Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports on the FBI raid on Trump’s personal attorney: Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a friend of Trump, called the Cohen raids “a little heavy-handed.” “Is this surprising? Yes,” said Giuliani, also a former U.S. attorney. “Is it extraordinary? No. This is the way prosecutors get information — sometimes to convict and prosecute, sometimes to exculpate.” Criticizing Mueller for veering into “highly personal issues,” such as the alleged Daniels encounter, Giuliani added, “The only thing…

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Politico reports: With relations between the West and Moscow at a post-Cold War low point, Russia’s closest EU neighbors are turning to tougher military and financial measures to send a message to Vladimir Putin. At a White House meeting last week, the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania asked Donald Trump to do more to deter Russia by bolstering U.S. forces in Eastern Europe. Trump didn’t give a clear answer. He praised the Baltic countries’ robust defense spending in recent…

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Roger Cohen writes: Hungary had a horrendous 20th century of lost territory and freedom, but Budapest, a handsome city set on a broad sweep of the Danube, suggests its wounds have healed. Trams hum along boulevards lined with elegant cafes and clogged with the cars German companies manufacture here. The country has escaped what Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, called the “kidnapped West,” the great swath of Europe yielded to the Soviet empire after World War II, and has returned…

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The Washington Post reports: For more than a year, Roger Stone has asserted that he spent Christmas 2016 trying to survive an assassination attempt — most likely radioactive polonium poisoning — by someone trying to frame Russia. Tests were conducted; doctors were baffled, the longtime political operative and adviser to Donald Trump told journalists. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was contacted. But from the moment he made the claims, Stone has deflected questions when asked to back…

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The Observer reports: Hashem Zakout should have been at his local hospital yesterday doing the voluntary work as a clerk that he hopes will lead to a paid full-time job. Instead the 24-year-old was a patient in the emergency room at another northern Gaza hospital, shot in the left knee after throwing “little stones” at Israeli troops across the border, east of the Jabaliya refugee camp where he lives. Zakout was wounded on Friday when he was 10 metres from…

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