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Reports that John Bolton had written a firsthand account of President Trump’s direct involvement in withholding aid to Ukraine has left some Republicans confused and angry over the legal strategy by the president’s defense team.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 3:24 PM

The NBA legend and eight others were flying in heavy fog before crashing into a hillside in Calabasas, California, at about 9:45 a.m. on Sunday.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 5:24 AM

(Bloomberg) -- The mother of an Israeli woman imprisoned on drug-smuggling charges in Russia said she’s hopeful President Vladimir Putin will pardon her daughter.Naama Issachar, a 26-year-old U.S.-born Israeli army veteran, was sentenced in October to 7 1/2 years for carrying a small amount of hashish in her luggage on a transit flight via Moscow after a backpacking trip to India. Her plight has become a cause celebre in Israel, where it’s widely seen as politically motivated.Putin met with Issachar’s mother, Yaffa, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, on the sidelines of an international forum on the Holocaust. He assured her that “everything will be all right,” and on Sunday, Naama Issachar applied for a presidential pardon, her lawyers said.When asked in a text message exchange whether she expects her daughter to return to Israel soon, Yaffa Issachar replied: “I hope so.” The request for a pardon has been received and “all necessary legal procedures are being carried out at the moment so the president can take a decision on this issue in the nearest future,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on a conference call Monday.A decision to free Issachar, who’s been in detention since April, could bolster Netanyahu, who’s been indicted on corruption charges and is fighting for his political survival at the country’s third election in less than a year in March.The Kremlin said last week that Israel and Russia are also making progress in settling a dispute over the ownership of Russian Orthodox Church property in Jerusalem, which Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said could form part of a quid pro quo to secure Issachar’s release.The Russian leader has previously rebuffed multiple pleas from Netanyahu for Issachar’s sentence to be commuted.Her case for a time became entangled with that of a Russian national, Alexei Burkov, whom Israel extradited to the U.S. in November on charges including hacking and credit card fraud. Russia had offered to swap the two, according to Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician.(Adds Putin spokesman’s comment in 4th paragraph)To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net;Irina Reznik in Moscow at ireznik@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Tony HalpinFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 5:39 AM

When Thai medical student Badeephak Kaosala dares to leave his rented apartment in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, he puts on a mask, gloves, a hat and layers of clothing to try to avoid infection with the coronavirus that has the city on lockdown. "Anywhere you go, you are always self-conscious of touching someone or you always have to keep in mind that you have to keep a distance from the person you're walking next to - when he sneezes, when he coughs, even when he breathes," said the 23-year-old student at Wuhan's Tongji Medical College. The Thai government has put a military plane on standby for a possible evacuation of its citizens, but Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Monday they do not yet have Beijing's permission for the airlift.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 9:28 AM

This was not a problem for the courts.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020

A California father has been arrested in the decades-old killings of five of his infant children — one found wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket — in a case the sheriff said Monday has haunted his agency for years. Paul Perez, 57, a convicted sex offender with a 20-year criminal history, was arrested at a state prison in Delano, days before he was expected to be released on unrelated charges. Yolo County Sheriff Tom Lopez said the case reflects an “unspeakable evil" but said authorities do not know a motive.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 12:44 PM

"You didn't just erase a photo. You erased a continent," Ugandan climate change activist Vanessa Nakate said in a tweet responding to the slight.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 8:21 AM

* Death of man, 39, initially attributed to hanging * UK Foreign Office said to be in touch with man’s wifeA British man has died while being held in US immigration detention in Florida, the Guardian has confirmed.The death was first reported by BuzzFeed News, which said the man was 39 years old and that the cause was initially attributed to asphyxiation due to hanging. The incident was reported to have occurred on Saturday last week.“Our staff are in contact with the US authorities following the death of a British man in Florida,” said a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office in London.Foreign Office officials are understood to have been in contact with the deceased man’s wife, as US officials investigate the circumstances of the death.It was unclear which of Florida’s four detention centres the man was held in, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) did not respond to requests for comment.The incident marks the fifth death at a detention centre in the 2020 fiscal year, which begins in October 2019. There were eight deaths in Ice detention in the 2019 fiscal year.The immigration detention population in the United States has soared under the Trump administration. Last year Ice detained 510,854 people, compared with 396,448 in 2018. The administration has also increased its use of detention facilities, mostly run by private security companies, with a new concentration of detention centres opening in the deep south.Medical provision and mental health care at detention facilities has come under increased criticism under the Trump administration after a spate of high profile deaths since 2017.At the end of last year House Democrats on the oversight and reform committee launched an inquiry to investigate a “troubling pattern of abuse and poor treatment” of migrants in custody.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 5:41 PM

The World Health Organization, which has sometimes been criticised for its handling of past disease outbreaks, admitted an error on Monday in its risk assessment of China's deadly virus. In a footnote, the WHO explained that it had stated "incorrectly" in its previous reports on Thursday, Friday and Saturday that the global risk was "moderate". The correction of the global risk assessment does not mean that an international health emergency has been declared.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 1:30 PM

The Taliban said it had shot down a U.S. military plane in the central Afghan province of Ghazni on Monday, killing all personnel onboard.

POSTED JANUARY 27, 2020 11:13 AM