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Trump pardons former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI (nationthailand.com)

Trump pardons former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI

InternationalNov 26. 2020Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is pictured at a news briefing at the White House on Feb. 1, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford 

By  The Washington Post · Rosalind S. Helderman, Josh Dawsey · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW, NATIONAL-SECURITY
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he had pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, ending a three-year legal saga that included Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI, his later effort to withdraw that plea and then a controversial decision by Attorney General William Barr to try to drop the case altogether.

Trump’s move marks a full embrace of the retired general he had ousted from the White House after only 22 days on the job – and a final salvo against the Russia investigation that shadowed the first half of his term in office.

The pardon he granted Flynn, an early backer of his 2016 White House bid, underlines how Trump has used his clemency power to benefit allies and well-connected offenders.White House officials said Trump has been considering other pardons before leaving office, including possibly other former aides who were convicted of crimes as part of the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Flynn pleaded guilty to a felony in December 2017, admitting that he had misled investigators about details of his conversations with the Russian ambassador during Trump’s presidential transition.

His plea was one of the first major courtroom victories for special counsel Robert Mueller III, who had been appointed seven months earlier.

The special counsel probe ultimately did not establish the Trump campaign had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin. But the investigation documented how Russia interfered in the 2016 race to benefit Trump, and how Trump’s campaign welcomed the assistance. 

Flynn was one of six Trump associates to be convicted or charged with crimes before the probe ended in 2019. The president and his allies have repeatedly attacked Flynn’s prosecution as overzealous and flawed in their efforts to discredit the special counsel inquiry.

This spring, Barr and the Justice Department suddenly reversed course, declaring that prosecutors should not have brought the case against Flynn and seeking to have it dismissed. That request has been pending before a federal judge, who has been reviewing the case.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted, “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!”

Not long before Trump announced the pardon publicly, Flynn tweeted an image of the American flag and the words “Jeremiah 1:19,” a reference to a Bible verse in which God says, “They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you.”

Democrats responded to the long-anticipated pardon with outrage. In a lengthy statement, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Flynn had chosen “loyalty to Trump over loyalty to his country” and that Trump’s decision was intended to insulate himself from criminal investigation. He called the move a “corruption of the Framer’s intent” in giving the president broad pardon powers. 

“It’s no surprise that Trump would go out just as he came in – crooked to the end,” Schiff said.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., called the pardon “undeserved, unprincipled, and one more stain on President Trump’s rapidly diminishing legacy.”

Through a representative, Mueller declined to comment. 

But Andrew Weissmann, a former member of the special counsel team, tweeted, “Trump’s abuse of the pardon power undermines the crown jewel of our democracy: the rule of law.”

Trump told one adviser this week that Flynn had considerable support from the conservative community, and that his pardon would be well received among his supporters, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation.

Flynn had also developed close ties with Jenna Ellis, one of the president’s legal advisers, who is pushing his false allegations of fraud in this month’s election. 

Last week, the night before she appeared at a news conference at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington to discuss the president’s claims about the election, Ellis posted a photograph on Twitter of herself with Flynn and the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. She has discussed Flynn’s case with Trump, according to the person.

Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was an advocate for the Flynn pardon, and has often commiserated with the president about how unfair the Mueller investigation was to Flynn and others.

Flynn is the second Trump associate caught up in the Mueller probe to benefit from the president’s power to grant clemency. In July, Trump commuted the sentence of his former adviser, Roger Stone, who had been convicted of lying to Congress about his efforts to secure information from WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.

Trump has largely eschewed the traditional pardon process, in which people convicted of crimes formally apply for White House consideration and have their applications reviewed by Justice Department lawyers. 

Instead, the president has taken recommendations from friends, TV hosts and White House advisers, such as son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has taken a large role in some of the past decisions.

It is unclear whether Trump might seek to preemptively pardon himself or any of his family members, who have told others they expect to face ongoing investigations after Trump leaves office. 

After his guilty plea in late 2017, Flynn initially cooperated with special counsel prosecutors pursuing other cases, delaying his sentencing. 

But once Mueller’s team disbanded, Flynn hired new lawyers – including attorney Sidney Powell, who this fall has been part of a team of Trump legal advisers working to overturn the November election results by promoting baseless conspiracy theories about fraud.

In the Flynn case, Powell argued that Flynn had been entrapped during his FBI interview, conducted at the White House four days after Trump took office. She maintained that he had never intended to lie and that key documents had been withheld from him by prosecutors.

Prosecutors at first continued to pursue the case, and a federal judge rejected several of Flynn’s new arguments.

But in May, acting on instructions from Barr, the Justice Department reversed course and said a new review of the case’s origins led prosecutors to conclude that Flynn’s lies could not be proved in court. Because of that, the department said, they were not material to an FBI investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that was underway at the time.

The stunning turnaround prompted fears of politicization at the Justice Department. Barr insisted that a review of the case concluded it should be dismissed.

Rather than immediately accept that, however, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has overseen the case, signaled that he wished to explore whether the Justice Department had acted properly and if Flynn was being given special treatment because he is an ally of the president.

Flynn objected to Sullivan’s handling of the case, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled the judge did not have to immediately grant the Justice Department’s request to drop the matter.

In September, Powell told Sullivan that she had personally briefed Trump on Flynn’s case and had asked the president not to pardon his former national security adviser.

But on Wednesday, Powell said the pardon was appropriate. “It was high time that he be exonerated of all these charges,” she said on Fox Business. “It was truly a pardon of innocence.”

Trump’s pardon shortcuts Sullivan’s ongoing review. The Justice Department will no longer be able to pursue charges against Flynn for lying to the FBI, even after President-elect Joe Biden and his new attorney general take over next year.

The Supreme Court has ruled that accepting a pardon is akin to an admission of guilt – though some presidents and governors have used their pardon powers to help people who maintained their innocence. 

A Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the department was not consulted in advance of the pardon but was given a “head’s up” on Wednesday. The official said the department would have preferred to see if Sullivan would act, and for the matter to be resolved in court.

“We were confident in the likelihood of our success in the case,” the official said. They said, however, the move was “obviously an appropriate use of the president’s pardon power.”

Flynn, now 61, was a highly regarded military intelligence officer who served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before being named director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama.

But he was pushed out of that job amid concerns about his leadership skills, and a penchant for taking positions on matters related to Iran and militant Islam not supported by underlying intelligence. Associates of Flynn said he was so embittered by his treatment that he turned against Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and others he blamed for his professional demise.

In 2016, he lent Trump’s campaign legitimacyat a time when no other established national security official role was willing to endorse the former reality TV star or advise him on foreign policy issues.

As a campaign adviser, he led crowds in chants of “Lock Her Up” about Clinton and, in recent years, as his legal woes mounted, Flynn has made statements and postings on Twitter that suggest he has embraced online conspiracy claims espoused by QAnon and other sources.

After Trump was elected, he designated Flynn to serve as his national security adviser. In that role, Flynn conducted a series of meetings and phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump was inaugurated.

Among the topics the two discussed were new sanctions that were imposed on Russia by Obama on Dec. 29, 2016, in response to Russia’s interference in the election. Declassified transcripts of the call show that Flynn and Kislyak spoke that day, and Flynn asked that Russia not respond aggressively to Obama’s move or escalate the conflict. 

The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would take no action in reaction to the new sanctions, flummoxing officials in Washington. 

The reason for the move, however, was made clear in a phone call from Kislyak to Flynn on Dec. 31, in which the Russian envoy told Flynn his views had been “taken into account” at the Kremlin and were the reason for the muted Russian reaction.

When Flynn was asked 24 days later by two FBI agents whether he discussed the sanctions with Kislyak, he told the agents that he did not remember doing so. In pleading guilty, he told the court he knew this was not true. 

More recently, he told the court he had not intended to lie. 

After a Washington Post columnist reported in January 2017 that Flynn had spoken to Kislyak on the day the sanctions were announced, Vice President Pence and other officials publicly said they had been assured by Flynn that he had not discussed the topic with the Russian ambassador. 

Justice Department officials warned the White House that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI. After that, Flynn acknowledged privately to Trump that he may have discussed sanctions with Kislyak.

Trump’s top aides concluded they did not think Flynn could have forgotten the conversation and concluded he had lied. Flynn was then forced to resign from his post.

Why Flynn chose to lie repeatedly about his contacts with Kislyak is one of the lingering mysteries of the Russia investigation. Many legal experts believe that if had he been truthful, he likely would not have faced charges or lost his job.

In pleading guilty, Flynn also told the court that he had acted as a foreign agent of the government of Turkey while working as a consultant during the 2016 presidential campaign – and falsely filed paperwork with the Justice Department in March 2017 indicating that he had not known whether Turkey would benefit from the work or not. Flynn later denied knowingly making false statements about his Turkey work. 

His lies to the FBI – as well as his undisclosed work for Turkey – prompted Sullivan to lecture the retired general at a dramatic hearing not long after he pleaded guilty, telling him that his crime was a “very serious offense.”

The judge pointed to the American flag that sat on the bench next to him and told the retired military officer: “Arguably, you sold your country out.” 

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Mall Santas brave the pandemic with plexiglass barriers, sanitation elves and snow-globe bubbles (nationthailand.com)

Mall Santas brave the pandemic with plexiglass barriers, sanitation elves and snow-globe bubbles

InternationalNov 26. 2020Santa’s helper works to keep things disinfected at the Springfield Bass Pro Shops store in Springfield, Mo. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Annaliese Nurnberg. 

By The Washington Post · Abha Bhattarai · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, FEATURES, RETAIL

Santa Claus is coming to town with a few extra precautions this year.

Santa dons a face shield and sits behind plexiglass at a Bass Pro Shops store this week in Springfield, Mo. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Annaliese Nurnberg.

Old Saint Nick will pose for photos from inside an acrylic snow globe in Richmond. He’ll be barricaded behind a eight-foot picture frame in Lakewood, Colo. And in Gruene, Texas, Cowboy Kringle, who wears red leather chaps and a cowboy hat, will keep socially distant by asking visitors to sit on a saddle positioned six feet away.

This year’s holiday photos will have a decidedly pandemic feel: No more sitting on Kriss Kringle’s lap or whispering in his ear. Instead, venues are increasingly requiring reservations, masks and temperature checks. Santa is hosting drive-through events, attaching face shields to his hat and trading in his white cloth gloves for disposable ones to protect himself – and others – as coronavirus cases skyrocket to new highs around the country.

Although some retailers, such as Macy’s, have suspended Santa visits or moved them online, many others are forging ahead with extra precautions and backup plans, in hopes of getting customers into stores during a particularly fraught holiday season.

“Everything is different this year, but people are finding a way to keep that traditional Santa experience,” said Mitchell Allen, owner of the staffing firm Hire Santa, where virtual bookings have grown tenfold but still make up a sliver of the company’s total revenue. “It’s unexpected, to be honest.”

The stakes are especially high. The pandemic has sent a number of prominent retailers into bankruptcy and disrupted every part of the industry, from supply chains to consumer behavior. Many retailers are still struggling to make up for lost sales from coronavirus-related closures in the spring. Another round of shutdowns just as the holiday season is kicking off, they say, could be devastating.

Bass Pro Shops Santa Paul Porter in Springfield, Mo. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Annaliese Nurnberg.

Santa, though, has become a symbol of retailers’ optimism, even as challenges abound. Santa-booking companies say overall appointments are down about 40%, and many Santas are dropping out of the workforce because of health concerns. Even so, store executives and mall owners have spent months – and tens of thousands of dollars – trying to reimagine Santa’s Wonderland for the coronavirus era. The goal, they say, is to spread holiday cheer (but not the virus).

“Santa can’t give out hugs or candy canes this year, but people still want to see him,” said Mark Brenneman, 70, who has been playing Santa for nearly five decades. “They want hope. They want normal.”

But normal can be difficult during a pandemic. Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., canceled in-person Santa visits this month after the governor issued an executive order restricting all social gatherings, indoors and outdoors.

Santas are also nervous. Many are in their 70s and 80s and have health conditions such as diabetes that put them at particularly high risk of coronavirus complications. Brenneman, who owns the booking firm Santa Claus and Co. in Phoenix, said about half of the 30 white-bearded men he employs are sitting the season out, and a few are doing only outdoor events.

But at least a dozen Santas, he said, will continue to work because they need the money. “A lot of these guys are living on Social Security checks alone, so it’s a tough decision for them to make – their health or extra income,” he said.

A Santa gig, he said, can easily bring in hundreds of dollars a day. Brenneman charges $200 an hour early in the season and as much as $600 an hour on Christmas Eve. Overall bookings are down about 40% this year, but the company still has at least 300 events on its calendar.

Brenneman and his employees are making more house calls, too. With most corporate events and school visits canceled, more families are inviting Santa into their homes to read stories, perform magic tricks or sing carols from a distance. Some are renting golf carts or horses and buggies to parade Santa and Mrs. Claus around their neighborhoods.

“We have to give people hope,” he said, “more today than any year in the past.”

Bass Pro Shops began offering free photos with Santa during the 2008 recession, when the country was in need of a collective pick-me-up. It turned out to be an overnight success that helped drive sales and boost the company’s brand.

Now the outdoors retailer, which also owns Cabela’s, is hoping to re-create some of that magic, even if Old Saint Nick is stuck behind an acrylic shield and elves are pulling double duty as “Santa’s sanitization squad.” Demand has been brisk: 95,000 families stopped in for photos during Santa’s first week at 176 stores.

“A lot of our customers told us they want the event to continue,” spokesman Jack Wlezien said. “They said: ‘We’ve already had to sacrifice so much this year. We’d really like to be able to see Santa.’ So then the question became: How can we pull this off while also protecting Santa, our shoppers and employees?”

Photos are by appointment only, and all visitors must undergo a temperature screening. The company also has backup plans, such as moving the set outdoors, in case of new shutdowns and restrictions.

Other retailers are making similar calculations. Neiman Marcus has done away with its popular breakfast-with-Santa events and is enlisting the jolly old elf to deliver curbside orders to customers’ cars instead. More than 130 shopping malls owned by Brookfield Properties are offering their own twist on the North Pole, using oversize sleighs and fake campfires to keep visitors at least six feet apart.

Overall, Santa visits are expected to decline about 65% from last year, when more than 10 million families took their children to pose for pictures at malls and stores, according to GlobalData Retail. The majority of those people also spent money at nearby shops and restaurants during their visit, the firm said.

The SoNo Collection, a mall owned by Brookfield in Norwalk, Conn., is offering virtual visits this year for $25. But for those who would like to see Santa in the flesh, he’ll be greeting shoppers from inside an acrylic snow globe on the third floor.

“Santa has survived so many things – the Spanish flu, the bubonic plague – and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell my kids that he was afraid of covid-19,” said Kathryn Burgess, a Richmond-based photographer who designed the snow globe and spent $10,000 manufacturing it. “But we had to come up with a creative plan to protect him.”

Her acrylic barriers, which she sells for as much as $4,000, are being used by nearly 50 malls, schools and hospitals this holiday season.

Just about everything is bigger in Texas, Renee Davis said, and that includes Santa’s plans for the pandemic.

Davis, who owns events company Santa Express Central, recently spent $10,000 on a custom “hot rod sleigh” for Santa to drive to local parades, neighborhood events and hospitals. She is coordinating more outdoor events, including drive-throughs where children can drop off letters to Santa and take photos from their cars.

“It’s like re-creating the wheel with every client,” said Davis, who co-founded the company with her husband in 2002. “I’m working harder than I ever have in my life.”

The company is committing to fewer bookings this year and has backup plans in case Santa gets sick or has to quarantine. It has become more difficult to find qualified Santas with proper training and real beards who are willing to do in-person visits, Davis said.

There are more-practical considerations, too. Davis has spent months stockpiling hand sanitizer to last Santa the entire holiday season. And since masks ruffle his beard and muffle his voice, she has been buying up plastic face shields that connect to his glasses.

“We have to protect Santa, and we have to protect the child,” she said. “That’s the most important thing this year.”

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IBM planning 10,000 job cuts in Europe ahead of unit sale (nationthailand.com)

IBM planning 10,000 job cuts in Europe ahead of unit sale

InternationalNov 26. 2020An IBM logo in London, on Oct. 29, 2018. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chris J. Ratcliffe. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Olivia Carville, Helene Fouquet, Daniele Lepido · BUSINESS, WORLD, TECHNOLOGY, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS, EUROPE

International Business Machines Corp. is planning to cut about 10,000 jobs in Europe in an attempt to lower costs at its slow-growth services unit and prepare the business for a spinoff.

The wide-ranging losses will affect about 20% of staff in the region, according to people familiar with the matter. The U.K. and Germany are set to be most impacted, with cuts also planned in Poland, Slovakia, Italy and Belgium.

IBM announced the job cuts in Europe earlier in November during a meeting with European labor representatives, according to a union officer briefed on proceedings. The person asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

“Our staffing decisions are made to provide the best support to our customers in adopting an open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities,” an IBM spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “We also continue to make significant investments in training and skills development for IBMers to best meet the needs of our customers.”

Hardest hit will be IBM’s legacy IT services business, which handles day-to-day infrastructure operations, such as managing client data centers and traditional information-technology support for installing, operating and repairing equipment.

IBM said in October it’s planning to spin off the business and focus on its new hybrid-cloud computing and artificial intelligence unit, which the company hopes will return it to revenue growth. IBM said it aims to complete the carve-out as a tax-free spinoff to IBM shareholders by the end of 2021.

“We’re taking structural actions to simplify and streamline our business,” said IBM Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh during the company’s third-quarter earnings call in October. “We expect the fourth-quarter charge to our operating results of about $2.3 billion.”

Once an iconic blue-chip company, IBM’s star has faded over the years as its legacy in mainframe computing and IT services fell behind while newer technology firms like Amazon.com Inc. swooped in to dominate the emerging cloud-computing market.

IBM was already cutting jobs earlier this year, although the company wouldn’t say how many positions were being eliminated. The company has traditionally declined to disclose the numbers of job cuts for decades, with arguably one exception in 1993 when Lou Gerstner, a CEO hired from outside the company, announced 60,000 dismissals.

The spin-off of its services unit is the first big move by Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna, who took over from Ginni Rometty in April and has been pushing to revive growth after almost a decade of shrinking revenue. Krishna earlier this year cut thousands of jobs as he began reshaping the business.

The current round of job cuts should be completed by the end of the first-half of 2021, one of the people added.

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Dell, HP report sales topping estimates on pandemic PC Surge (nationthailand.com)

Dell, HP report sales topping estimates on pandemic PC Surge

InternationalNov 26. 2020A man walks with a box bearing the HP logo in New Delhi onJune 24, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Prashanth Vishwanathan. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Nico Grant · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, RETAIL

Dell Technologies and HP reported quarterly revenue that topped Wall Street estimates, lifted by customer upgrades of personal computers for remote work and school during the pandemic.

Dell’s sales climbed 2.8% to $23.5 billion in the period that ended Oct. 30, the Round Rock, Texas-based company said Tuesday in a statement. Rival HP reported it shipped a record 19 million PCs in its recent quarter, as well as more home printers than it has sold in years. HP also gave a profit forecast for the current period that beat analysts’ projections and said it would raise its quarterly dividend 10%.

Michael Dell and HP Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores are trying to revamp their PC makers into more profitable businesses. Both companies have taken steps to cut operating expenses during the pandemic, and they produced better-than-projected profits in the October quarter. Billionaire Dell is trying to spur more predictable, recurring revenue by letting corporate clients pay for products over time rather than upfront. Lores, meanwhile, is overseeing a corporate restructuring that will result in lower expenses and a smaller workforce.

“We are very optimistic about where the company is going to be going during the next quarters and years,” Lores said in an interview.

HP shares gained about 5% in New York trading, helped by the company’s announcement that it would boost the quarterly dividend to 19.38 cents a share. Dell shares fell roughly 2%. The stock is up more than 30% so far this year.

HP’s revenue fell about 1% to $15.3 billion in the period that ended Oct. 31, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a statement. Analysts, on average, expected $14.7 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit, excluding some items, was 62 cents a share in the fourth fiscal quarter, while analysts projected 52 cents.

Adjusted profit in the current quarter will be 64 cents to 70 cents a share, HP said. Analysts, on average, estimated 54 cents.

Dell’s sales from consumer PCs jumped 14% to $3.5 billion in the fiscal third quarter, the company said. PC sales to business and government clients increased 5.4% to $8.78 billion. Server and networking sales fell 1.8% to $4.16 billion, the seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines for the unit. Executives said they expect continued “soft” data-center spending in the current period. Storage hardware revenue declined 7% to $3.86 billion.

“I’m generally pleased with how the business performed,” Dell Chief Financial Officer Tom Sweet said in an interview. “We’ve got to continue to work our way through the uncertain environment. Given our broad, diversified portfolio, we have an ability to drive a consistent stable cash flow, consistent results.”

Dell said that it expected revenue in the current period to increase 3% to 4% compared with the third quarter’s.

Sales of HP’s Personal Systems, mostly computers, was little changed from a year earlier at $10.4 billion. Revenue from consumers jumped 24% while business sales decreased 12%. Printing revenue declined 3% to $4.8 billion. The company reported a 21% rise in consumer hardware sales and a 22% drop in hardware revenue from businesses.

While corporate customers aren’t buying printers with their offices closed or at reduced capacity, Lores said demand from consumers working at home was so strong that HP shipped 12 million printers in the quarter — the highest number since the corporate split from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. in 2015.

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Sunak warns of 2.6 million jobless in historic U.K. slump (nationthailand.com)

Sunak warns of 2.6 million jobless in historic U.K. slump

InternationalNov 26. 2020A commuter wears a protective face mask on a bus in London on Nov. 17, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Simon Dawson. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Alex Morales, David Goodman · BUSINESS, WORLD, EUROPE

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak warned the U.K. will suffer its deepest recession in more than 300 years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with unemployment expected to reach 7.5%, as he set out government spending plans.

Sunak announced billions of pounds for new infrastructure projects to boost jobs, and support for low-paid workers, but he cut funding for policies he said were hard to “justify” — such as public sector pay rises and overseas aid.

“Our health emergency is not yet over and our economic emergency has only just begun,” Sunak told Parliament. “So our immediate priority is to protect people’s lives and livelihoods.”

The chancellor’s statement to Parliament on Wednesday began the British state’s painful reckoning with the financial consequences of the pandemic, with some tough decisions on how to address a ballooning budget deficit.

With renewed lockdowns threatening further economic damage, the chancellor focused on support for jobs and the unemployed, plowing tens of billions of pounds into infrastructure spending, and ensuring the health care system can cope with a resurgent wave of infections.

Sunak’s choices will set the tone for the ruling Conservative Party’s approach to the fiscal legacy of the coronavirus.

The most noteworthy announcement in advance was the biggest uptick in defense spending in three decades: a four-year, 24 billion-pound investment in the country’s armed forces that pleased traditional Conservatives. The chancellor also confirmed a cut in the U.K.’s foreign aid budget to 0.5% of national income, breaking a promise to spend 0.7%.

The drop in overseas development spending is likely to dismay other Tories including former Prime Minister David Cameron, who warned it will hamper renewed efforts to display Britain’s global role just as Brexit takes effect.

Sunak said the 0.7% aid commitment was “difficult to justify” to the British people. “I have listened with great respect to those who have argued passionately to retain this target,” he said. “But at a time of unprecedented crisis, government must make tough choices.”

Curbs to public sector pay also provoked an immediate backlash.

“Earlier this year the chancellor stood on his doorstep and clapped for key workers, today his government institutes a pay freeze for many of them,” Labour’s shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, told Sunak. “The beginning of his speech was that our economic emergency was only just begun. Try telling that to people who’ve been out of work since March.”

A new infrastructure strategy is expected to detail planned projects to deliver on 100 billion pounds of projects pledged over the course of the five-year Parliament that started last December. Sunak also unveiled a new financial institution to help attract private money into such programs.

The chancellor has found himself spending in a way that no Conservative chancellor would easily countenance. As of July, costs totaling 200 billion pounds had been racked up or earmarked to tackle the virus and support jobs and businesses through the crisis.

More borrowing will be needed. The government plans to issue a record 485.5 billion pounds of bonds this fiscal year.

The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that the already dire economic situation would be made worse if the Brexit negotiations end without a deal. In that scenario, unemployment would peak at 8.3%, while the economy wouldn’t reclaim its pre-virus size until well into 2023. The long-term GDP scarring of virus would be 5% rather than 3%, according to the OBR’s latest forecasts, published Wednesday.

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U.S. new-home sales remain elevated in October (nationthailand.com)

U.S. new-home sales remain elevated in October

InternationalNov 26. 2020Homes under construction in the Versilia at Southern Highlands master-planned community are seen in this aerial photograph taken over Las Vegas on Sept. 17, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Roger Kisby. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jarrell Dillard · BUSINESS, PERSONAL-FINANCE, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS

New-home sales in the U.S. held up in October, remaining near the best pace since 2006 and well above pre-pandemic levels, the latest sign that record-low mortgage rates are underpinning robust buyer interest.

Purchases of new single-family houses dropped 0.3% from September to a 999,000 annualized pace from an upwardly revised 1.002 million rate, government data showed Wednesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 975,000 rate. The median selling price rose 2.5% from a year earlier to $330,600.

Recent momentum in housing has been driven by attractive mortgage rates and buyers looking for more space as they work from home. Purchases, however, may face greater headwinds after infections began to soar around the U.S. in recent weeks and new restrictions threatened to curb hiring.

The number of properties sold for which construction hadn’t yet started increased to a fresh 14-year high of 385,000 in October, suggesting that strength in construction will continue in coming months.

The supply of new homes remained the tightest on record. At the current sales pace, it would take 3.3 months to exhaust the supply, the same as the prior month and the leanest inventory in data going back more than a half century.

The number of homes for sale was unchanged at 278,000, the fewest since 2017.

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Biden’s UN pick boosts morale for diplomats Trump sidelined (nationthailand.com)

Biden’s UN pick boosts morale for diplomats Trump sidelined

InternationalNov 26. 2020Linda Thomas-Greenfield, during a Bloomberg West Television interview in San Francisco on May 31, 2016. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · David Wainer · NATIONAL, WORLD, POLITICS, NATIONAL-SECURITY, WHITEHOUSE

When Linda Thomas-Greenfield was held at gunpoint on a diplomatic assignment in Rwanda in 1994, she tried her best to look calm as she explained to a “glazed-eyed young man” that she wasn’t the woman he was told to kill.

“I was afraid, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t panic,” Thomas-Greenfield, now one of America’s most experienced diplomats and President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for United Nations ambassador, later recalled in a TED Talk. The Tutsi woman who was the intended target was among hundreds of thousands killed during the genocide that year.

Some 26 years after that harrowing experience, Thomas-Greenfield will soon be preparing for her Senate confirmation hearing, leaning on her experience across four continents, including State Department assignments in Jamaica, Nigeria, Switzerland and Pakistan, as well as in Washington as assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

After four years of “America First” messaging from President Donald Trump and Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Michael Pompeo, Thomas-Greenfield’s appointment is a clear signal of a return to traditional diplomacy and to cooperation over confrontation at the U.N. It’s also a vote of confidence in career diplomats whose influence has been diminished.

“America is back. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back,” Thomas-Greenfield said Tuesday as Biden introduced his foreign policy team.

In a sign of how much this reflects a shift in attitude, Pompeo responded on Fox News hours later that “multilateralism for the sake of hanging out with your buddies at a cool cocktail party, that’s not in the best interest of the United States of America.”

Raised in Louisiana, Thomas-Greenfield was the oldest of eight children and was bused to a segregated school as a child. Her father dropped out of school in the third grade, and her mother had an eighth-grade education. She attended Louisiana State University, where she faced harassment and discrimination from students and faculty members, according to a person close to her.

The 67-year-old Thomas-Greenfield, who would be one of the highest-ranking Black officials in Biden’s administration, said Tuesday that she taps into her Louisiana roots to conduct “gumbo diplomacy.”

“Wherever I was posted around the world, I’d invite people of different backgrounds and beliefs to help me make a roux and chop onions for the Holy Trinity, and make homemade gumbo,” she said. The Holy Trinity of Cajun cuisine is a base made of onions, bell peppers and celery. “It was my way of breaking down barriers, connecting with people.”

Biden plans to give his UN envoy the full Cabinet status that current Ambassador Kelly Craft lacks, but the job at the world body won’t be easy. Under Trump, the U.S. took on other members of the organization on issues from reimposing sanctions on Iran to quitting the World Health Organization, a move Biden has pledged to reverse.

“Her appointment will be seen at the UN as a sign that Washington will re-engage with the world and that the Biden administration will not be staffed with individuals who are antagonistic to the organization,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

Thomas-Greenfield’s experience and contacts in Africa will come in handy at a time when African countries have grown exasperated with the U.S., which recently held up the appointment of African diplomats to head the UN mission in Libya in favor of a Bulgarian national.

Much like her recent predecessors, she would have to deal with China’s rise at the UN, where it has gained clout by getting its nationals tapped to head top agencies.

“China has been much more willing to play the game than the U.S.,” said Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “Anything that dents that and suggests the U.S. is paying attention to Africa, where China has been a major benefactor, will benefit U.S. diplomacy at the UN.”

Diplomats and African leaders view Thomas-Greenfield as a hands-on envoy who was determined to get out into the field as much as possible.

“She got to know Liberia, not only the capital, but also rural Liberia,” former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said by phone. “As the deputy secretary for African affairs she was able to mobilize support from the U.S. for Liberia during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.”

Thomas-Greenfield’s appointment also will send a message to the career diplomats of the U.S. foreign service, who were largely sidelined from senior positions during the Trump administration.

Pompeo sought to rehire Thomas-Greenfield when he took over as Trump’s top diplomat in April 2018, but she declined, according to a person familiar with his thinking at the time who asked not to be identified.

In a November article for Foreign Affairs magazine that she co-wrote with William Burns, Thomas-Greenfield, who served for a time as director general of the foreign service, lamented the “wreckage” at the State Department and called for a commitment to investing in the people at the department.

“Her appointment sends an important message to the foreign service that one of their own, and a person of color, can become a Cabinet member,” said Wendy Sherman, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Barack Obama who has worked closely with Thomas-Greenfield, including in her recent post at Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting group founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Thomas-Greenfield is “very capable of holding a press conference and putting out a public narrative but does not need to be the shiny object in the room,” Sherman said.

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Brexit talks entering decisive days, EU’s Von Der Leyen says (nationthailand.com)

Brexit talks entering decisive days, EU’s Von Der Leyen says

InternationalNov 26. 2020Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, delivers a State of the Union address in the European Parliament in Brussels on Sept. 16, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ian Wishart, Viktoria Dendrinou · WORLD, EUROPE

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the coming days will be “decisive” for trade negotiations with the U.K. and crucial differences between the two sides remain.

“Frankly I cannot tell you today if there will be a deal,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Brussels. “There are still three issues that can make the difference between a deal and no deal.”

Von der Leyen said the disagreements that have bedeviled the talks since the beginning are still proving difficult: the level playing field for business, the enforcement of any agreement and access to British fishing waters.

“With very little time ahead of us, we will do all in our power to reach an agreement,” she added.

Negotiations are continuing virtually after a member of the European team tested positive for the coronavirus but face-to-face contact is expected to resume in London before the end of the week. Officials on both sides have expressed optimism that an agreement is possible and could be reached by the end of next week.

“In the discussions about state aid we have still serious issues, for instance when it comes to enforcement,” von der Leyen said. “Significant difficulties remain on the question how we can secure — now and over time — our common high standards on labor and social rights, the environment, climate change and tax transparency.”

Before the European Commission chief spoke, U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden used a conversation with reporters to remind the U.K. of the importance of sticking by the agreement it struck last year to keep the Irish border free of checkpoints after Brexit. Reneging on those commitments could disrupt any potential trade deal before it’s ratified.

“We do not want a guarded border,” Biden said on Tuesday. “The idea of having the border, north and south, once again being closed. We’ve just got to keep the border open.”

Turning away from Brexit, von der Leyen broached the topic of the rule of law in the EU as Poland and Hungary threaten to withhold agreement on the bloc’s budget and pandemic recovery fund amid a row over plans to tie the funding to basic principles such as the maintenance of an independent judiciary.

“In July all 27 member states agreed on a conditionality mechanism,” von der Leyen said. “We’re talking here about violations of the principle of the rule of law, which are now threatening the EU budget.”

She described the rule of law conditions as appropriate, proportionate and necessary.

“It is very difficult to imagine that anybody in Europe could have anything against this principle.”

With the coronavirus still ravaging the continent, von der Leyen welcomed the European Commission’s contracts with six different vaccine suppliers and said the first Europeans might be vaccinated before the end of the December.

But she warned against repeating the mistakes of the summer.

“Relaxing too fast and too much is a risk for a third wave after Christmas,” she said. “Weeks ago, I said that this Christmas will be different. And yes, it will be quieter.”

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Joe Biden calls for shared sacrifice to fight the pandemic as Trump rails about baseless election accusations (nationthailand.com)

Joe Biden calls for shared sacrifice to fight the pandemic as Trump rails about baseless election accusations

InternationalNov 26. 2020President-elect Joe Biden gives a pre-Thanksgiving speech on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman 

By The Washington Post · Jenna Johnson, Amy B Wang, Josh Dawsey · NATIONAL, POLITICS, WHITEHOUSE

President-elect Joe Biden urged Americans on the eve of Thanksgiving to recommit to fighting the coronavirus, not one another, and to take it upon themselves to make decisions that can save lives.

In a somber and at times pleading speech, Biden reflected on other times in history that Americans have suffered, on the pain felt by the families of the more than 260,000 people who have been killed by the virus, on the sacrifices many Americans are making by scaling back or canceling their holiday plans and on the additional deaths that will undoubtedly come in the months ahead.

He urged Americans to take “simple steps” like wearing a mask, limiting the size of gatherings and socially distancing from others.

“This is the moment where we need to steel our spines,” Biden said from a stage in Wilmington, Del. “Redouble our efforts and recommit ourselves to the fight.”

He later added: “Hang on. Don’t let yourself surrender to the fatigue, which I understand – it is real fatigue. I know we can and we will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war. We’ll get our lives back. Life is going to return to normal, I promise you.”

As Biden called on Americans to come together, President Donald Trump spent the day tweeting a steady stream of grievances and baseless accusations, twice scream-tweeting: “RIGGED ELECTION!” The president made no mention of the pandemic, which has killed more than 260,000 under his watch, offered no suggestions to Americans conflicted about how to celebrate Thanksgiving safely and publicly expressed no gratitude.

Just before Biden began speaking in Wilmington, Del., Trump called the cellphone of his attorney Jenna Ellis, who was at a news conference about voter fraud in Pennsylvania. As she put him on speakerphone, he continued to unleash his grievances over the sometimes scratchy line.

“This election was lost by the Democrats,” Trump said, falsely. “They cheated.”

Earlier in the day, Trump’s aides hastily canceled a trip to that event. The president had planned to helicopter there for a news conference featuring his attorney Rudy Giuliani to again allege widespread voter fraud, despite not having yet provided any evidence. Trump was angry, several advisers said, at the perception he had given up the election fight after allowing the transition to begin.

The travel plan caught Trump’s advisers by surprise, including campaign attorney Justin Clark, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and many others close to the president, three officials said. Efforts were made to talk him out of the trip, but he continued to say it would be a good idea to appear with Giuliani and continue fighting the election results.

At the event, Giuliani appeared without a mask, even though he had been in close contact with campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, who tested positive after appearing last week at the RNC with Giuliani.

Much of the White House was empty on Wednesday morning, and several advisers said they were no longer paying attention to Trump’s antics. RNC lawyers are distancing themselves from the Giuliani efforts, officials said, and the campaign has stopped holding morning calls to talk about how to talk to the country about Giuliani’s fights.

Biden’s team, as it has for days, continued to beef up a transition that only began officially on Monday evening, when the General Services Administration finally notified federal agencies they could cooperate with the Biden team.

“The election is over. Virtually everyone on Earth has accepted that truth, except for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani,” said Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Biden-Harris transition team. “The Trump campaign has been laughed out of every courtroom with their meritless and baseless lawsuits meant to undermine the will of the American people. This is a sideshow.”

Bedingfield said that the Biden-Harris transition team has been quickly making up for lost time since Monday night when GSA administrator Emily Murphy gave the go-ahead, ending a three-week delay.

She and Jen Psaki, another spokeswoman, provided a laundry list of logistical accomplishments, refreshingly boring compared to parade of attacks, boastful claims and context-lacking assertions often uttered by Trump administration officials.

Since Monday night, the Biden-Harris transition team has made contact or met with more than 50 major federal agencies and commissions, and held more than 30 virtual briefings, Bedingfield said. She praised civil servants assisting with the transition from the Trump Administration for being “professional and welcoming” and for beginning to prepare for this moment weeks ago, despite Trump’s attempts to stall. She thanked them for clearing their schedules and, at in-person meetings, offering coffee and meals.

Biden is now receiving classified information and expects to start in-person security briefings next week, the aides said. The process of background checks for political appointees has begun, and some members of the transition team have begun to receive government-issued laptops.

Next week, Biden plans to announce some members of his economic team. Biden has already picked economist Janet Yellen to be U.S. treasury secretary. When asked when Biden would name a health secretary, given the pandemic, Psaki said that “it is front and center on the top of the mind” of Biden, Harris and other officials, but declined to provide a time frame. More appointments are expected in the weeks to come, although the spokeswomen would not say in which areas.

“Buckle up for December,” Psaki said.

Despite Trump’s efforts, Bedingfield and Psaki both said they were confident that, so far, Biden has access to the information and resources needed for a smooth transition.

Biden still has not spoken with Trump, which Bedingfield said is not necessary. If Trump eventually wants to speak with Biden, she said, “that’s something we would work out in the future.” A conversation between the two is not something “mission critical,” she said.

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GOP effort to invalidate more than 2.5 million votes in Pennsylvania dealt another setback (nationthailand.com)

GOP effort to invalidate more than 2.5 million votes in Pennsylvania dealt another setback

InternationalNov 26. 2020President Trump and then-candidate Joe Biden are pictured at the first debate in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. Trump has had no success in court regarding his allegations of election fraud. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo Jabin Botsford 

By The Washington Post · Elise Viebeck, Josh Dawsey · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW, WHITEHOUSE

Republicans faced another procedural setback in a Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to invalidate more than 2.5 million votes, as a temporary order blocking further certification of election results was stayed on appeal from state officials who had already formalized President-elect Joe Biden’s win the day before.

Legal experts said the case had little chance of success, much like the other last-ditch GOP election lawsuits pending in battleground states. Republicans have gained no substantive traction across more than two dozen cases trying to undo results favoring Biden since Election Day, and as of Tuesday, four of six states where President Donald Trump tried to overturn the outcome have certified Biden’s win.

In the Pennsylvania case, Republican plaintiffs are retroactively challenging the state’s mail-voting system, calling into question virtually every contest that took place there on Nov. 3 and asking for judges to take the unprecedented step of voiding election results across the state.

On Wednesday morning, Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, who was elected as a Republican in 2009, placed a hold on the certification process for downballot races pending an evidentiary hearing. State officials appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court later Wednesday, which triggered an automatic stay of McCullough’s order. They then asked the state high court to step in and dismiss the case altogether.

“The Commonwealth Court’s Order threatens to disrupt the certification of every race in the 2020 general election; foreclose the seating of elected representatives; indefinitely postpone the December 1 start of the General Assembly’s term; undermine the will of the voters; and cast a wholly unwarranted cloud over Pennsylvania’s election results,” lawyers for the state wrote in a filing.

Legal experts said it was unlikely that judges assigned to the case would ultimately grant a request to change the rules of an election after the fact in a way that disenfranchises millions of people.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who tracks voting rights litigation, called the case “internally incoherent” and “an attempt to magically disappear an entire election.”

“It basically says Pennsylvania had something other than an election, which is another explanation for why it’s not going anywhere,” he said.

McCullough’s order followed a late-night filing by Republicans speculating that Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, might have accelerated certification of the presidential results on Tuesday to avoid a possible injunction stemming from their case.

Boockvar stated Tuesday that she certified the results for president and vice president and that Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for Biden’s slate of electors, adding that the certificate was submitted to the archivist of the United States.

Separately, Pennsylvania Republicans sought to build support for their voter fraud claims on Wednesday with an hours-long, largely maskless indoor news event at a Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg.

Led by Republican state legislators, the gathering featured Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and adviser Jenna Ellis alongside Pennsylvanians who voiced suspicions that the election was dishonest based on their experiences as observers. At one point, Trump called in via Giuliani’s cellphone, telling the room and people watching online that “we have to turn the election over.”

Trump had planned to attend the event in person, which caught advisers by surprise, including campaign attorney Justin Clark, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and many others close to the president, three people involved with the campaign said on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak. Efforts were made to talk Trump out of the trip, but he continued to say it would be a good idea to appear with Giuliani, the people said. They said Trump told several advisers that he appreciated Giuliani wanted to keep fighting, while he believed they were prematurely declaring defeat.

By Wednesday morning, the president had decided not to go, even as his team whirred into motion to make the Thanksgiving Eve trip happen. “Bullet dodged,” said one campaign adviser. “It would have been a total humiliation.”

Giuliani appeared without a mask, even after he had been in close contact with campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, who tested positive for the coronavirus and appeared last week at the RNC with Giuliani and attorney Sidney Powell, maskless.

RNC lawyers were distancing themselves from Giuliani’s efforts, the officials said. Much of the White House was empty on Wednesday morning. The campaign has stopped holding morning calls to talk about how to craft messaging around Giuliani’s fights, several advisers said.

Many of the president’s advisers do not see the effort by Ellis and Giuliani going anywhere, and they believe Trump is only hurting his reputation and legacy by participating in it.

Elsewhere in the country, Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward continued her push to challenge Biden’s victory there ahead of Nov. 30, when Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is scheduled to certify results.

Ward on Tuesday asked a judge to begin examining ballots and envelopes ahead of what she said would be a formal election contest filed after certification. Arizona law allows any voter to challenge the results of an election on the grounds that illegal votes were cast or that election officials engaged in misconduct. To succeed, Ward would have to show that Trump actually received the most votes in the state, which appears unlikely given that Biden’s margin of victory is greater than 10,000 votes.

A judge has set a hearing in the case for Monday.

In Wisconsin, recounts in the two largest counties – Dane and Milwaukee – continued on Wednesday. Election officials plan to pause the process on Thursday to observe the Thanksgiving holiday before returning to work on Friday and working through the weekend to complete the recounts by Dec. 1, as required by Wisconsin law. Biden leads Trump by about 20,000 votes in the state. As of the close of Tuesday, the state’s recount, which began on Friday, had resulted in Biden’s margin being whittled by just 52 votes.

In Georgia, a machine recount is underway of the state’s 5 million presidential votes, at the president’s request. While most counties plan on taking Thanksgiving Day off, they are scheduled to resume the recount at 7 a.m. on Friday and work through the weekend to meet the deadline of Dec. 2. The new recount is a machine rescan of the presidential ballots, which were already hand-recounted during the state’s risk-limiting audit process to ensure the accuracy of the initial count of ballots.