Russian officials rush to meet U.S. order to close outposts
Russia accused the United States on Friday of a “gross violation of international law” after the Trump administration gave Moscow two days to shutter diplomatic outposts in San Francisco and other American cities.
As Russian diplomats rushed to meet the Saturday deadline, black smoke was seen billowing out of the chimney at the San Francisco consulate, one of three Russian facilities being forcibly closed. Firefighters, who were turned away by Russian officials when they responded to the scene, said the Russians were burning something in their fireplace.
In Moscow, the Russian government claimed that U.S. officials were planning to search both the consulate and apartments used by their diplomats today, though there were no indications from the U.S. suggesting that was the case. The State Department said merely that it planned to “secure and maintain” the properties and that Russia wouldn’t be allowed to use them for “diplomatic, consular, or residential purposes” any longer.
The Kremlin appeared to be wrestling with how forcefully to react to the U.S. order, the latest in a series of escalating retaliatory measures between the former Cold War foes. President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Russia needs to “think carefully about how we could respond” to one of the thorniest diplomatic confrontations between Washington and Moscow in decades.
“One does not want to go into a frenzy, because someone has to be reasonable and stop,” Ushakov said.
The diplomatic machinations came the day after the Trump administration ordered three Russian facilities to close: the San Francisco consulate and trade missions in New York and Washington. The Russian Embassy in Washington is not affected, nor are three other Russian consulates in the U.S., including in New York.
American diplomats serving in Cuba suffered injuries including mild traumatic brain injury from mysterious “sonic harassment attacks,” the labor union representing U.S. Foreign Service officers said Friday.
The American Foreign Service Association said it has met or spoken with 10 victims since the health problems came to light last month. The health concerns date to late 2016 but were revealed only when the State Department said in August that it had expelled two Cuban diplomats as a rebuke to the Cuban government.
The Cuban government has denied it harmed diplomats and is cooperating with an FBI investigation, officials said.
Pope Francis says that when he was 42 he had sessions weekly with a psychoanalyst who was female and Jewish to “clarify some things.”
It wasn’t specified what the future pontiff wanted to explore. The revelation came in a dozen conversations Francis had with French sociologist Dominique Wolton, who is writing a soon-to-be-published book.
Francis then was a Jesuit official in his native Argentina, which was ruled by military dictatorship.
Rescuers worked through the night removing the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in India’s financial capital of Mumbai.
Fire officer Prabhat Kumar said Friday that 15 injured survivors had been pulled from the debris so far.
Police said 33 bodies had been recovered from the rubble by early Friday, but hope was fading of finding anyone alive more than 24 hours after the building collapsed. Authorities had no clear idea how many people lived there or were in the ground floor work spaces. But police said nearly a dozen people were missing and feared trapped beneath the huge mound of broken concrete slabs and twisted steel girders.
The rickety 117-year-old, five-story building in congested Bhendi Bazaar in south Mumbai had been declared unsafe to live in six years ago, but some people continued to stay there.
Two shipwrecks more than a century old have been found in the deep waters of Lake Huron, Maritime archaeologists announced Friday.
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary officials said they recently confirmed the identities of the wooden freighter Ohio and steel-hulled steamer Choctaw. Researchers from the Alpena, Mich.-based federal sanctuary found what they believed to be the vessels during a May expedition.