Rep. Matt Gaetz barged into Fiona Hill deposition

According to transcripts released by House Democrats, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, in a heated exchange with Rep. Adam Schiff, was told to leave the closed-door Fiona Hill deposition.

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Nikki Haley: ‘There’s Just Nothing Impeachable’ About Trump’s Actions

Stephanie Keith/GettyAs the impeachment inquiry against him heats up, President Trump appears to have gotten perhaps his most dramatic defense yet from former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley: According to her, impeachment proceedings are akin to “the death penalty for a public official” and Trump simply doesn’t deserve the death penalty. In excerpts from an interview with CBS News released late Friday, Haley scoffed at the idea that Trump would actually be removed from office.“You're going to impeach a president for asking for a favor that didn't happen and giving money and it wasn't withheld?” Haley told CBS' Norah O'Donnell. “I don't know what you would impeach him on.”The former ambassador, who resigned in late 2018, went on to liken impeachment proceedings to capital punishment.“And look, Norah, impeachment is like the death penalty for a public official. When you look at the transcript, there's nothing in that transcript that warrants the death penalty for the president,” she said, referring to a transcript of the July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president that sparked the impeachment inquiry.O'Donnell pushed back, noting that the National Security Council's top Ukraine expert, Alexander Vindman—who listened in on the call—had testified to Congress that the rough transcript of the call released by the White House was not complete.“There's still things that are missing from it,” O'Donnell said.“The Ukrainians never did the investigation, and the president released the funds,” Haley replied. “I mean, when you look at those, there's just nothing impeachable there.”“I think the biggest thing that bothers me is the American people should decide this,” Haley added, apparently taking issue with Congress' constitutional right to impeach a president if deemed appropriate. “Why do we have a bunch of people in Congress making this decision?”The first public hearings of the impeachment inquiry are slated to begin next week—with former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and two top diplomats, William Taylor and George Kent, expected to testify. The inquiry was sparked by a whistleblower complaint about the July 25 call. The whistleblower raised concerns about Trump leveraging military aid to pressure Ukraine into investigating widely debunked corruption allegations against his potential political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, along with alleged 2016 election interference by Ukrainians.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Romania's Iohannis in pole position for presidential vote

Romanians vote in a presidential election on Sunday and are expected to support incumbent Klaus Iohannis, an anti-graft policymaker who has won praise in the West for his commitment to the rule of law.

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After burying last victims, some in Mexico's breakaway Mormon community head north

Members of a breakaway Mormon community tucked in the hills of northern Mexico buried the last of their dead on Saturday after a devastating massacre, and some headed for safer ground in the United States.

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Republicans Argue Impeachment Case Falls Short of Proving Trump Misconduct

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Former Los Angeles police chief named interim in Chicago

Chicago's mayor on Friday named former Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck to serve as Chicago's interim police superintendent, a day after the city's top police officer announced he is retiring. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Beck was the perfect choice for the job leading the police force in the nation's third-largest city.

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UPDATE 2-China factory prices falter, while inflation soars to near 8-yr high

China's producer prices fell the most in more than three years in October, as the manufacturing sector weakened on declining demand and a knock from the Sino-U.S. tariff war, reinforcing the case for Beijing to keep the stimulus coming. The producer price index (PPI), seen as a key indicator of corporate profitability, fell 1.6% in October from a year earlier, marking the steepest decline since July 2016, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed on Saturday. Analysts had tipped a contraction of 1.5% for the PPI.

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China hopes Vietnam does not 'complicate' South China Sea issue

China called on Vietnam on Friday not to "complicate" the South China Sea issue, after a senior official in Vietnam said it could explore legal action, among various options, in its territorial dispute with China over the waters. Friction has grown between the two communist-run countries since China in July sent a ship for a months-long seismic survey to an area internationally designated as Vietnam's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), but also claimed by China. Speaking at a conference in Hanoi on Wednesday, deputy foreign minister Le Hoai Trung said Vietnam preferred negotiations but did have other options for the disputed waterway, including arbitration and litigation.

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Pakistan opens visa-free border crossing for India Sikhs

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan inaugurated Saturday a visa-free border crossing for Sikh pilgrims from India, allowing thousands of pilgrims to easily visit a Sikh shrine just inside Pakistan each day. Imran Khan and Narendra Modi held separate opening ceremonies on their respective sides of the new border crossing.

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The uniting politics of second-chance justice

Oklahoma’s mass commutation reflects a bipartisan spirit of forgiveness that could find a place in American politics.

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Transcripts Show GOP ‘Terror Campaign’ to Out Whistleblower

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyRepublican lawmakers have sought to hijack several impeachment depositions in a crusade for information on the whistleblower who sparked the inquiry, according to a review of the transcripts by The Daily Beast. Efforts from Republican lawmakers and their counsel to elicit information on the whistleblower—both by asking leading questions and asking point-blank for the person’s identity—were repeatedly batted down by Democrats, and in one case the attorney of the witness in disputes that became increasingly caustic. Last week, The Daily Beast reported that Derek Harvey, an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, provided notes for House Republicans ahead of the high-profile testimonies of Trump administration appointees with the name of the alleged whistleblower. The goal was that once the transcripts became public, so would the name of the individual. In one example, during the deposition of Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, minority counsel Steve Castor asked flat-out, “Is the whistleblower [redacted]?”  Thanks to Rand Paul, Russian Media Are Naming the Alleged WhistleblowerDuring the deposition of acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, who had testified that military aid to Ukraine was held up against the wishes of top officials including National Security Adviser John Bolton, Rep. Mark  Meadows (R-NC) pressed Taylor for more details on the names of individuals he spoke to at the National Security Council who provided information about Bolton’s thinking on the Ukraine situation.“I guess I'm a little concerned on who at NSC would've been telling you about Ambassador Bolton,” Meadows said. “You felt like he was a kindred spirit on this. So who was telling you from the NSC that he was?”Later, Castor asked Taylor if he communicated with or knew of the official that conservative media has identified as the alleged whistleblower. Taylor said he did not know the individual. Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project, said if the effort to out the whistleblower’s identity was successful it’s certainly “a felony” under the Whistleblower Protection Act, though he doubted the Department of Justice would prosecute the offenders. “It’s an attempt to terrorize other witnesses from providing other testimony,” he said.“This new tactic is threatening their lives, it’s a terror campaign against anyone bearing witness against the president.” The legal risks of their attempts to out the individual did little to deter those involved, even as Democrats attempted to thwart their efforts. Republicans exited certain depositions complaining that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) — who ruled that questions about the whistleblower would be off-limits during the hearings—was shutting down their lines of questioning. That was particularly the case with the testimony of Vindman, who was on Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and who Republicans believed might know the whistleblower.Team Trump Stirs Up Completely Bogus Claim About WhistleblowerThough Vindman said in his opening statement that he would not answer questions about the whistleblower’s identity, the released transcripts reveal that Schiff had to cut off Republicans at least five different times over the course of the 10-hour proceeding. Schiff seemed to get increasingly exasperated as Castor, along with lawmakers such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and John Ratcliffe (R-TX), tried different tactics to coax the information about the whistleblower out of the witness, from the blatant—like Castor’s straight-up ask—to the more subtle, like asking which people he might debrief about an important call.“I am concerned about a bad-faith effort to out a whistleblower who has a statutory right to remain anonymous,” said Schiff, who instructed Vindman that he did not have to answer any question that might have come close to identifying the whistleblower. “We will not be a party to the attacks on the whistleblower. We will not put this whistleblower's life at risk or anymore risk than it already is.”Minutes later, Schiff and Jordan got into a heated argument when more whistleblower questions came up. Jordan claimed he wanted to protect the whistleblower but went after Schiff for allegedly withholding the person’s name, a charge that leans on the chairman’s admission that the whistleblower first anonymously contacted his committee for guidance on how to file their complaint. “It doesn't make it any more true the tenth time you said it than the first time.” responded Schiff, “It just means you’re more willful about the false statement?”The questions also exasperated Vindman’s attorney, Michael Volkov. Later in that deposition, when Castor went at the whistleblower angle again, Volkov asked, “If you want to keep going down this road, we’re going to just keep objecting, OK?”During a portion of the deposition of former NSC official Fiona Hill, the GOP attorney rattled off a list of several officials, asking Hill if she knew any of them. That portion was largely redacted in the transcript, hiding its contents from public view, but it appeared similar to a tactic used by Castor during Taylor’s deposition to try to narrow the universe of who knew the information contained in the whistleblower complaint. Visible in the transcript of Hill’s deposition, however, was the attendance of Nunes aide Harvey, who was a colleague of Hill’s on the NSC during the first year of the Trump administration.  While the whistleblower may have very little recourse under the law, Devine noted that the District of Columbia is one of the only jurisdictions where the individual could seek relief from the effort to out them. In order to do so, Devine said, they would need to file a First Amendment suit in District Court, seeking injunctive relief, including a temporary restraining order, against revealing their identity. “It’s not true they can do this with impunity,” he said. “The assertion that these politicians can engage in this behavior at will is completely false.” — With additional reporting by Spencer AckermanRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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U.K. Conservatives' Lead Over Labour Narrows in Opinium Poll

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s Conservative Party’s lead over the opposition Labour Party narrowed this week as the campaign for the Dec. 12 general election picked up steam.The ruling Conservatives had 41% support compared with 29% for Labour, according to Opinium’s poll issued Saturday for the Observer newspaper. The Tories were at 42% last week and Labour at 26%.The Liberal Democrats were third, with 15%, followed by the Brexit Party at 6% and the Scottish National Party at 5%.The online survey of 2,001 U.K. adults was carried out from Nov. 6 to 8.There’s a 9-in-10 chance that the true value of a party’s support lies within 4 points of the estimates provided by the poll, and a 2-in-3 chance that they are within 2 points, according to Opinium.To contact the reporter on this story: Madison Park in San Francisco at mpark197@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sebastian Tong at stong41@bloomberg.net, Steve GeimannFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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PHOTOS: For Syrian Kurds, and aid workers – the ‘safe zone’ is not so safe

The Kurds are calling this area ‘the genocide zone’. The safe zone is not safe by any definition. It is the zone of the Turkish invasion.

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Argentina’s New Foreign Policy: Who’s Advising Fernandez

(Bloomberg) -- Argentina’s President-elect Alberto Fernandez isn’t showing any signs of moderating his foreign policy stance before he takes office in a month. This weekend, he will host a group of leftist politicians in Buenos Aires.Fernandez was one of the first to praise the likely liberation of Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from jail. He held a lengthy four-hour lunch with Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his first trip abroad since the elections. And on Saturday he’ll be the key speaker of the Puebla Group, a body created in July that brings together left-wing leaders from the region.Read More: Argentina’s Fernandez Set to Shake Up Policy With U.S. and MoreFormer presidents such as Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Uruguay’s Jose Mujica, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo and Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero are some of the higher-profile members of this self-proclaimed progressive group that will be discussing priorities for the region during a weekend meeting in Buenos Aires, concluding with a statement on Sunday. On the agenda are topics such as climate change, migration and regional growth.“The Puebla Group is one I’ve supported even before being a presidential candidate,” Fernandez said in Mexico. “It’s a group designed to fix problems in Latin America. Nothing more than that.”Fernandez hasn’t made clear yet whether he’ll remain in the Lima Group of nations who support Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido. Argentina’s decision on Venezuela could hurt its standing with U.S. President Donald Trump and challenge its ability to renegotiate a $56 billion credit line with the International Monetary Fund.Fernandez, who takes office Dec. 10, has yet to announce who will be his foreign minister. Until then, these are Fernandez’s point people on foreign policy matters, who don’t act as a unified team:Felipe SolaSola, 69, is one of Fernandez’s closest advisers, and travels with him in every trip abroad. An agricultural engineer, he is a national congressman since 2009 and was governor of the province of Buenos Aires during Nestor Kirchner’s presidency. Before that, he was agriculture minister between 1993 and 1999.“I’m slowly getting used to the idea of ​​being the foreign affairs minister,” Sola said during an interview with a local radio station.Though his role isn’t yet defined, he hasn’t hesitated to make statements on Argentina’s foreign policy. During Fernandez’s visit to Mexico, Sola said that the country won’t change its view on the situation in Venezuela due to the debt with the Fund.Jorge ArguelloArguello, 63, is Argentina’s former ambassador to the United Nations, the U.S. and Portugal. Born in Cordoba province, he is a lawyer and a career diplomat. Arguello is a friend of Fernandez for 40 years, though he hasn’t participated in his international trips so far this year.Before that, he was a two-time Buenos Aires City lawmaker. He is the president of Fundacion Embajada Abierta, a consulting firm in Buenos Aires. In a recent article originally published in Le Monde Diplomatique, he defined Argentina as a “country that plays under the rules imposed by others” and that must organize its international agenda with a delicate balance between its own national interests and consensus with other nations.Marco Enriquez-OminamiChile’s three-time presidential candidate Marco Enriquez-Ominami, 46, is also close to Fernandez and has been influencing his international agenda. Although he defines himself as a friend and not a adviser, he has traveled this year with the Argentine leader to Spain and Mexico.Shifting between English, Spanish and French, he was seen most recently at the lobby of the Camino Real hotel in Mexico City, talking about details of the upcoming Puebla Group meeting in Buenos Aires, which he’ll also be attending.Enriquez-Ominami, a Congressman from 2006 to 2010, is a Puebla Group founder and a member of the Partido Progresista in Chile. He lived in Paris for more than a decade.To contact the reporters on this story: Jorgelina do Rosario in Buenos Aires at jdorosario@bloomberg.net;Eric Martin in Mexico City at emartin21@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Carolina Millan at cmillanronch@bloomberg.net, Walter BrandimarteFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers charged, student mourned

Police in Hong Kong said Saturday that they have arrested and charged six pro-democracy lawmakers, a move that could escalate public fury a day after the death of a university student linked to months of anti-government protests in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The 22-year-old died Friday, succumbing to injuries four days after falling from a parking garage when police fired tear gas during clashes with protesters. Police said they arrested six lawmakers and charged them Saturday with obstructing the local assembly during a raucous May 11 meeting over a now-shelved China extradition bill that sparked the five months of protests calling for democratic reforms.

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Some Kentucky Republicans warn against election challenge

Some Kentucky Republicans are warning Gov. Matt Bevin against challenging the election results in his reelection bid unless he finds evidence of massive fraud.

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Slain in Mexico, seven-month-old twins buried in rain-swept funeral

Suspected cartel gunmen attacked Rhonita Miller LeBaron, 30, and four of her children on Monday, also striking two other vehicles, killing a total of three women and six children on an isolated dirt road in the hills of Sonora. All of the victims were dual U.S.-Mexican citizens. "We pray, Father, that good will come out of this terrible incident, that the way may be opened up for this country to find justice for those that don't have a voice," said Rhonita's father-in-law, Kenny Miller, speaking at the graveside where children lay flowers as a soft rain fell.

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US-born IS bride appeals again to come home from Syria

A US-born woman who says she regrets having joined the Islamic State group has appealed again to come home from the refugee camp where she lives with her small son in Syria. The government is refusing to let Hoda Muthana return to the US, arguing that she is not an American citizen. In an interview with NBC News published Saturday, Muthana said she "regrets every single thing" done by IS, which she joined in 2014 after embracing extremist ideology while living with her family in Alabama.

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Greta Thunberg: Huge mural of climate activist appears in San Francisco to 'change hearts and minds'

A huge mural of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has appeared in central San Francisco.The enormous eight-storey painting will tower over residents and visitors near Union Square in the heart of the city’s downtown.

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U.K. Conservatives' Lead Over Labour Narrows in Opinium Poll

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s Conservative Party’s lead over the opposition Labour Party narrowed this week as the campaign for the Dec. 12 general election picked up steam.The ruling Conservatives had 41% support compared with 29% for Labour, according to Opinium’s poll issued Saturday for the Observer newspaper. The Tories were at 42% last week and Labour at 26%.The Liberal Democrats were third, with 15%, followed by the Brexit Party at 6% and the Scottish National Party at 5%.The online survey of 2,001 U.K. adults was carried out from Nov. 6 to 8.There’s a 9-in-10 chance that the true value of a party’s support lies within 4 points of the estimates provided by the poll, and a 2-in-3 chance that they are within 2 points, according to Opinium.To contact the reporter on this story: Madison Park in San Francisco at mpark197@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sebastian Tong at stong41@bloomberg.net, Steve GeimannFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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The Latest: Venezuela's Maduro celebrates Da Silva's release

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is celebrating former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's release from jail as a step toward rebuilding unity in South America. Da Silva left the jail where he had been detained since April 2018 after a judge ordered his release. The judge's order followed a Supreme Court ruling that a person can be imprisoned only after all appeals to higher courts have been exhausted.

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China sentences fentanyl traffickers after US tip about ring

A Chinese court sentenced nine fentanyl traffickers on Thursday in a case that is the culmination of a rare collaboration between Chinese and U.S. law enforcement to crack down on global networks that manufacture and distribute lethal synthetic opioids. Liu Yong was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, while Jiang Juhua and Wang Fengxi were sentenced to life in prison. Working off a 2017 tip from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about an online drug vendor who went by the name Diana, Chinese police busted a drug ring based in the northern Chinese city of Xingtai that shipped synthetic drugs illicitly to the U.S. and other countries from a gritty clandestine laboratory.

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Australian firefighters battle widespread blazes, brace for worse conditions

Australian firefighters will spend Sunday trying to contain bushfires as authorities warn that widespread fire danger on Tuesday will stretch their ability to protect people.

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