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Venezuela's President Nicols Maduro said the U.S. government is fabricating a war against him as the world's biggest warship approached the South American country, while moving to revoke the citizenship of an opponent he accuses of egging on an invasion. Maduro said in a national broadcast on Friday night that the administration of President Donald Trump is fabricating a new eternal war" as the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, which can host up to 90 airplanes and attack helicopters, moves closer to Venezuela. On Saturday, the Venezuelan president also referred to the pressure he has felt from the U.S. government as he started legal proceedings seeking to revoke the citizenship and cancel the passport of opposition politician Leopoldo Lpez. They promised they would never again get involved in a war and they are fabricating a war that we will avoid, said Maduro in Friday night's address. Trump has accused him, without providing evidence, of being the leader of the organized crime
Donald Trump is meeting Sunday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, taking a break from golfing in Scotland to discuss trade as both sides seek an agreement on tariff rates now that the White House's deadline to impose stiff tariff rates is looming. Trump played golf Saturday at his course in Turnberry on the southwest coast of Scotland and is expected to hit the links again frequently during his five-day visit. On Tuesday, he'll be in Aberdeen, in northeast Scotland, where his family has another golf course and is opening a third next month. Trump and his son Eric are planning to help cut the ribbon on the new course, where public tee times starting Aug. 13 are already on offer. The visit with von der Leyen is expected to be behind closed doors and few further details have been released. Leaving the White House on Friday, Trump said we have a 50-50 chance, maybe less than that, but a 50-50 chance of making a deal with the EU. He said the deal would have to buy
FBI Director Kash Patel was not part of a Signal chat in which other Trump administration national security officials discussed detailed attack plans, but that didn't spare him from being questioned by lawmakers this week about whether the nation's premier law enforcement agency would investigate. Patel made no such commitments during the course of two days of Senate and House hearings. Instead, he testified that he had not personally reviewed the text messages that were inadvertently shared with the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic who was mistakenly included on an unclassified Signal chat. That Patel would be grilled on what the FBI might do was hardly surprising. Even as President Donald Trump insisted "it's not really an FBI thing, the reality is that the FBI and Justice Department for decades have been responsible for enforcing Espionage Act statutes governing the mishandling whether intentional or negligent of national defense information like the kind shared on Signal, a ..
The Congress on Saturday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to heed to his friend, US President Donald Trump, for using paper ballots and not machines for voting to address the concerns of the entire country on the integrity of India's electoral process. Congress general secretary, organisation, K C Venugopal wondered why the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is feigning ignorance to what the entire world is saying and why is its government running away from transparency. "Will PM Modi pay heed to his best friend Donald Trump's message on ballot papers and same day voting, and address the concerns of the whole nation about the integrity of our electoral process?" Venugopal asked in a post on X. "I'm sure his best friend will also be appalled at the abnormal increase of lakhs of voters in Maharashtra, or the surgical deletions of opposition votes," he said, citing Trump's remarks at a governors' meeting. At the meeting, Trump was heard urging governors to switch to paper ballots a
The Trump administration presented a plan Thursday to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for US aid projects as part of its dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, leaving fewer than 300 workers out of thousands. Late Thursday, federal workers associations filed suit asking a federal court to stop the shutdown, arguing that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation. Two current USAID employees and one former senior USAID official told The Associated Press of the administration's plan, presented to remaining senior officials of the agency Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to a Trump administration order barring USAID staffers from talking to anyone outside their agency. The plan would leave fewer than 300 staffers on the job out of what are currently 8,000 direct hires and contractors. They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired international staffers abroad, would run t
The acting director of the Secret Service said Thursday that the agency is reorganizing and reimagining its culture and how it operates following an assassination attempt against Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Members of a bipartisan House task force investigating the attempt on Trump's life pushed Ronald Rowe on how the agency's staffers could have missed such blatant security vulnerabilities leading up to the July 13 shooting at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. At one point, the hearing devolved into a shouting match between Rowe and a Republican congressman. Rowe promised accountability for what he called the agency's abject failure to secure the rally in Butler, where a gunman opened fire from a nearby building. Trump was wounded in the ear, one rallygoer was killed and two others were wounded. Another assassination attempt two months later contributed to the agency's troubles. That gunman waited for hours for Trump to appear at his golf course in Florida, but a Secret ...
President-elect Donald Trump is interviewing candidates for the role of FBI director, incoming Vice-President JD Vance said on Tuesday in the clearest indication yet that the new administration is looking to replace current director Christopher Wray. In a social media post that was later deleted, Vance defended his absence from a Senate vote at which a judicial nominee of President Joe Biden was confirmed by saying that at the time of the vote, "I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director." "I tend to think it's more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45," he added on X. Vance was referring to the Senate vote on Monday to confirm Embry J Kidd, a Biden nominee to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, a vote that he and several other Republican senators missed. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment, and the Trum
Vice President Kamala Harris is facing the delicate task of calibrating her policy pitch to American voters, a standard task for any White House hopeful but one that comes with additional challenges this year. First, Harris is running for president while serving under President Joe Biden, meaning she's linked to anything that happened or will happen on his watch. She inherits accomplishments like limiting the cost of insulin but also the administration's struggle to prevent illegal border crossings. Second, Harris has baggage from her own failed campaign for president before she became Biden's running mate four years ago. During that Democratic primary, she backed an array of progressive proposals that Republicans have highlighted to paint her as dangerously liberal. Harris has already disavowed some of her earlier positions, such as a ban on fracking and support for single-payer healthcare. And she's pledging to keep some of Biden's promises, including no tax increases on anyone
Harvey Weinstein is expected to appear before a judge Wednesday afternoon in the same New York City courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial. Weinstein is awaiting a retrial on rape charges after his 2020 conviction was tossed out. Wednesday's court hearing will address various legal issues related to the upcoming trial, which is tentatively scheduled for some time after Labor Day. Weinstein's original trial was held in the same courtroom where Trump is on trial now, but the two men are unlikely to bump into each other. Weinstein is in custody and will be brought to and from the courtroom under guard. He will be appearing in a courtroom on a different floor than where Trump is currently on trial. Weinstein was convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on Jessica Mann, an aspiring actor, and of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, a former TV and film production assistant. But last month New York's highest court threw out those convictions after determining