Rachel Maddow highlights excerpts in the new Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury, that add details and possible new avenues of inquiry for potential obstruction of justice cases against the Trump team.
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Iran’s government has rallied tens of thousands of its supporters to counter anti-regime protests which have gripped the country for the last week. The demonstrators turned out in towns and cities rocked by some of the largest riots in nearly a decade, where people have been protesting against rising costs and corruption. The crowds in Qom, Ahvaz and Kermanshah waved Iranian flags and pictures of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as signs reading "Death to seditionists". Pro-government demonstrators march in Iran's holy city of Qom, some 90 miles south of Tehran Credit: AFP Some also held placards saying “Death to America and Israel”, referencing the ayatollah’s comments on Tuesday accusing Iran’s foreign enemies of fermenting the unrest. The semi-official Fars news agency, affiliated to the elite Revolutionary Guards, described the well-attended rallies as “the revolutionary outburst of Iranian people against lawbreakers”. Such rallies are often organised by the government in Iran to demonstrate its popular support and justify any crackdown on opposition demonstrations. Tens of thousands gathered across Iran in a massive show of strength for the Islamic rulers after days of deadly unrest. Credit: AFP Some small anti-regime protests were held on Wednesday, but they lacked the intensity and numbers seen in previous days. More than 21 people, including two teenage boys, have been killed in clashes in the last week. Some 1,000 have been arrested, with the head of Tehran's Revolutionary Court warning that they could potentially face the death penalty. The protests began on December 28, when a few hundred demonstrators gather in Mashhad and several other towns, apparently mobilised by a call on popular messaging service Telegram. Two days later the government shut down the app and other social media sites in an attempt to quell the unrest. While initially focusing on Iran's flagging economy and rising food prices, the protests have morphed into demands for wholesale change in Iran's theocratic government. Iranian students protest at the University of Tehran during a demonstration driven by anger over economic problems, in the capital Tehran Credit: AFP They may be rooted in anger over the economy and corruption, but protesters quickly started chanting slogans directly against Khamenei and denouncing the Islamic Republic itself - not just a call for reforms, but an open and outright rejection of the ruling system. This is a dramatic shift from 2009, where a few voices called for the ayatollah’s removal, but they were limited. Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, told his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, on Wednesday that he hoped that the protests would come to an end in the coming days. The Revolutionary Guards also claimed that the protests were petering out. "Today we can announce the end of the sedition," Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Guards, said. "There were a maximum of 1,500 people in each place and the number of troublemakers did not exceed 15,000 people nationwide.” But protesters said they would continue until their demands were met. “The regime is trying to show the world that they have more supporters than detractors by organising big rallies, but it will not silence us,” one activist from the northeastern city of Mashhad, using only the name Ali, told the Telegraph. “This isn’t an overnight movement, this hasn’t sprung up from nowhere.” Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Iran’s former government spokesperson, said the regime ignored the protesters’ concerns at their peril. “What are these lies? Which enemy?,” he wrote on Twitter. “These are our youth. They are fed up with being ignored, of unemployment, despair, poverty, lack of future and bias. I recommend the regime to listen and turn this into an opportunity for dialogue before the entire house burns down.” The US denied it was behind the protests, while at the same time encouraging Iranians to rise up against the regime. “The people of Iran are crying out for freedom,” NIkki Harley, the US’s ambassador to the United Nations, said. “All freedom-loving people must stand with their cause.” President Donald Trump quickly seized on the unrest in Iran, hoping it may destablise the country he has called the “biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world”. In an ominous message on Wednesday, he tweeted: “Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!” Ambassadors to EU states are concerned that Mr Trump is trying to use the demonstrations as a vehicle to place further pressure on the EU to abandon its support for the Iran nuclear deal signed by the president’s predecessor Barack Obama in 2015.
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San Francisco Bay Area residents have been shaken out of their slumber by a magnitude 4.4 earthquake that was felt over a wide area. A spokesman for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services said there were no reports of harm to the region. A Berkeley Fire Department dispatcher, who declined to give his name, said more than a dozen people had called, mostly complaining about windows shaking.
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A father held hostage by Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan for five years has been charged with sexual assault. Joshua Boyle, 34, who with his wife Caitlan Coleman Boyle was captured by the Haqqani network in Afghanistan in October 2012, will have his case discussed during a brief preliminary hearing at a court in Ottowa, Canada, on Wednesday. The Canadian citizen, whose American wife gave birth to their three children while in captivity, faces a total of 15 charges, including eight counts of assault, two of sexual assault, two claims of unlawful confinement, and one accusation of uttering death threats.
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Russia's defence ministry on Thursday said two servicemen were killed in a mortar attack by Islamist militants in Syria on New Year's Eve, but denied media reports seven military planes were destroyed. "As darkness fell, the Hmeimim air base was subjected to sudden mortar shelling from a mobile group of militants. As a result of the shelling, two servicemen were killed," the defence ministry said in a statement to Russian agencies.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday reiterated his frustration with certain states for not handing over information to his commission on voter fraud, and blamed the “rigged system” on Democrats.
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WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration is considering prosecuting state and local officials for not fully cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency’s acting director said Tuesday in an escalation of his threats against so-called “sanctuary cities” and the undocumented immigrants who live in them.
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Comparing the ongoing anti-government protests in Iran to demonstrations in the U.S. like Black Lives Matter, actress and activist Yara Shahidi is urging Americans to consider just how interconnected the situation in Iran is to the U.S. experience.
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A Chicago man is being warned by city officials to stop offering "slumber parties" at his home to homeless people or else his house will be condemned. Greg Schiller told NBC 5 he began opening his basement up to the homeless last month during brutally cold weather. "While we appreciate those who volunteer to provide additional resources in the community, Mr. Schiller's house does not comply with codes and regulations that guard against potential dangers such as carbon monoxide poisoning, inadequate light and ventilation, and insufficient exits in the event of a fire," Molly Center, a city spokesperson, said.
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An Indian airline said Thursday it had grounded two pilots over allegations they had a fight and both briefly stormed out of the cockpit during a New Year's Day flight from London to Mumbai. Jet Airways is investigating claims that a male pilot slapped his female colleague during a heated argument while the plane was in the air with 324 passengers on board. Reports in several Indian newspapers, quoting unnamed sources, said the mid-air altercation led the female pilot to leave the cockpit in tears and she had to be persuaded to go back in by cabin crew.
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The brutal cold that’s believed to be responsible for at least 11 human deaths this week is also taking a toll on animals — particularly pets left outside in the frigid weather.
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Even as Democrats and voting rights groups praised the sudden demise of President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission on Wednesday, voting rights experts were raising alarms about the news that the Department of Homeland Security would step into the breach.
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Motel 6 locations in Washington state gave information about thousands of guests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leading to the detention of at least six people, the state’s attorney general alleged in a lawsuit on Wednesday.
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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — A Zimbabwean court on Thursday freed "for now" an American woman charged with subversion for allegedly describing the former president on Twitter as a "sick man."
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The government is trying to project stability after a week of deadly protests
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A woman who accidentally received the wrong lottery ticket from a cashier and decided to buy it anyway made the right move.
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The average price of a home in London dropped in 2017 for the first time in eight years on fallout from Brexit, data showed on Thursday. While prices were up nationwide, they were down in London for the first time since 2009, mortgage lender Nationwide calculated. UK house prices rose by 2.6 percent overall last year -- slower than the 4.5 percent seen the previous year -- said Nationwide, whose monthly survey is closely watched by markets.
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Burger chain In-N-Out wants its customers’ buns to be warm, apparently.
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The Trump administration has agreed to delay joint military exercises with South Korea until after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics next month, the Pentagon said on Thursday. The decision pushes back a set of annual military exercises known as Foal Eagle, which normally are held between February and April. The decision came as President Donald Trump on Thursday attempted to take credit for the possible reopening of talks between Seoul and Pyongyang, in a departure from his previous skepticism over dialogue. He tweeted: "Does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasn’t firm, strong and willing to commit our total 'might' against the North," adding that "talks are a good thing!" It also came as Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday that North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs are "the most serious threat for our national security since the end of World War II." He promised to carry on building up Japan's military to help protect the nation. The US decision to delay provocative military exercises also came as it was reported that North Korea accidentally misfired a test ballistic missile into one of its own cities in April last year. A woman looks through binoculars during a visit to the Imjingak peace park near the Demilitarized Zone Credit: AFP Citing a US government source, The Diplomat magazine said that the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 crashed just one minute after launch on April 28, plummeting into industrial or agricultural buildings in the city of Tokchon, roughly two hours from the capital, Pyongyang. The missile’s failure was widely reported at the time but it was not previously known that it had crashed into a populated area after flying approximately 24 miles from its launchpad near the Pukchang Airfield in South Pyongan province. Structural damage from a suspected large explosion was detected by The Diplomat using publicly available satellite images, but it was unable to determine if there had been any human casualties. The unintended strike on the compound has once again raised the spectre of an accidental military escalation or even the launch of a nuclear war if an errant missile were to hit North Korea or Japan. Even with a dummy payload, missiles like the Hwasong-12, which use highly volatile liquid fuel, could cause considerable damage to urban areas in a crash, potentially resembling an attack and sparking a serious crisis. North Korean missile ranges At the time of the failed launch, tensions were high on the Korean peninsula and US President Donald Trump had claimed he was “sending an armada” to the region. North Korea considerably stepped up its nuclear and weapons programme in 2017, prompting multiple commercial airlines to change their flight paths as a precaution. The Hwasong-12, which was eventually successfully tested in May, was later revealed to be the fundamental building block for the Hwasong-14/KN20, an intercontinental ballistic missile which Pyongyang boasted could reach the US mainland. However, analysts now fear a more immediate risk of a North Korean nuclear meltdown, according to a recent article published on 38North, a project of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Doubts about the hermit kingdom’s nuclear safety standards re-emerged in December after a video was discovered of leader Kim Jong-un smoking a cigarette next to a Hwasong-14 missile. “Kim’s recklessness is certainly notable, and it hints at an under-emphasised and potentially devastating possibility: the threat of a nuclear accident in North Korea,” said the 38North article.
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