World Briefly: 3-25-17

No repeal for ‘Obamacare’ _ a humiliating defeat for Trump

WASHINGTON — In a humiliating failure, President Donald Trump and GOP leaders pulled their bill to repeal “Obamacare” off the House floor Friday when it became clear it would fail badly — after seven years of nonstop railing against the law. Democrats said Americans can “breathe a sigh of relief.” Trump said the current law was imploding “and soon will explode.”

Thwarted by two factions of fellow Republicans, from the center and far right, House Speaker Paul Ryan said President Barack Obama’s health care law, the GOP’s No. 1 target in the new Trump administration, will remain in place “for the foreseeable future.”

It was a stunning defeat for the new president after he had demanded House Republicans delay no longer and vote on the legislation Friday, pass or fail.

His gamble failed. Instead Trump, who campaigned as a master deal-maker and claimed that he alone could fix the nation’s health care system, saw his ultimatum rejected by Republican lawmakers who made clear they answer to their own voters, not to the president.

He “never said repeal and replace it in 64 days,” a dejected but still combative Trump said at the White House, though he repeatedly shouted during the presidential campaign that it was going down on Day One of his term.

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Trump campaign chair offers to talk to House panel on Russia

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, a key figure in investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, has volunteered to be interviewed by lawmakers as part of an increasingly partisan House probe of the Kremlin’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.

The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, on Friday announced the prospect of an interview with Paul Manafort, and Nunes cancelled a previously scheduled public hearing in which former Obama administration officials had agreed to testify about the Russia investigation. Manafort also volunteered to be interviewed by the Senate intelligence committee, which is conducting its own investigation.

It was not clear whether Manafort had offered to testify under oath or in a public hearing.

Manafort volunteered to be interviewed the same week that FBI director James Comey confirmed the existence of an ongoing counterintelligence investigation into possible Trump associates’ coordination with Russia and just days after an Associated Press report revealed Manafort worked with a Russian billionaire with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago.

The confirmation of an ongoing FBI investigation was a blow to the White House, which has described the Russia probe as a ruse. And the new details about Manafort’s ties to a close Putin ally appear to contradict what Trump has previously said about Manafort’s connections.

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Trump OKs Keystone pipeline, calling it ‘great day’ for jobs

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump greenlighted the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, declaring it a “great day for American jobs” and siding with energy advocates over environmental groups in a heated debate over climate change.

The presidential permit comes nearly a decade after Calgary-based TransCanada applied to build the $8 billion pipeline, which will snake from Canada through the United States. Trump’s State Department said the project advances U.S. national interests, in a complete reversal of the conclusion President Barack Obama’s administration reached less than a year-and-a-half ago.

“It’s a great day for American jobs and a historic moment for North America and energy independence,” Trump said, standing alongside TransCanada’s CEO in the Oval Office. Keystone will reduce costs and reliance on foreign oil while creating thousands of jobs, he said, adding: “It’s going to be an incredible pipeline.”

The decision caps the long scientific and political fight over a project that became a proxy battle in the larger fight over global warming. And Friday’s decision, while long foreshadowed by Trump’s public support for Keystone, represents one of the biggest steps to date by his administration to prioritize economic development over environmental concerns.

TransCanada, Trump said, can now build Keystone “with efficiency and with speed.” Though it still faces other major hurdles, including disputes over the route, the president said the federal government was formulating final details “as we speak.”

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London attacker cheerful, joking on eve of deadly rampage

BIRMINGHAM, England — Long before his short stints in jail turned into years behind bars, Khalid Masood was known as Adrian Elms, with a reputation for drinking and an unpredictable temper.

At least twice he was convicted of violent crimes, well before he stabbed a police officer to death Wednesday in London with a motion that one horrified witness described as “playing a drum on your back with two knives.”

But as he checked out of his hotel to head toward London for his deadly rampage, the manager said he was struck by his guest’s friendly manner.

Within hours, Masood drove his rented SUV across the crowded Westminster Bridge, leaving a trail of dead and wounded. Then he jumped out and attacked Constable Keith Palmer, an officer guarding Parliament, stabbing him to death before being shot to death by police.

In all, he killed four people and left more than two dozen hospitalized.

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Putin meets Le Pen, denies French election interference

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin made his preferences in the French presidential election clear Friday by hosting far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at the Kremlin, but analysts are skeptical about Russia’s ability to sway the outcome of the vote.

Embracing Le Pen is part of Russia’s efforts to reach out to nationalist and anti-globalist forces to build up its influence in the West and help overcome the strains in relations with the U.S. and the European Union.

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential vote has emboldened the Kremlin, even though the ongoing U.S. Congressional scrutiny of his campaign ties with Russia has all but dashed Moscow’s hopes for a quick detente. U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of hacking to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

During Friday’s meeting with National Front leader Le Pen, Putin insisted that Russia has no intention of meddling in the French election and only wants to have a dialogue with a variety of politicians. He praised Le Pen, saying she represents part of a “quickly developing spectrum of European political forces.”

Le Pen’s anti-immigration and anti-EU platform appeals to the Kremlin, which has postured as a defender of conservative national values against Western globalization. She also has called for strong security ties with Moscow to jointly combat radical Islamic groups, promised to work to repeal the EU sanctions on Moscow over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and pledged to recognize Crimea as part of Russia if she’s elected.

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Speaker Ryan falls short in first test of Trump presidency

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan guaranteed a win on the Republican plan to dismantle Barack Obama’s health care law. Instead, he suffered a brutal defeat, cancelling a vote and admitting “we’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”

Friday’s painful rebuke is an ominous sign for President Donald Trump’s agenda, from taxes to infrastructure to the budget. Looming in a few weeks is the need to agree on a bill to keep the government open. After the health care debacle, Trump told Republican leaders he’s moving on.

The episode is a danger point for the relationship between Trump and Ryan, who had an awkward pairing during the campaign but worked in tandem on the GOP health measure.

“I like Speaker Ryan,” Trump said. “I think Paul really worked hard.”

Virtually every congressional Republican won election promising to repeal Obamacare. With a Republican in the White House, passage seemed almost guaranteed.

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Plan to dig up President Polk’s body _ again _ stirs trouble

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — President James K. Polk did big things for America, dramatically expanding its borders by annexing Texas and seizing California and the Southwest in a war with Mexico. Achieving undisturbed eternal rest has proved more difficult.

In a proposal that has riled some folks in Tennessee, including a very distant relative of the nation’s 11th president, some state lawmakers want to move Polk’s body to what would be its fourth resting place in the nearly 170 years since he died of cholera.

The plan is to exhume Polk’s remains and those of his wife, Sarah, from their white-columned tomb on the grounds of the state Capitol in Nashville and take them about 50 miles to his father’s home, now known as the James K. Polk Home and Museum, in Columbia. A vote on the resolution could come as early as Monday.

Teresa Elam, who says she is a seventh-generation great-niece of the childless Polk, called the whole idea “mortifying.”

“I got so upset about it because they’re going to take these bodies of these fine, wonderful people and bring them down to Columbia and put them on display to make money,” she said.

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Canada pulls vehicle license plate deemed offensive

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A Canadian provincial government has withdrawn a man’s eponymous personalized vehicle license plate, saying Lorne Grabher’s surname is offensive to women when viewed on his car bumper.

Grabher said Friday that he put his last name on the license plate decades ago as a gift for his late father’s birthday, and says the province’s refusal to renew the plate late last year is unfair.

Grabher says the Nova Scotia government is discriminating against his name.

Transport Department spokesman Brian Taylor says while the department understands Grabher is a surname with German roots, this context isn’t available to the general public who view it.

The personalized plate program introduced in 1989 allows the province to refuse names when they’re deemed offensive, socially unacceptable and not in good taste.

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Arkansas inmates make longshot bid to avoid double execution

VARNER, Ark. — Two Arkansas inmates scheduled for back-to-back lethal injections next month asked the parole board Friday to spare their lives, a longshot bid as the state prepares for an unprecedented four nights of double executions over a 10-day period.

While Texas has executed eight people in a month — twice in 1997 — no state in the modern era has executed that many prisoners in 10 days.

Stacey Johnson and a lawyer for Ledell Lee asked board members to recommend that Gov. Asa Hutchinson commute their sentences. Such efforts typically fail. The board planned to deliberate Friday afternoon in Little Rock after hearing from relatives of the men’s victims, but did not indicate when it would announce its decision.

Of the 27 people executed in Arkansas since 1990, 20 had clemency requests rejected and the others didn’t apply. Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted one man’s sentence on his own after a reluctant juror stepped forward.

Johnson and Lee are set to die April 20. Other double executions are set for April 17, 24 and 27.

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US Jews wrestle with arrest of Jew in bomb threats case

NEW YORK — Jewish groups had pointed to scores of bomb threats against their communities as the most dramatic example of what they considered a surge in anti-Semitism. Some blamed a far-right emboldened by President Donald Trump. Now, that picture has been complicated by the arrest of an Israeli Jewish hacker who authorities say is responsible for the harassment.

Israeli police said the motive behind the threats was unclear. An attorney for the 19-year-old man, who was arrested Thursday, said her client had a “very serious medical condition” that might have affected his behavior. Earlier this month, U.S. law enforcement had arrested a former journalist in St. Louis, Juan Thompson, on charges he threatened Jewish organizations as part of a bizarre campaign to harass his former girlfriend. But Israeli police say the Jewish teen is the primary suspect in the more than 150 bomb threats in North America since early January.

Previously, Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism and monitors extremism, had partly blamed Trump for creating an atmosphere that fueled the bomb threats and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, among other recent harassment. “His well-documented reluctance to address rising anti-Semitism helped to create an environment in which extremists felt emboldened,” Greenblatt wrote last month.

On Feb. 28, in a meeting with state attorneys general, Trump had suggested the phoned-in bomb threats may have been designed to make “others look bad,” according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. The remark raised concerns that Trump was downplaying bigotry. That same night, Trump opened his address to Congress with a strong condemnation of the threats and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, which occurred in suburban St. Louis, Philadelphia and elsewhere.

In a phone interview Thursday from Washington, where Greenblatt was discussing anti-Semitism with members of Congress, he said, “It’s not the identity of the culprit that’s the issue,” but the outcome of threats themselves, which terrified Jews and disrupted Jewish life.

By wire sources