It was a hazy and cold December morning in Madrid, and the central Puerta del Sol square, the neural center of the Spanish capital, stood empty of tourists even though it was already past 10 a.m. "Care to vote, sir?" asked one of the men surrounding a table beneath the equestrian statue of 18th century King Charles III. "What for?" the passerby inquired. "For the republic!" replied the man, raising his voice to a shout.
On December 2, over 23,000 people in 12 districts and four municipalities of the Madrid region voted in an unofficial referendum on Spain's form of government. The result was overwhelming in its rejection of the monarchy: 93 percent of those who cast ballots would prefer to have a president of the republic as Spain's head of state.
"Almost 1,500 people who support the monarchical regime have determined that it should nonetheless be submitted to the people's will," said the non-partisan grassroots coordinating body behind the Assemblies for a People's Poll on Monarchy or Republic in a press release afterwards.
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Filibuster_HK
2018-12-11 20:42:02
Thailand election date set and campaign ban lifted
Thailand's military government has said political parties are free to start campaigning ahead of a long-awaited election scheduled for 24 February.
The announcement ends a ban on political campaigning brought in when the military ousted the elected government in a coup four years ago.
The military has always insisted it intends to restore democracy in Thailand.
But the election date has been pushed back repeatedly.
The military took power in Thailand in 2014, overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the hugely popular Pheu Thai party.
They later drew up a new constitution and changes to the electoral system, which were approved by the public in a referendum in 2017.
The constitution effectively ensures that even after the election, the military will remain an influential force in politics. It will be able to appoint the senate, which in turn will help choose the next prime minister.
Protests and road barricades at roundabouts and toll-booths across France have continued, as many gilets jaunes demonstrators said concessions made by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, were not enough to calm their anger and sense of social injustice.
Anti-government demonstrators have called for further protests in Paris on Saturday, after four weekends of rioting in the French capital and other cities plunged France’s centrist president to his worst crisis in office.
Macron gave a prerecorded televised speech on Monday watched by more than 21 million people in which he announced major steps to address concerns that people in France could not make ends meet.
The minimum wage will increase by €100 a month from January, he said, and a planned tax on pensions under €2,000 a month would be cancelled.
But crucially, the president did not announce a U-turn on his pro-business policies. He stood firm by his decision to slash France’s wealth tax for the very rich. Many protesters had wanted a full wealth tax to be reintroduced.
Macron’s speech was never expected to stop the road barricades overnight.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-11 20:46:06
Reluctant U.S. Supreme Court on collision course with Trump
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court’s reluctance to take up new cases on volatile social issues is putting it on a collision course with President Donald Trump, whose Justice Department is trying to rush such disputes through the appeals system to get them before the nine justices as quickly as possible.
That tension could come to head in 2019 if the court continues to avoid cases that the Republican president’s lawyers are aggressively trying to bring to the justices. The court’s 5-4 conservative majority includes Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
While Trump has suffered a series of setbacks in lower federal courts since taking office last year, he has collected major victories at the Supreme Court. Most notably, the court in June upheld in a 5-4 ruling Trump’s travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries, with Gorsuch casting a pivotal vote, after lower courts had blocked the policy.
But since Kavanaugh joined the bench in October after a bitter Senate confirmation fight, the court has declined to take up appeals by conservative-leaning states seeking to deny public funds to women’s healthcare and abortion provider Planned Parenthood, while postponing action on a dispute over federal employment protections opposed by Trump’s administration for gay and transgender people.
In a setback to social and religious conservatives who strongly support Trump, the high court on Monday declined to take up appeals by Kansas and Louisiana to deny Planned Parenthood public funds under the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor.
Three of the court’s five conservatives voted to hear the matter, but with conservatives Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts declining to join them they fell a vote short of the required four needed to take up a case.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-11 20:46:40
Brazil will quit U.N. migration pact, incoming minister says
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil will pull out of a United Nations pact on dealing with rising migration, the incoming foreign relations minister said, joining the United States and a growing number of countries in rejecting the agreement.
Ernesto Araújo - who will take office in January under right-wing president-elect Jair Bolsonaro - said the international accord was “an inappropriate instrument” to deal with the issue and nations should set their own policies.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-12 09:21:26
Trump says would intervene in arrest of Chinese executive
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would intervene with the U.S. Justice Department in the case against a Chinese telecommunications executive if it would help secure a trade deal with Beijing.
“If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters in the Oval Office.
At the request of U.S. authorities, Huawei Technologies Co. executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested earlier this month in Vancouver on charges of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. The arrest came the same day Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a 90-day truce in their trade war during summit talks in Buenos Aires.
Trump, who wants China to open up its markets to more American-made products and stop what Washington calls the theft of intellectual property, said he had not yet spoken to Xi about the case against Huawei’s executive.
At least two people have been killed and 12 others wounded in a shooting in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.
The gunman, known to security services, is on the run and is being hunted by police. He had been injured in an exchange of gunfire with a soldier, police said.
The shooting happened close to a Christmas market near one of the central squares, Place Kléber.
France's counter terrorism prosecutor has opened an investigation.
Confirming the death toll had risen to two, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, who is on his way to the city, called it a "serious public security incident".
Six of the injured are said to be in a serious condition, while six others suffered light injuries, police said.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-12 09:29:52
The 17 gripping minutes that captivated Washington
“This has spiraled downward,” Nancy Pelosi declared.
That turned out to be an understatement.
For 17 awkward and tense minutes in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Donald Trump and his Democratic adversaries — Pelosi, the expected incoming House Speaker, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader — clashed in spectacular fashion, with the cameras rolling and shocked reporters watching. White House aides who had given Trump concise talking points were equally blindsided.
In the end, Trump handed Democrats what they consider a massive gift: a direct and unqualified admission — on live TV, no less — that he will be responsible for a government shutdown.
“If we don’t get what we want one way or the other ... I will shutdown the government,” Trump said, adding that he would be “proud” to induce a shutdown over his push for border wall funding.
“I will take the mantle,” he said. “I will be the one to shut it down.”
Not long ago, Michael Cohen was the right-hand man to the most powerful person on earth. In a few months, he’ll be a federal inmate, sentenced to three years in prison for crimes committed at Donald Trump’s side.
The fall from grace was fast and hard, and the toll on the 52-year-old lawyer was evident as he stood in a lower Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday to learn his fate. Face drawn, he shook his head in disbelief as Judge William Pauley handed down the sentence for a “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct”.
To hear Cohen tell it – breaking down in tears – he was a man undone by loyalty to Trump.
“The irony is, today is the day I am taking my freedom back,” said Cohen, who joined the Trump Organization in 2006 and spent the next decade dedicated to cleaning up Trump’s messes, first as a real estate mogul known for his chronic womanizing and then as a candidate and finally, improbably, president of the United States.
He had been living, he said, in a state of “personal and mental incarceration” ever since the day he signed up to work for a man whose business acumen, at the time, he admired. “I now know there is little to admire,” he said.
Read Michael Cohen's full sentencing statement and why 'blind loyalty' to Trump was the biggest mistake of his life
Recently, the President Tweeted a statement calling me weak, and he was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass. My weakness can be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump, and I was weak for not having the strength to question and to refuse his demands. I have already spent years living a personal and mental incarceration, which no matter what is decided today, owning this mistake will free me to be once more the person I really am.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-13 20:35:37
Sri Lanka: president's dissolution of parliament illegal, top court rules
Sri Lanka’s supreme court has rejected an attempt by the president to dismiss parliament and hold snap elections, extending a political crisis that has paralysed the island nation for more than six weeks.
The court in Colombo ruled that Maithripala Sirisena’s order to dismiss parliament, issued on 9 November, was unconstitutional.
The unanimous decision by the country’s top judges leaves Sri Lanka without a prime minister or cabinet, nor a 2019 budget in place. Lawmakers have warned that public sector employees could cease being paid from the beginning of next month.
The ruling extends an impasse that started on 26 October, when Sirisena suddenly announced he had dismissed the country’s prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Wickremesinghe declared the dismissal was an “undemocratic coup” and refused to vacate the prime ministerial residence for the man Sirisena appointed to replace him, the country’s former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-13 20:36:19
Nancy Pelosi on track to become House speaker after agreeing to term limit
Nancy Pelosi has all but assured her ascent to speaker of the House after striking a deal with a rebellious group of Democratic lawmakers demanding fresh faces in leadership.
The agreement, which she announced on Wednesday, was the latest and perhaps most consequential hurdle that the Democratic leader from California has cleared in her bid to reclaim the speakership, a post that is second in line to the presidency. Pelosi, the first woman in American history to be speaker, held the gavel from 2007 to 2011.
The plan would bind the party’s leaders to a four-term limit as part of an effort to ensure opportunities for younger members of the party. It would apply retroactively, meaning Pelosi could only serve for an additional two terms, or four years.
“Over the summer, I made it clear that I see myself as a bridge to the next generation of leaders, a recognition of my continuing responsibility to mentor and advance new members into positions of power and responsibility in the House Democratic Caucus,” Pelosi said in a statement, which concluded with her saying she was “comfortable” with the term-limit proposal.
Moments later, several Democratic lawmakers announced that they would support the California Democrat in a floor vote on the House on 3 January, when the party regains control after winning a majority of at least 40 seats in the November midterms.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-13 20:36:41
China arrests two Canadians on national security charges
Two Canadians have been arrested in China on charges of "endangering national security," the country's Foreign Ministry confirmed on Thursday.
Michael Spavor, a China-based business consultant renowned for running trips to North Korea, and former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig were placed under "compulsory measures" on Monday, according to ministry spokesman Lu Kang, using a term that would typically mean they were in custody.
Lu said Canada had been made aware of their arrests, but declined to confirm whether the men had been given access to lawyers.
Their arrests have further strained relations between the United States, Canada and China in a three-way dispute over the arrest of telecom giant Huawei's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Meng Wanzhou.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-13 20:40:42
Beijing eases back on 'Made in China 2025' amid trade talks with U.S.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China appears to be easing its high-tech industrial development push, dubbed “Made in China 2025,” which has long irked the United States, amid talks between the two countries to reduce trade tensions, according to new guidance to local governments.
Beijing has dropped references to “Made in China 2025”, an initiative intended to help China catch up with global rivals in sophisticated technologies and promoted aggressively since 2015.
The strategy is core to China’s aim to transform itself into a global superpower by 2050, and rival U.S. dominance in sectors such as semiconductors, robotics, aerospace, clean-energy cars and artificial intelligence.
But its open efforts to deploy state support and subsidies to close a technology gap has provoked alarm in the West and blowback from the United States.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said it was clear China has been de-emphasizing the 2025 plan in response to objections from the United States and other countries, “but that doesn’t mean they’ve dropped it.”
"To be clear, neither the SCO nor this Office is making a motion under U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1. No such motion is being made because, as detailed herein, Cohen repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any additional criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge.
(...)
As the Court is undoubtedly aware, in order to successfully cooperate with this Office, witnesses must undergo full debriefings that encompass their entire criminal history, as well as any and all information they possess about crimes committed by both themselves and others. This process permits the Office to fully assess the candor, culpability, and complications attendant to any potential cooperator, and results in cooperating witnesses who, having accepted full responsibility for any and all misconduct, are credible to law enforcement and, hopefully, to judges and juries. Cohen affirmatively chose not to pursue this process. Cohen’s efforts thus fell well short of cooperation, as that term is properly used in this District.
(...)
While he answered questions about the charged conduct, he refused to discuss other uncharged criminal conduct, if any, in which he may have participated."
"Every defendant in every criminal case has the right to fight the charges against him. But where, as here, the evidence of their guilt is overwhelming, defendants often make the choice to plead guilty."
檢控官有寫, 本身跟指引會建議判51~63個月, 但考慮到Cohen同Special Counsel Office(SCO)合作, 建議法官可以溫和輕判("a modest downward variance from the applicable Guidelines range"
Muller memo嘅結論:
"the defendant has made substantial and significant efforts to remediate his misconduct, accept responsibility for his actions, and assist the SCO’s investigation."
" Recently, the President tweeted a statement calling me 'weak,' and he was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass. My weakness can be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump, and I was weak for not having the strength to question and to refuse his demands. I have already spent years living a personal and mental incarceration, which no matter what is decided today, owning this mistake will free me to be once more the person I really am."
"Career prosecutors here in New York have evidence that the president of the United States committed a felony by ordering and paying Michael Cohen to break the law. How do we know that? They told that to the federal judge. Under the rules, they can’t tell that to the federal judge unless they actually have that hardcore evidence. Under the rules, they can’t tell that to the federal judge unless they intend to do something with that evidence."
佢認為SDNY檢控官有足夠強證據, 證明Trump犯法, 先會同個官咁講
:^(
"The felony is paying Michael Cohen to commit a felony. It is pretty basic, A hires B to shoot someone, A is as liable as if he had pulled the trigger, you paid someone to commit the crime, they commit the crime, you are liable, criminally liable for their commission of that crime as well."
主使他人犯罪都係犯罪, 好合符直覺
:^(
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Filibuster_HK
2018-12-14 09:07:34
EU extends sanctions on Russia over Ukraine
European Council President Donald Tusk announced Thursday that EU leaders had agreed to extend comprehensive sanctions against Russia.
Tweeting from the EU summit in Brussels, Tusk wrote, "Decision: EU unanimously prolongs economic sanctions against Russia given zero progress in implementation of Minsk agreements."
The EU sanctions were originally adopted in July 2014, in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. The sanctions target Russia's financial, energy and defense sectors; blocking Russian banks' access to EU markets and limiting EU imports to the country.
In a separate statement, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the military alliance had been "supporting Ukraine to improve its naval capabilities, logistics and cyber defense."
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-14 09:09:04
EU leaders reject May's idea to salvage her Brexit deal
EU leaders delivered a devastating knock-back to Theresa May after she appealed to them to hold “nothing in reserve” and work with her to salvage her Brexit deal by putting a 12-month limit on the unpopular Irish backstop.
The embattled prime minister had pinned her hopes on a last-ditch effort to persuade the European Union to work with her in devising a legal guarantee, known as a “joint interpretative instrument”, that she believes could get her Brexit deal through parliament.
The idea of the EU having the target of terminating the Northern Ireland backstop no more than a year after it was put in force had been supported by Germany’s Angela Merkel and Austria’s Sebastian Kurz.
But it was opposed by Ireland, France, Sweden, Spain and Belgium, who voiced doubts that the prime minister would be able to sell the technical concession to hostile MPs in Westminster.
Filibuster_HK
2018-12-14 09:10:21
Senators vote to end US backing for Saudi war on Yemen
The US Senate has voted to withdraw US military aid for Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen and to blame the kingdom's crown prince for the murder of a journalist.
The historic vote is the first time any chamber of US Congress has agreed to pull US forces from a military conflict under the 1973 War Powers Act.
Some of President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans defied him to pass the measure with Democrats by 56-41.
But the resolution is seen as largely symbolic and unlikely to become law.
https://www.dw.com/en/spain-asks-is-monarchy-right-for-us/a-46664399
It was a hazy and cold December morning in Madrid, and the central Puerta del Sol square, the neural center of the Spanish capital, stood empty of tourists even though it was already past 10 a.m. "Care to vote, sir?" asked one of the men surrounding a table beneath the equestrian statue of 18th century King Charles III. "What for?" the passerby inquired. "For the republic!" replied the man, raising his voice to a shout.
On December 2, over 23,000 people in 12 districts and four municipalities of the Madrid region voted in an unofficial referendum on Spain's form of government. The result was overwhelming in its rejection of the monarchy: 93 percent of those who cast ballots would prefer to have a president of the republic as Spain's head of state.
"Almost 1,500 people who support the monarchical regime have determined that it should nonetheless be submitted to the people's will," said the non-partisan grassroots coordinating body behind the Assemblies for a People's Poll on Monarchy or Republic in a press release afterwards.