FBI James Clapper Cartoons

White House expects Senate to change healthcare bill, but retain principles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said on Friday it expects the Senate to retain the “principles” of the healthcare bill approved by the House of Representatives on Thursday even as it makes some changes.
“We expect there to be some changes, but we expect the principles and the main pillars of the healthcare bill as it exists now to remain the same,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.
Among those principles, she said, were creating a competitive environment and giving states more flexibility to make decisions about the healthcare system.

Ex-Obama administration officials to testify in Trump-Russia probe

Two officials in former President Barack Obama’s administration will testify on Monday in a Senate investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under Obama, and Sally Yates, who was Deputy Attorney General, will testify to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism, the first such public testimony by former officials from the Democratic administration in one of congressional probes on Russia.
Congressional committees began investigating after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of Democratic political groups to discredit the election and sway the voting toward Republican Trump, who won an upset victory in November.
Moscow has denied any such meddling. Trump also has dismissed the allegations, suggesting instead that Obama might have wiretapped his Trump Tower in New York or that China may have been behind the cyber attacks. No evidence has been found to support either allegation.
The public hearing will be the first featuring testimony by Obama administration officials who have left government. Trump fired Yates from the Department of Justice in January, and Clapper retired on Jan. 20, when Trump was inaugurated.
Senator Lindsey Graham, the subcommittee’s chairman who called the hearing is a Russia hawk and sometime critic of Trump who has been one of the leading Republican voices calling for a thorough investigation of Russia and the election.
Yates is expected to tell the senators that on Jan. 26, when she was acting Attorney General, she had warned White House Counsel Don McGahn that then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had not told the truth about conversations he had with Sergei Kislyak, Moscow’s Ambassador to Washington, about U.S. economic sanctions on Russia.
Flynn resigned after less than a month in office.
The congressional hearings have been shadowed by allegations, mostly from Democrats, that lawmakers are too partisan to investigate effectively.
In the lead-up to Monday’s hearing, Susan Rice, who was Obama’s national security adviser, declined an invitation to testify because it had come only from the Republican Grahamand not Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat.
Her refusal was first reported by CNN.
Rice’s name was linked to the Russia investigation when Trump suggested she might have broken the law by asking intelligence analysts to reveal the name of a Trump associate mentioned in an intelligence report.
She denied doing anything inappropriate, and there is no evidence to substantiate Trump’s allegation.
Trump tweeted on Thursday that it was “Not good!” that Rice had not agreed to testify.
The probe being led by Graham and Whitehouse is one of three main congressional investigations of Russia and the 2016 U.S. election. The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are conducting separate investigations.
Clapper, Yates and another official who served under Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, had been scheduled to testify to the House of Representatives intelligence committee in March, but that hearing was canceled by the panel’s chairman, Republican Devin Nunes.
Nunes, a Trump ally, has since recused himself from the Russia investigation amid concerns that he was too close to the White House to lead a credible probe.
Yates, Clapper and Brennan are now due to appear at a public hearing of the House committee that has not been scheduled.

Made in North Korea: As tougher sanctions loom, more local goods in stores

From carrot-flavored toothpaste and charcoal facemasks to motorcycles and solar panels, visitors to North Korea say they are seeing more and more locally made products in the isolated country’s shops and supermarkets, replacing mostly Chinese imports.
As the Trump administration considers tougher economic sanctions to push the isolated country toward dismantling its weapons programs, North Korea is pursuing a dual strategy of developing both its military and economy.
The majority of consumer products in North Korea still come from China. But under leader Kim Jong Un, there’s been an attempt to sell more domestically made goods, to avoid any outflow of currency and to reinforce the national ideology of juche, or self-reliance, visiting businessmen say.
There is no available data to show how much is being produced domestically. Export data from countries like China and Malaysia, which sell consumer goods to North Korea, may not be an accurate reflection.
China’s commerce ministry declined to comment when asked whether China’s exports to North Korea were decreasing due to an increase in locally-made products.
Visitors say that with the impetus from the top, large North Korean companies like military-controlled Air Koryo, the operator of the national airline, and the Naegohyang conglomerate have diversified into manufacturing consumer goods including cigarettes and sports clothing.
North Korea is one of the most insular countries in the world and visits by foreigners are highly regulated.
A Reuters team that was in the capital Pyongyang last month was allowed to go to a grocery store, accompanied by government minders, where shelves were filled with locally made drinks, biscuits and other basic food items. Other visitors have seen locally made canned goods, coffee, liquor, toothpaste, cosmetics, soap, bicycles and other goods on sale in the city.
“As new factories open, the branding, packaging and ingredients of our food products have improved,” said shop assistant Rhee Kyong-sook, 33.
Kim Chul-ung, a 39-year old physical education teacher visiting the store, said: “I can taste real fruit in the drinks that are made in North Korea, compared to drinks from other countries.”
Visitors say locally made consumer goods are becoming increasingly sophisticated and QR or matrix barcodes can been found on a wide range of products from make-up to soft drinks. Market vendors are also becoming more competitive, offering samples of their food to shoppers, something they didn’t do five years ago.
“Around 2013, Kim Jong Un started talking about the need for import substitution,” said Andray Abrahamian of Choson Exchange, a Singapore-based group that trains North Koreans in business skills.
“There was clearly recognition that too many products were being imported from China, not just high-end consumer goods but also lower-end ones like food.”
“MY HOMELAND”
Air Koryo’s range of products now includes cigarettes, fizzy drinks, taxis and petrol stations.
“Naegohyang”, or “My Homeland”, began as a Pyongyang-based tobacco factory, but has expanded in recent years to produce playing cards, electronic goods and sports clothing. The company even sponsors a women’s football team of the same name.
The North Korean companies were not available for comment and do not publish revenue or profit statements. It was not possible to identify any joint venture partners.
Traders and retail experts said the North Korean market was attractive, thanks to a growing class of “donju”, or “masters of money,” who generate wealth in a gray market economy that is being increasingly recognized and controlled by the state.
“The North Koreans increasingly don’t want Chinese products because they think they are poor quality,” said a trader from Southeast Asia who exports consumer goods to North Korea. The trader did not want to be identified.
China has been rocked by a number of food safety scandals in recent years, including contaminated rice and milk powder.
“Mothers in North Korea are no different to mothers in China or Canada, they want to feed their babies the best possible food,” said Michael Spavor of Paektu Exchange, which brings delegations of investors, tourists and academics into North Korea.
“I’ve seen people in a store in North Korea comparing a Chinese and a Korean product and picking the Korean one,” he said.
STILL RELIANT
Nevertheless, North Korea is still heavily reliant on trade with China and the vast majority of raw materials to make consumer products still come from or through China.
For example, while domestically-made instant coffee is becoming increasingly common, the sugar used in it would likely come from China or another country that produces sugar and pass into North Korea via China, says Abrahamian.
“We’re seeing a rise in domestically-made products, including motorcycles, solar panels and food, but the business relationships on which these products depend on are still Chinese.”
Because of the reliance on China, it is likely these “Made in North Korea” companies will suffer if stiffer economic sanctions are imposed on the country.
Diplomats said this week Washington was negotiating with China on a possible stronger U.N. Security Council response – such as new sanctions – to North Korea’s missile launches.
(Washington considering imposing new sanctions on North Korea, to read more, click http://reut.rs/2p9JyO5)
“If you have a coal mining town of 10,000 people who are all in some way connected to the coal industry, then when sanctions are imposed against North Korean coal, the whole town’s consumer market will suffer because people don’t have the buying power anymore,” said Abrahamian.

Macron wins French presidency, to European allies’ relief

Emmanuel Macron was elected French president on Sunday with a business-friendly vision of European integration, defeating Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist who threatened to take France out of the European Union.
The centrist’s emphatic victory, which also smashed the dominance of France’s mainstream parties, will bring huge relief to European allies who had feared another populist upheaval to follow Britain’s vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president.
The euro currency, hit a six-month high against the dollar while Asian shares gained and U.S. stocks briefly touched a record high.[FRX/]
With virtually all votes counted, Macron had topped 66 percent against just under 34 percent for Le Pen – a gap wider than the 20 or so percentage points that pre-election surveys had suggested.
Even so, it was a record performance for the National Front, a party whose anti-immigrant policies once made it a pariah, and underlined the scale of the divisions that Macron must now try to heal.
After winning the first round two weeks ago, Macron had been accused of behaving as if he was already president. On Sunday night, with victory finally sealed, he was much more solemn.
“I know the divisions in our nation, which have led some to vote for the extremes. I respect them,” Macron said in an address at his campaign headquarters, shown live on television.
“I know the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that very many of you have also expressed. It’s my responsibility to hear them,” he said. “I will work to recreate the link between Europe and its peoples, between Europe and citizens.”
Later he strode alone almost grimly through the courtyard of the Louvre Palace in central Paris to the strains of the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, not breaking into a smile until he mounted the stage of his victory rally to the cheers of his partying supporters.
His immediate challenge will be to secure a majority in next month’s parliamentary election for a political movement that is barely a year old, rebranded as La Republique En Marche (“Onward the Republic”), in order to implement his program.
EUROPE DEFENDED
Outgoing president Francois Hollande, who brought Macron into politics, said the result “confirms that a very large majority of our fellow citizens wanted to unite around the values of the Republic and show their attachment to the European Union”.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, told Macron: “I am delighted that the ideas you defended of a strong and progressive Europe, which protects all its citizens, will be those that you will carry into your presidency.”
Macron spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he hopes to revitalize the Franco-German axis at the heart of the EU, saying he planned to visit Berlin shortly.
Trump tweeted his congratulations on Macron’s “big win”, saying he looked forward to working with him. Chinese President Xi Jinping said China was willing to help push Sino-French ties to a higher level, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also congratulated Macron.
“Fading political risk in France adds to the chance that euro zone economic growth can surprise to the upside this year,” said Holger Schmieding, an analyst at Berenberg Bank.
Macron will become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon. A 39-year-old former investment banker, he served for two years as economy minister under Hollande but has never previously held elected office.
Le Pen, 48, said she had also offered her congratulations. But she defiantly claimed the mantle of France’s main opposition in calling on “all patriots to join us” in constituting a “new political force”.
Her tally was almost double the score that her father Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by the conservative Jacques Chirac.
Her high-spending, anti-globalisation “France-first” policies may have unnerved financial markets but they appealed to many poorer members of society against a background of high unemployment, social tensions and security concerns.
RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE
Despite having served briefly in Hollande’s deeply unpopular Socialist government, Macron managed to portray himself as the man to revive France’s fortunes by recasting a political landscape moulded by the left-right divisions of the past century.
“I’ve liked his youth and his vision from the start,” said Katia Dieudonné, a 35-year-old immigrant from Haiti who brought her two children to Macron’s victory rally.
“He stands for the change I’ve wanted since I arrived in France in 1985 – openness, diversity, without stigmatizing anyone … I’ve voted for the left in the past and been disappointed.”
Macron was due to attend a ceremony marking the Western allies’ World War Two victory in Europe on Monday. The ceremony in Paris marks the 72nd anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
Macron’s team successfully skirted several attempts to derail his campaign – by hacking its communications and distributing purportedly leaked documents – that were reminiscent of the hacking of Democratic Party communications during Hillary Clinton’s U.S. election campaign.
Allegations by Macron’s camp that a massive computer hack had compromised emails added last-minute drama on Friday night, just as official campaigning was ending.
While Macron sees France’s way forward in boosting the competitiveness of an open economy, Le Pen wanted to shield French workers by closing borders, quitting the EU’s common currency, the euro, radically loosening the bloc and scrapping trade deals.
Macron will become the eighth – and youngest – president of France’s Fifth Republic when he moves into the Elysee Palace after his inauguration next weekend.
Opinion surveys taken before the second round suggested that his fledgling movement, despite being barely a year old, had a fighting chance of securing the majority he needed.
He plans to blend a big reduction in public spending and a relaxation of labor laws with greater investment in training and a gradual reform of the unwieldy pension system.
A European integrationist and pro-NATO, he is orthodox in foreign and defense policy and shows no sign of wishing to change France’s traditional alliances or reshape its military and peacekeeping roles in the Middle East and Africa.
NEW GENERATION
His election also represents a long-awaited generational change in French politics that have been dominated by the same faces for years.
He will be the youngest leader in the current Group of Seven (G7) major nations and has elicited comparisons with youthful leaders past and present, from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to British ex-premier Tony Blair and even the late U.S. president John F. Kennedy.
But any idea of a brave new political dawn will be tempered by an abstention rate on Sunday of around 25 percent, the highest this century, and by a record share of blank or spoiled ballots – submitted by more than 11 percent of those who did vote.
Many of those will have been supporters of the far-left maverick Jean-Luc Melenchon, whose high-spending, anti-EU, anti-globalisation platform had many similarities with Le Pen’s.
Melenchon took 19 percent in coming fourth in the first round of the election, and pointedly refused to endorse Macron for the runoff.
France’s biggest labor union, the CFDT, welcomed Macron’s victory but said the National Front’s score was still worryingly high.
“Now, all the anxieties expressed at the ballot by a part of the electorate must be heard,” it said in a statement. “The feeling of being disenfranchised, of injustice, and even abandonment is present among a large number of our citizens.”
The more radical leftist CGT union called for a demonstration on Monday against “liberal” economic policies.
Like Macron, Le Pen will now have to work to try to convert her presidential result into parliamentary seats, in a two-round system that has in the past encouraged voters to cast ballots tactically to keep her out.
She has worked for years to soften the xenophobic associations that clung to the National Front under her father, going so far as to expel him from the party he founded.
On Sunday night, her deputy Florian Philippot distanced the movement even further from him by saying the new, reconstituted party would not be called “National Front”.