Britain’s parliament has for the second time rejected Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to hold early elections in an attempt to break the Brexit deadlock.
Johnson had lobbied for snap elections on October 15 in an effort to win a parliamentary majority to approve his Brexit plans ahead of an EU summit of the continent’s leaders.
Following Tuesday’s vote, Johnson carried out his controversial suspension of parliament for five weeks, until the queen gives her annual address to parliament outlining the government’s legislative plans for the upcoming year.
Parliament’s rejection of a new election came hours after Britain’s Queen Elizabeth gave her approval to legislation seeking to block Johnson from carrying out a no-deal Brexit, his plan to take the country out of the European Union on October 31 without spelling out the terms of the split.
Johnson insisted Monday that Brexit would take place in October despite the new law, which was passed by parliament last week, but did not say how he would accomplish that.
The prime minister has few options left to carry out Brexit by the end of October, including persuading EU leaders to reach a new deal at the October summit or convincing lawmakers to back no deal.
In another sign of acrimony, parliament members Monday passed a motion demanding the government publish all documents relating to its efforts to prepare for a “no deal” Brexit.
Before Johnson took office in July, parliament three times rejected Brexit plans advanced by former Prime Minister Teresa May. Lawmakers in the House of Commons, however, have been unable to reach an agreement on British trade practices with the EU after it leaves the 28-nation bloc and how to deal with cross-border passage between Britain’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.
Johnson’s no-deal Brexit plans have been opposed by a majority of parliamentarians, including 21 Conservative lawmakers, among them Winston Churchill’s grandson, who worked to thwart the Tory prime minister. Johnson booted them from the Conservative party.
Get out the tiaras and the best china. Hit British television series Downton Abbey is about to arrive on the big screen and the makers are feeling uncharacteristically nervous.
Driven by fan demand, the aristocratic family and their servants return with a movie set around a royal visit to the vast Grantham country home.
“When something’s been a big, big hit on television and you make a movie, there is a kind of onus that the movie should satisfy those people who loved the show. … I think I was aware of that and conscious of it,” creator Julian Fellowes, who wrote the screenplay for the Downton Abbey movie, told Reuters at the world premiere Monday.
Most of the original cast, including Hugh Bonneville (Lord Grantham), Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) Jim Carter (butler Mr. Carson) and Maggie Smith as the crusty Dowager Countess, reprised their roles for the movie, which opens in much of Europe on Sept. 13 and in the United States on Sept. 20.
The television series, set in the early 20th century, ran from 2011-2015 and won numerous awards for its portrayal of the quintessentially British stiff upper lip.
Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Lady Grantham, said Monday she was particularly nervous about making the movie “because I didn’t want to destroy the affection that people have for the show.”
Carter said he hoped the movie lived up to the expectations of fans. “It’s been driven by the fans really, this film. In the three years since the TV series finished, every time we talk to someone it’s always been, ‘Is it going to be a film?'”
The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee said on Monday it will consider steps this week to formalize an investigation that could lead to the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The panel, which hopes to decide whether to recommend Trump’s impeachment to the full House by year-end, will meet on Thursday to consider a resolution that Democratic panel aides said would better align the inquiry with formal ones of the past.
House Democrats have broadly ramped up investigation of Trump as they returned from summer recess on Monday and unveiled an inquiry into reports that he pressured Ukraine’s government into assisting his re-election campaign.
The measure to be considered at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on Thursday would authorize panel Chairman Jerrold Nadler to designate committee and subcommittee hearings as impeachment proceedings.
It would also allow for aggressive questioning of hearing witnesses by committee attorneys, set procedures for reviewing grand jury material and allow the White House to respond in writing to evidence and testimony.
“Hopefully, it enables us to move more quickly and more effectively,” Nadler told reporters. “We are examining the various malfeasances of the president with a view toward the possibility of recommending articles of impeachment.”
Only two American presidents have been impeached by the House: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999. Neither was convicted by the Senate, which is required to remove a president.
Former President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against him, but before the full House voted on the matter.
An impeachment resolution against Trump was referred to the judiciary committee in February, three months after Democrats won control of the House in November 2018. It launched an oversight probe of Trump’s presidency in March and has since rebranded it as an impeachment investigation.
But the approach has been criticized by Republicans for avoiding a precedent from the Nixon and Clinton eras, when formal impeachment inquiries were authorized by the full House.
This time, Democrats have steered clear of a House vote that could prove risky for Democratic freshmen from swing districts, where impeachment is unpopular with many voters.
“Judiciary Democrats are trying to pull a fast one on Americans,” Representative Doug Collins, the panel’s top Republican, said in a message on Twitter.
At least 134 House Democrats support an impeachment inquiry, a Reuters head count shows. While that is a majority of the party caucus, the number is well below the 218 votes needed for the House to approve a resolution.
A Democratic aide said the new steps follow procedures used in previous impeachments. But the resolution would not go to the full House for a vote.
For much of the year, the panel has focused on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including instances of Trump behavior that Democrats say provide evidence he obstructed justice by trying to impede Mueller’s inquiry.
Nadler has since broadened the investigation to other kinds of potential misconduct, including accusations that Trump has improperly mixed his business interests with his role as president, dangled pardons to encourage official misconduct and paid money during the 2016 campaign to silence women claiming to have had affairs with him.
The panel has also sued in federal court to gain access to Mueller’s grand jury evidence and to compel former White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify.
If the committee approves the new resolution on Thursday, the more aggressive questioning format would be in place for a Sept. 17 hearing where Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is scheduled to testify, along with former Trump White House aides Rob Porter and Rick Dearborn.
Democrats want to question the three men about an episode described by Mueller, in which Trump allegedly tried to pressure former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to redirect the Russia probe away from his 2016 presidential campaign.
But it is not clear whether the White House could seek to stonewall the hearing by directing Porter and Dearborn not to testify.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, and her husband, Todd, appear headed for divorce after more than 30 years of marriage, state court records showed.
A divorce complaint, quietly entered in Alaska Superior Court on Friday, cryptically bears only the initials of the two parties — SLP for Sarah Louise Palin and TMP for Todd Mitchell Palin — rather than their names, as well as their matching birth dates, according to the Anchorage court docket.
TMP asked to dissolve the marriage, and the Anchorage Daily News said he cited “incompatibility of temperament between the parties such that they find it impossible to live together as husband and wife.”
The filing describes the couple as having at least one minor child — an apparent reference to the Palins’ 11-year-old son, Trig, who was born with Down syndrome. The Palins also have four adult children.
The electronic court file showed nearly a dozen related records, including a child custody jurisdiction affidavit, a domestic relations procedural order and an information sheet.
But none were immediately available for scrutiny.
Alaska media outlets reported the divorcing parties to be the Palins. The story was first covered by longtime Alaska journalist Craig Medred, who publishes an independent news site.
The Palins married in 1988. They are both 55.
Political career
Sarah Palin began her political career in the early 1990s on the city council of the family’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, and ran successfully for governor in 2006, becoming the first woman and youngest person ever elected to that post.
Arizona Senator John McCain, then the Republican presidential nominee, stunned the political establishment in August 2008 when he named her as his running mate against the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Following McCain’s defeat, Palin in July 2009 resigned as governor just 2-1/2 years into her four-year term. But she became an outspoken booster for the Republican Tea Party movement while pursuing a new career as a Fox News commentator and reality TV personality.
‘First dude’
Todd Palin, nicknamed the state’s “first dude” during his wife’s gubernatorial tenure, once worked for energy company BP Plc on the oil fields of the North Slope and gained fame in Alaska as a four-time champion of the Iron Dog Race, the world’s longest snowmobile contest.
Medred reported that the couple had been scheduled to appear together at a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, in early August, but Todd Palin was absent. The ex-governor said then that her spouse was flying around Alaska.
Officials in northern Burkina Faso say at least 29 people were killed in two separate incidents Sunday.
Government spokesman Remis Dandjinou said, in a statement, at least 15 people were killed when a truck carrying people and goods “rode over an improvised explosive device in the Barsalogho area.”
Fourteen people were killed when a food convoy of trucks came under attack in Sanmatenga province, according to the spokesman.
The French news agency AFP reports that locals sources said many of the dead in the convoy were the drivers of the vehicles carrying provisions for people displaced by fighting.
“Military reinforcements have been deployed and a thorough search in under way,” said Dandjinou.
Millions of people in Burkina Faso are facing an unprecedented humanitarian emergency because of growing hunger, instability and displacement, the World Food Program warned recently.
The United Nations reports escalating fighting, some fueled by ethnic and religious beliefs, has forced more than 237,000 people to flee their homes.
Jihadists have frequently launched attacks on Burkina’s military.
A former French colony, Burkina Faso in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China and any form of secessionism “will be crushed,” state media said on Monday, a day after demonstrators rallied at the U.S. consulate to ask for help in bringing democracy to city.
The China Daily newspaper said Sunday’s rally in Hong Kong was proof that foreign forces were behind the protests, which began in mid-June, and warned that demonstrators should “stop trying the patience of the central government”.
Chinese officials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong over a hugely unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be tried in Communist Party-controlled courts.
Anger over the bill grew into sometimes violent protests calling for more freedoms for Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam formally scrapped the bill last week as part of concessions aimed at ending the protests.
“Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China – and that is the bottom line no one should challenge, not the demonstrators, not the foreign forces playing their dirty games,” the China Daily said in an editorial.
“The demonstrations in Hong Kong are not about rights or democracy. They are a result of foreign interference. Lest the central government’s restraint be misconstrued as weakness, let it be clear secessionism in any form will be crushed,” it said.
State news agency Xinhua said in a separate commentary that the rule of law needed to be manifested and that Hong Kong could pay a larger and heavier penalty should the current situation continue.
Nissan Motor Co’s nominating committee will discuss Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa’s resignation and possible successors at a meeting on Monday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Saikawa has expressed his desire to resign from the troubled automaker and is not “clinging to his chair”, the source said, declining to be identified because the information has not been made public.
The Nikkei newspaper earlier reported that Saikawa told reporters on Monday he wanted to “pass the baton” to the next generation as soon as possible. The executive has come under pressure since admitting last week to being improperly compensated.
A charity ship run by humanitarian groups in the Mediterranean spent a rainy Sunday searching open waters for a fragile rubber boat overloaded with migrants before finally plucking 50 people to safety not far off Libya’s coast.
The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, which is operated jointly by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, sent its own boats to pick up a pregnant woman close to full term, 12 minors and 37 men, all from sub-Saharan Africa.
“God bless you!” one of the men told the rescuers as they passed life vests to the wet and barefoot passengers.
At least two people feeling ill collapsed upon arrival on the Ocean Viking, while three others were soaked in fuel and two were suffering from mild hypothermia. The operation was witnessed by an Associated Press journalist aboard the ship, which found the migrant boat some 14 nautical miles (16 statute miles) from Libya.
The rescue occurred 14 hours after the Ocean Viking as well as Libyan, Italian and Maltese authorities, the United Nations’ refugee agency and Moonbird, a humanitarian observation plane, received an email by Alarm Phone, a hotline for migrants. It was an urgent call seeking help for the rubber boat carrying 50 people without a working engine.
The Ocean Viking, which was already in the Libyan search and rescue zone of the central Mediterranean, informed all authorities that it was beginning an active search for the migrant boat. Throughout the morning, the charity ship chased several objects spotted on the horizon, including what turned out to be a floating palm leaf tangled with fishing gear and an empty small fishing boat.
Throughout the morning, the ship tried to contact Libyan officials without success. The AP journalist witnessed at least three phone calls to the Libyan Joint Rescue and Coordination Center that went unanswered.
The blue rubber boat jammed with the migrants was finally spotted on the horizon near a fishing boat at 1:30 p.m. The fishing boat did not respond to radio contact by the Ocean Viking, which then launched its rescue boats.
At 2:30 p.m., the Libyan Coastguard finally answered the phone and the Ocean Viking reported that its crew was in the process of rescuing the migrants.
A European Union plane taking part in the Operation Sophia anti-human trafficking operation flew over the Ocean Viking, the migrant boat and the fishing boat multiple times shortly before the people were rescued.
As required by maritime law, the ship asked Libyan authorities responsible for rescue coordination in that part of the Mediterranean to provide a place of safety to disembark the rescued migrants, but it also made the same request to Italian and Maltese officials. There was no immediate response.
International migration and human rights bodies say Libya is not a place of safety, and Doctors Without Borders does not consider any North African country safe for disembarkation of the migrants.
But for more than a year, migrant rescues performed by non-governmental groups have frequently led to sometimes weeks-long standoffs trying to get European authorities to allow migrants to be landed.
World War II veteran Henry Ochsner, who landed on the beach at Normandy on D-Day and later received the French government’s highest honor for his service, has died. He was 96.
Family friend Dennis Anderson says Ochsner died Saturday at his home in California City of complications from cancer and old age.
As part of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division — known as the “Screaming Eagles” — Ochsner also fought at the Battle of the Bulge.
In 2017 Ochsner and nine other veterans were awarded France’s National Order of the Legion of Honor during a ceremony at Los Angeles National Cemetery.
Ochsner married Violet Jenson in 1947. He is survived by his wife, their four daughters and two granddaughters. Funeral plans are pending.
Top oil producers will consider fresh output cuts at a meeting this week, but analysts are doubtful they will succeed in bolstering crude prices dented by the U.S.-China trade war.
The OPEC petroleum exporters’ cartel and key non-OPEC members want to halt a slide in prices that has continued despite previous production cuts and US sanctions that have squeezed supply from Iran and Venezuela.
Analysts say the OPEC+ group’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, which monitors a supply cut deal reached last year, has limited options when it meets in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
UAE Energy Minister Suheil al-Mazrouei said Sunday the group would do “whatever necessary” to rebalance the crude market, but admitted that the issue was not entirely in the hands of the world’s top producers.
Speaking at a press conference in Abu Dhabi ahead of the World Energy Congress, to start Monday, he said the oil market is no longer governed by supply and demand but is being influenced more by U.S.-China trade tensions and geopolitical factors.
The minister said that although further cuts will be considered at Thursday’s meeting, they may not be the best way to boost declining prices.
“Anything that the group sees that will balance the market, we are committed to discuss it and hopefully go and do whatever necessary,” he said.
“But I wouldn’t suggest to jump to cuts every time that we have an issue on trade tensions.”
While cuts could help prices, they could also mean producers lose further market share, analysts say.
“OPEC has traditionally resorted to production cuts in order to shore up the prices,” said M. R. Raghu, head of research at Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz).
“However, this has come at the cost of reduction in OPEC’s global crude market share from a peak of 35 percent in 2012 to 30 percent as of July 2019,” he told AFP.
The 24-nation OPEC+ group, dominated by the cartel’s kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC production giant Russia, agreed to reduce output in December 2018.
That came as a faltering global economy and a boom in US shale oil threatened to create a global glut in supply.
Previous supply cuts have mostly succeeded in bolstering prices.
But this time, the market has continued to slide — even after OPEC+ agreed in June to extend by nine months an earlier deal slashing output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd).
Trade war
The new factor is the trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies, whose tit-for-tat tariffs have created fears of a global recession that will undermine demand for oil.
Saudi economist Fadhl al-Bouenain said the oil market has become “highly sensitive to the US-China trade war”.
“What is happening to oil prices is outside the control of OPEC and certainly stronger than its capability,” Bouenain told AFP.
“Accordingly, I think OPEC+ will not resort to new production cuts” because that would further blunt the group’s already shrunken market share, he said.
European benchmark Brent was selling at $61.54 per barrel Friday, in contrast with more than $75 this time last year but up from around $50 at the end of December 2018.
The deliberations also coincide with stymied production from Iran and Venezuela and slower growth in U.S. output, meaning that supplies are not excessively high.
“US shale output growth does not have the same momentum as in previous cycles, and OPEC production is at a 15-year low, having fallen by 2.7 million barrels per day over the past nine months,” Standard Chartered said in a commentary last month.
“We think that the oil policy options for key producers are limited, for the moment,” the investment bank said.
No decisions will be taken at Thursday’s meeting, but it should produce recommendations ahead of an OPEC+ ministerial meeting in Vienna in December.
Rapidan Energy Group said the alliance might need to cut output by an additional one million bpd to stabilise the market.
But the problem will be deciding which member countries will shoulder the burden of any new cuts.
Saudi Arabia, which is the de facto leader of OPEC and pumps about a third of the cartel’s oil, took on more than its fair share last time around.
FILE – In this photo taken July 01, 2019, Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khaled al-Falih (R) and Saudi Deputy Oil Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz talk to the press on the sidelines of an oil meeting in Vienna, Austria.
It has also undergone a major shake-up in its oil sector, announcing the replacement of energy minister Khalid al-Falih with Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in the early hours of Sunday morning ahead of a much-anticipated stock listing of state oil giant Aramco.
Bouenain said he believes that Riyadh is likely to resist taking on further cuts, given the impact on the kingdom’s revenues.
Raghu said that “without a favorable resolution to the dispute, OPEC’s production cuts will not result in a sizeable uptick of oil prices.”
Turkish and U.S. troops conducted their first joint ground patrol in northeastern Syria Sunday as part of a planned so-called “safe zone” that Ankara has been pressing for in the volatile region.
Turkey hopes the buffer zone, which it says should be at least 30 kilometers (19 miles) deep, will keep Syrian Kurdish fighters, considered a threat by Turkey but U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State group, away from its border.
Associated Press journalists in the town of Tal Abyad saw about a dozen Turkish armored vehicles with the country’s red flag standing along the border after crossing into Syria, and American vehicles about a mile away waiting. The two sides then came together in a joint patrol with American vehicles leading the convoy.
At least two helicopters hovered overhead. The Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed the start of the joint patrols and said unmanned aerial vehicles were also being used.
Washington has in the last years frequently found itself trying to forestall violence between its NATO ally Turkey and the Kurdish fighters it partnered with along the border to clear of IS militants.
An initial agreement between Washington and Ankara last month averted threats of a Turkish attack. But details of the deal are still being worked out in separate talks with Ankara and the Kurdish-led forces in Syria known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
Turkey, which has carried out several incursions into Syria in the course of the country’s civil war in an effort to curb the expanding influence of the Kurdish forces, carried out joint patrols with U.S. troops in the northern town of Manbij last year.
Sunday’s joint patrol is the first one taking place east of the Euphrates River, where U.S. troops have more presence, and as part of the safe zone that is being set up.
Anadolu Agency said six Turkish armored vehicles crossed into Syria on Sunday from the border town of Akcakale, opposite from Syria’s Tal Abyad, and joined U.S. vehicles for their first joint patrol of an area east of the Euphrates river.
AP reporters in Tal Abyad said the patrol was headed to a Kurdish-controlled base apparently to inspect it, apparently to ensure that trenches and sand berms had been removed. U.S. troops had inspected the base on Saturday during patrols with the SDF during which some of the berms Turkey had complained about were removed.
For Turkey, a “safe zone” is important because it is hoping some of the Syrian refugees it has been hosting for years could be resettled there, although it is not clear how that would work.
On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey could “open its gates” and allow Syrian refugees in the country to move toward Western countries if a safe zone is not created and Turkey is left to shoulder the refugee burden alone. Turkey hosts 3.6 million refugees from Syria.
Rather than calling it a safe zone, Washington and the Kurdish-led forces have said a “security mechanism” is taking shape to diffuse tensions in northeastern Syria
Pope Francis is pressing for the poor to have the dignity of work with a visit Sunday to a hilltop rock quarry in Madagascar where hundreds of people toil rather than scavenge in the biggest dump of the Indian Ocean nation’s capital.
After celebrating an open-air Mass before an estimated 1 million people, Francis heads to Akamasoa village, the brainchild of an Argentine priest who was so overwhelmed by the abject poverty of Madagascar that he set about creating ways for the poor to earn a living.
Over 30 years, the Akamasoa quarry has produced the stones that built the homes, roads, schools and health clinics that now dot the pine-covered hillside of Antananarivo. Founder the Rev. Pedro Opeka said the low salaries he can pay are “an injustice” — about 1 euro a day — but they are at least more than the dump scavengers earn, and enough for parents to send their children to school.
“Akamasoa is a revolt against poverty, it is a revolt against fatality,” Opeka told The Associated Press ahead of the pope’s visit. “When we started here it was an inferno, people who were excluded from the society.”
Opeka, a charismatic, bearded figure who is beloved by many in this city, grew up in Francis’ native Buenos Aires and even studied theology at the same seminary where the future pope studied and taught. A member of the Lazarist religious order, he was working as a missionary in Madagascar when he was inspired to create Akamasoa after witnessing the wretched life led by parents and children who lived off the dump scraps.
The Akamasoa project, which is funded by donors around the world and recognized by the Madagascar government, says it has built some 4,000 homes in more than 20 villages serving some 25,000 people since its foundation in 1989. About 700 people work in the rock quarry, using simple mallets to chop chunks of granite into cobblestones or pebbles, while others work as carpenters or attend training classes. It says 14,000 children have passed through its schools.
Despite Madagascar’s vast and unique natural resources, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. The World Bank says 75% of its 24 million people live on less than $2 a day; only 13% of the population has access to electricity.
Francis, the first pope from the global south, has long preached about the dignity of work, and the need for all able-bodied adults to be able to earn enough to provide for their families. He is expected to deliver a prayer for workers during a visit to the rock quarry in one of the highlights of his weeklong Africa pilgrimage.
Susane Razanamahasoa, 65, has worked in the quarry for 20 years, 9{ hours a day, to provide for her six children. She said the pope’s visit recalled the dedication to the poor of St. Francis of Assisi, his namesake.
“He is an extraordinary man and the fact that he has taken the name Francis after St. Francis of Assisi means he is thirsty to live like St. Francis,” she said during a break in her work. “I am so full of joy that he is coming.”
Francis began his day with a Mass on a dusty field in the capital, where the faithful who attended an evening vigil spent a cold, windy night securing spots for the Sunday service.
They roared and waved plastic Madagascar and Holy See flags as Francis looped through the crowd before Mass on his popemobile, kicking up red dust in his wake. Citing local organizers, the Vatican said an estimated 1 million people were on hand.
In his homily, Francis told the crowd to not work only for their own personal agendas and goals, but for others.
“As we look around us, how many men and women, young people and children are suffering and in utter need!” he said. “This is not part of God’s plan. How urgently Jesus calls us to kill off our self-centeredness, our individualism and our pride!”
On Monday, Francis travels to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius on the final day of his weeklong, three-nation Africa trip.
