Up for his first Emmy nomination for playing a murderous Member of Parliament in A Very English Scandal, Hugh Grant today took a killer aim at perpetually ruffled UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson over the move to suspend the House of Commons and slide in a no-deal Brexit.
The Golden Globe winning actor who played possibly the most beloved fictional 10 Downing Street resident ever in Love Actually had little of that infamous British stiff upper lip in chastising the former London Mayor for the potential constitutional crisis and anti-democratic taint created by the five-week suspension:
You will not fuck with my children’s future. You will not destroy the freedoms my grandfather fought two world wars to defend. Fuck off you over-promoted rubber bath toy. Britain is revolted by you and you little gang of masturbatory prefects. https://t.co/Oc0xwLI6dI
Termed a prorogation, the procedure was approved this morning by Queen Elizabeth II under advisement from the recently installed Johnson and the UK’s Privy Council.
With #StopTheCoup trending on Twitter in Britain and around the world on Wednesday, protests have emerged on the streets of the island nation and among leading politicians both of Johnson’s own Conservative Party and Opposition parties plus the Commons Speaker John Bercow. The latter called the strong arming to clearly curtail debate before the October 31 exit of the UK from the European Union a “constitutional outrage” as others plan to challenge the move in Parliament itself when the body convenes briefly next week.
No stranger to airing his own political views online since the dark days of the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloids hacking scandal back in 2011, Grant will probably be on this side of the pond for the Emmys on September 15.
Whether the UK Parliament is shut down until mid-October or not, the Four Weddings and a Funeral alum is up for Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his portrayal of one-time UK Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe. As in my review of last year and elsewhere Grant has been acclaimed for his performance in Amazon’s A Very English Scandal of the once influential would-be statesman and his 1970s attempt to have his lover Norman Scott killed off to avert their affair being revealed.
Too soon to tell how history will judge Boris Johnson over today’s actions, but the disgraced Thorpe was found not guilty in a heavily Establishment-biased trial in mid-1979.
Tropical Storm Dorian strengthened to a hurricane Wednesday afternoon as it threatened the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, with forecasters predicting it could become a Category 3 hurricane by the time it hits Florida over the weekend.
Dorian became a hurricane near the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the National Hurricane Center. There were multiple observations of hurricane-force winds in St. Thomas, according to the hurricane center.
The storm was expected to move near or over the U.S. and British Virgin Islands Wednesday afternoon and then move over the Atlantic Ocean east of the southeastern Bahamas, the hurricane center said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, hurricane warnings were in effect for the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico’s island municipalities of Vieques and Culebra. A hurricane watch and tropical storm warning were in effect for Puerto Rico.
The hurricane center said the storm’s maximum sustained winds had increased to 75 mph with higher gusts, and forecast that Dorian could strengthen to a Category 3 hurricane as it nears Florida this weekend and early next week.
Rainfall from the storm could cause 'life-threatening flash floods," according to the hurricane center.
The storm was tracking more north than most forecasts had predicted and could pass Puerto Rico to its east, drastically increasing the odds of a hurricane landfall in the southeast U.S., wrote Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
Aug. 28, 201904:37
But the storm could still prove a major test of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid two years after Hurricane Maria wiped out power on the entire island and thousands died in the aftermath of the storm. In some areas, power was only fully restored a year later.
The island was already seeing heavy rain Wednesday as conditions worsened. The worst was expected from Wednesday afternoon to early Thursday before the storm pulls away. The eastern part of the island and the Virgin Islands were expected to get 4 to 6 inches of rain, with isolated areas seeing as much as 10 inches.
Late Tuesday, President Donald Trump approved a state of emergency declaration for Puerto Rico, allowing federal authorities to coordinate aid efforts.
But on Wednesday morning, the president had this message for the U.S. territory: “Puerto Rico is one of the most corrupt places on earth. Their political system is broken and their politicians are either Incompetent or Corrupt,” he tweeted. “Congress approved Billions of Dollars last time, more than anyplace else has ever gotten, and it is sent to Crooked Pols. No good!”
Trump has repeated a false claim that Congress sent $92 billion of aid money to Puerto Rico. Congress has allocated $42.5 billion to disaster relief for Puerto Rico, according to federal data, but the island had received less than $14 billion through May.
Trump then said he was “the best thing that’s ever happened to Puerto Rico!”
Aug. 28, 201903:06
Earlier Wednesday, Trump said they were tracking Dorian “as it heads, as usual, to Puerto Rico.”
Trump then defended the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was widely criticized in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in September 2017, and targeted a regular critic of his, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.
“FEMA and all others are ready, and will do a great job. When they do, let them know it, and give them a big Thank You — Not like last time,” Trump tweeted. “That includes from the incompetent Mayor of San Juan!”
In San Juan, volunteers went door to door to make sure residents were prepared. Many homes on the island are still covered by blue tarps from Hurricane Maria.
Jorge Ortiz, 50, a construction worker who had the second floor of his house ripped off in that storm and just finished rebuilding three months ago, without local or federal assistance, told The Associated Press that he was worried he would "lose it again."
Cruz said the island was prepared, but added: “We’re scared. We know what may be coming."
Daniella Silva
Daniella Silva is a reporter for NBC News, specializing in immigration and inclusion issues, as well as coverage of Latin America.
Iran will not talk to the United States until all sanctions imposed on Tehran are lifted, President Hassan Rouhani has said, a day after US President Donald Trump said he would meet his Iranian counterpart to try to end a nuclear standoff.
Trump said on Monday he would meet Iran's president under the right circumstances to end a confrontation over Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal and that talks were under way to see how countries could open credit lines to keep Iran's economy afloat.
"The step is to retreat from sanctions. You must retreat from all illegal, unjust and wrong sanctions against the nation of Iran," Rouhani said in a televised speech in the capital Tehran on Tuesday.
"Without taking this step, the deadlock will not be unlocked," he added.
"Without America withdrawing from sanctions and abandoning the wrong path it has chosen, we will not witness any positive development. The key to positive change is in the hands of Washington."
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Iran's economy has been battered by US sanctions reimposed after Trump last May pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
The landmark accord offered Iran relief from global sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme.
Speaking at a G7 summit in the French resort of Biarritz on Monday, Trump ruled out lifting economic sanctions to compensate for losses suffered by Iran.
The remaining signatories - the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia - have struggled to salvage the deal amid deepening tensions.
'Take the first step'
Trump has put in place a policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran through crippling sanctions that critics see as raising the risk of conflict in the Middle East between the US and Iran.
Iran has scaled back its commitments under the pact in response to US sanctions.
"We will continue to scale back our commitments under the 2015 deal if our interests are not guaranteed," said Rouhani in the speech broadcast live. "Tehran has never wanted nuclear weapons."
"So take the first step. Without this step, this lock will not be unlocked," Rouhani said.
In Biarritz, French President Emmanuel Macron said the "conditions for a meeting" between Trump and Rouhani "in the next few weeks" had been created through intensive diplomacy and consultations.
Trump, speaking alongside Macron at the final news conference of the G7 summit, said he "would certainly agree to that" and that the timeline proposed by his French counterpart was realistic
"I think he's [Rouhani] going to want to meet. I think Iran wants to get this situation straightened out. They are hurting badly" Trump said.
Rouhani and Trump are scheduled to be in New York to attend the UN General Assembly at the end of September, which could provide a stage for talks.
The possible meeting between Rouhani and Trump was blasted as a photo opportunity on Tuesday on the front page of the Javan newspaper close to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
But the Iranian president said he was not looking for photo opportunities.
"We seek to resolve issues and problems in a rational way but we are not after photos. For anyone wanting to take a picture with Hassan Rouhani, this is not possible," he said.
Demonstrators march on Friday in São Paulo, Brazil, holding a banner with a message that reads in Portuguese: "The Amazon belongs to the people." Brazilians staged protests across the country throughout the weekend demanding action to combat the fires in the Amazon.
Andre Penner/AP
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Andre Penner/AP
"Hello, planet! Wake up! Without the Amazon, you can't breathe!" protesters chanted Friday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as they filled the front steps of city hall carrying painted crosses traditionally seen at funerals. That night, they were mourning the rainforest.
At another Rio protest on Sunday, thousands of demonstrators marched along Ipanema beach, chanting "The Amazon stays, out with Bolsonaro," a reference to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Protesters swarmed the main bus station in the capital of Brasília, packed over six blocks of downtown São Paulo and filled plazas across northern cities of Recife, Manaus and Belém.
The mounting public uproar — including efforts at the Group of Seven meeting in France to address a spike in Brazilian forest fires — pressured Bolsonaro to change his tone. After scoffing at his critics the previous week, suggesting without evidence that environmental nongovernmental organizations could be setting the fires, the president gave a somber prime-time television address on Friday night pledging to combat fires and illegal deforestation. TV viewers banged pots and pans, a signal of discontent with political leadership.
"Both internationally and domestically, it marked a low point for his presidency," said political scientist Karla Gobo of Brazil's Advanced School of Propaganda and Marketing.
Cattle graze close to part of the Amazon rainforest that is affected by wildfire near Novo Progresso, Brazil, on Sunday. Brazil deployed two C-130 Hercules aircraft to douse fires devouring parts of the Amazon rainforest, as hundreds of new blazes were ignited and a growing global outcry over the blazes sparks protests.
João Laet/AFP/Getty Images
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João Laet/AFP/Getty Images
Inside Brazil, mobilization for the Amazon over the weekend included opposition politicians, who have called for a congressional investigation into the causes of the fires, as well as a wide array of student activists, health workers, lawyers and indigenous organizers. Leading chants at both Rio protests was Michael Oliveira, an indigenous Aruak man who came to live in Rio from the Amazonian city of Manaus. He spent several years living on city's streets before becoming a schoolteacher.
"We are a nonpartisan, broad coalition of environmentalists," 23-year-old law student Luísa Daher said into the microphone at the Rio protest to cheers. "We're just getting started."
The number of fires in the Amazon so far this year is 35% higher than the historical average for the same period over the last eight years, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research.
Indigenous people protest in defense of the Amazon in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. Experts from the country's satellite monitoring agency say most of the fires are set by farmers or ranchers clearing existing farmland, but the same monitoring agency has reported a sharp increase in deforestation this year as well.
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Bruna Prado/AP
On Friday, Bolsonaro suggested that high temperatures in 2019 were behind the increase in fires, but scientists say that does not fully explain the problem. They point to deforestation, which is often carried out illegally and removed over three times as much forest last month as in July 2018, according to preliminary data from the research institute.
The 10 Amazon municipalities with the most fires this year are the same that have seen the most new deforestation, according to researchers from the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, who said in a technical note that the data represents "a strong indicator of the intentional character of the fires: clearing recently deforested areas."
Critics say the government has given a pass to farmers and loggers to slash and burn trees in the rainforest without seeking a required license. Bolsonaro pledged to roll back forest protections during his campaign, and since taking office, he has defunded and politically sidelined the government oversight of the environment.
If Bolsonaro's election last year suggested political weakness in Brazil's environmental movement, the new wave of protest for the Amazon shows many Brazilians are desperate for political action to conserve the forest.
"Our goal is not to advance a certain political party, but to build consciousness, be broad, and be participatory," said Daher. "We're listening to advice from veterans of environmental and indigenous movements."
Several protesters said they admired the activism occurring in climate movements in other parts of the world. "It's my role as a young person and as a Brazilian to show up too and put this issue on the political agenda," said political science student Cíntia Lucena, 20, who protested in Brasília.
A woman holds up a sign that reads "SOS Amazon. Everybody for the Amazon," featuring a stuffed sloth during a protest in defense of the Amazon in Rio on Sunday.
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Bruna Prado/AP
"When the sky in São Paulo turned black from soot on Monday afternoon," said Henrique Bezerra, 35, a corporate consultant who was protesting in São Paulo on Friday, "I think that scared the reality into a lot of people."
Still, even with increased domestic and international pressure, conservation specialists warn that meaningful steps to better protecting the Amazon will likely be difficult to achieve under Bolsonaro's administration. Bolsonaro appointed an environment minister convicted of illegally approving a mining project in a conservation area and a foreign minister who has described climate change as a Marxist plot. Brazil's environmental agency, its budget reduced, reported it has issued one-third fewer environmental fines so far in 2019 compared with the same period last year.
Pledges of action
Brazil's federal government has announced it will help fight fires in Amazonian states that request aid, and a firefighting operation has begun in the state of Rondônia.
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera announced that the G-7 countries had agreed on a $20 million aid package to help fight Amazon fires and said a reforestation program would be discussed at the United Nations General Assembly next month.
"A serious response would also include restoring funding and authority to the government organs that combat illegal deforestation," said biologist Joice Ferreira of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, a state-run organization affiliated with the Agriculture Ministry.
"The president is encircled by climate deniers and conspiracy theorists," said Claudio Angelo of Brazil's Climate Observatory, a civil society research coalition. "It is very difficult to imagine a real change."
Carolina Pavese, a political scientist who specializes in international climate policy at the Catholic University of Minas Gerais, said that given the current context, "better outcomes may be possible through strengthening the work of environmental nonprofits and civil society without the government as an intermediary."
The protesters emphasized the gravity of the situation. Many signs read "SOS." "The Amazon belongs to the world, and we need the world's help right now," said biology student João Taranto at a protest in Rio.
His sentiment ran counter to Bolsonaro's comments that the international action to save the forest in Brazil betrays a "colonial" mindset.
The protesters plan to continue taking to the streets. Several said they would participate in an upcoming climate strike, and a string of demonstrations for the Amazon in different cities has been scheduled for the upcoming weeks.
Near the end of Rio's downtown protest on Friday, an organizer reminded the crowd to return any borrowed materials. "If you took a funeral cross to carry," said a voice from the sound car, "please turn it in so we can use it at the next march."
He said he'd received word from China that its negotiators are ready to return to trade talks, even after his aides spent Sunday insisting Trump wants higher tariffs on Chinese products. And he shrugged off a surprise visit a day earlier from Iran's foreign minister, saying he knew it was happening and didn't interpret it as a sign of disrespect.
"One of the reasons China's a great country is they understand how life works," Trump told reporters during a morning meeting alongside Egypt's president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, saying his trade team received phone calls from Beijing expressing a desire to restart talks. "I have great respect for it. This is a very positive development for the world."
It was a hopeful moment in otherwise bitter trade discussions at the G7, where Trump has been a man alone in his insistence that tariffs can produce a trade truce rather than rattling the global economy.
Already, US and Chinese negotiators were set to meet again next month, so the development Trump touted on Monday didn't itself amount to a breakthrough. But any sign the two sides are continuing to work toward a deal comes as a welcome development for other G7 leaders, who blame the protracted trade war for weighing down growth.
"We will see what happens but I think we will make a deal," Trump said.
The note of optimism aside, there was little evidence Trump was preparing acts of conciliation that might help the group of leaders put on a show of unity on their final day of talks. Instead, disputes over trade, foreign policy and climate change were readily apparent, even as Trump maintained the summit was without discord.
He'll end the day with a joint press conference alongside his host, French President Emmanuel Macron, who has made a point of pushing forward on issues where his disagreements with Trump are obvious. That included a surprise appearance by the Iranian foreign minister, whose arrival in Biarritz on Saturday caught some US officials off-guard. Macron informed his fellow leaders that Mohammad Javad Zarif would make the visit only the night before he arrived.
Trump maintained a neutral view of the development on Monday, saying he was not surprised and had even given Macron his approval to push forward with planning the Zarif visit.
"Macron spoke with me, he asked me," Trump said. "I said if you want to do it that's okay. I don't consider that disrespectful at all, especially when he asked me for approval."
Still, Trump said he felt it was too early for a meeting with Zarif himself. And he continued to trash the Iran nuclear deal, an accord that European leaders are working to salvage after Trump withdrew.
Iran has been one of several points of contention for leaders here. Another has been climate change, the focus of a midday session later Monday. That will pit Trump against fellow leaders in a now-familiar dynamic. At the past two G7s, Trump has dashed his counterparts' attempts to put forward a show of unity on the issue.
Trump's aides have huffed that the summit's agenda is an attempt to bolster Macron politically while isolating the United States. Whatever the intent, the effect has been to separate Trump from other leaders at a moment of global anxiety.
Nowhere has that been more evident than on trade, a topic Trump injected with new confusion on Sunday. After appearing to soften on his beloved tariffs, telling reporters he had "second thoughts" about the punishing trade war, his aides swooped in to explain he was merely stating misgivings about not applying harsher duties.
The attempts at cleanup weren't welcomed by other leaders, who were cautiously cheered to learn Trump might be rethinking his approach to global trade. Instead, Trump has argued in meetings and dinners they should join him in applying tariffs on China in an attempt to force Beijing to change some of its economic practices.
Interactions throughout the summit, held amid throngs of French vacationers concluding their summer holidays on the picturesque Basque coast, have been tense, according to officials from multiple countries. Trump has berated his counterparts on topics from Iran to trade to Russia, which he ardently argued during a Saturday evening dinner should be readmitted to the summit next year.
There have been some friendly moments. Trump greeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a French-style double kiss on the cheek when they encountered each other during a family photo on Sunday (they will meet formally on Monday). And Trump eagerly announced an "agreement in principle" on trade with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, though final details were still being put down on paper.
But the strife between Trump and fellow leaders has been apparent. Even the leader closest to Trump, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, admitted Sunday he opposed Trump's trade war with China.
The President, however, has insisted the summit is proceeding happily — either blind to the obvious disagreements or willing to ignore them.
"In France we are all laughing at how knowingly inaccurate the U.S. reporting of events and conversations at the G-7 is," he wrote Sunday evening on Twitter, after sending birthday greetings to the actor Sean Connery and retired television host Regis Philbin.
