President Donald Trump said on Friday he was open to sitting down with investigators probing possible collusion between his campaign and Moscow “under certain circumstances,” but that he did not want to get caught in a “perjury trap.”
“I’d do it under certain circumstances,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“I think that if we’re going to meet it’s got to be a fair meeting,” he added. “I don’t want to be set up with a perjury trap.”
Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he has tariffs ready to go on a further $267 billion worth of Chinese imports, as the world awaits his decision on imposing levies on $200 billion worth of the Asian nation’s goods.
“The $200 billion we are talking about could take place very soon depending on what happens with them. To a certain extent its going to be up to China, Trump said. “And I hate to say this, but behind that is another $267 billion ready to go on short notice if I want. That changes the equation.”
Earlier on Friday White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Trump will not make any decisions on his threatened tariffs on another $200 billion worth of Chinese goods before officials evaluate public comments on them. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office received nearly 6,000 comments during the public comment period on the proposed levies, which ended Thursday night.
Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama
Calls by a Roman Catholic archbishop and his conservative backers for Pope Francis to resign could make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to do so, Church experts say.
Canon (Church) Law says a pope can resign but the decision must be taken freely. In 2013, Francis’s predecessor, Benedict, became the first pontiff in six centuries to resign.
Benedict, then 85, abdicated because he said he no longer had the strength to run the Church. Unlike now, no-one had publicly demanded his resignation, which was a surprise even to top Vatican officials.
HOW DID THE VATICAN AND THE POPE GET TO THIS POINT?
In an 11-page statement published on Aug. 26, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to Washington, launched an unprecedented broadside by a Church insider against the pope and a long list of Vatican and U.S. Church officials.
He said that soon after the pontiff’s election in 2013, he told Francis that Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., had engaged in sexual misconduct.
He said the pope did nothing and even lifted sanctions that had been imposed on McCarrick by Benedict, the former pope.
Critics of Vigano say his statement has holes and contradictions. They say McCarrick disregarded any sanctions, appearing in public often, even alongside Benedict, in the years after Vigano says the former pope sanctioned McCarrick. Vigano stands by his accusations.
Vigano, who is in hiding and communicating exclusively through reporters for conservative media outlets who helped him prepare, edit and distribute the statement, says there is a “homosexual network” in the Vatican that promotes the advancement of gays in the Church.
His statement included no supporting documents.
In July, after U.S. Church officials said there was evidence that McCarrick, 88, had sexually abused a minor more than 50 years ago, Francis sacked him as cardinal and ordered him to live the rest of his life in seclusion, prayer and penitence. Francis’ defenders say he took strict action against McCarrick while Benedict had not.
Francis told reporters on his plane returning from Ireland that he would “not say one word” about Vigano’s accusations. “Read the document carefully and judge it for yourselves. It speaks for itself,” he said.
WHAT IS THE GENESIS OF THE CURRENT CONSERVATIVE ESCALATION?
Since his election in 2013, conservatives have sharply criticized Francis, saying he has left many faithful confused by pronouncements that the Church should be more welcoming to homosexuals and divorced Catholics and not be obsessed by “culture war” issues such as abortion.
Their attacks on the pope hit a new level with Vigano’s broadside. Much of the drama has been played out in newspapers and social media, part of what has become an often shrill proxy war between Francis’ defenders and Vigano’s allies, who back his call for the pope to step down.
WHAT DOES CANON LAW SAY ABOUT PAPAL RESIGNATIONS?
Canon 332, paragraph two, states:
“If it should happen that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that he makes the resignation freely and that it be duly manifested but not that it be accepted by anyone.”
Canon lawyers say much hinges on the interpretation of the word “freely” and whether the demands being made by the pope’s fiercest critics has constituted enough of a climate of duress to put its validity into doubt.
WHAT DO CANON LAW EXPERTS SAY?
“The pope has the right to freely resign. That’s what the canon says. The doubt is whether the situation Francis is in now really allows for a free choice because there is a political faction in the Church trying to force it,” said Nicholas Cafardi, former dean of Duquesne University School of Law.
“I don’t see how (the pope can resign freely) when you have people campaigning for it,” said Cafardi, who is also a former member of the Board of Governors of the Canon Law Society of America.
Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., agreed.
“I think were are getting to the point of it becoming impossible because the pressure on him is so intense psychologically that it would be impossible to withstand and therefore it would be invalid,” Martens said.
A Rome-based canon lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his position in the Church, said he believed a resignation could be possible but that “it would be very complicated and hairy” and its validity hotly contested because some would see it as a result of duress.
Edward Peters, a conservative canon lawyer based in Detroit, has said on his blog that Francis should not be considered any different to other bishops who canon law says should resign for just or grave causes. The pope is also bishop of Rome.
But some experts also say two former popes (Benedict and Francis) would be just too much for Catholics to digest and would confuse the faithful.
Father Raymond de Souza, a widely read conservative commentator based in Canada, said it would be wrong to treat “the papal office as something worldly than can be relinquished under adverse circumstances”.
WHAT DOES CANON LAW SAY ABOUT PAPAL CONTESTERS?
Canon 1373 says one “who publicly either stirs up hostilities or hatred among subjects against (a pope) ... is to be punished by an interdict or by other just penalties”.
Cafardi said: “I think they (the harshest papal critics) are violating it (canon 1373) or are very close to violating it because of the hate they are trying to stir up against Francis”.
CAN A POPE BE DEPOSED?
Not these days. He can die in office or resign of his own free will. There is no impeachment procedure for a pope.
But Church history is nothing if not colorful. At the start of the 15th century there were three men claiming to be the true pope, each backed by political powers in Europe and Church factions. The Council of Constance, which ran from 1414 to 1418, deposed two of them and the third abdicated.
Tesla’s Elon Musk provoked another twitter storm on Friday by briefly smoking marijuana on a live web show with comedian Joe Rogan.
The forty-seven year old billionaire spent two and a half hours on a podcast late Thursday discussing everything from artificial intelligence and its impact on humankind to flame throwers and social media.
Taking a puff from a joint - which Rogan said was a blend of tobacco and marijuana and legal in California - Musk said he “almost never” smoked.
“I’m not a regular smoker of weed,” Musk said. “I don’t actually notice any effect...I don’t find that it is very good for productivity.”
Tesla was not immediately available for comment.
Musk stunned investors a month back with tweets saying he had funding to take the company private for $420 per share. He then backed off from his plan saying Tesla was better off as a public company.
He followed it up with fresh attacks on British cave diver Vernon Unsworth. Buzzfeed News reported earlier in the week that Musk, in an email to the news site, called Unsworth a “child rapist.”
Neither Tesla nor Musk have commented on the Buzzfeed report.
Musk apologized to Unsworth in July for similar insults he made on Twitter following the rescue of a dozen Thai schoolboys and their football coach from a cave in Thailand.
The billionaire’s behavior has raised concerns about his leadership and several Wall Street analysts have called for the company to appoint a strong No. 2 to prop up Tesla’s operations and standing with investors.
His followers on Twitter went into a frenzy following the podcast. Several followers questioned if it was against the company’s policy, while others mocked the CEO’s initial $420 bid, a number that has become code for marijuana.
"Elon getting high on weed and whiskey is the first reason to go long on $TSLA in a while. He needs to relax a bit," a tweet bit.ly/2M5PdAo by user @jkmcnk said.
Another user tweeted bit.ly/2MT7aY4: "This guy is completely off the rails."
Shares of Tesla fell 1.3 percent in trading before the bell. They have fallen about 18 percent since Musk’s tweet on taking the company private on Aug. 7.
Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Writing by Sweta Singh
Former U.S. President Barack Obama will warn Democratic voters in a speech on Friday that the stakes are too high to sit out November’s elections when the party is seeking to wrest control of Congress from President Donald Trump’s Republicans.
Obama has largely avoided the spotlight since Trump succeeded him last year. But Friday’s speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will mark the start of a flurry of activity as he hits the campaign trail in coming weeks on behalf of Democratic candidates.
On Saturday, Obama will appear at an event in Southern California for seven Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in Republican-held districts that backed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, putting them high on the Democratic list of targets.
Obama travels next week to Ohio to campaign for the Democratic candidate for governor, Richard Cordray, a former Obama administration official.
Later in the month, he is expected to campaign in Illinois and Pennsylvania, the latter state being critical to Democratic hopes of picking up the 23 seats needed to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and put the brakes on Trump’s agenda.
In his Illinois speech on Friday, Obama will revisit themes he has expounded on in the past, including that “America is at its best when our democracy is inclusive and our citizens are engaged,” and that “this moment in our country is too perilous for Democratic voters to sit out,” said spokeswoman Katie Hill.
Traditionally, both parties see a large drop-off in turnout in non-presidential election years.
The former Democratic president, following tradition, has been reluctant to publicly criticize Trump, to the frustration of some in his party. Trump has been critical of Obama’s eight years in office.
But during his eulogy for the late Republican Senator John McCain last week, Obama appeared to directly reference Trump, when he declared: “So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insults and phony controversies and manufactured outrage.”
At the University of Illinois, Obama will receive the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government, named for the longtime U.S. senator from Illinois. Obama served as a senator from Illinois for almost four years.
(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Island nations like Fiji and the Maldives are almost at the "point of no return" because of rising sea levels, a leading climate negotiator warned Friday.
As well as losing land and infrastructure to encroaching oceans as the planet heats up, many islands are also facing extreme flooding and damage from tropical storms, warned Amjad Abdulla, head negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
With experts from across the planet locked in key talks in Bangkok aimed at breathing life into the Paris Agreement on climate change, Abdulla said time had "already run out" for some countries.
"Our islands are at risk. We are doing more than our fair share with our limited resources," he told AFP on the sidelines of the six-day conference.
"What we are saying to the international community is that we do not have adequate financial, technological or human capacity in terms of alleviating the issue of climate change -- we need international cooperation so we can all survive on our islands."
The 2015 Paris deal -- which must be adopted by signatory nations by December -- aims to limit global temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius and to less than 1.5 degrees if possible.
The most persistent sticking points in negotiations revolve around money.
The Paris Agreement has promised $100 billion annually from 2020 to poor nations already coping with the effects of climate change.
Developing countries favour outright grants from public sources, demand visibility on how donor nations intend to scale up this largesse, and object to under-investment in adapting to climate impacts.
Rich countries want more private capital in the mix and prefer projects with profit potential.
AFP/File / -The existence of island nations like the Maldives is at risk from rising sea levels
Although responsible for only a tiny percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions, the very existence of island nations are under threat from rising sea levels.
"We are very behind. If the world had adequately addressed the issue we wouldn't still be negotiating and people would have been able to adapt and have a happier, more prosperous lifestyle," Abdulla said.
"We are on the front line. But this is a global issue and it can be only addressed at the global level."
- 'Traumatic' changes -
Island nations want a better idea of what sort of funding they can expect from richer states to help develop renewable technology and build up local defences against the rising seas.
They also want commitments to help with the unique "loss and damage" derived from sea level rises and other impacts including storms and salt water intrusion.
"People are losing their livelihood, losing their homes," said Abdulla.
"From the perspective of us in the Maldives, we are moving people to safer places, creating some kind of protection so that people can still survive.
AFP / Jewel SAMAD"It's almost the point of no return" warned Abdulla during the six-day Bangkok conference
"Now is almost the point of no return. The cost of adaptation is going to be massively scaled up. It's not cheap even now and we see that the cost is going to escalate."
Delegates at the Bangkok conference aim to produce a draft text of "streamlined" options that ministers and heads of state can push across the finish line at the December UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland.
Abdulla said he was optimistic a consensus would be reached, but stressed things "are not moving forward how we would have wanted."
"We don't have the luxury of time. It has already run out," he added.
Finding a road through dozens of contentious and unresolved issues from the Paris accord carries particular urgency for Abdulla, who grew up in the Maldives and still remembers a time when most people lived in wooden huts, and electricity, quality schooling and healthcare were rare.
"Now, there's no island without a school. They all have healthcare facilities, pharmacies, there are universities and people's livelihoods have changed dramatically.
"Telephones, cable TV, internet. Schoolkids now have tablets. We have improved hugely. And it's all under threat," he said. "It's traumatic."
Indian media on Friday -- including some conservative outlets -- hailed a Supreme Court ruling to decriminalise gay sex whilst highlighting a "deafening" silence from Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government.
Banner front page headlines such as "Love at First Right", "Rainbow Nation" and "Independence Day" greeted the verdict of the top court to strike down the heart of Section 377, a law introduced by British rulers in 1861.
Many said the five justices may have opened the doors to demands for greater civil rights for long-marginalised gays and lesbians, including same-sex marriage.
The conservative Hindu newspaper called the verdict "a reaffirmation of the right to love" and "a welcome depature from centuries of 'hetero-normative' thinking".
The judges had "furthered the frontiers of personal freedom and liberated the idea of personal rights from the pressure of public opinion," it added in an editorial.
The Hindusan Times warned that the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender community will still face condemnation from their families and colleagues.
"Harassment and violence will continue to occur," it warned.
"But if the long legal battle and the courage of queer people and communities are anything to go by, this fight for equal rights will not end. It will grow even stronger now that even the apex court has said there is no going back."
Amid pictures of celebrating activists, Google India put out a rainbow flag on its homepage and Facebook changed its display picture to a multi-hued icon.
AFP / CHANDAN KHANNA The court ruled the colonial era law effectively making gay sex illegal was unconstitutional
The United Nations and rights activists around the world gave Twitter support to the Supreme Court ruling.
But Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing government has yet to make a comment on the ruling.
Modi's administration had initially opposed dismantling Section 377, though in July government lawyers said they would give in to the "wisdom" of the top court.
Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said the government should have taken a categorical stand one way or the other instead of being ambivalent, the Hindu newspaper reported the judge as saying.
The Indian Express daily said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's silence on the issue was "deafening" and "deceptive".
India's main opposition Congress and other small regional parties have welcomed the verdict.
The BJP's ideological Hindu nationalist backer, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said it does not consider homosexuality a crime but it did not support same-sex relations.
"Traditionally, Indian society does not accept such relations," it said in a statement.
Now, an op-ed in The New York Times by an anonymous “senior White House official” describes how deeply the troubles in this administration run and what effort is required to protect the nation.
My focus as the volume’s editor was on Trump’s dangerousness because of my area of expertise in violence prevention. Approaching violence as a public health issue, I have consulted with governments and international organizations, in addition to 20 years of engaging in the individual assessment and treatment of violent offenders.
The book proceeded from an ethics conference I held at Yale, my home institution. At that meeting, my psychiatrist colleagues and I discussed balancing two essential duties of our profession. First is the duty to speak responsibly about public officials, especially as outlined in “the Goldwater rule,” which requires that we refrain from diagnosing without a personal examination and without authorization. Second is our responsibility to protect public health and safety, or our “duty to warn” in cases of danger, which usually supersedes other rules.
Our conclusion was overwhelmingly that our responsibility to society and its safety, as outlined in our ethical guidelines, overrode any etiquette owed to a public figure. That decision led to the collection of essays in the book, which includes some of the most prominent thinkers of the field including Robert J. Lifton, Judith Herman, Philip Zimbardo and two dozen others. That decision was controversial among some members of our field.
We already know a great deal about Trump’s mental state based on the voluminous information he has given through his tweets and his responses to real situations in real time. Now, this week’s credible reports support the concerns we articulated in the book beyond any doubt.
The author of the New York Times op-ed makes clear that the conflict in the White House is not about Trump’s ideology.
The problem, the author sees, is the lack of “any discernible first principles that guide his decision making … his impulsiveness [that] results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back, and there being literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next.”
These are obviously psychological symptoms reflective of emotional compulsion, impulsivity, poor concentration, narcissism and recklessness. They are identical to those that Woodward describes in numerous examples, which he writes were met with the “stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters.”
They are also consistent with the course we foresaw early in Trump’s presidency, which concerned us enough to outline it in our book. We tried to warn that his condition was worse than it appeared, would grow worse over time and would eventually become uncontainable.
What we observed were signs of mental instability – signs that would eventually play out not only in the White House, as these accounts report, but in domestic situations and in the geopolitical sphere.
There is a strong connection between immediate dangerousness – the likelihood of waging a war or launching nuclear weapons – and extended societal dangerousness – policies that force separation of children from families or the restructuring of global relations in a way that would destabilize the world.
I am concerned that his mental challenges could cause him to take unpredictable and potentially extreme and dangerous measures to distract from his legal problems.
Mental health professionals have standard procedures for evaluating dangerousness. More than a personal interview, violence potential is best assessed through past history and a structured checklist of a person’s characteristics.
These characteristics include a history of cruelty to animals or other people, risk taking, behavior suggesting loss of control or impulsivity, narcissistic personality and current mental instability. Also of concern are noncompliance or unwillingness to undergo tests or treatment, access to weapons, poor relationship with significant other or spouse, seeing oneself as a victim, lack of compassion or empathy, and lack of concern over consequences of harmful acts.
The Woodward book and the New York Times op-ed confirm many of these characteristics. The rest have been evident in Trump’s behavior outside the White House and prior to his tenure.
That the president has met not just some but all these criteria should be reason for alarm.
Other ways in which a president could be dangerous are through cognitive symptoms or lapses, since functions such as reasoning, memory, attention, language and learning are critical to the duties of a president. He has exhibited signs of decline here, too.
The president has already shown an alarming escalation of irrational behavior during times of distress. Others have observed him to be “unstable,” “losing a step” and “unraveling.” He is likely to enter such a state again.
Violent acts are not random events. They are end products of a long process that follow recognizable patterns. As mental health experts, we make predictions in terms of unacceptable levels of probability rather than on the basis of what is certain to happen.
Trump’s impairment is a familiar pattern to a violence expert such as myself, but given his level of severity, one does not need to be a specialist to know that he is dangerous.
What next?
I believe Woodward’s book and the revelations in the New York Times op-ed have placed great pressure on the president. We are now entering a period when the stresses of the presidency could accelerate because of the advancing special counsel’s investigations.
The degree of Trump’s denial and resistance to the unfolding revelations, as expressed in a recent Fox interview, are telling of his fragility.
From my observations of the president over extended time via his public presentations, direct thoughts through tweets and accounts of his close associates, I believe that the question is not whether he will look for distractions, but how soon and to what degree.
Just as suspicion of crime should lead to an investigation, the severity of impairment that we see should lead to an evaluation, preferably with the president’s consent.
Mental impairment should be evaluated independently from criminal investigations, using medical criteria and standardized measures. A sitting president may be immune to indictments, but he is subject to the law, which is strict about public safety and the right to treatment when an individual poses a danger to the public because of mental instability. In the case of danger, the patient does not have the right to refuse, nor does the physician have the right not to take the person as a patient.
This evaluation may have been delayed, but it is still not too late. And mental health professionals have extensive experience assessing, restraining and treating individuals much like Trump – it is almost routine.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants President Donald Trump to commit to a follow-up interview to written answers to questions in his probe of any coordination between Trump campaign members and Russia in the 2016 U.S. election, Rudy Giuliani, who is representing the president, said on Thursday.
Giuliani, who said talks between the two sides were continuing, saw Mueller’s stance as a hardening in the position prosecutors are taking after offering to allow Trump to answer questions in writing.
“I thought we were close to having an agreement until they came back with, ‘You have to agree now that you’ll allow a follow-up,’ and I don’t see how we can do it,” Giuliani told Reuters.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment.
Lawyers for Trump have been negotiating over a potential interview with Mueller’s team since last year in the U.S. investigation of Russian meddling in the presidential election, which Moscow denies. Trump has denied any campaign collusion, calling the Mueller probe a “witch hunt.”
In a letter to Trump’s lawyers last week, Mueller expressed a willingness to accept written responses on questions about collusion, but did not rule out a possible interview as a follow-up, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
After receiving the written responses, Mueller’s investigators would decide on a next step, which could include an interview with Trump, the person said.
But Giuliani said on Thursday that Mueller’s team had stiffened its position in the latest talks.
“They want a commitment” to a follow-up interview, Giuliani said. “We’ve said no, and let’s see how they deal with it.”
Giuliani has described a possible interview with Mueller as a potential “perjury trap,” an opportunity to catch Trump making a false statement under oath, and legal experts have also suggested that Trump could open himself up to trouble.
Mueller is also investigating whether Trump may have tried to obstruct the Russia investigation after winning office, but Giuliani said on Thursday that no questions on the obstruction issue would be part of the first round of questions.
If negotiations break down with Mueller, a subpoena could be issued for Trump to testify before a grand jury, which Giuliani has said they would fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the campaign, seeking to tilt it in Trump’s favor against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by hacking Democratic computer networks and spreading disinformation on social media.
Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Tim Ahmann
Lawyers for Sayfullo Saipov, the man accused of killing eight people by driving a truck into a New York City bike path in October, on Thursday asked a federal judge to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, saying President Donald Trump’s statements on Twitter have made a fair legal process impossible.
In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, Saipov’s lawyers said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who must decide whether to pursue the death penalty, cannot be objective because Trump has pressured him to make decisions based on “nakedly political considerations” and has called for Saipov to be executed.
The lawyers pointed to a Monday tweet in which the president criticized the “Jeff Sessions Justice Department” for indicting two Republican congressmen “just ahead” of the upcoming congressional elections.
They also cited two tweets following Saipov’s arrest calling for him to face the death penalty.
Together, they said, Trump’s tweets make it impossible for Sessions to “exercise independent discretion” on the matter.
They asked that if the judge declines to bar the death penalty altogether, an independent prosecutor be appointed to make the decision in place of Sessions.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, whose office is prosecuting Saipov, declined to comment. The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Saipov, a 30-year-old Uzbek national, was arrested in October immediately after police said he plowed a truck down a bike lane on Manhattan’s West Side. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the deadliest assault on New York City since Sept. 11, 2001.
He was charged in an indictment with eight counts of murder and other crimes including attempted murder and providing material support to Islamic State. He has pleaded not guilty.
Following the attack, Saipov told investigators he was inspired by watching Islamic State videos and began planning the attack a year earlier, according to a criminal complaint filed by prosecutors the day after the attack.
Saipov made a public statement at a pre-trial hearing in June, speaking of a “war” led by Islamic State to establish sharia, or Islamic law, on earth, and dismissing the court’s judgment as “not important.”
Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
Filmmaker Michael Moore compares U.S. President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler in his provocative new documentary, “Fahrenheit 11/9” that got its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday to a sold-out audience.
The documentary examines the forces Moore believes contributed to Trump’s election victory in November 2016, drawing parallels with the rise of Hitler in 1930s Germany.
The White House could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.
At one point, the film superimposes Trump’s words over videos of Hitler’s rallies, as a historian talks about the rise of strong men to positions of power.
“We explore the question of how the hell we got in this mess and how do we get out of it,” the liberal activist told reporters ahead of the film’s screening.
“He’s (Trump) been around for a long time and we’ve behaved in a certain way for a long time and when you look back now you can see how the road was paved for him,” Moore said.
The new film was a call to action for Americans, said Moore, who won an Oscar in 2003 for his gun violence documentary “Bowling for Columbine.”
“We are in a war to get our country back,” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t understand that is going to be sorely disappointed in the results of what’s about to happen in the next few years with Donald Trump.”
“Fahrenheit 11/9” takes its title from the early hours of Nov. 9, 2016, when Republican candidate Trump was officially declared the victor over Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.
In the film, Moore assigns blame for Trump’s victory to widespread assumptions that Clinton would win, vested interests, and U.S. media that prioritized the big audiences Trump drew to television programming.
The documentary premiered the same week the New York Times printed an anonymous opinion column whose writer described “a quiet resistance” to Trump within his own administration, and advance excerpts of a new book by journalist Bob Woodward portrayed Trump as prone to impulsive decision-making.
It follows Moore’s one-man show on Broadway last year in which he used his satirical blend of humor to target Trump and encourage liberals to turn resentment at the Republican political agenda into resistance.
The film also touched on topics ranging from mass shootings in American schools to the contamination of water in Moore’s Flint, Michigan hometown.
At the end of the Toronto premiere, Moore emerged on stage, accompanied by some of the Florida school students who led nationwide protests demanding stricter gun laws.
“Fahrenheit 11/9” will open in movie theaters across the U.S. on Sept. 21.
Reporting by Nichola Saminather and Rollo Ross; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Clarence Fernandez
U.S. and Canadian negotiators pushed ahead in grinding talks to rescue the North American Free Trade Agreement on Thursday, but a few stubborn issues stood in the way of a deal, including dairy quotas, protection for Canadian media companies, and how to resolve future trade disputes.
A U.S. source familiar with the discussions in Washington said it was still unclear whether the two sides could bridge the gaps or whether President Donald Trump will opt for a Mexico-only bilateral trade deal.
“We’re down to three issues: Chapter 19, the cultural issues and dairy. We’ve created leverage and driven Canada to the table,” the source said. “Part of our problem is that Canada has been backsliding on its commitments (on dairy).”
NAFTA’s Chapter 19 governs how disputes are resolved.
Trump has set a deadline for a deal this week, prompting aides to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland to work well into the evening on Thursday to find ways to move forward.
Bloomberg News cited a Canadian government official as saying that a deal was not expected to be reached this week.
“We are making good progress,” Freeland told reporters following a short meeting with Lighthizer at the USTR offices on Thursday evening.
She repeated her earlier statements that the day’s discussions were “constructive and productive” amid an atmosphere of “goodwill on both sides.”
She declined to discuss specific issues under negotiation but said talks would resume on Friday.
The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, Kevin Brady, a powerful voice in Congress on trade, told reporters that differences remained between the two sides over Canada’s dairy quota regime, a trade dispute resolution settlement procedure and “other longstanding issues.”
The Trump administration charges that Canada discriminates against U.S. dairy exports. It also wants to end the Chapter 19 arbitration panels for resolving disputes over anti-dumping tariffs, something Canada has used to defend its lumber exports to the United States, despite U.S. charges that Canadian lumber is unfairly subsidized.
“They are continuing to push toward a conclusion of that agreement. A lot depends on the seriousness of Canada in resolving these final disputes,” Brady told reporters after speaking with Lighthizer earlier on Thursday. “My sense is that everyone is at the table with the intention of working these last, always difficult issues out.”
The third unresolved issue is Canada’s insistence that previous NAFTA cultural exemptions protecting its publishing and media companies from being acquired by American companies be preserved. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week said this was important to Canada’s national sovereignty and identity.
Lighthizer has referred to the exemptions as “cultural protectionism” as Canadian companies are free to buy U.S. media outlets.
Trump has threatened to push ahead with a bilateral deal with Mexico, effectively killing the three-country NAFTA pact, which covers $1.2 trillion in trade.
The United States and Mexico reached an agreement on overhauling NAFTA at the beginning of last week, turning up the pressure on Canada to agree to new terms.
Trump said on Wednesday that he expected it to be clear whether there would be a deal to include Canada in a few days.
Canada also wants a permanent exemption from Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, and for Washington to eliminate the threat of U.S. auto tariffs.
But Freeland said the “Section 232” national security tariffs on metals were not part of the current NAFTA talks.
The United States and Mexico reached an agreement on overhauling NAFTA at the beginning of last week, turning up the pressure on Canada to agree to new terms.
Trump said on Wednesday that he expected it to be clear whether there would be a deal to include Canada in a few days.
Canada also wants a permanent exemption from Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, and for Washington to eliminate the threat of U.S. auto tariffs.
But Freeland said the “Section 232” national security tariffs on metals were not part of the current NAFTA talks.
Negotiators have blown through several deadlines since the talks started in August 2017. As the process grinds on, some in Washington insist Trump cannot pull out of NAFTA without the approval of Congress.
Writing by David Ljunggren and David Chance; Additional reporting by Dan Burns in Washington and Chris Prentice in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler
Rescue workers with dogs searched for survivors on Friday in debris-strewn landslides caused by an earthquake in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido that killed at least 16 people, officials said, with 26 still missing.
Electricity was restored to nearly half the island’s 5.3 million residents after a blackout triggered by Thursday morning’s 6.7-magnitude quake. There were also widespread transport cuts after the pre-dawn quake, the latest natural disaster in a deadly summer in Japan.
Nearly 5,000 people spent the night in evacuation centers where food was distributed in the morning.
“It was an anxious night with several aftershocks, but we took encouragement from being together and now we’re grateful for some food,” one woman told public broadcaster NHK.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told an emergency meeting early on Friday that 22,000 rescue workers had worked through the night to search for survivors.
With rain forecast for Friday afternoon and Saturday, he urged people to be careful about loose soil that could cause unstable houses to collapse or further landslides.
“We will devote all our energy to saving lives,” Abe said.
Hokkaido Electric Power Co. (9505.T) aimed to bring more than 80 percent of the 2.95 million households back online by the end of Friday, industry minister Hiroshige Seko said.
Flights resumed from midday at Hokkaido’s main airport, New Chitose, with more flights planned for the afternoon, airline officials said.
The island, about the size of Austria, is a popular tourist destination known for its mountains, lakes and seafood.
LANDSLIDES WRECK HOMES
Soldiers in fatigues and orange-clad rescue workers searched for survivors, picking through debris on huge mounds of earth near the epicenter in Atsuma in southern Hokkaido. Aerial footage showed rescuers with dogs walking through the destruction.
All 26 missing people are from the Atsuma area, where dozens of landslides wrecked homes and other structures and left starkly barren hillsides.
“I just hope they can find him quickly,” one unidentified man told NHK as he watched the search for his missing neighbor.
The quake damaged the big Tomato-Atsuma plant, which normally supplies half of Hokkaido’s power and is located near the epicenter, forcing it to automatically shut down. That caused such instability in the grid that it tripped all other power stations on the island, causing a full blackout.
Hokkaido Electric was bringing other smaller plants back on line and also receiving some power transferred through undersea cables from the main island of Honshu.
The quake was the second disaster to hit Japan this week alone after a summer during which the country has been battered by deadly typhoons, flooding and a record heat wave.
Kansai International Airport has been shut since Typhoon Jebi ripped through Osaka on Tuesday, although some domestic flights operated by Japan Airlines (JAL) (9201.T) and ANA’s (9202.T) low-cost carrier Peach Aviation resumed on Friday, the carriers said.
JR Hokkaido planned to resume bullet train operations from midday. It was also trying to resume other train services on Friday afternoon, a spokesman said.
Manufacturers were still affected by power outages.
Toyota Motor Corp’s (7203.T) Tomakomai factory, which makes transmissions and other parts, said operations remained suspended indefinitely until power was restored, a spokesman said.
Toppan Printing’s (7911.T) operations at a plant in Chitose, which makes food packages, would remain suspended until it regained power, a spokesman said.
The quake prompted Japan’s Self Defense Forces to cancel two joint military exercises in Hokkaido, including the first-ever drill with Australian fighter jets, and a training exercise with the U.S. Marine Corps.
A soccer friendly between Japan and Chile scheduled for Friday in Sapporo was also called off.
Reporting by Chris Gallagher, Kaori Kaneko, Makiko Yamazaki and Osamu Tsukimori; Writing by Malcolm Foster, Chris Gallagher; Editing by Paul Tait
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AFP / Jewel SAMAD
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