AN ALPINE CATTLE TREK
EX-CIA DIRECTOR BRENNAN TESTIFIES ON CAPITOL HILL
Former CIA director John Brennan said Tuesday he doesn’t know whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials in the 2016 election, but he left office in January with “unresolved questions” about whether Russia had been successful in getting Trump campaign officials to act on its behalf “either wittingly or unwittingly.”
“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals,” Brennan testified before the House Intelligence Committee. “It raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”
“I don’t know if such collusion — your words — existed,” Brennan told the committee. “I don’t know. But I know there was sufficient intelligence ... to warrant investigation by the (FBI).”
LANDSLIDE BURIES STRETCH OF ICONIC CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY
A massive landslide along an iconic coastal highway in California has buried the road under a 40-foot layer of rock and dirt, the latest hit after a winter of crip- pling slides and flooding.
A swath of the hillside gave way in an area called Mud Creek on Saturday night, changing the Big Sur coastline below to include what now looks like a rounded skirt hem, Susana Cruz, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Transportation, said Tuesday.
More than 1 million tons of rock and dirt tumbled down the slope, covering up about onequarter of a mile of Highway 1.
Narrow, windy Highway 1 through Big Sur is a major tourist draw, attracting visitors to serene groves of redwoods, beaches and the highway’s dramatic oceanside scenery between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
ALSO ...
The U.S. Postal Service has dedicated its new Henry David Thoreau postage stamp at a ceremony at Walden Pond, where the 19th century American philosopher and naturalist spent two years in solitude and reflection. The ceremony took place Tuesday in Concord, Massachusetts.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former Ethiopian minister of health, was elected Tuesday as the next director-general of the World Health Organization, becoming the first non-medical doctor and the first African tapped to lead the influential agency.