US Officials Warn Congress on Election Hacking Threats

Senior Trump administration officials warned Congress on Tuesday of ongoing efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2018 midterm congressional elections as the federal government prepares to hand out $380 million in election security funding to states. At a briefing attended by 40 or more members of the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives, the heads …

Zuckerberg: ‘We Have Made Significant Investments To Protect The Integrity Of Elections’

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that “we weren’t prepared enough for coordinated misinformation operations” during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, but “since then we have made significant investments to protect the integrity of elections by making these kinds of attacks much harder to do on Facebook.” Zuckerberg spoke on May 22 to …

Bannon: ‘If Europe Is So Worried About Russia, Pay Up’

Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, told an audience in Prague that NATO countries in Europe need to start paying more to protect themselves from Russia and stop being a “protectorate” of the United States. Speaking at a forum sponsored by a Czech defense contractor on May 22, Bannon said …

Watchdog Report to Fault FBI for Clinton Probe Delay

An upcoming report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog is expected to criticize senior FBI leaders for not moving quickly enough to review a trove of Hillary Clinton emails discovered late in the 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the findings. The FBI’s timing has been a sore point for Clinton supporters, who say …

Cuba Plane Crash Death Toll Rises to 111 as One Survivor Dies

The death toll from a plane crash in Cuba last week rose to 111 on Monday as one of the three survivors, 23-year-old Grettel Landrove, died in a Havana hospital, Cuban state-run media said. The two other survivors, also women, remain in critical condition due to severe burns and other trauma, the director of the …

Russia-Friendly, Pro-EU Candidates In Runoff Moldovan Election

The candidate of Moldova’s pro-Moscow Socialist Party, Ion Ceban, has won the first round of the snap election for mayor in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, with almost 41 percent of the vote, followed by Andrei Nastase, the candidate of the pro-European party Dignity and Truth Platform (DA), who garnered just over 31 percent. …

Monitor: IS Fighters Leave Damascus Enclave

A Syrian monitor says Islamic State fighters are being evacuated from the last insurgent enclave near Damascus, a move that will restore state control over the area. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the evacuation of the fighters and their families from Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp began Sunday. Buses were carrying the fighters …

US, China Agree to Increased Trade Cooperation

The United States and China agreed to take measures to reduce the U.S. trade deficit in goods by having China purchase more American goods, particularly agriculture and energy products, according to a joint statement the two nations released Saturday. “There was a consensus on taking effective measures to substantially reduce the United States trade deficit in goods with China,” the joint …

Texas Shooting Suspect Seems ‘Weirdly Nonemotional,’ Lawyer Says

The 17-year-old student who authorities said killed 10 people when he opened fire in an art class in his Houston-area high school appeared to be disoriented on the morning after the rampage, one of his lawyers said Saturday. The teenager, identified by law enforcement as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, has been charged with capital murder and is …