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Category: Politics

UK government helped sanctioned Putin ally sue British journalist

UK government helped sanctioned Putin ally sue British journalist

Open Democracy reports: The UK government helped the boss of Russia’s murderous mercenary army to circumvent its own sanctions and launch a targeted legal attack on a British journalist, openDemocracy can reveal. Yevgeny Prigozhin is the founder of Wagner, a private army that the US government last week announced it would designate a “transnational criminal organisation”, allowing it to impose even tougher sanctions on the group. For years it has been accused of human rights abuses and war crimes in…

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Berlin not blocking export of tanks to Ukraine, EU diplomat says

Berlin not blocking export of tanks to Ukraine, EU diplomat says

Reuters reports: Germany is not blocking the re-export of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, the European Union’s top diplomat said on Monday, after Poland vowed to send some as long as other countries did too. The Kyiv government wants the German-made Leopard 2, one of the most widely used Western tanks, to help it break through Russian lines and recapture territory this year. Germany, which must approve re-exports of the Leopard, has held back, wary of moves that could cause Moscow…

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Depleted under Trump, a ‘traumatized’ EPA struggles with its mission

Depleted under Trump, a ‘traumatized’ EPA struggles with its mission

The New York Times reports: The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration. The chemicals chief said her staff can’t keep up with a mounting workload. The enforcement unit is prosecuting fewer polluters than at any time in the past two decades. And now this: the stressed-out, stretched-thin Environmental Protection Agency is scrambling to write about a half dozen highly complex rules and regulations that…

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Florida is where free speech goes to die

Florida is where free speech goes to die

Bess Levin writes: One of Florida governor Ron DeSantis‘s favorite little mottos is “Florida is where woke goes to die.” In fact, a better, more accurate motto would be “Ron DeSantis’s Florida is where free speech goes to die, unless you’ve agreed to the governor’s list of preapproved talking points, like that LGBTQ+ people don’t exist, white people are and have always been awesome, and nonwhite people have nothing to complain about.” Defenders of the governor will not like this…

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Russian agents suspected of directing far-right group to mail bombs in Spain

Russian agents suspected of directing far-right group to mail bombs in Spain

The New York Times reports: American and European officials believe that Russian military intelligence officers directed associates of a white supremacist militant group based in Russia to carry out a recent letter bomb campaign in Spain whose most prominent targets were the prime minister, the defense minister and foreign diplomats, according to U.S. officials. Spanish and foreign investigators have been looking into who sent six letter bombs in late November and early December to sites mostly in Madrid, including the…

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MI5 refused to investigate ‘Russian spy’s’ links to Tories, says whistleblower

MI5 refused to investigate ‘Russian spy’s’ links to Tories, says whistleblower

Carole Cadwalladr reports: MI5 repeatedly refused to investigate evidence that an alleged Russian spy was attempting to cultivate influence with senior Conservative politicians and channel illegal Russian funds into the party, a Tory member has alleged in a new complaint lodged with the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT). Sergei Cristo, a Conservative party activist and a former journalist with the BBC World Service, has lodged a complaint with the investigatory powers tribunal, filing the case after corresponding with the chair of…

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American lawmakers urge U.S. to ship Abrams tanks to Ukraine

American lawmakers urge U.S. to ship Abrams tanks to Ukraine

Reuters reports: American lawmakers on Sunday pushed the U.S. government to export M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine, saying that even sending a symbolic number to Kyiv would be enough to push European allies to do the same. Michael McCaul, the newly installed Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” that “just one” Abrams tank would be enough to prompt allies, notably Germany, to unlock their own tank inventories for the fight against Russia….

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Supreme Court leak investigation ends with justices appearing as above the law

Supreme Court leak investigation ends with justices appearing as above the law

The New York Times reports: Last spring and summer, employees of the Supreme Court were drawn into an investigation that turned into an uncomfortable awakening. As the court marshal’s office looked into who had leaked the draft opinion of the decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, law clerks who had secured coveted perches at the top of the judiciary scrambled for legal advice and navigated quandaries like whether to surrender their personal cellphones to investigators. The “court family” soon…

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Trump team struggles to consolidate support ahead of S.C. event

Trump team struggles to consolidate support ahead of S.C. event

The Washington Post reports: Advisers to Donald Trump have blanketed South Carolina Republican officials with pleading phone calls in recent weeks in an effort to drum up endorsements and attendees for the former president’s first campaign swing of the 2024 cycle next week. But the appeals have run headlong into a complicated new reality: Many of the state’s lawmakers and political operatives, and even some of his previous supporters, are not ready to pick a presidential candidate. They find themselves…

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European leadership on Ukraine comes from smaller nations

European leadership on Ukraine comes from smaller nations

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: In the weeks leading up to Friday’s conference of the two dozen nations of the Ukraine Contact Group at the U.S.-run Ramstein Air Base in southwest Germany, there has been a steady trickle of information about what military hardware allies were planning to send to the war-torn nation to help bolster its defenses and launch counteroffensives to repel Russia’s invasion. For most participants who attended Friday’s meeting, the most coveted outcome eluded them. No…

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Germany continues standing in the way of effort to supply Ukraine with tanks

Germany continues standing in the way of effort to supply Ukraine with tanks

Politico reports: Germany dashed Ukrainian hopes that Berlin would finally decide on Friday to send modern battle tanks to Kyiv’s forces, with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius arguing there was no international agreement yet on the topic. Speaking outside a meeting of defense ministers at the U.S. Ramstein military base in Germany, Pistorius said his government had still not agreed to a Ukrainian request for German’s Leopard 2 tanks to aid an expected spring offensive. “We all cannot say today…

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Federal judge rules Trump is ‘the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process’

Federal judge rules Trump is ‘the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process’

The New York Times reports: In a scathing ruling, a federal judge in Florida on Thursday ordered Donald J. Trump and one of his lawyers together to pay nearly a million dollars in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against nearly three dozen of Mr. Trump’s perceived political enemies, including Hillary Clinton and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey. The ruling was a significant rebuke of Mr. Trump, who has rarely faced such consequences in his long history of…

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In Supreme Court leak investigation, justices were questioned but not asked to give a sworn affidavit

In Supreme Court leak investigation, justices were questioned but not asked to give a sworn affidavit

CNBC reports: Each of the Supreme Court’s justices was questioned — some of them multiple times — as part of an investigation into last year’s leak of a draft opinion of the ruling that ended up overturning the court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision, the head of that probe revealed Friday. The statement came a day after the Supreme Court refused to say whether the justices were among the nearly 100 court staffers and clerks who were questioned in…

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Jacinda Ardern, the rare politician who knew when to quit

Jacinda Ardern, the rare politician who knew when to quit

Stephen Collinson writes: “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,” William Shakespeare writes of an executed rebel in “Macbeth.” Today’s leaders, however, often struggle to embrace an equivalent vision of a dignified exit from political life when their time comes. Jacinda Ardern is the rare leader who is choosing to leave the stage, not to be pushed off it. New Zealand’s prime minister said Thursday that she had “no more in the tank” after five years in…

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U.S. warms to helping Ukraine target Crimea

U.S. warms to helping Ukraine target Crimea

The New York Times reports: For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes. Now that line is starting to soften. After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting…

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Berlin won’t allow exports of German-made Leopard to Ukraine unless U.S. sends its own

Berlin won’t allow exports of German-made Leopard to Ukraine unless U.S. sends its own

The Wall Street Journal reports: Germany won’t allow allies to ship German-made tanks to Ukraine to help its defense against Russia nor send its own systems unless the U.S. agrees to send American-made battle tanks, senior German officials said on Wednesday. North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have over 2,000 German-made Leopard tanks, considered to be among the most sophisticated in the world, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Several European governments have said they are ready to…

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