Bhinneka News Online: Tuesday Morning Briefing: Manafort accused of lying to U.S. special counsel

Tuesday 27 November 2018

Tuesday Morning Briefing: Manafort accused of lying to U.S. special counsel

Politics

President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort breached his plea deal by lying to federal investigators, prosecutors said in a court filing, signaling a potential setback to the special counsel’s probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Voters in Mississippi will decide a Senate special election runoff marked by racial controversy and capped by a last-minute visit by Trump to shore up the beleaguered Republican incumbent.

Reuters Opinion

@ReutersOpinion

George Moscone, the San Francisco mayor assassinated with Harvey Milk in 1978, campaigned on 'radical' ideas like not having city government dominated by white men. Now mostly taken for granted, then they challenged powerful interests. Via @LincolnMitchell https://reut.rs/2DZHAfh

1:43 AM - Nov 27, 2018

Ukraine-Russia

Ukraine imposed martial law for 30 days in parts of the country most vulnerable to an attack from Russia after President Petro Poroshenko warned of the “extremely serious” threat of a land invasion.

Europe may need to impose tougher sanctions against Moscow following Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian navy vessels and their crews at the weekend, an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Commentary: Russia's seizure of three Ukrainian naval ships "was another demonstration of Moscow’s ever-mounting appetite to use unorthodox, partially nonmilitary and sometimes nonlethal techniques to redraw the geopolitical map," writes Reuters global affairs columnist Peter Apps. "It’s a strategy Putin’s foes – particularly Ukraine, still locked in an endless ground war elsewhere along its border, but also the Western states of NATO – are struggling to counter."

World

Divisions within Europe and tension between the United States and China pose major challenges to the next round of United Nations talks on climate change. The most important U.N. climate conference since the Paris Agreement of 2015 opens on Sunday in Katowice, Poland, in one of the most polluted coal-mining regions in Europe. Success, according to the conference’s Polish host, will need a miracle.

Authorities in Myanmar have seized a boat carrying 93 people, apparently Rohingya Muslims, fleeing displacement camps in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State and hoping to reach Malaysia, an official said. Two Reuters journalists have been imprisoned in Myanmar for 351 days. See the full coverage.

Prime Minister Theresa May began a tour of the United Kingdom to drum up support for her Brexit divorce deal with the European Union, while her deputy said parliament might reject it if asked to vote on it now. Britain can unilaterally reverse its decision to leave the European Union, an urgent hearing of Europe’s top court was told in a case supporters of EU membership hope could pave the way to a second referendum and ultimately stop Brexit.