Month: October 2018

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – A federal grand jury on Wednesday charged the man accused of killing 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue with additional hate crimes and firearms offenses, as the Jewish community held more funerals for victims of the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.

The 44-count grand jury indictment expands on the charges initially brought against avowed anti-Semite Robert Bowers, 46, after Saturday’s massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill district.

“Today begins the process of seeking justice for the victims of these hateful acts,” U.S. Attorney Scott Brady said in a statement, adding that his office “will spare no resource” in doing so.

The fresh charges account for surviving victims of the massacre, including police officers. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

Bowers is accused of bursting into the synagogue and opening fire with a semi-automatic rifle and three pistols in the midst of Sabbath prayer services as he shouted “All Jews must die.”

Eleven of the mostly elderly congregants were killed, and six people, including four police officers, were wounded before the suspect was shot by police and surrendered.

The attack, following a wave of politically motivated pipe bombs mailed to prominent Democrats, heightened national tensions days ahead of elections on Tuesday that will decide whether U.S. President Donald Trump will lose the Republican majority he now enjoys in both houses of Congress.

The Pittsburgh massacre also fueled a debate over Trump’s inflammatory political rhetoric and his self-identification as a “nationalist,” which critics say has fomented a surge in right-wing extremism and may have even helped provoke Saturday’s bloodshed.

The Trump administration has rejected the notion that he has encouraged white nationalists and neo-Nazis who have embraced him, insisting he is trying to unify America even as he continues to disparage the media as an “enemy of the people.”

Mourners gathered on Wednesday for the funerals of Melvin Wax, 88, who was leading Sabbath services for one of the temple’s three congregations when the attack began; retired real estate agent Irving Younger, 69; and retired university researcher Joyce Fienberg, 75.

The after-effects of the tragedy pervaded life on Wednesday in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the heart of its Jewish community, where the synagogue is located.

In coffee shops, customers talked about the victims they knew, remembering them as civic-minded, kind and pillars of the community. In the street, friends embraced and comforted one another during the period of raw grief.

Libby Zal said that Younger was such a fixture in Squirrel Hill that a local store he frequented would send him a “get well” card if he was absent for a few days.

Dan Frankel, a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, called Younger outgoing and opinionated.

“He was very interested in social justice and he probably would not have wanted the death penalty (for the gunman),” Frankel said.

EXPANDED CHARGES

Wednesday’s indictment, like the criminal complaint preceding it, charged Bowers with 11 counts of obstructing free exercise of religion, resulting in death, and 11 counts of using a firearm to commit murder – one count for each worshiper killed

It added 15 criminal counts total, including new hate-crime charges pertaining to the wounding of two worshipers and the use of dangerous weapons against a dozen police officers, including the four injured in a gunfight with the suspect.

Funerals for the first four victims to be buried were held on Tuesday as Trump paid a low-key visit to Pennsylvania’s second-largest city, stopping briefly at Tree of Life and the hospital where the wounded officers are recovering.

His trip was greeted by thousands of protesters, who staged a boisterous but peaceful march and rally near the synagogue, demanding Trump publicly denounce white nationalism.

Trump made no public comments during his visit, but wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning that his office had been “shown great respect on a very sad and solemn day” in Pittsburgh.

“Small protest was not seen by us, staged far away,” he tweeted. “The Fake News stories were just the opposite-Disgraceful!”

Four days after the attack, nerves in Squirrel Hill were still frayed. A public school was briefly placed on lockdown following a report that someone had brought a gun onto campus, police said. The report was later found to be false.

Jodi Smith, a Pittsburgh native, joined mourners ahead of the Wax funeral at the Ralph Schugar Chapel and remembered him as a “very polite, gentle man.”

“I could have claimed him as a father,” Smith said. “The synagogue had been his life since his wife passed away a few years ago.”

Fienberg spent 25 years as a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center until she retired in 2008.

“She was an engaging, elegant, and warm person,” the center said on Facebook.

LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Theresa May appeared assured when she met business leaders on Wednesday, attendees of the meeting said, and sounded confident on prospects for striking a Brexit deal despite concern that Britain might leave the European Union without one.

May and Chancellor Philip Hammond met around 150 executives to discuss Britain’s departure from the world’s biggest trading bloc and this week’s annual budget, which included spending pledges and higher taxes on technology firms.

Serco CEO Rupert Soames said both May and Hammond had been “reassuringly robust” and pragmatic in the meeting where May sought to assuage the concerns of business over the imminent departure from the EU.

“(It was) helpful to have practical recognition that the uncertainty is causing investment to slow down,” he told Reuters.

With five months to secure a deal before Britain is due to leave the EU, business leaders are demanding certainty over the kind of trade terms the divorce will deliver. In particular, they want reassurances that there will be a 21-month transition period after Britain is due to leave the bloc.

Attendeees at the meeting at Guildhall in London said the atmosphere was good.

“There was a sense that they’ve got their mojo back,” Legal & General chief executive Nigel Wilson told BBC News after the meeting.

“There was assured confidence from both of them that Brexit negotiations will go well, so we’ll get a good solution, that it will go through parliament in a reasonably smooth way.”

If Britain and the EU fail to strike a withdrawal agreement, there will be no formal transition period to cushion the impact of Brexit.

Earlier on Wednesday, the opposition Labour Party’s finance spokesman John McDonnell also briefed businesses on the budget, and said those attending had quickly focused on Brexit during the discussion.

“We’re as worried as they are about the uncertainty and the lack of assurance coming from government about a deal,” McDonnell told reporters after the meeting.

The Brexit negotiations are currently stalled over a disagreement on a fallback plan to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, former focal point for sectarian tensions, if a future trading relationship is not in place in time.

The latest meeting with business leaders follows a conference call the prime minister held with a similar-sized group of business leaders earlier this month.

May is bidding to prove her business-friendly credentials. She told the Conservative party conference that she would “back business” afer former foreign minister and prominent Brexiteer Boris Johnson reportedly used a different four-letter word to express his disdain for businesses’ interventions on Brexit.

“She set out that the government would work to build a Britain that would be unequivocally pro-business,” May’s office said in a statement after the meeting.

LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Theresa May and Chancellor Philip Hammond batted away on Wednesday requests from business leaders for special treatment due to Brexit, a senior executive told Reuters.

One of the business leaders attending a meeting with May and Hammond had requested more subsidies given the uncertainty surrounding Britain’s departure from the European Union, said the executive, who declined to be named.

“(Hammond) … said you could give people a crock of gold to invest at the moment and they won’t do anything because they don’t know what the future will be,” said the executive, adding that the atmosphere in the room had been good.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States could send as many as 15,000 troops to the border with Mexico, as he hardens his stance against a caravan of migrants fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.

The numbers cited by Trump are significantly higher than defense officials have disclosed. The Pentagon said on Monday it was deploying more than 5,200 troops to the border but that the number would rise. On Wednesday, it said more than 7,000 troops would support the Department of Homeland Security along the border.

Several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have accused Trump of politicizing the military ahead of next week’s congressional elections with his plans to use active military personnel to buttress border patrol efforts.

“As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out … We’ll go up to anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel, on top of Border Patrol, ICE and everybody else at the border,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Trump did not say how many of those 15,000 would be National Guard. There are already 2,100 U.S. National Guard forces at the border, sent after a previous Trump request in April, and they are authorized to go up to 4,000.

If 15,000 troops were drawn into the effort, it would mean there would be more U.S. troops on the border with Mexico than there are in Afghanistan, which has become America’s longest conflict.

Trump has sought to use immigration as an issue to motivate Republican voters ahead of the Nov. 6 elections, where Republicans will seek to maintain control of both congressional chambers.

As a presidential candidate before the U.S. election in 2016, Trump promised to harden immigration laws and build a wall along the southern border with Mexico, but implementation of his signature campaign promise has been slow.

A caravan of Central American migrants estimated to number at least 3,500 people left Honduras in mid-October and is now in southern Mexico on its way to the U.S. border.

“WE DON’T DO STUNTS”

Before Trump’s comments, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday rejected criticism that deploying thousands of troops to the border with Mexico was a political stunt.

“The support that we provide to the secretary for homeland security is practical support based on the request from the commissioner of customs and border police, so we don’t do stunts in this department,” Mattis said after a meeting with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon.

Republican lawmakers and other Trump supporters have applauded the deployment. But critics argue Trump has manufactured a crisis to drive Republican voters to the polls.

“The move to send 5,200 active duty troops to the southern border is a craven political stunt that sets a bad precedent and is arguably an abuse of power,” said Kelly Magsamen, a former senior Pentagon official who is currently with the Center for American Progress left-leaning think tank.

Trump’s decision to call in the military appears to be a departure from past practice. In recent years, such operations have been carried out by National Guard forces, largely part-time military members often called upon to respond to domestic emergencies.

A U.S. official told Reuters that as of Wednesday the Pentagon had identified more than 7,000 active-duty troops, which included about 2,000 on standby, that could be deployed to the border with Mexico if needed.

Many basic questions remained unanswered days after the Pentagon announcement, including the scope of the mission as well as the Pentagon’s assessment of any threat posed by arriving migrants.

LONDON (Reuters) – Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt will set out on Wednesday plans to “reinvigorate and expand” British diplomacy after years of budget cuts as the country looks to boost its influence around the world after Brexit.

With just five months until Britain leaves the European Union, its biggest foreign policy shift in more than 40 years, Hunt will say Britain plans to hire nearly 1,000 more diplomatic staff, open new embassies and boost language training.

“Our democratic values are arguably under greater threat than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall… We can use our influence, reach and power to defend our values by becoming an invisible chain that links the world’s democracies,” Hunt will say in a speech, according to advance extracts.

Since Britain voted in a 2016 referendum to leave the EU, the government has repeatedly flagged its ambition for a ‘Global Britain’, but lawmakers and foreign policy experts have accused it of lacking a strategy or resources to deliver on that goal.

The Foreign Office has faced budget cuts under successive governments which have seen it reduce embassy jobs and sell off exotic properties overseas. At the same time its remit has shrunk, with key policy areas including foreign aid, trade and the relationship with the EU moved to other departments.

The Foreign Office’s operating expenditure fell by 21.6 percent between 2010 and 2015 and was then frozen in real terms, spending watchdog the National Audit Office said last year.

“There is a mismatch between the rhetoric and ambition around a Global Britain and actually what we invest in the diplomatic service itself,” said Tom Raines, head of the Europe Programme at global affairs think-tank Chatham House.

The mismatch, he added, was “quite obvious to others”.

In his speech, entitled “Britain’s role in the world after Brexit”, Hunt will say the new jobs will include 335 diplomatic positions overseas, 328 in London and 329 new local staff around the world.

According to the National Audit Office, the Foreign Office employed 12,865 staff globally in 2016-17.

The government also plans to create 12 new embassies or missions, many of them in Commonwealth countries as it looks to revitalise links with former colonies.

“There is a perception in many places that Brexit is an isolationist or backwards step for the UK, which has generally been seen as internationalist and open… so there is a big job for the UK to correct that narrative,” said Raines.

The Foreign Office will also boost language training, increasing the number of languages taught at the department to 70 from 50, including the addition of Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Gujarati.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Donald Trump met with advisers about his plans for campaign appearances in the final weeks for the battle for control of the U.S. Congress, the president surprised them by insisting they add more events to an already-crowded schedule.

His strategy for the final stretch has been simple: Drive Republican turnout by focusing on an issue that appeals to his core supporters – illegal immigration – using as a foil a large group of Central American migrants making their way slowly through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

And he aimed to keep talking about how Democrats tried to block Brett Kavanaugh from ascending to the U.S. Supreme Court, plus economic gains in the country under his watch.

“This will be the election of the Kavanaughs and the caravans and law and order and tax cuts,” Trump told a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Oct. 26.

Trump’s desire to focus on red-meat issues was rattled by two shocking cases of political violence as he plowed into an eight-state blitz ahead of Tuesday’s congressional elections.

Non-stop cable TV coverage of pipe bombs mailed to prominent political opponents of Trump and of a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue upended his goal of dominating the news. And the freewheeling format of his rallies can complicate the White House’s efforts at delivering a carefully crafted closing message to voters ahead of the elections.

Trump has had to divert from his usual stump speeches and make a rare appeal for political unity, even as he is accused of stoking divisions with his scathing attacks on key Democratic figures and figures in the U.S. news media.

Given the media’s focus on the twin calamities, Trump and his aides are struggling to keep up the momentum ahead of the Nov. 6 vote, which will determine whether Trump’s fellow Republicans retain majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Trump upped the ante on Tuesday, saying he would issue an executive order curtailing so-called “birthright citizenship” to try to prevent babies born to undocumented immigrants from being automatically American citizens.

Such an order would immediately be challenged in federal court as unconstitutional, and some of Trump’s network of outside advisers worried the president was creating an unnecessary distraction.

“The president is making a mistake when he’s trying to roll out a new immigration policy that is undeniably going to be stopped in the federal courts,” said one Trump confidant, who asked not to be identified.

The White House countered criticism of Trump’s proposal by saying there is a wider need for reforms. “We have massive loopholes in our immigration system that we have to close,” spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Fox News.

‘HUGE CROWDS’

Opinion polls indicate that Democrats have a good chance of making the net gain of 23 seats they need to win control of the House, but are less likely to capture a majority in the Senate.

Trump’s final blitz of campaigning includes 11 rallies in eight states, mostly focused on U.S. Senate races. They include two stops in Florida, two in Missouri and visits to West Virginia, Indiana, Montana, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio – all states Trump won in the 2016 presidential election.

“These are places where data and polling information tells us that the president is of best use. He doesn’t go to places that are sure-fire wins nor does he go to places that are sure fire-losses,” said a Trump adviser.

Trump and his aides believe putting him in front of crowds will help convince voters who provided him with his upset victory in 2016 to turn out in a midterm election, when turnout is typically lower than in presidential years.

“These huge crowds – Donald Trump is still the only person who comes without a band, an instrument, a singing voice or a sermon to pack these houses,” said senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who is retiring and who has been a steady critic of the president, said Trump should be using his microphone to unite, not divide Americans after the mailed pipe bombs and the killing of 11 people at the synagogue.

“These events are horrific enough, so we ought to try to make something good come from the tragedy. Something good would be to unify the country and moving away from this kind of rhetoric. That’s what he hasn’t done,” the Arizona senator told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The White House said Trump will continue to draw a contrast with his Democratic opponents.

‘MASSIVE HOLE’

Trump aides acknowledge that holding onto the House is a challenging prospect, and say Republicans’ goal this year is to minimize losses.

“The party in power usually loses many seats and there are 43 Republican retirements and I think that this a massive hole to dig out of,” said Conway.

If Democrats take over the House, Trump’s administration will suddenly be exposed to congressional investigations that would weigh heavily on him for the next two years.

Major legislation would also likely fall to the wayside, such as his signature bid to build a wall along the U.S. southern border with Mexico to thwart illegal immigration.

But for Trump personally, there could be benefits.

A Democratic House would give him a target ahead of his 2020 re-election campaign and would probably prompt what some consider house-cleaning in the Republican hierarchy in Washington – changes that could usher in more Trump allies.

Perhaps preemptively seeking a silver lining, the Trump confidant struck a contrarian tone and said Republicans winning both chambers of Congress would be a negative for Trump “because there will be no immediate desire to change anything.”

Full U.S. election coverage: here