Top News Stories for Today – Jan 24, 2019
Top News Stories for Today – Jan 24, 2019
China warns Canada’s Meng Wanzhou arrest
A party-backed nationalistic tabloid in China has warned that the extradition battle over tech giant Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, is likely to be drawn out and complex. In a sharply worded editorial, the Global Times also said Beijing should make it clear that it will retaliate against both Washington and Ottawa if the request is approved. In the editorial, the Global Times said “anyone with a brain can clearly see Washington’s intention to stop rising Chinese high-tech companies in the name of the law.” It also said that China should prepare for more complicated games.
China has already carried out what many see as retaliation against Canada for detaining Meng while she was transiting through the country in early December. Since then, Beijing has arrested two Canadian citizens and recently retried a Canadian facing drug charges, replacing a 15-year verdict with the death sentence. VOA
Trump delays Congress speech over shutdown
President Trump tweeted late Wednesday night that he will deliver his State of the Union address once the government shutdown is over. His announcement came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent him a letter informing him that she would not hold a vote on a resolution authorizing him to give his speech in the House chamber until the government re-opened.
“I look forward to giving a ‘great’ State of the Union Address in the near future!” he tweeted. Pelosi quickly responded with her own tweet, telling Trump she hopes “by saying ‘near future’ you mean you will support the House passed package to #EndTheShutdown that the Senate will vote on tomorrow.” Donald J. Trump and Nancy Pelosi via The Week
Democrat inquiry WH’s use of security clearances
A powerful House committee now led by Democrats has launched an investigation into the Trump administration’s use of security clearances, accusing the White House and the 2016 presidential transition team of “grave breaches” in the process that awards access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets.
The inquiry by the House oversight and reform committee, announced on Wednesday, takes direct aim at some of those closest to the president over the past two years, including the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and former White House aide Rob Porter. The review also sets up one of the first potential fights between a Democrat-led House committee and a White House bracing for a number of investigations in the wake of last year’s midterm elections that eroded Republican control in Congress. The Guardian
Cohen postpones testimony due to threats from Trump
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former attorney, was scheduled to publicly testify about Trump to Congress next month, but revealed Wednesday he’d postpone that appearance due to alleged “ongoing threats against his family from President Trump” and Trump’s current lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Cohen, who was sentenced to prison for financial crimes and for lying to Congress about the Trump Organization’s plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, has been cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s potential involvement with Russian election interference. He said he’d tell Congress “all he knows” about Trump, but in a Wednesday statement from his attorney said he “had to put his family and their safety first.” Cohen did not detail the alleged threats from Trump and Giuliani. CNN via The Week
Venezuela orders US diplomats out of the country
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Wednesday he is severing diplomatic relations with the United States after President Trump officially recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. Maduro said in a speech that US diplomats have 72 hours to leave the country. “I’ve decided to break diplomatic and political relations with the imperialist US government,” he said.
Maduro was elected to another term in a widely disputed election that has been decried as illegitimate, prompting Guaidó, the opposition leader and president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, to declare himself the interim president. The US recognized him as the country’s leader Wednesday after having previously called Maduro a “dictator with no legitimate claim to power.” The Associated Press and The Washington Post via The Week
Arrested ex- Jakarta governor free after 2 years
The former governor of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta is free after spending nearly two years in prison on a blasphemy conviction. Ahok, an ethnic Chinese-Christian, was running for re-election in 2016 when he was captured on video quoting a verse in the Quran to prove to his supporters that there were no restrictions on Muslims voting for non-Muslim politicians.
His statement was edited and widely spread through social media, triggering angry demonstrations by hardline Muslims calling for either his arrest or execution for insulting Islam. Ahok would go on to lose the election in April 2017 by a Muslim challenger who courted the conservative Islamic vote, and was convicted less than a month later on the blasphemy charges. The conviction generated fears that Indonesia’s reputation as a tolerant, moderate Muslim-dominated nation was being challenged by hardline conservatives seeking to impose a strict form of sharia, or Islamic law. About 88 percent of Indonesia’s 260 million people are Muslim. VOA
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