Trump Targets Permits to Cap 'Infrastructure Week'

President Donald Trump wrapped up his administration's "infrastructure week" Friday by unveiling a council and a new White House office tasked with streamlining fixes for America's infrastructure. During a speech at the Department of Transportation, the president announced plans to create a council designed to "help project managers navigate the bureaucratic maze." "This council will also improve transparency by creating a new online dashboard allowing everyone to easily track major projects through every stage of the approval process," Trump said. "This council will make sure that every federal agency that is consistently delaying projects by missing deadlines will face tough, new penalties. ... We will hold the bureaucracy accountable."

Journalist Arrested During Trump Inauguration Faces New Felonies That Carry Decades in Jail

Journalist Aaron Cantu made an initial court appearance Friday to face new criminal charges that could carry decades in prison for alleged rioting and property destruction during President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Cantu, who works for the Santa Fe Reporter and has had articles published by Vice, The Nation, The Guardian and The Intercept, declined to comment inside a courthouse in the nation’s capital. His attorney Chantale Fiebig also declined to comment on the case, which the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has criticized. Cantu, wearing a suit and tie, appeared alongside more than three dozen other defendants crowded in a horseshoe around Judge Lynn Leibovitz. He accepted an Oct. 15, 2018 trial date and entered a not guilty plea for three separate rioting charges and five felony destruction of property charges.

Trump: Answer About Comey Tapes Coming ‘In the Very Near Future’

President Donald Trump on Friday said he would soon reveal whether recordings of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey existed, leveraging his skills as a showman to heighten anticipation on one of Washington's most burning questions. "Well, I'll tell you about that maybe sometime in the very near future," Trump said in response to a reporter's question during a White House press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. Asked later by another reporter whether he was hinting at the existence of such tapes, which he suggested in a tweet last month he might possess, Trump was again cagey.

"No collusion, no obstruction," Trump said, adding of Comey, "he's a leaker." "Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstructions – we are doing really well," he said, again blaming his political opponents for ginning up a non-existent scandal to distract from their electoral failures. "That was an excuse by the Democrats who lost an election that some people think they shouldn't have lost," he said.

London attack: Men 'planned to use 7.5 tonne lorry'

Trump's new Cuba policy: What's at stake for the island?

Warmer ties with Cuba after almost 60 years of hostility was one of President Barack Obama's main foreign policy legacies. He and Cuban leader Raul Castro agreed to normalise diplomatic relations in December 2014 and in August 2015 the US re-opened its embassy in Havana, more than half a century after it had closed following Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.

Opponents of the engagement policy want Mr Trump to adopt proposals which include tightening the 12 categories of travel under which Americans have been coming to Cuba - including the catch-all "people-to-people" exchanges. This would mean US visitors might again face fines if they visit the island without the right paperwork.The potential effects of such a move on Cuba's tourism industry would be significant. However the pro-engagement lobby group Engage Cuba argues that it would have a multi-billion dollar impact on the US economy too, affecting jobs in the airline and cruise ship industries.

A goat's dream job?

Election results 2017: How will this minority government actually work?

The incontestable truth of this general election is that the Conservative party does not have enough MPs to win votes by itself in the new House of Commons.

The incontestable truth of this general election is that the Conservative party does not have enough MPs to win votes by itself in the new House of Commons.

Raqqa: US-backed forces advance in IS 'capital'

US-backed Syrian forces have advanced into the western part of so-called Islamic State's "capital" of Raqqa, they and a monitor report.

"The SDF captured the western half of the Al-Sabahiya neighbourhood and are reinforcing their positions there," the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP news agency on Saturday. "They then advanced north to the adjacent district of Al-Romaniya and are fighting IS there."

Qatar blockade: Gulf states silent on Tillerson plea to ease measures

Nations behind a blockade on Qatar have welcomed strong comments from President Donald Trump backing their move, but were silent on calls from his secretary of state to ease the measures.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain have cut ties, accusing Qatar of funding terrorism. Qatar denies the accusations.

France's Emmanuel Macron: Birth of the anti-Trump?

In less than 24 hours, his Trump-defying message "make our planet great again" was shared more than 140,000 times, easily ousting the previous record-holder, the rather less high-minded TV presenter Cyril Hanouna. One fifth of the re-tweets were in the US.

In giving his TV reaction to the US president, not only did Macron break brazenly with longstanding convention, according to which French presidents never speak publicly in English, but he even had the chutzpah to subvert the US leader's personal campaign slogan.

Trump-Russia probe 'bigger than Watergate' says Clapper

The Watergate scandal of the 1970s is not as big as the Trump-Russia investigation, the former director of US national intelligence has said.

US intelligence agencies believe Russia interfered in the US election and they are investigating alleged links between the Trump campaign and Moscow.But there is no known evidence of collusion and President Donald Trump has dismissed the story as "fake news".

The former FBI chief was investigating an alleged Kremlin plot to sway last year's US election in favour of Mr Trump, and whether there was any collusion with the president or his campaign staff.

US President Donald Trump says he is "100%" willing to speak under oath about his conversations with ex-FBI chief James Comey.Speaking at the White House, he denied having asked for Mr Comey's loyalty or for an inquiry into a former White House aide to be dropped.

Trump: I would speak under oath on Comey

Is Trump closer to obstruction of justice?

James Comey may not have added much new detail in testimony on Thursday about his one-to-one meetings with Donald Trump but he did add something: he set the scene, and law professors say that could be a missing piece in an obstruction of justice case against the president.

We knew that already - Mr Comey made details of the meeting public several weeks ago - and Committee Republicans sought on Thursday to paint it as an innocent exchange: "I hope" was not an instruction, they said.

'Body slam' Republican congressman Gianforte to plead guilty

Greg Gianforte is accused of attacking a reporter from the UK's Guardian newspaper a day before his election.

Gallatin county attorney Marty Lambert told AP the congressman had requested the court hearing after reaching a civil settlement this week.

As protesters target a famed Copenhagen statue, it’s worth remembering how views of the mythical human-fish hybrid have changed over time, writes Kelly Grovier.

Spare a thought for The Little Mermaid. In the 104 years since the Danish-Icelandic sculptor Edvard Eriksen created his bronze statue of a young half-woman half-fish – who stares wistfully from her stony perch beside the Langelinie promenade in Copenhagen – the 1.25m (4.1ft) tall sculpture has been decapitated twice, bludgeoned in the neck in another attempt to sever the head, dismembered, defaced with luminous paint and soldered-on sex toys, and blown off her base by a bomb that sent her blast-pocked body tumbling into the harbour.

The head and face are those of a ballerina, Ellen Price (who declined to model nude for the sculptor), which have been grafted onto the naked physique of Eriksen’s wife, Eline. The result is a work of enforced fusion, one that seems forever to hover on a hazy margin between states of being – fact and fantasy, hope and harm, this world and another.

Militants have been under siege since rampaging through the southern city on 23 May. The latest fighting has claimed the lives of 13 Philippine marines.

undreds of militants, who have been flying the black flag of so-called Islamic State and are led by the self-styled IS emir of the southern Philippines, Isnilon Hapilon, and the Maute brothers Omar and Abdullah, are still holed up in the city.

The latest casualties bring the number of Philippine troops killed in the fighting to 58.

Merkel says EU is 'ready to start Brexit negotiations'

The German chancellor said she believed Britain would stick to the timetable, adding the European Union was "ready".

It is her first comment since Mrs May's Conservative party lost 13 seats.The loss left the Conservatives eight MPs short of a majority in parliament, plunging negotiations into uncertainty. Mrs May called the snap election in order to secure a clear mandate for her vision of Brexit.

Apple Customer Data in China Was Sold Illegally, Police Say

he Chinese police said this week that they had arrested 22 people suspected of selling the personal data of an unspecified number of Apple customers. The police, in Cangnan County in the eastern province of Zhejiang, said the thieves had reaped 50 million renminbi, or about $7.3 million, over an unspecified period.

20 of the 22 people worked for companies that sell Apple products or are Apple contractors

Jeremy Corbyn Lost U.K. Election, but Is Still Its Biggest Winner

It was a scathing put-down. “He can lead a protest, I’m leading the country,” Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain said about the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.Over the past seven weeks, Mr. Corbyn led the protest of his life. As Mrs. May faltered, stumbling her way toward an election she herself had called, the veteran left winger and serial campaigner turned his party into a movement.

Mr. Corbyn did lose the election. But he won more than anyone else. He deprived the prime minister who had treated him with such dismissiveness of both her Parliamentary majority and her authority. Far from obliterating Labour, he re-energized it, shifting its politics far to the left.

Emmanuel Macron’s Amateur Politicians Are Poised to Remake French Parliament

Mr. Berville is the face of a new type of citizen-candidate in France, one with no political experience, no allegiance to the traditional parties and an undefined if firmly held belief that France needs to change. Surprisingly, polls before Sunday’s first round of national voting show that a majority of French voters may agree

A month ago, there were doubts about whether Mr. Macron could come up with enough candidates, let alone win a majority. But a widely acknowledged strong beginning by Mr. Macron — one veteran politician from the rival Socialists was quoted as saying the French were “stupefied” to discover the new president’s adroitness — has swept away the skepticism.