A pig is seen in an enclosure at pig a farm in Alling, Germany February 15, 2019. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle
April 18, 2019
By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) – Yale University scientists have succeeded in restoring basic cellular activity in pigs’ brains hours after their deaths in a finding that may one day lead to advances in treating human stroke and brain injuries, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The scientists emphasized that their work did not even come close to reawakening consciousness in the disembodied pig brains. In fact the experiment was specifically designed to avoid such an outcome, however improbable.
Still, the study raises a host of bioethical issues, including questions about the very definition of brain death and potential consequences for protocols related to organ donation.
The research grew out of efforts to enhance the study of brain development, disorders and evolution. The main practical application is the prospect of allowing scientists to analyze whole brain specimens of large mammals in three dimensions, rather than through studies confined to small tissue samples, Yale said.
The study, backed by the National Institutes of Health, offers no immediate clinical breakthrough for humans, according to the authors.
Results of the experiment, to be published on Thursday in the journal Nature, run contrary to long-accepted principles of brain death, which hold that vital cellular activity ceases irreversibly seconds or minutes after oxygen and blood flow are cut off.
The limited rejuvenation of circulatory function and cellular metabolism in pig brains, which were harvested from animals slaughtered at a meat-packing plant, was achieved four hours after death by infusing the brains with a special chemical solution designed to preserve the tissue.
“The intact brain of a large mammal retains a previously underappreciated capacity for restoration of circulation and certain molecular and cellular activities multiple hours after circulatory arrest,” lead researcher Nenad Sestan said in a Yale press release issued ahead of the study.
It was in the lab run by Sestan, a Yale professor of neuroscience, comparative medicine, genetics and psychiatry, that researchers developed the so-called BrainEx system used to pump artificial nutrients into the pig brains’ vascular network.
‘NOT A LIVING BRAIN’
Scientists stressed, however, that the treated brains still lacked any detectable signs of organized electrical activity associated with perception, awareness or consciousness.
“Clinically defined, this is not a living brain, but it is a cellularly active brain,” study co-author Zvonimir Vrselja, associate researcher in neuroscience.
The BrainEx preservative included substances to block nerve signals. Researchers also were ready to halt any electrical activity that might have emerged through anesthetics and temperature reduction, according to Yale.
While the study offers no immediate therapeutic benefits for humans, it creates a new research platform that may ultimately help doctors find ways to revive brain function in stroke patients or to test new treatments for restoring brain cells damaged by injury, the authors said.
In the meantime, the research could spark new quandaries surrounding the determination of death itself, widely defined by one measure as the irreversible loss of all brain function. The blurring of that line has implications in turn for deciding when doctors are ethically bound to go from preserving a patient’s life to preserving their organs.
“For most of human history, death was very simple,” Christof Koch, president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, said in a Nature article accompanying publication of the Yale study.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Sandra Maler)
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Barclays is seen on the top of one of its branch in Madrid, Spain, March 22, 2016. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/File Photo
March 19, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – Barclays on Tuesday urged shareholders to reject activist investor Edward Bramson’s bid for seat on the bank’s board, saying he lacks the necessary experience and has different incentives to other investors.
In its most detailed statement yet on Bramson, who is seeking election to the board at Barclays’ annual general meeting on May 2, the bank said that he is likely seek what it said could be a destabilizing restructuring of the bank.
(Reporting by Lawrence White; Editing by David Goodman)
MELBOURNE, Australia – The most senior Catholic cleric ever charged with child sex abuse has been convicted of molesting two choirboys moments after celebrating Mass, dealing a new blow to the Catholic hierarchy's credibility after a year of global revelations of abuse and cover-up.
Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis' top financial adviser and the Vatican's economy minister, bowed his head but then regained his composure as the 12-member jury delivered unanimous verdicts in the Victoria state County Court on Dec. 11 after more than two days of deliberation.
The court had until Tuesday forbidden publication of any details about the trial.
Pell faces a potential maximum 50-year prison term after a sentencing hearing that begins on Wednesday. He lodged an appeal last week against the convictions.
Details of the trial had been suppressed because until Tuesday, Pell had faced a second trial in April on charges that he indecently assaulted two boys aged 9 or 10 and 11 or 12 as a young priest in the late 1970s in a public pool in his hometown of Ballarat.
Prosecutor Fran Dalziel told the court on Tuesday that the Ballarat charges had been dropped and asked for the suppression order to be lifted.
"This is not a special case," Dalziel said.
The victim who testified at Pell's trial said after the conviction was revealed that he has experienced "shame, loneliness, depression and struggle." In his statement, the man said it had taken him years to understand the impact the assault had on his life.
Lawyer Lisa Flynn said the father of the second victim, who died of a heroin overdose in 2014 at the age of 31, is planning to sue the church or Pell individually once the appeal is resolved.
Pell's lawyer Robert Richter initially wanted details of the trial suppressed until his appeal was heard, but later withdraw the application.
Pell was surrounded by a crush of cameras and members of the public as he was ushered from the courthouse to a waiting car. "You're a monster!" one man shouted. "You're going to burn in hell, you freak!"
"Are you sorry?" one woman shouted. Pell did not respond.
Another of Pell's lawyers, Paul Galbally, said Pell continued to maintain his innocence.
"Although the cardinal originally faced allegations from a number of complainants, all of those complaints and allegations save for the matters that are subject to the appeal have all been either withdrawn or discontinued," Galbally told reporters outside.
Pell has initially been charged with more than 20 charges of sexual abuse against various complainants.
The revelations came in the same month that the Vatican announced Francis approved the expulsion from the priesthood for a former high-ranking American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, for sexual abuse of minors and adults.
The convictions were also confirmed days after Francis concluded his extraordinary summit of Catholic leaders summoned to Rome for a tutorial on preventing clergy sexual abuse and protecting children from predator priests.
The lifting of the suppression order was welcomed by SNAP, a U.S. support group for victim of clergy abuse.
"We hope that his conviction will not only bring healing to his victims in Australia but hope to survivors across the world who are yearning for accountability at the top levels of the church," SNAP said in a statement. "We believe (the) conviction will make Australian children safer and parents and parishioners better informed about how to prevent sexual abuse."
The jury convicted Pell of abusing two boys whom he had caught swigging sacramental wine in a rear room of Melbourne's St. Patrick's Cathedral in late 1996, as hundreds of worshippers were streaming out of Sunday services.
Pell, now 77 but 55 at the time, had just been named the most senior Catholic in Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne.
The boys were both 13 years old. The jury also found Pell guilty of indecently assaulting one of the boys in a corridor more than a month later.
Pell had maintained his innocence throughout, describing the accusations as "vile and disgusting conduct" that went against everything he believed in.
Richter, his lawyer, had told the jury that only a "mad man" would take the risk of abusing boys in such a public place. He said it was "laughable" that Pell would have been able to expose his penis and force the victim to take it in his mouth, given the cumbersome robes he was wearing.
Both he and Chief Judge Peter Kidd urged the jury of eight men and four women not to punish Pell for all the failings of the Catholic Church, which in Australia have been staggering.
"You must not scapegoat Cardinal Pell," Kidd told the jury.
Along with Ireland and the U.S., Australia has been devastated by the impact of the clerical abuse scandal, with a Royal Commission inquiry finding that 4,444 people reported they had been abused at more than 1,000 Catholic institutions across Australia between 1980 and 2015.
Pell's own hometown of Ballarat had such a high incidence of abuse — and, survivors say, a correlated higher-than-average incidence of suicide — that the city warranted its own case study in the Royal Commission report.
As a result, Pell's trial amounted to something of a reckoning for survivors, with the brash and towering cardinal becoming the poster child for all that went wrong with the way the Catholic Church handled the scandal.
The conviction capped a year that had been so dominated by revelations of high-ranking sex abuse and cover-up that analysts openly speak of a crisis unparalleled since the Reformation. In addition to Pell, the allegations against McCarrick of groping a minor in the 1970s and of sleeping with adult seminarians became public.
As a result of the scandal, Francis' approval ratings have tanked in the United States, and his standing with conservative Catholics around the world — already on shaky ground over his outreach to divorcees — has plunged.
Up until the verdict, Pell's lawyers had appeared confident that they had established a reasonable doubt and had expected quick verdicts of not guilty.
When the jury chairman delivered the first guilty verdict, Pell's hands slipped from the arm rests of the chair where he sat in the dock at the back of the courtroom. His head bowed after the second verdict, but he restored his composure for the final verdicts.
Pell, who walked to and from court throughout his monthlong trial with a crutch under his right arm, was released on bail to undergo surgical knee replacements in Sydney on Dec. 14. Prosecutor Mark Gibson did not oppose bail, saying the surgery would be more easily managed outside the prison system.
The first four offenses occurred at the first or second Solemn Mass that Archbishop Pell celebrated as leader of the magnificent blue-stone century-old cathedral in the center of Melbourne. Pell was wearing his full robes — though not his staff or pointed bishops' hat — at the time.
The now 34-year-old survivor told the court that Pell orally raped him, then crouched and fondled the complainant's genitals while masturbating.
"I was young and I didn't really know what had happened to me. I didn't really know what it was, if it was normal," the complainant told the court.
The other victim died of a heroin overdose in 2014 without ever complaining of the abuse, and even denying to his suspicious mother that he had been molested while he was part of the choir.
Neither boy can now be identified, because it is illegal to name victims of sexual assault in Victoria state.
Pell was initially charged with orally raping the second boy. But that charge was downgraded to indecent assault when the victim who testified said that he couldn't see the other's boy mouth at that moment from his vantage point.
More than a month later, the complainant testified that Pell pushed him against a cathedral corridor wall after a Mass and squeezed the boy's genitals painfully before walking away in silence.
"Pell was in robes and I was in robes. He squeezed and kept walking," the complainant told the jurors. "I didn't tell anyone at the time because I didn't want to jeopardize anything. I didn't want to rock the boat with my family, my schooling, my life."
The complainant testified that he feared that making such accusations against a powerful church man would cost him his place in the choir and with it his scholarship to prestigious St. Kevin's College.
Pell pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four counts of willfully committing an indecent act with or in the presence of a child under 16 in late 1996 and early 1997.
He did not testify at his trial. But the jury saw a video recording of an interview he gave Australian detectives in Rome in 2016 in which he stridently denied the allegations.
Pell grimaced, appearing incredulous and distressed, waved his arms over his head and muttered to himself as the detectives detailed the accusations that his victim had leveled against him a year earlier.
"The allegations involve vile and disgusting conduct contrary to everything I hold dear and contrary to the explicit teachings of the church which I have spent my life representing," Pell told police.
Richter told the jury that the prosecution case compounded a series of improbabilities and impossibilities.
He told the jury that Pell could not have "parted" his robes as the complainant had described.
The jury was handed the actual cumbersome robes Pell wore as archbishop. Over his regular clothes, Pell would wear a full-length white robe called an alb that was tied around his waist with a rope-like cincture. Over that, he would drape a 3-meter (10-foot) band of cloth called a stole around his neck. The outermost garment was the long poncho-like chasuble.
More than 20 witnesses, including clerics, choristers and altar servers, testified during the trial. None recalled ever seeing the complainant and the other victim break from a procession of choristers, altar servers and clerics to go to the back room.
The complainant testified that he and his friend had run from the procession and back into the cathedral through a side door to, as Gibson, the prosecutor, said, "have some fun."
Monsignor Charles Portelli, who was the cathedral's master of ceremonies in the 1990s, testified that he was always with Pell after Mass to help him disrobe in the sacristy.
The defense argued that Pell's usual practice was to linger at the cathedral front steps talking to members of the congregation after Mass. But Gibson said there was evidence that Pell didn't always chat outside and had the opportunity to commit the crimes.
The lifting of the gag order comes after Francis charted a new course for the Catholic Church to confront clergy sexual abuse and cover-up, a scandal that has consumed his papacy and threatens the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy at large.
Opening a first-ever Vatican summit on preventing abuse, Francis warned 190 bishops and religious superiors last week that their flocks were demanding concrete action, not just words, to punish predator priests and keep children safe. He offered them 21 proposals to consider going forward, some of them obvious and easy to adopt, others requiring new laws.
But Francis went into the meeting even more weakened and discredited after one of his top advisers was convicted of the very crime he has now decided is worth fighting on a universal scale.
Pell's downfall will invariably tarnish the pope, since Francis appointed Pell economy minister in 2014 even though some of the allegations against him were known at the time.
In October, Francis finally cut Pell loose, removing him as a member of his informal cabinet. Pell technically remains prefect of the Vatican's economy ministry, but his five-year term expires this year and is not expected to be renewed.
___
Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
An architecture expert has called for Notre Dame’s fallen spire to be replaced with an Islamic minaret as an apology to Algerian Muslims killed by French police.
Writing in Domus, Tom Wilkinson, history editor of the Architectural Review, argues that the rebuild is an opportunity to communicate a message of political correctness.
“I can’t say I ever thought it the most beautiful cathedral in the world,” writes Wilkinson, before going on to slam Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the cathedral’s 19th century restorer, accusing him of “utterly unforgettable fantasies of structural engineering”.
He goes on to call for the rebuild to reflect “a more up-to-date form of political truth,” which could include “transforming Notre-Dame into a memorial to the generations of peasants who were exploited to fund it.”
According to Wilkinson, it could also include replacing the church’s perished 200 year old spire with an Islamic minaret.
My Modest Proposal for the spire of Notre Dame: replace it with a minaret https://t.co/6EsiVNuZpY
“What about the approximately 100 Algerians who were killed by the French police while protesting the Algerian War in 1961, many of them thrown into the Seine at the foot of Notre-Dame?” he writes.
“These victims of the state could be memorialised by replacing Viollet-le-Duc’s flèche with – why not? – a graceful minaret.”
A minaret is a tower built next to a mosque that is normally used to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer.
As I document in the video below, while Wilkinson’s proposal is unlikely to be taken seriously, top architects and President Macron himself have called for the rebuild of Notre Dame to reflect the country’s new “diversity”.
The favorite to secure the rebuilding contract, Foster + Partners, has been responsible for some of western architecture’s most hideous eyesores, including the new ‘Tulip’ tower in London, which critics say reminds them of a giant dildo.
Those who prayed for Notre Dame to be rescued from the fires that nearly destroyed it should keep praying because the threat posed by modernist architects may be substantially greater.
Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has been banned from entering the country of Australia over his comments on social media about the New Zealand mosque shootings, ABC Australia reported.
Australian Immigration Minister David Coleman said in a statement that Yiannopoulos’s comments regarding the massacre are “appalling and foment hatred and division.”
“The terrorist attack in Christchurch was carried out on Muslims peacefully practicing their religion,” Coleman said, according to the outlet. “Australia stands with New Zealand and with Muslim communities the world over in condemning this inhuman act.”
The ban comes after 49 people were killed and dozens more injured in attacks at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an alleged white supremacist.
Shortly after the shooting, Yiannopoulos took to Facebook to describe Islam as a “barbaric, alien” religious culture.
“I’m banned from Australia, again, after a statement in which I said I abhor political violence,” Yiannopoulos said on social media.
Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor, was barred from entering Australia earlier this month after his visa application was rejected on character grounds.
The mass shooting in New Zealand appears to line up with the narrative that conservatives are violent and hateful and therefore deserve to be censored. Matt Bracken joins Alex to reveal how actually Facebook is responsible for the attention this murderer received.
After consulting with his attorneys and crisis management team, Jussie Smollett told Chicago police that he has an alleged drug problem, a move which could be used as a mitigating factor to get his sentence reduced, according to TMZ.
Smollett divulged his ‘drug problem’ after turning himself in Thursday morning on charges that he filed a police report for a Jan. 29 hate crime hoax he allegedly paid to associates to act out.
Smollett fingered Abimbola “Abel” Osundario – one of the two brothers the ‘Empire’ star allegedly paid $3,500 to beat him up – as his drug dealer, selling him ‘Molly’ several times since the spring of 2018 according to text messages.
Police say Smollett text messaged Osundario asking for the drug – a street name for ecstacy.
Word of Smollett’s drug problem comes as TVLine reports ‘Empire‘ producers are considering bringing in a new actor to play the role of Jamal. Co-creator Lee Daniels – who reportedly loosely based the character on himself, is said to be a big fan of the idea.
20th Century Fox said on Friday that while they will wait for the legal process to play out, they “have decided to remove the role of ‘Jamal’ from the final two episodes of the season.”
Smollett was arrested early Thursday after turning himself in on a felony criminal charge of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report in connection with the hate crime ‘attack.’
And in a sign that the left has finally accepted the situation, the Daily Show mocked the Smollett situation on Friday:
Coming this fall… The story of a poorly staged hate crime that rocked a nation: Jussie’s Lie pic.twitter.com/iGXmETn8m6
Aerospace and military weapons giant Lockheed Martin introduced a different sort of addition to their arsenal — a new fragrance product designed to capture the “essence of space.”
The fragrance, called Vector, is described as an “out-of-this-world scent” that “blends metallic notes to create a clean scent with a sterile feel, balanced by subtle, fiery undertones that burn off like vapor in the atmosphere.”
“No one is better suited to develop the preferred fragrance for tomorrow’s explorers. We’ve seen, touched and for the first time ever, we can smell space,” the video description reads.
“Our engineers worked with Tony Antonelli, former Astronaut and Space Shuttle pilot, who is now on the Orion program at Lockheed Martin, to create a scent that transcends our planet and brings the essence of space down to Earth.”
The company went on to claim that they have “successfully bottled the smell of the stars.”
In the video, Antonelli describes his first experience of “smelling space” from returning astronauts.
“The first time I opened the hatch to help spacewalkers back inside, I was blown away by the strong and unique odor they brought back,” he said. “I had smelled nothing like it before and nothing like it since. Until now.”
CBS Denver reported their staff thought the scent smelled “like a forest,” while others said it smelled like “industrial chemicals or diesel fuel.”
Avengers fans gather at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to attend the opening screening of “Avengers: Endgame” in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake
April 26, 2019
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marvel Studios superhero spectacle “Avengers: Endgame” hauled in a record $60 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices during its Thursday night debut, distributor Walt Disney Co said.
Global ticket sales for the film about Iron Man, Hulk and other popular characters reached $305 million for the first two days, Disney said.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attends the funeral service for murdered journalist Lyra McKee at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, Northern Ireland April 24, 2019. Brian Lawless/Pool via REUTERS
April 26, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – The leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said on Friday he had turned down an invitation to a state dinner which will be part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Britain in June.
“Theresa May should not be rolling out the red carpet for a state visit to honor a president who rips up vital international treaties, backs climate change denial and uses racist and misogynist rhetoric,” Corbyn said in a statement.
He said maintaining the relationship with the United States did not require “the pomp and ceremony of a state visit” and he said he would welcome a meeting with Trump “to discuss all matters of interest.”
(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg)
Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli, Libya April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Hani Amara
April 26, 2019
By Ulf Laessing
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s U.N.-recognized government has budgeted up to 2 billion dinars ($1.43 billion) to cover costs of a three-week-old war for control of the capital, such as treatment for the wounded, to be funded without new borrowing, the economy minister said.
Ali Abdulaziz Issawi suggested the government hoped for business to continue more or less as usual despite the assault on Tripoli, in the country’s northwest, by forces tied to a parallel administration based in the eastern city of Benghazi.
Once Africa’s third largest producer of oil, Libya has been riven by factional conflict since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with the country now broadly split between eastern-based forces under Khalifa Haftar and the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, in the west, under Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.
Still, with Haftar’s Libyan National Army forces unable so far to pierce defenses in Tripoli’s southern suburbs, normal life and business activities continue in much of the capital and western coastal towns.
Issawi, in an interview with Reuters in his Tripoli office, also said Libya’s commercial ports and wheat imports were still functioning normally, although some roads have been blocked.
He said the Serraj government estimates it will spend up to 2 billion dinars extra on medical treatment for wounded, aid for displaced people and other “emergency” war costs.
He said this was not military spending but analysts believe that the sum will also cover expenditures such as pay for allied armed groups or food for fighters.
“We could actually spend less,” he added, in comments that gave the first insight into the economic impact of the fighting.
Issawi said the Tripoli government, which controls little territory beyond the greater capital region, would not incur new debt to fund the war costs, sticking to a plan to post a 2019 budget without a deficit.
Tripoli derives revenue largely from oil and natural gas production, interest-free loans from local banks to the central bank, and a 183 percent surcharge on foreign exchange transactions conducted at official rates.
But with centralized tax collection greatly diminished, public debt has piled up – to 68 billion dinars in the west, including unpaid state obligations such as social insurance.
Some analysts expect Serraj’s government will be forced to raise new debt if the war for control of Tripoli drags on.
With much of Libya dominated by armed factions that also act as security forces, the public wage bill for both the western and eastern administrations has soared as fighters have been made public employees in efforts to buy their loyalty.
The east has sold bonds worth 35 billion dinars outside the official financial system as the Tripoli central bank does not fund the parallel government apart from some wages.
Despite its limited reach, the Tripoli government still runs an annual budget of around 46.8 billion dinars, mainly for public salaries and fuel subsidies.
“This year we cannot finance via debt…we will not borrow (by agreement with the central bank),” Issawi said.
According to International Monetary Fund data, Libya’s central government debt-to-GDP ratio is 143 percent, making it one of the most heavily indebted in the world on that measure.
Issawi declined to say what parts of the budget would be trimmed to support the extra outlay for war costs.
However, with some 70 percent of the budget allocated to public wages, fuel subsidies and other welfare benefits, a portion devoted to infrastructure is most likely to be axed.
Widespread lawlessness has meant there have been no major infrastructural projects since 2011, when a NATO-backed uprising overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi, leaving schools, hospitals and roads in acute need of restoration.
FOREX SURCHARGE
Issawi said the government planned to raise as much as 30 billion dinars by the end of 2019 from hard currency deals after imposing in September a 183 percent surcharge on commercial and private transactions done on the official rate of 1.4 to the U.S. dollar. That fee has effectively devalued the official rate to 3.9, much closer to the black market equivalent.
Some 17 billion dinars have been raised since then, with hard currency allocated for import credit letters now issued without delays, Issawi said. The forex fee has helped the government forecast a budget in the black for 2019.
Despite the narrowing spread between the two rates, the black market continues to thrive. Dozens of traders remained at their favorite spot behind the central bank headquarters in Tripoli when Reuters reporters visited it last week.
But traders said it could take time for the Serraj government to register the extra forex receipts as official banking channels were taking up to six months to approve import financing, keeping the black market in play for dealers.
Issawi said authorities planned to lower the forex fee from 183 percent, without saying when. The black market rate has dropped from 6 to around 4.1 since September but it has hardly moved of late as demand for black market cash remains high.
The Tripoli government has stopped subsidizing food and bread, which used to be cheaper than drinking water in Libya. Wheat imports are now being arranged by private traders and there are surplus stocks of flour at the moment, Issawi said.
(Reporting by Ulf Laessing in Tripoli with additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., threatened possible jail time for White House officials refusing to comply with subpoenas to testify before the House Oversight Committee.
Connolly, a member of the House panel, made his comments during an interview on CNN on Thursday. He said that “if a subpoena is issued and you’re told you must testify, we will back that up.”
He added: “And we will use any and all power in our command to make sure it’s backed up — whether that’s a contempt citation, whether that’s going to court and getting that citation enforced, whether it’s fines, whether it’s possible incarceration.”
“We will go to the max to enforce the constitutional role of the legislative branch of government.”
His comments came after three officials have refused to comply with congressional requests to testify, CNN noted.
Trump told The Washington Post that his staff should not testify on Capitol Hill, explaining that the White House cooperated fully with special counsel Robert Mueller and “there is no reason to go any further, especially in Congress where it’s very partisan.”
“Outdated laws” need fixing to deal with the surge in illegal immigrant families crossing the U.S. border with Mexico, a top Border Patrol official said Friday.
Historically 70 to 90 percent of apprehensions at the border were quickly returned to Mexico, Hastings said.
Now, 83 percent of those apprehended have come from the Central American northern triangle which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and of those 63 percent are “family units” and children who cannot be returned, he said.
“There are no consequences that we can apply to this group currently,” Hastings said. “We’re overwhelmed. If you look at agents there doing a tremendous job trying to deal with the flow.”
The law dictates children have to be released after 20 days of detention.
“Up to 40 percent of our agents are processing at any given time,” he said. “That should say that in and of itself is pulling from those border security resources.”
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