NEWS BRIEFING Intel chief to Congress: Live election security briefings off
WASHINGTON — The nation’s top intelligence official has informed Congress that his office will no longer give in-person election security briefings on Capitol Hill, a move that raised concern among lawmakers Saturday about the public’s right to know about foreign interference in the upcoming presidential election.
President Donald Trump said National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe made the decision because the administration “got tired” of intelligence about election security leaking from Congress.
“They leaked the information and what’s even worse, they leaked the wrong information and we got tired of it,” Trump told reporters while attending a briefing on Hurricane Laura in Orange, Texas.
He didn’t offer details to support his statement.
Sen. Angus King, IMaine, said the idea that the national intelligence director’s office would stop briefing Congress on foreign threats to the U.S. election is “an outrage” and that written updates were “flatly insufficient.”
Ratcliffe, who oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies, sent formal notification letters Saturday to the Senate and House leadership and the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ intelligence committees.
Earlier this month, the nation’s counterintelligence chief, William Evanina, issued a statement saying U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia is using various methods to denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and that people linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin are boosting Trump’s reelection bid. U.S. officials also believe China does not want Trump to win a second term and has accelerated its criticism of the White House, Evanina wrote.
On Saturday, Democratic lawmakers criticized Ratcliffe’s decision.
“This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat who chairs the
House’s intelligence committee, said in a joint statement. “
Pelosi and Schiff called the decision a “betrayal of the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy.”
An official with the House intelligence committee said the decision was unexpected because Ratcliffe’s office earlier had reached out to schedule an in-person briefing to the committee on Sept. 17.
Protest us:
i n Ma u r i t i -
Honking and drumming, tens of thousands of people protested Saturday in Mauritius over the government’s slow response to an oil spill from a grounded Japanese ship and the alarming discovery of dozens of dead dolphins in recent days.
Outraged over the Indian Ocean island nation’s worst environmental disaster in years, protesters displayed signs such as “You have no shame” and “I’ve seen better Cabinets at IKEA.” “Inaction,” one protester scrawled on an inflatable dolphin held above the crowd.
They marched peacefully through the capital, Port Louis, a month after the ship struck a coral reef a mile offshore. It later cracked under the pounding surf and spilled around 1,000 tons of fuel oil into fragile marine areas.
Mauritius depends heavily on tourism, and the spill has been a severe blow on top of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which has limited international travel.
Two soldiers were killed and three were injured when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training exercise off Southern California’s coast, the Defense Department said Saturday.
Staff Sgt. Vincent P. Marketta, 33, of Brick, New Jersey, and Sgt. Tyler M. Shelton, 22, of San Bernardino, California, died Thursday from injuries “sustained during an aircraft mishap while conducting aviation training,” according to a U.S. Army Special Operations Command statement.
Officials released no other information on the crash. J. Elise Van Pool, an Army spokeswoman, confirmed in an email that three other soldiers were injured in the crash.
Black Hawk down: Belarus regime strikes back:
Belarus, shaken by three weeks of massive protests against its authoritarian president, on Saturday cracked down hard on the
Columbia University is taking the name of its medical school’s founder off of a campus dormitory because he owned slaves and once advertised a reward for the return of one who ran away, the university’s president said Friday.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger told students and faculty in a letter that the university was not erasing Samuel Bard’s contributions to the school but that it became clear amid a global reckoning on racism and racist legacies that having a dorm named for him was not appropriate.
The building, which is home to clinical students studying at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, was named for Bard when it opened in 1931. Bollinger said it will be rechristened “with a name that represents our University’s values.”
Columbia University: Building collapses China:
in
Seventeen people were killed in China after a two-story restaurant collapsed during a gathering Saturday morning, state media said.
The official Xinhua News Agency said 28 other people were injured in the accident.
The restaurant was in Shanxi province’s Xiangfen county, about 400 miles southwest of Beijing.
The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear.