SALISBURY, England: British media reported Monday that a former Russian spy was in critical condition after coming into contact with an “unknown substance,” a case that immediately drew parallels to the poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko.
Authorities did not identify the man, saying only that he and a woman were found unconscious Sunday afternoon on a bench in a shopping mall in Salisbury, an English city about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of London.
British media identified him as Sergei Skripal, 66, who was convicted in Russia on charges of spying for Britain and sentenced in 2006 to 13 years in prison. Skripal was freed in 2010 as part of a US-Russian spy swap.
Wiltshire Police, which is responsible for the Salisbury area, only identified the man and woman by their approximate ages and said they appeared to know one another and “did not have any visible injuries.”
“They are currently being treated for suspected exposure to an unknown substance. Both are currently in a critical condition in intensive care,” police said in a statement.
The discovery of the unconscious pair led to a dramatic decontamination effort. Crews in billowing yellow moon suits worked into the night spraying down the street, and the Salisbury hospital’s emergency room was closed.
The BBC, which first identified Skripal as one of the victims, quoted eyewitness Freya Church as saying it looked like the two people had taken “something quite strong.”
“On the bench there was a couple, an older guy and a younger girl. She was sort of leaned in on him. It looked like she had passed out, maybe,” Church said.
“He was doing some strange hand movements, looking up to the sky,” she said.
Public Health England said in a statement that it had only limited information about the patients, but there “doesn’t appear to be any further immediate risk to public health.”
“PHE understands that those exposed to the substances have been decontaminated,” the health agency said.
Public records list Skripal as having an address in Salisbury.
Skripal served with Russia’s military intelligence, often known by its Russian-language acronym GRU, and retired in 1999. He then worked at the Foreign Ministry until 2003 and later became involved in business.
After his 2004 arrest in Moscow, he confessed to having been recruited by British intelligence in 1995 and said he provided information about GRU agents in Europe, receiving over $100,000 in return.
At the time of Skripal’s trial, the Russian media quoted the FSB domestic security agency as saying that the damage from his activities could be compared to harm inflicted by Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU colonel who spied for the United States and Britain. Penkovsky was executed in 1963.
Skripal was pardoned and released from custody in July 2010 as part of a US-Russian-spy swap, which followed the exposure of a ring of Russian sleeper agents in the United States.
The circumstances surrounding Sunday’s incident were still murky and police urged the public not to speculate. But few could avoid invoking the name of Litvinenko — the former Russian agent who died after drinking polonium-210-laced tea in a swanky London hotel in 2006.
His bizarre illness was initially treated as unexplained before evidence eventually emerged indicating he had been deliberately poisoned.
In a report published in 2016, a British judge wrote Litvinenko was killed in assassination carried out by Russia’s security services — with the likely approval of President Vladimir Putin. Russia has denied any responsibility for Litvinenko’s death“
Keir Giles, the director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, said he “would be surprised if this were not linked back to Russia in some direct way.”
He said he could not rule out an overdose or some other kind of accidental poisoning — but found it hard to picture such a scenario “that would lead to a full-scale decontamination of the street and the hospital.”
Giles also invoked a string of suspicious deaths of Russian government opponents in Britain since Litvinenko’s slaying.
“It’s not just Litvinenko,” he said. “It’s hard not to see a pattern of the attacks becoming more and more brazen.”
Igor Sutyagin, who was part of the same spy swap as Skripal and now is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said there was not enough evidence to point fingers in any direction.
“There are lots of former security officers that deserted to the West,” he said, urging caution until more is known. “It is necessary to balance this information.”
British media say former Russian spy in critical condition
British media say former Russian spy in critical condition
BRICS offered Turkiye partner country status, Turkish trade minister says
- Turkish officials have repeatedly said potential membership of BRICS would not affect Turkiye’s responsibilities to the Western military alliance
Turkiye, a NATO member, has in recent months voiced interest in joining the BRICS group of emerging economies, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attended a BRICS leaders’ summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan last month, after Ankara said it had taken formal steps to become a member of the group.
“As for Turkiye’s status regarding (BRICS) membership, they offered Turkiye the status of partner membership,” Bolat said in an interview with private broadcaster TVNet on Wednesday.
“This (status) is the transition process in the organizational structure of BRICS,” he said.
Ankara sees the BRICS group as an opportunity to further economic cooperation with member states, rather than an alternative to its Western ties and NATO membership, Erdogan has said.
Turkish officials have repeatedly said potential membership of BRICS would not affect Turkiye’s responsibilities to the Western military alliance.
Aside from full membership, BRICS members introduced a “partner country” category in Kazan, according to the declaration issued by BRICS on Oct. 23.
Bolat did not say whether Ankara had accepted the proposal.
An official in Erdogan’s ruling AK Party told Reuters this month that while the proposal had been discussed in Kazan, partner country status would fall short of Turkiye’s demands for membership.
1 million migrants in the US rely on temporary protections that Trump could target
- People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief
- But President-elect Donald Trump promised mass deportations and suggested he would scale back the use of Temporary Protected Status
NEW YORK: Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama’s Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States.
They were living in the US when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief.
But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested they would scale back the use of TPS that covers more than 1 million immigrants. They have highlighted unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified disputed claims made by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex.
“What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, mentioning a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”
Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with a reporter as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York migrant hotel where they live. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of the biggest displacements worldwide.
“My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could make it to this country, that they send me back again.”
Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have the most at stake.
Haiti’s international airport shut down this week after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince while a new interim prime minister was sworn in. The Federal Aviation Administration barred US airlines from landing there for 30 days.
“It’s creating a lot of anxiety,” said Vania André, editor-in-chief for The Haitian Times, an online newspaper covering the Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. The country is not equipped to handle the widespread gang violence already and cannot absorb all those people.”
Designations by the Homeland Security secretary offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. The designation for El Salvador ends in March. Designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela end in April. Others expire later.
Federal regulations say a designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and it requires 60 days’ notice.
TPS is similar to the lesser-known Deferred Enforcement Departure Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency was ending, shielding 145,000 from deportation for 18 months.
Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump’s earlier efforts to allow TPS designations for several countries to expire, doesn’t doubt the president-elect will try again.
“It’s possible that some people in his administration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy” and economically disastrous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that they would care about such considerations.”
Courts blocked designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until well into President Joe Biden’s term. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then renewed them.
Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see another legal challenge, depending on what the Trump administration does.
Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvador. Members were alarmed to learn some Salvadorans were tortured and executed after being deported from the US Other designations protected people during wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kuwait, from genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean, in 1995 and 1997.
A designation is not a pathway to US permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants can try to change their status through other immigration processes.
Advocates are pressing the White House for a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Less than 3,000 are still covered by the temporary protections issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch battered the country. People who fled much later under oppression from President Daniel Ortega’s government don’t enjoy the same protection from deportation.
“It’s a moral obligation” for the Biden administration, said Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee.
Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden moves quickly.
“He should do it now,” said Elena, who lives Florida and insisted only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”
India’s toxic smog cuts off visibility in several areas
- Delhi pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row
- Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well
NEW DELHI: Toxic smog blanketed northern India on Thursday, becoming too thick to see through in several places, as high levels of pollution combined with humidity, low wind speed, and a drop in temperature, officials said.
The city of Lahore in neighboring Pakistan ranked as the world’s most polluted in winter’s annual scourge across the region, worsened by dust, emissions, and smoke from fires burnt illegally in India’s farming states of Punjab and Haryana.
However, operations at New Delhi’s international airport were not affected by the smog, which weather officials expect to scatter during the day as breezes pick up.
Visibility remained at 300 m (980 ft), the airport operator, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said, while some airlines warned flights could be affected.
“Winter fog may impact flights” with Delhi, the city of Amritsar in Punjab, where authorities said visibility was zero, and the temple city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, IndiGo said in a message on X.
New Delhi’s international airport diverted some flights on Wednesday.
The minimum temperature in Delhi fell to 16.1°Celsius (61°F) on Thursday from 17°C the previous day, weather officials said.
Its pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row, with a score of 430 on an index of air quality maintained by the top pollution panel that rates a score of zero to 50 as ‘good’.
Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well, the earth sciences ministry said, worsening to ‘very poor’ later, or an index score in the range of 300 to 400.
The number of farm fires to clear fields of paddy stubble in preparation for the planting of wheat in north India has risen steadily this week to almost 2,300 on Wednesday from 1,200 on Monday, the ministry’s website showed.
In Pakistan, Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, was rated the world’s most polluted city on Thursday, in live rankings kept by Swiss group IQAir. Authorities there have also battled hazardous air this month.
The province has already shut schools, halted some building work, banned most outdoor activity, and ordered early closures of some businesses in efforts to combat the problem.
Philippines Marcos’ says will not block ICC if ex-president Duterte wants to be investigated
- Ferdinand Marcos Jr.: ‘The Philippines will not cooperate with the ICC but it has obligations with Interpol’
- ’If that’s the wish of (Duterte), we will not block ICC. We will not just cooperate’
MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Thursday his government would not block the International Criminal Court (ICC) if former leader Rodrigo Duterte wants to be investigated for alleged crimes against humanity in his anti-drugs crackdown.
The Philippines will not cooperate with the ICC but it has obligations with Interpol, Marcos told reporters.
“If that’s the wish of (Duterte), we will not block ICC. We will not just cooperate,” Marcos said. “But if he agrees to be investigated, it is up to him.”
The remarks follow a marathon congressional hearing on Wednesday during which Duterte, president from 2016-2022, refused to apologize for his role in the bloodshed and urged the ICC to start its investigation
All testimony provided by Duterte will be assessed to see their legal consequences, Marcos said.
Duterte unilaterally withdrew the Philippine as a member of the ICC in 2019 after it announced it had started a preliminary examination into thousands of killings in his anti-narcotics campaign. He questioned its authority to conduct an investigation.
Under Duterte, police said they killed 6,200 suspected dealers who had resisted arrest during their anti-drug operations.
But human rights groups believe the real toll to be far greater, with thousands more users and peddlers gunned down in mysterious circumstances by unknown assailants.
Authorities at the time said those were vigilante killings and drugs gangs eliminating rivals. Rights groups and some victims accuse police of systematic cover-ups and executions, which they deny.
Republicans win 218 US House seats, giving Donald Trump and the party control of government
- A House Republican victory in Arizona and California gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the majority. The GOP also controls the Senate
- In 2016, the GOP also swept Congress, but many Republican leaders resisted Trump's policy ideas and the Supreme Court had a liberal majority. Not this time
WASHINGTON: Republicans have won enough seats to control the US House, completing the party’s sweep into power and securing their hold on US government alongside President-elect Donald Trump.
A House Republican victory in Arizona, alongside a win in slow-counting California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the majority. Republicans earlier gained control of the Senate from Democrats.
With hard-fought yet thin majorities, Republican leaders are envisioning a mandate to upend the federal government and swiftly implement Trump’s vision for the country.
The incoming president has promised to carry out the country’s largest-ever deportation operation, extend tax breaks, punish his political enemies, seize control of the federal government’s most powerful tools and reshape the US economy. The GOP election victories ensure that Congress will be onboard for that agenda, and Democrats will be almost powerless to check it.
When Trump was elected president in 2016, Republicans also swept Congress, but he still encountered Republican leaders resistant to his policy ideas, as well as a Supreme Court with a liberal majority. Not this time.
When he returns to the White House, Trump will be working with a Republican Party that has been completely transformed by his “Make America Great Again” movement and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, including three that he appointed.
Trump rallied House Republicans at a Capitol Hill hotel Wednesday morning, marking his first return to Washington since the election.
“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s good, we got to figure something else,’” Trump said to the room full of lawmakers who laughed in response.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who with Trump’s endorsement won the Republican Conference’s nomination to stay on as speaker next year, has talked of taking a “blowtorch” to the federal government and its programs, eyeing ways to overhaul even popular programs championed by Democrats in recent years. The Louisiana Republican, an ardent conservative, has pulled the House Republican Conference closer to Trump during the campaign season as they prepare an “ambitious” 100-day agenda.
“Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate,” Johnson said earlier this week. “The American people want us to implement and deliver that ‘America First’ agenda.”
Trump’s allies in the House are already signaling they will seek retribution for the legal troubles Trump faced while out of office. The incoming president on Wednesday said he would nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz, a fierce loyalist, for attorney general.
Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan, the chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, has said GOP lawmakers are “not taking anything off the table” in their plans to investigate Special counsel Jack Smith, even as Smith is winding down two federal investigations into Trump for plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Still, with a few races still uncalled the Republicans may hold the majority by just a few seats as the new Congress begins. Trump’s decision to pull from the House for posts in his administration — Reps. Gaetz, Mike Waltz and Elize Stefanik so far — could complicate Johnson’s ability to maintain a majority in the early days of the new Congress.
Gaetz submitted his resignation Wednesday, effective immediately. Johnson said he hoped the seat could be filled by the time the new Congress convenes Jan. 3. Replacements for members of the House require special elections, and the congressional districts held by the three departing members have been held by Republicans for years.
With the thin majority, a highly functioning House is also far from guaranteed. The past two years of Republican House control were defined by infighting as hard-line conservative factions sought to gain influence and power by openly defying their party leadership. While Johnson — at times with Trump’s help — largely tamed open rebellions against his leadership, the right wing of the party is ascendant and ambitious on the heels of Trump’s election victory.
The Republican majority also depends on a small group of lawmakers who won tough elections by running as moderates. It remains to be seen whether they will stay onboard for some of the most extreme proposals championed by Trump and his allies.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, is trying to keep Democrats relevant to any legislation that passes Congress, an effort that will depend on Democratic leaders unifying over 200 members, even as the party undergoes a postmortem of its election losses.
In the Senate, GOP leaders, fresh off winning a convincing majority, are already working with Trump to confirm his Cabinet picks. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota won an internal election Wednesday to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest serving party leader in Senate history.
Thune in the past has been critical of Trump, but praised the incoming president during his leadership election bid.
“This Republican team is united. We are on one team,” Thune said. “We are excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump’s agenda.”
The GOP’s Senate majority of 53 seats also ensures that Republicans will have breathing room when it comes to confirming Cabinet posts, or Supreme Court justices if there is a vacancy. Not all those confirmations are guaranteed. Republicans were incredulous Wednesday when the news hit Capitol Hill that Trump would nominate Gaetz as his attorney general. Even close Trump allies in the Senate distanced themselves from supporting Gaetz, who had been facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
Still, Trump on Sunday demanded that any Republican leader must allow him to make administration appointments without a vote while the Senate is in recess. Such a move would be a notable shift in power away from the Senate, yet all the leadership contenders quickly agreed to the idea. Democrats could potentially fight such a maneuver.
Meanwhile, Trump’s social media supporters, including Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, clamored against picking a traditional Republican to lead the Senate chamber. Thune worked as a top lieutenant to McConnell, who once called the former president a “despicable human being” in his private notes.
However, McConnell made it clear that on Capitol Hill the days of Republican resistance to Trump are over.
