Joining today's show are Mike Barnicle, Katty Kay, Donny Deutsch, Jim VandeHei, Jonathan Capehart, Ray Suarez, Richard Haass, Chuck Todd, Sen. Tim Kaine, Nancy Gibbs, Salma Hayek, Fmr. Gov. Rick Perry, Maria Shriver, Father Kevin O’Brien, Andrea Mitchell, Luke Russert and more
The dramatic announcement came in Havana, where the two sides began formal negotiations in 2012 on ending the 50-year-old conflict. Wednesday’s ceremony marked the first time Santos has appeared beside Timoleón Jiménez, alias “Timochenko,” the elusive FARC commander who previously surfaced in videos recorded from his jungle hideouts.
With Cuban President Raúl Castro seated between them, Santos said he and Timochenko had told their negotiating teams to reach a final agreement within six months. The guerrilla commander remains an adversary, Santos said, but “today we are making progress in the same direction, toward the most noble goal a society can have: peace.”
“We must break once and for all any link between politics and weapons,” he told a room packed with Colombian journalists and politicians at Havana’s convention center.
More than 220,000 people have been killed in the three-way violence between the left-wing guerrillas, the government and right-wing paramilitary groups. At least 6 million Colombians have been forced to flee their homes. Only Syria has more “internally displaced persons,” according to U.N. data.
The agreement announced Wednesday breaks an impasse over the most sensitive element of the talks, namely whether guerrillas who lay down their weapons would be subject to criminal prosecution, prison terms and potential extradition to the United States.
Leaders of the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, have insisted they would not submit to such terms. There are reams of criminal charges against them in Colombian, U.S. and international courts for murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking, terrorism and virtually every other serious offense imaginable.
The deal would establish a truth-and-reconciliation process through which guerrillas and Colombian military commanders accused of rights abuses would be required to confess their crimes at special tribunals.
Timochenko, who is rarely seen on television by Colombians and even less without a combat uniform, read a brief statement after Santos’s remarks. His graying hair and beard appeared to have been trimmed, and he wore a white guayabera shirt, as did the other members of the FARC delegation.
The rebel commander praised the system of special tribunals as a mechanism “designed for all of those affected by the conflict, combatants and non-combatants . . . built on the basis of reparation and non-repetition” of conflict.
“Now we must work to build consensus” toward a peace deal, he said, “and work to transform FARC into a legal political movement.”
Under the terms of the agreement, combatants who provide truthful testimony and atone for their crimes would be eligible for a system of “alternative justice” that would limit their punishment to financial reparations to victims and five to eight years that could be served at low-security work camps or halfway houses.
But the special tribunals would have the power to investigate and cross-examine those accused of war crimes. Combatants who failed to fully confess or withheld evidence would lose eligibility for a lighter sentence and would face full criminal prosecution.
FARC commanders who have already been extradited to the United States would not be eligible, according to a person with knowledge of the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Nurtured by drug trafficking profits, illegal mining and revenue from kidnapping and extortion, the leftist insurgent group has been at war with the government since 1964.
Final deal pending
The announcement in Havana came three days after Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the city’s Plaza of the Revolution with a plea to Colombians to “achieve definitive reconciliation” in the peace talks to end “the long night of pain and violence.”
“Please, we do not have the right to allow ourselves yet another failure on this path of peace and reconciliation,” Francis said.
In a statement, Secretary of State John F. Kerry praised the pope’s “moral leadership” and said he had called Santos to congratulate him. He also recognized Cuba and Norway, the two countries serving as “guarantors” for the negotiations.
“Peace is now ever closer for the Colombian people and millions of conflict victims,” Kerry said. “The Colombian people deserve a just and durable peace, and this will be their victory.”
Wednesday’s agreement does not complete the peace process, but it resolves one of the thorniest and most controversial aspects of the talks. The two sides have deals in place on other elements: rural development, an end to the guerrillas’ drug trafficking and guarantees for the future participation of FARC members in the country’s political system.
Still pending are the nuts-and-bolts issues of disarming and demobilizing the estimated 7,000 or so FARC combatants who remain on remote battlefields in Colombia’s jungles and mountains.
Wednesday’s announcement was especially significant because it also sets the first timetables for ending the conflict. FARC combatants would have 60 days to lay down weapons once a deal is reached.
“These are the most important breakthroughs since negotiations began more than three years ago,” said Bernard Aronson, U.S. special envoy to the Colombia peace talks. “Taken together this means the war in Colombia is coming to an end.”
Under the terms of the peace process, the final agreement must be approved by Colombian voters. Though many Colombians say in surveys that they want peace, Santos’s popularity has slumped since his reelection last year, and the deal could collapse if voters reject it because they think it lets FARC off too easily.
“Santos, it’s not peace that’s near, it’s the surrender to FARC and the tyranny of Venezuela,” wrote former president Álvaro Uribe, Santos’s political archrival, on Twitter, linking Wednesday’s announcement to Colombia’s ongoing tensions with the government in Caracas.
During his 2002 to 2010 presidency, Uribe rolled back FARC’s territorial gains and decimated its ranks, but he could not completely defeat the rebels.
“Without jail time for the commanders, there will be a deal in Havana but also a recipe for more violence in Colombia,” Uribe warned.
‘A glide-path forward’
A smaller leftist group, the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish initials ELN, is still at war with the Colombian government, but those fighters are expected to also ask to negotiate a peace deal.
“This is huge news,” said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a D.C. think tank. “Transitional justice was by far the hardest issue on the agenda.”
“It might be an overstatement to say that they’re now on a glide-path toward a final peace accord,” Isacson said. “But what remains to be negotiated is easier than what has been agreed.”
Isacson noted that a FARC cease-fire over the past two months has brought the country a preview of what a lasting peace deal would mean.
“If this kind of tranquility persists, Colombians won’t want to go back to the way things were,” Isacson said. “They will swallow hard and support the accord as long as it includes some real accountability for human rights abusers.”
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Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times writes about how Military analyst again raises red flags on progress in Iraq. As the war in Iraq deteriorated, a senior American intelligence analyst went public in 2005 and criticized President George W. Bush’s administration for pushing “amateurish and unrealistic” plans for the invasion two years before. Now that same man, Gregory Hooker, is at the center of an insurrection of United States Central Command intelligence analysts over America’s latest war in Iraq, and whether Congress, policy makers and the public are being given too rosy a picture of the situation.
As the senior Iraq analyst at Central Command, the military headquarters in Tampa that oversees American military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, Mr. Hooker is the leader of a group of analysts that is accusing senior commanders of changing intelligence reports to paint an overly optimistic portrait of the American bombing campaign against the Islamic State. The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating.
Donald Trump is on the show right now taking on questions from the panel. Trump Complains About Fox's Poll Coverage, Rich Lowry 'Balls' Remark. Donald Trump on Thursday morning explained why he has decided to boycott Fox News after he complained on Wednesday that the network treats him "unfairly."
The real estate mogul said that Fox host Bill O'Reilly "is okay," even though Fox News cancelled Trump's appearance on O'Reilly's show Wednesday night. The network said they cancelled the appearance before Trump announced his boycott. Trump complained about how the network covers his performance in the polls.
"They don’t put up the good polls. They don’t put up polls — if I’m leading big in a poll, they don’t put it up," Trump added, later complaining that he saw a headline noting that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) surpassed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a poll without noting Trump's lead.
Trump then turned to Megyn Kelly's show, referencing National Review editor Rich Lowry's Wednesday night appearance on "The Kelly File."
"Megyn Kelly, you had this loser on last night. This guy Lowry — I never even heard of him. He was so out of control. He lost control of himself. It was actually sad," Trump said on "Morning Joe."
On Wednesday night, Lowry said of Trump, "Let’s be honest: Carly cut his balls off with the precision of a surgeon, and he knows it."
The National Review editor's comments sparked a battle with Trump on Twitter Wednesday night.
Trump said that Twitter enables him to "fight back."
"It’s like owning the New York Times without the losses," he said. "With one tweet, 140 characters, you can knock somebody out."
Most Agree With Trump on America's Lost Greatness, Bloomberg Poll Finds. A national survey finds that 72 percent of Americans say their country isn't as great as it once was —a central theme of front-runner Donald Trump's campaign.
The survey shows that 72 percent of Americans think their country isn't as great as it once was—a central theme of front-runner Donald Trump's campaign. More than a third prefer a presidential candidate without experience in public office.
Three of the four candidates leading the Republican field fit that description: Trump, the first choice of 21 percent of registered Republicans and voters who say they lean that way, followed by neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 16 percent, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush with 13 percent, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina with 11 percent.
Fiorina and Carson have seen the strongest gains among Republicans since the survey was taken a month ago. In the interim, voters have had their first extended looks at the candidates in two nationally televised debates. Fiorina's numbers, at 1 percent in the August poll, leaped by 10 percentage points while Carson jumped 11 percentage points, up from 5 percent. Trump's numbers have remained unchanged. Together, the three candidates who have never held political office account for 48 percent of the Republican vote.
After nominating politicians with solid government resumes again and again, Selzer said, the electorate seems interested in going another direction. “They see a nation falling behind or outright failing,” she said. “Whether it is an act of courage or an act of despair, more than a third are opting to take the risk of backing a genuine outsider.”Thirty-seven percent of Americans say they're more drawn to a presidential candidate who is a government outsider but who has also been a leader, handled complex issues, and managed teams to get things done. Among Republicans and those who lean that way, the preference for outsider candidates is even more pronounced: 51 percent, compared to 24 percent among Democrats.
Carly Fiorina, former chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., is enjoying a bounce after her latest poll performance.
Carly Fiorina, former chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., is enjoying a bounce after her latest poll performance. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
“She's very articulate, has great control, is intelligent,” said Paula Gartside, a 50-year-old paralegal and substitute teacher in Pennsylvania who is supporting Fiorina after being impressed by her last debate performance. “I don't think she pulls any punches. What you see is what you get.”
The two candidates with the highest unfavorable ratings are Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, at 42 percent, and Trump, at 40 percent. Still, those who like Trump are strongly supportive. “He's an outsider,” said Darleen Starcher, 61, a North Carolina resident who likes Trump. “He's not wanting or caring about being politically correct. He wants to make us better again. He wants to make us No. 1 again.”
The primary campaign is playing out before an electorate that's in a sour mood, with 66 percent of Americans saying the nation is headed in the wrong direction. That's the highest level recorded in a Bloomberg national poll since December 2013, when the economy was in worse shape than it is today. Given a series of choices about the greatness of America, 47 percent picked “falling behind,” while 25 percent said “failing.” Asked to name the biggest threats to American greatness, more cited “moral decay” (32 percent) and “our own lagging work ethic” (27 percent) than the rise of the Islamic State (26 percent) and competition with China (21 percent). A quarter of those responding also cited a “concentration of the nation's wealth among a very few individuals.”
Economically, the poll shows the nation's mood is bittersweet. On overall financial security, 27 percent of Americans say things are getting better, compared to 15 percent who say their situation is getting worse. The same pattern holds for job security (20 percent better, 13 percent worse) and market value of home (29 percent better, 14 percent worse). On performance of investments, 21 percent of Americans say their situation is getting worse, compared to 18 percent who say better. For all four economic indicators, the percentage of people saying they expect their situation to get better is lower than it was five months ago when Bloomberg asked similar questions.
And while a majority of 54 percent say they're moving closer, not further away, from their hopes for their career and/or finances, there are other indications of simmering economic discontents: a much larger majority—70 percent—say they see the gap between rich and everyone else as getting bigger. And 73 percent say that the tax code should be reformed so the wealthy pay proportionately more than middle-class people, a theme that's been picked up by candidates running the ideological gamut from Trump to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they're fed up with politics and think it amounts to “people playing games,” while 59 percent say the political system is broken and the nation needs to “just start over.” Yet if citizens are disgusted, they are not cynical about democracy. Only 30 percent think their vote doesn't matter and most believe that the political process is important. Just 19 percent agree with the statement “I'm not affected by politics—it doesn't matter which party is in power.” Asked for their review of the 2016 campaign so far, 53 percent rated it “entertaining.”
The poll of 1,001 U.S. adults, including 391 registered Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, was conducted from Sept. 18-21. The margin of error on the full sample is plus/minus 3.1 percentage points—Freeman Klopott contributed to this article.
Poll: Trump, Clinton lead in Florida, Bush 3rd in GOP race. The Donald continues to lead his Republican presidential opponents while U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has leapfrogged a onetime mentor, former Gov. Jeb Bush, in a poll of Florida voters released Wednesday by Florida Atlantic University.
In critical swing-state Florida, Hillary Clinton holds a significant edge over her Democratic rivals but struggles in match-ups against most Republican contenders, including Rubio and Florida pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the survey found.
The Republican sample of the poll, with a margin of error of 5.2 percentage points, showed Donald Trump with 31.5 percent of the vote in a GOP primary, followed by Florida senator Rubio in second place with 19.2 percent, followed by Bush at 11.3 percent, Carson at 10.3 percent and Carly Fiorina at 8.3 percent.
"You're really seeing a gathering of strength by Marco Rubio, and I think he's going to have a moment to make his case," said Florida Atlantic University political science professor Kevin Wagner, a fellow of the school's Business and Economics Initiative, which conducted the poll. "If he's doing better than Jeb in Florida, that's a good representation that his campaign is gaining momentum."
The survey of 801 likely Florida voters, with an overall margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, was conducted from Thursday to Sunday, immediately following last week's GOP debate, which nearly 80 percent of respondents said they watched. Nearly 40 percent of viewers said Fiorina won the debate.
The poll of all voters also showed Trump with an unfavorable rating of nearly 60 percent. Rubio's post-debate bump could pose problems for Bush. Although Bush's "super PAC" has amassed more than $100 million since the former governor began testing the presidential waters, Rubio's increasing viability as a general-election candidate could persuade some supporters to switch their allegiance, Wagner said.
"That would be a big danger," he said.
The poll also found that Clinton would win 59.5 percent of the votes in a Democratic primary, with Vice President Joe Biden --- who has not officially entered the race --- garnering 15.9 percent and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders receiving 15.2 percent.
But Clinton, who handily defeated Barack Obama in the 2008 Florida primary but lost the nomination nationally, lags behind GOP candidates in possible match-ups. Voters favored Carson over Clinton by 51.7 percent to 39.5 percent, and Rubio over Clinton by 50.4 percent to 42.2 percent. Bush held a 49.1 percent to 40.9 percent lead over Clinton, and Trump edged out the former secretary of state by a margin of 45.9 percent to 44.5 percent.
"Hillary Clinton is very strong inside the Democratic Party, but she has high negatives and she's vulnerable," Wagner said. "That's something that we wouldn't have said about her months ago. In the head-to-head match-ups, she's either very tight or losing to some of the leading Republican candidates. That's got to be of some concern to her campaign."
The war between Donald Trump and Fox News is back on. he war of words between Donald Trump and Fox News turned nasty Wednesday night. On Megyn Kelly's Fox News talk show, conservative columnist Rich Lowry asserted that Carly Fiorina had castrated Trump during the CNN debate last week.
Lowry, a prominent Trump critic, referred to Trump's private parts and said Fiorina had the "precision of a surgeon."
Kelly, who looked shocked at the remark, said "what did you just say?"
Trump was apparently shocked too -- he lambasted Lowry via Twitter, calling him "incompetent" and adding, "He should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!"
The FCC -- Federal Communications Commission -- occasionally fines broadcast networks for indecency, but has no power to sanction cable channels like Fox News.
Lowry gleefully replied to Trump on Twitter: "Man, you can dish it out but you REALLY, REALLY can't take it."
Fox News had no immediate comment on the off-color moment.
For the time being, Trump and Fox are at loggerheads, and Wednesday's back-and-forth about Trump's anatomy isn't likely to change that.
The conflict began heating up again around noon on Wednesday, when Trump tweeted that he would be boycotting Fox because the network has treated him "very unfairly."
"I have therefore decided that I won't be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future," he wrote.
But a Fox News spokesperson suggested Trump wasn't telling the full story. In a statement to CNN, Fox said "at 11:45 a.m. today, we canceled Donald Trump's scheduled appearance on 'The O'Reilly Factor' on Thursday, which resulted in Mr. Trump's subsequent tweet about his 'boycott' of Fox News."
Fox News declined to specify why it had canceled Trump's appearance. But the decision came after a series of tweets Trump posted on Monday and Tuesday criticizing Kelly's and Bill O'Reilly's shows, sometimes in highly personal ways.
"Enough's enough" is how one Fox source put it on Wednesday.
A second source argued that Trump was antagonizing Fox to create controversy and draw attention to himself at a time when other candidates are surging in the polls.
"When coverage doesn't go his way, he engages in personal attacks on our anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome," the Fox News spokesperson said. "He doesn't seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country."
Fox also criticized the media for its initial portrayal of Trump's boycott announcement. "The press predictably jumped to cover his tweet, creating yet another distraction from any real issues that Mr. Trump might be questioned about," the spokesperson said.
Trump's office replied by saying "Mr. Trump stands by his statement made earlier today" and pointing out the high ratings Stephen Colbert's show received when Trump stopped by on Tuesday night.
What happened between Fox and Trump?
Trump previously threatened to boycott Fox News in the wake of the first Republican primary debate six weeks ago on the grounds that the network's moderators -- particularly Kelly -- had been unfair to him.
The two parties reached detente after Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes called Trump to assure him that he would be treated fairly.
But the truce was exceedingly fragile. Trump still complained from time to time about Fox's coverage.
After the second primary debate of the season, last week, Trump was booked to appear this Thursday night on "The O'Reilly Factor," the highest-rated show on cable news.
O'Reilly even promoted the upcoming Trump interview while appearing on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," which was taped Monday evening.
By Monday night, however, Trump was souring on O'Reilly's show. He fired off a series of angry tweets.
"I am having a really hard time watching Fox News," Trump tweeted. He complained that O'Reilly's show had been "very negative to me" because its guests were all "Trump haters."
He also resumed his critiques of Kelly, who has drawn Trump's fire ever since her grilling of the candidate during the first debate.
"She is the worst -- all anti-Trump!" Trump tweeted Monday night. "Terrible show."
He also singled out Lowry as "truly one of the dumbest of the talking heads."
On Tuesday night, Trump wrote, "Do you ever notice that lightweight Megyn Kelly constantly goes after me but when I hit back it is totally sexist. She is highly overrated!"
In a wink to his fans, some of whom wrongly thought Kelly's post-debate vacation was a suspension, he also wrote, "I think Megyn Kelly should take another eleven day 'unscheduled' vacation."
How long will the Trump blackout last?
For Fox News, the boycott -- whether instigated by Ailes or Trump -- means it will be cut off from the Trump ratings machine. By the same token, Trump will miss out on access to the millions of viewers who tune into Fox News every night for coverage of the 2016 race.
Trump, who gave a relatively subdued performance at the Sept. 16 GOP debate, is down 8 points in the latest CNN/ORC national poll. Meanwhile, rivals like Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson have been on the rise, and commanding more and more media attention.
But a post-debate poll by Fox, published on Wednesday night, showed Trump still leading the GOP pack with 26% support now, holding steady from the 25% support a Fox poll found for him in mid-August.
Carson is up to 18%, from 12% before, according to the Fox poll, and Fiorina is up to 9%, from 5% before.
Did Hillary Clinton start the Obama birther movement?
This prompts Hillary Clinton to tweet, "Can a Muslim be President of the United States of America? In a word: Yes. Now let's move on."
Then Trump responds with a tweet of his own. "Just remember, the birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. She was all in!"
The birther movement refers to the long-running myth that Obama was not born in the United States and thus, under the Constitution, could not be president. Trump promoted this belief avidly for several years with anyone who would listen. This week, Trump told Late Show host Stephen Colbert that he doesn’t "talk about it anymore."
Did Clinton not just start the birther movement but back it wholeheartedly by being "all in"?
The allegation about Obama’s birthplace tracks back to the bruising 2008 Democratic primary between Obama and Clinton. According to a Telegraph article, as early as April 2008, a Clinton supporter passed around an email that questioned where Obama was born.
"Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy," it said. "She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth."
The cry that Obama was not a legitimate candidate grew much louder in June 2008.
On June 7, 2008, Clinton conceded and called for all Democrats to rally behind Obama. Some in her party did not care to listen. By June 10, 2008, opponents to Obama were posting on a website called Pumaparty.com. PUMA stood for Party Unity My Ass. The website encouraged frustrated Clinton supporters to back the Republican nominee.
John Avlon, editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, explored the roots of the birther movement in his book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America. Avlon described a posting on the PUMA website with the heading "Obama May Be Illegal to Be Elected President!" He wrote that a Clinton volunteer in Texas, Linda Starr, played a key role in spreading the rumor.
Starr connected with Pennsylvania attorney Philip Berg in August and Berg followed up by suing in federal court to block Obama’s nomination. The suit was thrown out repeatedly on the grounds that Berg lacked standing and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately refused to hear his appeal.
There is no record that Clinton herself or anyone within her campaign ever advanced the charge that Obama was not born in the United States. A review by our fellow fact-checkers at Factcheck.org reported that no journalist who investigated this ever found a connection to anyone in the Clinton organization.
Clinton, herself, answered this very accusation after Trump's tweeit during an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon. Lemon asked Clinton if she started smear campaigns that Obama was born outside the United States.
"That is – no. That is so ludicrous, Don. You know, honestly, I just believe that, first of all, it’s totally untrue, and secondly, you know, the president and I have never had any kind of confrontation like that," Clinton said. "You know, I have been blamed for nearly everything, that was a new one to me."
We should note that the birther rumor is distinct from the myth about Obama’s religion, which is what got the ball rolling at the Trump event in New Hampshire.
Our ruling
Trump said that Clinton started the birther movement and "was all in."
It’s an interesting bit of history that the birther movement appears to have begun with Democrats supporting Clinton and opposing Obama. But Trump, and others who have made this claim, neglect to mention that there is no direct tie to Clinton or her 2008 campaign.
The story appears to have started with supporters of Clinton, an important distinction.
Trump goes on to completely distort the chain of events by claiming Clinton "was all in" on the birther movement. Most of the talk started after Clinton suspended her presidential campaign. And the only thing she officially has ever done is deny any accusation of starting a whisper campaign.
We rate this claim False.
AP Fact Checks Trump’s Allegation That Hillary Is ‘Original Birther’. Under fire for his refusal to say whether he believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, Donald Trump went on the offensive against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, labeling her the “original birther” and declaring, “She’s the one that started that whole thing!”
Trump did not provide any evidence for that claim, but some have pointed to an interview Clinton did with 60 Minutes in 2008 along with a controversial image of Obama her staffers allegedly spread that ended up on The Drudge Report.
Now, the Associated Press has decided to fact check Trump’s claim and came to the conclusion that there is “no clear evidence that Clinton aided birthers.”
“The charges that Clinton may have played a role in the birther movement may be conflating a vague 2008 comment she made during a television interview about Obama’s faith, as well as political rumors during the 2008 presidential campaign that suggested Clinton’s campaign was stoking concerns about Obama’s birthplace and religion,” the AP’s Stephen Braun reported.
Referring to the 60 Minutes interview, he added, “Some critics later suggested Clinton’s hedging ‘as far as I know’ may have lent credence to those who charged Obama was not born in the U.S. — even though the comment referenced his faith, not his birthplace.”
Clinton herself vehemently denied the connection during a radio interview with Don Lemon Wednesday morning. “That’s so ludicrous, Don. You know, honestly, I just believe— first of all, it’s totally untrue,” the candidate said. As for whether Obama ever confronted her on the issue, she added, “The president and I have never had any confrontation like that.”
Israeli military says it is coordinating operations with Russia in Syria. Israel has set up a joint mechanism with the Russian military to coordinate their operations in Syria and avoid any accidental confrontations, a senior Israel military official said Thursday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of military regulations, said that teams headed by each of the militaries' deputy chiefs will hold their first meeting in two weeks and will discuss coordination of aerial, naval and electromagnetic operations around Syria.
Russia has backed the Assad regime throughout the nation's civil war, which has killed more than 250,000 people, and recently deployed forces there to help Syria in its battle against Islamic militants.
Russia has sought to cast arms supplies to Assad's government as part of international efforts to combat the Islamic State group and other militant organizations in Syria.
The United States and its allies see Assad as the cause of the Syrian crisis, and Washington has warned Moscow against beefing up its presence. But those warnings have been softer in tone, compared to the original American position that demanded Assad's ouster.
The joint mechanism is a result of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting this week in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, in which Netanyahu raised concerns over the new Russian involvement.
Israel has mostly stayed on the sidelines throughout the Syrian war, though it has returned fire when rockets or mortar shells have strayed into Israeli-controlled territory. Its primary concern has been the potential transfer of advanced weaponry to the Shiite Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon and Israel has occasionally carried out airstrikes against suspected weapons shipments.
Israel has no interest in seeing Assad, a long-time nemesis and key ally of Iran and Hezbollah, prevail. But before the civil war the Assad family maintained decades of relative quiet along the frontier, and Israel fears that if the government falls Syria could be overrun by Islamic extremists.
Israeli officials believe that Iran has recently sent hundreds of fighters into Syria to help Assad's beleaguered forces. Hezbollah forces, sent in from neighboring Lebanon, have suffered heavy losses.
Is Russia's Military Buildup In Syria A Good Thing? President Vladimir Putin says his forces are in Syria to help the country's embattled president to fight terrorists. The U.S. argues that the Syrian president is part of the problem.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Another international challenge right now is Russia's military buildup in Syria. It's happening just ahead of a major week on the diplomatic calendar - the U.N. General Assembly's high-level debate. President Vladimir Putin plans to speak there for the first time in a decade. He says his forces are in Syria to help the country's embattled president to fight terrorists. The U.S. argues that the Syrian president is part of the problem. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports on how diplomats are trying to bridge that gap.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: British-Syrian Dr. Rola Hallam says war crimes have become a shocking daily reality, and the international community must do something about this. That doesn't mean only going after the extremist group known as the Islamic State. It also means stopping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from bombing his own people and fueling extremism.
ROLA HALLAM: The government of Syria has been killing over seven times more civilians than ISIS. And unfortunately, the result of that is not just refugees, but this rise and rise of ISIS. They are two sides of the same coin.
KELEMEN: Hallam is looking for U.S. leadership to rally the U.N. Security Council around a solution, even though Russia's support for Assad complicates the diplomatic scene.
HALLAM: A few months ago, people thought that the Iran deal was probably impossible as well. But it goes to show, when there is political will to achieve something, that it can truly be achieved.
KELEMEN: The Obama administration has been warning Moscow that doubling down on its support for Assad is not the way to resolve the conflict. Valerie Szybala, who runs the Washington-based Syria Institute, says the U.S. needs to show Moscow more clearly that it's serious about protecting civilians.
VALERIE SZYBALA: It's going to take the U.S. doubling down, unless we really want to abandon the country to Russia and Iran and we're willing to cope with the history of another genocide.
KELEMEN: But while activists like Szybala see the Russian moves to prop up Assad as something to be countered, former U.S. intelligence official Paul Pillar of Georgetown University sees room for diplomacy. He says the most urgent goal now is to tamp down the violence, and that means putting aside the debate over Assad.
PAUL PILLAR: One of the things that could make the already very bad Syrian situation even worse is a complete and sudden collapse of the regime. Over the longer term, an authoritarian, barrel-bombing regime in power in Damascus, obviously, is not the formula for stability. And this is one of the things that the United States and Russia, along with the other major outside players, need to discuss.
KELEMEN: The U.S. says Assad must go, though Secretary of State John Kerry has come to acknowledge that may not be anytime soon. Pillar also thinks that Russia is worried enough about extremism that it could be convinced about the long-term need for a political evolution in Syria.
PILLAR: There's plenty of room for both sides to fudge on their previous formulas and to talk about a common interest in trying to bring this conflict under control.
KELEMEN: Secretary of State Kerry already seems to be trying to ease concerns about Russian aircraft and troops deployed to Syria's Mediterranean coast, saying they seem to be there for defensive purposes.
JOHN KERRY: For the moment, it is the judgment of our military and most experts that the level and type represents, basically, force protection.
KELEMEN: The trick is to make sure Russia stays focused on ISIS and doesn't do anything that further fuels the conflict. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
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Morning papers:
Saudi Arabia says 310 pilgrims dead in hajj stampede.
The crush happened in Mina, a large valley about five kilometers (three miles) from the holy city of Mecca that has been the site of hajj stampedes in years past.
Mina is where pilgrims carry out a symbolic stoning of the devil by throwing pebbles against three stone walls. It also houses more than 160,000 tents where pilgrims spend the night during the pilgrimage.
The Saudi civil defense directorate earlier said at least 450 other pilgrims were injured in the stampede on Street 204 in Mina. It was not immediately clear if some of those previously listed as injured were included in rising death tolls.
Amateur video shared on social media showed a horrific scene, with scores of bodies — the men dressed in the simple terry cloth garments worn during hajj — lying amid crushed wheelchairs and water bottles along a sunbaked street.
Survivors assessed the scene from the top of roadside stalls near white tents as rescue workers in orange and yellow vests combed the area.
Photos released by the directorate on its official Twitter account showed rescue workers helping the wounded onto stretchers and loading them onto ambulances near some of the tents.
Some 2 million people are taking part in this year's hajj pilgrimage, which began Tuesday.
Saudi authorities take extensive precautions to ensure the security of the hajj and the safety of pilgrims. But tragedies are not uncommon.
The stampede was the deadliest disaster at the hajj since 2006, when more than 360 pilgrims were killed in a stampede in the same area. Another stampede at Mina in 2004 left 244 pilgrims dead and hundreds injured.
Thursday's stampede happened less than two weeks after a giant construction crane came crashing down on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the focal point of the hajj.
That accident, on Sept. 11, killed at least 111 people and injured more than 390. Authorities blamed the crane collapse on high winds during an unusually powerful storm. Schreck reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The WSJ rep-orts that EU Ministers Push for Stronger Response on Migration Crisis. European interior ministers to meet Sept. 14 to ramp up efforts to cope with wave of migrants. Germany, France and the U.K. pushed for a faster European response in dealing with the continent’s spiraling migration crisis as Hungarian police detained a fifth person in connection with the deaths of 71 migrants found in an abandoned truck in Austria last week.
Responding to concerns that Europe is acting too slowly, the European Union’s three largest members called on Sunday for a special ministerial meeting in the next two weeks—instead of waiting for a planned session in October—to find measures to better cope with the thousands of migrants arriving daily in the bloc in search of asylum or a better life. Officials in Luxembourg, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, later said the bloc’s interior and home-affairs ministers would meet Sept. 14 to address the crisis.
“We agree that we mustn’t lose any more time,” said German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.
Mr. de Maizière and his French and U.K. counterparts urged the creation of “hot spots” in Italy and Greece by the end of the year that would enable authorities register migrants quicker and identify those needing protection.
They also demanded that Europe quickly establish a list of “safe countries of origin” to help speed up the process of determining which migrants don’t qualify for asylum, based on particular nationalities.
“There is a need to take measures immediately to face up to the challenge from these migrant flows,” the three ministers said in a statement.
Pressure is building on the EU to step up its efforts as the number of tragedies involving migrant deaths mounts—and occur closer to home. An estimated 200 migrants drowned Thursday after two boats capsized off the coast of Libya, the same day a truck containing 71 dead migrants was discovered in Austria near the Hungarian border.
And on Friday, Austrian police stopped another truck, this time with 26 refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, close to the German border. The group included three children in an advanced stage of dehydration. On Sunday, the police said the children had recovered and left the hospital with their parents.
By Sunday afternoon, Austrian forensic experts had performed 16 autopsies on the migrants discovered in the truck last week, a police spokeswoman said. Though authorities said it was too soon to determine the timing or cause of death they noted that the truck’s cargo had no openings for ventilation on its sides, suggesting the migrants—59 men, eight women and four children—suffocated.
Given the size of the cargo area, police said an average five people had been forced to share each square meter of space inside. A refrigeration unit outside the truck above the driver’s area had likely been turned down or off, they said. They said 10 cellphones and a USB drive had been recovered from the truck and that they were being evaluated to establish whether migrants had attempted to call for help and to help identify the victims. The majority of the victims are believed to be from Syria, according to one travel document found.
In addition to the fifth man detained Sunday, Hungarian authorities have detained three Bulgarians and one Afghan national, who court officials said over the weekend could face charges of human trafficking, torture and participating in organized crime.
The court said it had “reasonable suspicion” to hold the men and ordered they be detained for at least one month while charges are formally prepared and the suspects prepare their defense. A spokesman for the court, Szabolcs Sarkozi, said the prosecutor hadn’t brought murder or manslaughter charges because it wasn’t yet clear who was responsible for the deaths.
The incident highlights how many migrants from war-torn parts of the Middle East and North Africa are now traveling from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans to Hungary, a course considered less risky than the often deadly sea route across the Mediterranean.
Hungary, one of the main points of entry for migrants to the mostly border-free part of the European Union via southeastern Europe, on Saturday completed a razor-wire fence along the full 110-mile length of its border with Serbia, the Defense Ministry said. To further block the flow of migrants, Hungary plans to build a second, 3.5-meter-high fence in the coming months. It is also considering allowing police to use guns to protect the nation’s borders and weighing a ban on migrants traveling within the country.
“Let’s comprehend one thing for good. There is no war in Greece, there is no war in Macedonia, nor in Serbia or here. They have nothing to flee (once they are in those countries). We are talking about people who have been exploited or have made themselves victims,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said.
‘There is a need to take measures immediately to face up to the challenge from these migrant flows.’
—Joint statement by the interior ministers of France, Germany and the U.K.
Hungary detained 3,080 migrants on Saturday, the second highest daily number after Wednesday’s 3,241 record.
In Austria, the police said they had arrested a total of five traffickers in the district of Neusiedl am See over the past few days, the latest sign that Austria is increasing efforts to combat illegal immigration. The traffickers, three Hungarians, one Croatian and one Italian, had smuggled 36 people illegally into Austria, the local police said. Ulrike Dauer in Frankfurt and Margit Feher in Budapest contributed to this article. Write to William Horobin at William.Horobin@wsj.com and Andrea Thomas at andrea.thomas@wsj.com
The WAPO reports how the OPM says 5.6 million fingerprints stolen in cyberattack, five times as many as previously thought.
That's more than five times the 1.1 million government officials estimated when the cyberattacks were initially disclosed over the summer. The total number of those believed to be caught up in the breaches, which included the theft of the Social Security numbers and addresses of more than 21 million former and current government employees, remains the same.
OPM and the Department of Defense were reviewing the theft of background investigation records when they identified additional fingerprint data that had been exposed, OPM said in a statement.
Breaches involving biometric data like fingerprints are particularly concerning to privacy experts because of their permanence: Unlike passwords and even Social Security numbers, fingerprints cannot be changed. So those affected by this breach may find themselves grappling with the fallout for years.
“The fact that the number [of fingerprints breached] just increased by a factor of five is pretty mind-boggling,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “I’m surprised they didn't have structures in place to determine the number of fingerprints compromised earlier during the investigation.”
Lawmakers, too, were upset about the latest revelation. "OPM keeps getting it wrong," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). " I have zero confidence in OPM’s competence and ability to manage this crisis."
As fingerprints increasingly replace passwords as a day-to-day security measure for unlocking your iPhone or even your home, security experts have grown concerned about how hackers might leverage them.
But federal experts believe the potential for "misuse" of the stolen fingerprints is currently limited, according to OPM, but that could "could change over time as technology evolves." It also said an interagency working group including experts from law enforcement and the intelligence community will review ways that the fingerprint data could be abused and try to develop ways to prevent that from happening.
"If, in the future, new means are developed to misuse the fingerprint data, the government will provide additional information to individuals whose fingerprints may have been stolen in this breach," OPM said.
OPM says it is still in the process of notifying everyone caught up in the breach. But they will be offered free identity theft and fraud protection services, the agency said.
China is widely suspected of being behind the breaches, perhaps as part of move to build a massive database on Americans. But U.S. government officials have so far declined to publicly blame the nation for the cyberattacks. Chinese President Xi Jinping is currently visiting the U.S. and described China as a strong defender of cybersecurity and a victim of hacking itself during a speech in Seattle on Tuesday.
The hacks sparked an outcry on Capitol Hill where lawmakers criticized the government's response and said the agency should have done more to protect the information in the first place. Some called for the firing of OPM director Katherine Archuleta, who eventually resigned in July.
One lawmaker criticized OPM for releasing the new information during the Pope's visit to Washington: "Today's blatant news dump is the clearest sign yet that the administration still acts like the OPM hack is a PR crisis instead of a national security threat," said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in a statement.
OPM spokesman Sam Schumach said the additional batch of compromised fingerprints wasn't identified until very recently and that the agency spent the past several days analyzing the data.
"Yesterday, we began informing members of Congress, as well as the OPM Inspector General, of these newly identified archived records, and disclosed that this would change the fingerprint number previously reported," he said in an e-mailed statement. The agency was able to confirm the new total population Wednesday morning and subsequently informed the public, Schumach said.
Also, Texas football players who intentionally hit official attend disciplinary hearing. Two Texas high school football players, who intentionally hit an official during a game earlier this month and were suspended from school, attended a disciplinary hearing Wednesday.
Pascual Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, said that because Michael Moreno and Victor Rojas are minors, no information about the hearing would be released.
The boys' lawyer said they spoke at the hearing and took responsibility for what they did.
"They understand that they had a choice, they made a choice, it was the wrong choice, and they're just looking for fairness," attorney Jesse Hernandez said. "The boys are in fact are good kids."
Hernandez said he presented academic and disciplinary records as evidence.
Neither boy spoke to the media.
Players: Coach told us to hit football official
Both teenagers expressed remorse last week in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America."
"I would apologize for the mistake that I made," Rojas said when asked what he would say to game official Robert Watts if they met again.
Moreno said that he's ready to face the consequences and calls the incident one of his biggest regrets.
"I just ask that I am greatly sorry for this, and I regret it greatly," Moreno said. "And I just hope that people can change their minds about us."
The teens were suspended from school for three days. They have been attending an alternative school since then.
The state's governing body of all school extracurricular activities will hold a disciplinary hearing Thursday. The players, coaches and Watts have been invited to attend the public meeting.
Admission -- with a caveat
Their intentions on the now-viral video were clear: The two John Jay players targeted a game official.
First, Rojas came from behind and tackled Watts to the ground. Moreno then dived in headfirst -- leading with his helmet -- and hit Watts again.
Moreno and Rojas were ejected from the September 4 game against host Marble Falls High. No criminal charges have been filed, but Marble Falls, Texas, police said they are investigating.
The players told ABC they were following orders.
Police: Texas high school football players 'targeted,' 'blindsided' game official
Referring to assistant coach Mack Breed, Moreno said, "While on the sideline, he pulled me and another player over and he told us, and I quote, 'You need to hit him.' "
Moreno added that Breed said, "You need to hit the ref. He needs to pay the price."
The other player wasn't involved and ultimately didn't go through with the alleged plan. Rojas said a player told him about the situation.
Breed is on paid administrative leave. The Northside Independent School District said the allegations against Breed are still under investigation. CNN has reached out to Breed for comment but has not heard back.
The reason Watts was targeted, Moreno said, was because of unjustified calls as well as "racial slurs being thrown at players" purportedly by the referee. Rojas said he heard Watts tell one of his Hispanic friends "to speak English, this is America." Rojas and Moreno both allege they heard Watts call an African-American teammate the n-word.
Watts has denied saying these things and is considering legal action against the players.
"We've heard these allegations before, blaming the victim for the crime," Watts' attorney, Alan Goldberger, said on September 9. "That doesn't have any credibility, and (Watts) is not happy about being falsely accused."
Goldberger told CNN on Friday said it was clear that Watts did not make racial slurs. CNN's Tony Marco, Lauren Leslie, Jill Martin and Julia Talanova contributed to this report
Is Carly Fiorina The Answer To The GOP’s ‘War On Women’ Problem?
More than 250 people flocked to The Citadel in Charleston on Tuesday to hear Carly Fiorina discuss foreign policy — an event that gave Fiorina, fresh off a solid debate performance and a surge in the polls, a chance to connect with voters concerned about national security. But many attendees told ThinkProgress they really came to see the only female GOP candidate, and the one they see as having the best shot to counter the “war on women” rhetoric often attributed to her party.
“On her card, it’s talking about how she’s trying to refute the war on women,” Charleston resident Mary Smith told ThinkProgress, pointing to the brochure Fiorina’s campaign gave to attendees. “She’s definitely trying to help us ladies out.”
Charleston resident Phyllis Lazar agreed, saying that “it would be amazing to have her up against Hillary Clinton because then they couldn’t sit there and use that ‘war on women’ stuff.”
The New York Times wrote last month that many Republicans are looking at Fiorina as “the party’s weapon to counter the perception that it is waging a ‘war on women.’” How exactly she will do that — aside from just being a woman — was less clear to Smith and other women in the audience.
When asked to define the “war on women,” Smith said the Democratic Party likes to attack the GOP for trying to take away women’s reproductive rights and access to birth control. “I don’t really see any of that happening,” she said.
She’s definitely trying to help us ladies out.
During the second GOP debate, Fiorina reignited the national conversation about Planned Parenthood, which has been the subject of a video campaign claiming that the organization is “selling aborted baby parts.” She spoke passionately about one of the highly edited attack videos, saying it showed a fetus on a table with a beating heart. Her claim has since been discredited — the video includes a woman describing a similar scene and then stock footage of a stillborn baby — but Fiorina maintains that she didn’t misspeak. Some of her female supporters agree.
“She was very on-point,” Smith said about Fiorina’s discussion of Planned Parenthood during the debate. “That kind of blew me away.”
Cleveland, Ohio resident Carol McDowell, who came to Fiorina’s event while on vacation in Charleston, said Fiorina’s debate performance really “won us over” — pointing to two of her friends. “I loved the Planned Parenthood response that she had. The things being done today — it’s gone way beyond just abortion and it needs to stop.”
Fiorina also got a standing ovation from the audience at Heritage Action’s presidential forum in Greenville last week when she called for defunding Planned Parenthood, saying the “butchering” seen in the videos is an assault on the character of the country.
The message resonated with women in South Carolina. “Look, I got my first set of birth control pills from Planned Parenthood a long time ago,” said Lazar, who added that she is actually pro-choice. “I have nothing against them, but they should not be selling baby parts. As a country, we shouldn’t be doing that.”
Supports cheer for Carly Fiorina as she takes the stage in Charleston, South Carolina.Supports cheer for Carly Fiorina as she takes the stage in Charleston, South Carolina.
A government shutdown could be inevitable in the next week if Congress doesn’t reach an agreement about federal funding for the organization. If Planned Parnethood were to lose its federal contributions, the results would be disastrous for women across the country. About a quarter of the federal funding for the organization goes to family planning services for low-income people, like contraception, breast and cervical cancer screening, pregnancy tests, sexually transmitted infection testing, and HIV testing.
Federal funds are not permitted to be used for abortions. But anti-choice advocates like Fiorina don’t care, saying that abortions are clearly important to the organization and that receiving federal funding frees up more money to perform abortions.
Smith said she wasn’t bothered by the thought of Planned Parenthood being defunded, even though she believes that “every woman should have access to birth control.”
“We’re not sitting here saying don’t help women — that’s ridiculous,” Lazar said. Her husband added that “there are many other agencies that provide women’s health.”
The national battle against Planned Parenthood has already had real implications for women. In South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control suspended the licenses of two clinics that provide abortions, claiming the clinics violated a number of regulations including performing abortions sooner than 60 minutes after an ultrasound. The suspensions came after Gov. Nikki Haley (R) called for a review of Planned Parenthood’s practices, so women’s health advocates claim the inspections were politically motivated.
The two clinics could be shut down in the coming weeks if the department decides they have not addresses the alleged issues — none of which directly affect the treatment they provide to women. More than 6,500 women, men and young adults from across South Carolina turn to Planned Parenthood every year for medical and educational services, according to the organization. More than 70 percent of its patients in the state are uninsured and rely on Planned Parenthood for affordable care.
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