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Mitt Romney said he thinks new revelations from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton will increase the number of Republican senators who will vote in favor of calling at least Bolton to testify in the Senate impeachment trial.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 10:59 AM

A Harvard University professor was charged Tuesday with lying about his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program and concealing payments he received from the Chinese government for research. Charles Lieber, chair of the department of chemistry and chemical biology, is accused of hiding his involvement in China's Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed to lure people with knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property to China. Lieber was arrested early Tuesday at his office at the Ivy League university, officials said.

POSTED JANUARY 28, 2020 4:47 PM

(Bloomberg) -- The mother of an Israeli woman imprisoned on drug-smuggling charges in Russia said she’s hopeful President Vladimir Putin will pardon her daughter.Naama Issachar, a 26-year-old U.S.-born Israeli army veteran, was sentenced in October to 7 1/2 years for carrying a small amount of hashish in her luggage on a transit flight via Moscow after a backpacking trip to India. Her plight has become a cause celebre in Israel, where it’s widely seen as politically motivated.Putin met with Issachar’s mother, Yaffa, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, on the sidelines of an international forum on the Holocaust. He assured her that “everything will be all right,” and on Sunday, Naama Issachar applied for a presidential pardon, her lawyers said.When asked in a text message exchange whether she expects her daughter to return to Israel soon, Yaffa Issachar replied: “I hope so.” The request for a pardon has been received and “all necessary legal procedures are being carried out at the moment so the president can take a decision on this issue in the nearest future,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on a conference call Monday.A decision to free Issachar, who’s been in detention since April, could bolster Netanyahu, who’s been indicted on corruption charges and is fighting for his political survival at the country’s third election in less than a year in March.The Kremlin said last week that Israel and Russia are also making progress in settling a dispute over the ownership of Russian Orthodox Church property in Jerusalem, which Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said could form part of a quid pro quo to secure Issachar’s release.The Russian leader has previously rebuffed multiple pleas from Netanyahu for Issachar’s sentence to be commuted.Her case for a time became entangled with that of a Russian national, Alexei Burkov, whom Israel extradited to the U.S. in November on charges including hacking and credit card fraud. Russia had offered to swap the two, according to Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician.(Adds Putin spokesman’s comment in 4th paragraph)To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net;Irina Reznik in Moscow at ireznik@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Tony HalpinFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 5:39 AM

Bryant's helicopter was owned by an operator called Island Express Holding Corp., which purchased it from Illinois in 2015.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 2:32 PM

The Taliban said it had shot down a U.S. military plane in the central Afghan province of Ghazni on Monday, killing all personnel onboard.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 11:13 AM

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough kicked off Tuesday’s edition of Morning Joe by going off on a lengthy and raucous rant against President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team, branding the whole group as a “Confederacy of Dunces.”After Monday’s arguments by the president’s legal squad featured a slew of Fox News regulars essentially rehashing their Hannity segments, Scarborough spent the first few minutes of MSNBC’s signature morning program blasting the most standout moments.“Well, I mean—you had Confederacy of Dunces defending him in impeachment,” Scarborough declared, referencing the famous irreverent novel by John Kennedy Toole. “Their arguments were absolutely stunning.”Taking aim at Jane Raskin’s insistence that Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was only a “minor player” regarding Ukraine, the MSNBC star pointed out that Giuliani’s name was mentioned multiple times by Trump himself in his infamous July 25 call with the Ukrainian president.“Where do we begin with Ken Starr?” Scarborough then exclaimed. “If irony weren’t already dead and buried years ago, it was Ken Starr yesterday talking about how abuse of power is not sufficient to impeach a president. You need a crime.”“He literally dragged the corpse of irony out of the grave,” the former Republican congressman continued as the rest of the panel laughed. “He meticulously tied the corpse’s neck bone to the back of a tractor, and he ran that tractor throughout the graveyard of stupidity and ran over every headstone before once again kicking dirt on the corpse of irony, again!”“Wow,” co-host Willie Geist responded.“And then putting its bones back in the grave, one by one by one!” Scarborough added.Scarborough, meanwhile, continued to roundly mock Starr, who was the independent counsel during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, sarcastically observing that Starr was “so sad and mournful” over the “age of impeachment” we are now in.“You are a flashing billboard, a gaudily-printed, like, sandwich board sign going down Times Square saying, ‘We’re all dunces. We’re all hypocrites. We are all making fools of ourselves,’” he shouted.The former Florida lawmaker would then devote a couple more minutes to former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose argument was centered on Hunter Biden and Burisma. Claiming that Bondi apparently thinks all Trump supporters and conservatives are “stupid,” Scarborough ended his tirade by comparing himself to James Brown.Yes, sigh, that happened.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

POSTED JANUARY 28, 2020 11:24 AM

The United Nations raised "serious concerns" on Tuesday about the trials of hundreds of alleged Islamic State members in Iraq, some of whom merely prepared meals, offered medical services or even acted as human shields for the jihadist group. Iraq has processed thousands of cases under its anti-terrorism law - including of detainees from outside the Middle East transferred from neighboring Syria - in the aftermath of a 2014-17 war against Islamic State militants.

POSTED JANUARY 28, 2020 9:05 AM

Hundreds of newly discovered photographs, including some taken at the Sobibor death camp, represent a "quantum leap" in research into Nazi crimes against humanity, historians at the Berlin museum Topography of Terror said Tuesday. Historians said the "exceptional collection" provided unprecedented insights into the Sobibor camp in German Nazi-occupied Poland, about which little is known even 75 years after the end of World War II. The trove, consisting of 361 black-and-white photos and several written documents, also includes photos believed to show convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, who denied ever being at Sobibor.

POSTED JANUARY 28, 2020 12:43 PM

What on Earth...?

POSTED JANUARY 28, 2020 1:56 PM

The US Navy's elite SEAL Team 6 recovered two bodies from the wreckage site where a US Air Force aircraft crashed in Afghanistan on Monday.

POSTED JANUARY 28, 2020 1:01 PM