliament to take over as temporary president and work on an interim government.
The announcement of the president’s resignation came hours after protesters swarmed into his fortified residence in Colombo. Video images showed jubilant crowds taking a dip in the garden pool. Some people lay on the home’s beds, while others made tea and issued statements from a conference room demanding the departure of both Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
It was not clear if Rajapaksa was there at the time, and government spokesman Mohan Samaranayake said he had no information about the president’s movements.
Protesters also broke into the prime minister’s private residence and set it on fire, Wickremesinghe’s office said. It wasn’t immediately clear if he was there when the incursion happened.
Hours earlier Wickremesinghe had announced his own impending resignation, amid calls for him to quit. But he said he will not step down until a new government is formed, angering protesters who demanded his immediate departure.
A man picks up a tear gas canister to throw it away after police fired it to disperse the protesters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Saturday, July 9, 2022. Sri Lanka’s prime minister agreed to resign on Saturday after party leaders in Parliament demanded both he and the embattled president step down on the day protesters stormed the president’s residence and office in a fury over a worsening economic crisis.
Amitha Thennakoon / AP
“Today in this country we have a fuel crisis, a food shortage, we have the head of the World Food Program coming here and we have several matters to discuss with the IMF,” Wickremesinghe said.. “Therefore, if this government leaves there should be another government.”
Wickremesinghe said he suggested to the president to have an all-party government, but didn’t say anything about Rajapaksa’s whereabouts. Opposition parties in Parliament were discussing the formation of a new government.
Rajapaksa appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister in May in the hope that the career politician would use his diplomacy and contacts to resuscitate a collapsed economy. But people’s patience wore thin as shortages of fuel, medicine and cooking gas only increased and oil reserves ran dry.
The country is relying on aid from India and other nations as leaders try to negotiate a bailout with the International Monetary Fund.
Months of demonstrations have all but dismantled the Rajapaksa political dynasty, which has ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades but is accused by protesters of dragging the country into chaos through poor management and alleged corruption. The president’s older brother resigned as prime minister in May after violent protests saw him seek safety at a naval base.
Thousands of protesters entered the capital from the suburbs Saturday after police lifted an overnight curfew denounced as illegal by lawyers and opposition politicians. With fuel supplies scarce, many crowded onto buses and trains while others made their way on bicycles and on foot.
At the president’s seaside office, security personnel tried in vain to stop protesters who pushed through fences to run across the lawns and inside the colonial-era building.
A man throws back a tear gas shell after it was fired by police to disperse the protesters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Saturday, July 9, 2022. Sri Lankan protesters demanding that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign forced their way into his official residence on Saturday.
Amitha Thennakoon / AP
At least 34 people including two police officers were hurt in scuffles. Two of the injured were in critical condition, while others sustained minor injuries, according to an official at the Colombo National Hospital who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Privately owned Sirasa Television reported that at least six of its workers, including four reporters, were hospitalized after being beaten by police while covering the protest at the prime minister’s home.
Sri Lanka Medical Council, the country’s top professional body, warned that hospitals were running with minimum resources and would not be able to handle any mass casualties from the unrest.
Protest and religious leaders said Rajapaksa has lost his mandate and it is time for him to go.
“His claim that he was voted in by the Sinhala Buddhists is not valid now,” said Ven. Omalpe Sobitha, a prominent Buddhist leader. He urged Parliament to convene immediately to select an interim president.
Wickremesinghe said last month that the country’s economy had collapsed and that negotiations with the IMF were complex because Sri Lanka was now a bankrupt state.
Sri Lanka announced in April that it was suspending repayment of foreign loans due to a foreign currency shortage. Its total foreign debt amounts to $51 billion, of which it must repay $28 billion by the end of 2027.
U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chung on Friday asked people to protest peacefully and called for the military and police “to grant peaceful protesters the space and security to do so.”
“Chaos & force will not fix the economy or bring the political stability that Sri Lankans need right now,” Chung tweeted.
The Women’s March organization rallied on the streets of the nation’s capital Saturday to “fight for abortion rights” as nearly two dozen states move to ban the procedure following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade two weeks ago.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Franklin Square Saturday morning before heading to the White House in the afternoon.
The rally aims to pressure President Joe Biden and his administration to declare a national public health emergency on the issue and take executive action to protect abortion rights, according to the Women’s March.
The demonstration came a day after Biden signed an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to boost access to abortion pills and protect access to emergency medical care and family planning services, including various types of contraception, the White House said in a news release.
Abortion rights activists protest outside the White House after tying green flags to the fence during a rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.Jose Luis Magana / APAn abortion rights demonstrator shouts during a protest in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images
The order also seeks to protect patients’ privacy and access to accurate information as well as promote the safety and security of patients, providers and clinics, the White House said.
“Yesterday was a good first step, but it’s just that, a first step,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the Women’s March executive director, before a riled-up crowd of protesters Saturday. “We know there are limits to President Biden’s authority, but we want him to push that authority to the limit.”
An emergency declaration from Biden can unlock additional funds and resources to help local governments meet the demand for reproductive health services, according to the Women’s March. It can also open the door for the federal government to leverage additional resources to curb the negative impact of abortion bans in certain states.
So far, Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida have restricted access to abortions but have not banned the procedure. Eight states have pending abortion bans that could go into effect later in the year.
Lawmakers in Pennsylvania, one of the 21 states where abortion is still legal, took the first step to amend the state constitution Friday, giving voters the choice to declare whether abortion should be a considered a constitutional right as early as next year.
Against this background, abortion rights advocates in Washington have stepped up their efforts to press the Biden administration on abortion rights.
Instead of a mass march similar to the one organized in May following the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe, organizers of the Women’s March have described Saturday’s demonstrations as “targeted civil disobedience,” even hosting trainings for attendees ahead of the event in response to the increased likelihood of arrests.
Abortion rights demonstrators gather in Franklin Square Park in Washington, D.C. on Saturday before marching towards the White House to pressure on the Biden administration to protect abortion rights.Gemunu Amarasinghe / AP
Hannah Warren traveled from New Jersey to take part in the demonstration Saturday. She joined a training session Friday night before joining crowds in front of the White House Saturday.
After demonstrators made it to the White House amid rain, with many wearing green bandanas, they started chanting “bans off our bodies” and “stand up Joe Biden.”
A sit-in that lasted about 45 minutes was also set up directly in front of the White House fence.
No arrests had been reported as of early Saturday afternoon.
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