World snapshot Trump ‘ was warned not to hire general’
BRITAIN’S ruling Conservative Party holds a commanding 17 point lead over the opposition Labour Party with support for the anti- European Union UK Independence Party plummeting, a new poll shows. Support for Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives was at 47 per cent, while 30 per cent backed the Labour Party, the Survation poll found yesterday. The centrist Liberal Democrats were on 7 per cent, while just 4 per cent said they would vote for UKIP, nine percentage points less than the support it had at the 2015 election as the Brexit vote has cut the party’s appeal. FORMER acting Attorney General Sally Yates told Congress she bluntly warned the Trump White House in January that new National Security Adviser Michael Flynn “essentially could be blackmailed” by the Russians because he apparently had lied to his bosses about his contacts with Moscow’s US ambassador.
The testimony from Ms Yates, an Obama administration holdover fired soon after for other reasons, marked her first public comments about the concerns she raised and filled in basic details about the chain of events that led to General Flynn’s ousting in February. Her testimony, cou- CANADA has mobilised its army to help thousands of victims try to hold back waters and save their homes after the worst flood in half a century struck. Several rivers and lakes have overflowed their banks in Quebec province, between Gatineau in the Canadian pled with the revelation hours earlier that President Barack Obama himself had warned Donald Trump against hiring General Flynn shortly after the November election, made clear that alarms about General Flynn had reached the highest levels of the US government months before.
General Flynn had been an adviser to Mr Trump and an outspoken supporter of his presidential candidacy in the 2016 campaign.
Ms Yates, appearing before a Senate panel investigating Russian interference in the election, described discussions with Don McGahn, the Trump White House counsel, in which capital region and Montreal 200km downstream. Some 2500 homes in Quebec and more than 300 in Ontario have been flooded, and at least 1500 people have been ordered to evacuate — most of them in the Canadian capital region. she warned that General Flynn apparently had misled the administration about his communications with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
White House officials, including Vice- President Mike Pence, had insisted that General Flynn had not discussed POLICE and demonstrators clashed in of such confrontations s central Paris yesterday in response to at the Place de la Rethe election of Emmanuel Macron as publique, and no one the republic’s new president. was seriously injured. tivists Among brawlingthe left- with ctywing police and in unionthe Place acavoidedThe president-the drama elect by de la Republique were a number of peojoining the man he is ple who voted for Mr Macron in Sunreplacing in the Elysee day’s poll, but are opposed to his labour Palace, Socialist Presi- market reforms, including allowing dent Francois Hollande,e more flexibility for people to work to lay a wreath at the overtime on top of France’s 35- hour Tomb of the Unknown working week. Soldier near the Arc de Triomphe.
While teargas was used to break up He will be inaugurated on Sunday the demonstration and scuffles broke but has already begun facing up to the out between police and demonstrators, enormous challenge of trying to win the protest followed the usual theatre enough seats in next month’s assembly US- imposed sanctions with Mr Kislyak during the presidential transition period.
But the White House asked General Flynn to resign after news reports indicated he had misled officials about the nature of the calls.
“We felt like it was critical that we get this information to the White House, in part because the vice- president was unknowingly making false statements to the public and because we believed that General Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,” Ms Yates said.
“To state the obvious,” she added later, “you don’t want your national security adviser electionsel to form a working majority.ty Mr Macron al also changed the n name of his politi tical movement E En Marche! to E En Marche la R e p u b l i q u e ( translating to Republic on the Move) and began transforming into a more orthodox political party, at least in terms of structure. His party chief Richard Ferrand told journalists the names of En Marche la compromised sians.”
She said she had briefed the Trump White House so that they could take “the action that they deemed appropriate” and that she believed the Russians already had the same information about the calls.
Ms Yates’ questioning by a Senate panel investigating Russian interference in the presidential election was just one portion of a politically charged day that began with combative tweets from Mr Trump and continued with disclosures from Obama officials about a private Oval Office conversation between Mr Obama and his successor. with the Rus- Republique’s 577 candidates in the parliament elections would be revealed tomorrow.
Mr Macron’s defeated rival, the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, also revealed plans to change her party’s name, as she too turned her attention to the June 11 and 18 elections, where a new 577- seat National Assembly will be elected.
Ms Le Pen herself is a member of the European Parliament and has only two deputies in the French parliament – which is two more than Mr Macron currently has. She again declared herself the official opposition party in France, having picked up 11 million votes.