Britain - Brexit: PM Boris Johnson says Brexit opponents collaborating with EU

Boris Johnson: Brexit opponents 'collaborating' with EU

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49348072

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The Vatican: Pope Francis Says Secret Archives On Holocaust-Era Pope Pius XII Will Be Opened Early - by Billy Perrigo

The Pope Francis announced Monday that the Vatican’s archives on controversial World War II-era pope Pius XII would be opened up eight years earlier than planned, in 2020, a move seen as an olive branch to Jews who have criticized the Vatican for not doing enough during the Holocaust.

The church is not afraid of history,” Pope Francis said, announcing the move in a speech to members of the Vatican’s Secret Archives. “On the contrary, it loves it, and would like to love it even more, like it loves God.”

Papal archives are usually opened to historians 70 years after the end of a pope’s rule, but the Church has come under pressure to reveal Pius XII’s records earlier than that, while aging Holocaust survivors are still alive.

Many Jewish groups have been calling on the Vatican to open the archives for decades. Rabbi David Rosen, of the American Jewish Committee, welcomed the news, telling Reuters it would help historians to “acknowledge both the failures as well as the valiant efforts made” during the Holocaust.

Read more: Pope Francis Says Secret Archives On Holocaust-Era Pope Pius XII Will Be Opened Early

USA: GOP Coup D'état ?; GOP releases memo criticizing FBI surveillance to get Trump off the hook in Russian Collaboration investigation

Trump's three GOP Stooges trying to stop Russian investigation

A GOP memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI has been released, intensifying a fight between the White House and Republican lawmakers, on one side, and the nation’s top law enforcement agency over whether the origins of a probe into Russian interference in 2016 were tainted by political bias.

The four-page, newly declassified memo by Donald Trump and written by the Republican staffers for the House Intelligence Committee said the findings “raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain (Justice Department) and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),’’ calling it “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.’’

The memo accuses former officials who approved the surveillance applications — a group that includes former FBI Director James B. Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former deputy attorney general Sally Yates and current Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein — of signing off on court surveillance requests that omitted key facts about the political motivations of the person supplying some of the information, Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer in Britain.

The memo says Steele “was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.’’

It must be noted  that the memo is not an intelligence document and reflects information the committee has gathered, which Democrats, the FBI and Justice Department have criticized as incomplete and misleading. Current and former law enforcement officials said a major concern inside the FBI is that the rules governing classified information will impede their ability to respond to the memo’s accusations when it becomes public.

Several legal experts around the US are openly stating that this is a flagrant attempt by the GOP( (Republican Party) to get President Trump off the hook in relation to the Russian investigation, where the evidence is pointing more and more to President Trump and his election team's direct involvement in collaborating with the  Russians. 

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) released a statement Friday slamming recent efforts to discredit the integrity of U.S. intelligence agencies. "The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests — no party, no president's, only [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's," McCain wrote.

"I fear [Russia] succeeded in fueling political discord and dividing us from one another," McCain wrote, referencing the ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. "The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia's ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why [the FBI's Russia] investigation must proceed unimpeded." He continued: "If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin's job for him."

"Microshaft": Snowden docs detail collaboration between NSA and Microsoft - by Alex Halperin

Microsoft collaborated more closely with U.S. intelligence than had previously been known, The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and team reported today based information provided to them by Edward Snowden. According to the piece, the software giant allowed “users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption.”
The revelations include that:

• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;
• Microsoft also worked with the FBI’s Data Intercept Unit to “understand” potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;
• Skype, which was bought by Microsoft in October 2011, worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video of conversations as well as audio;

Microsoft responded with a statement: “When we upgrade or update products we aren’t absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands.”

Read more: Snowden docs detail collaboration between NSA and Microsoft - Salon.com