US to deploy more troops to eastern Syria to secure oilfields - Al Jazeera English

The United States will station additional forces in eastern Syria to protect oilfields in another policy shift that one former senior American official called a "shocking ignorance" of history and geography.

The planned reinforcement will take place in coordination with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to prevent the oilfields from falling into the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), a Pentagon statement said.

No details were provided on how many or what kind of forces would be sent, or whether decisions on those details have been made.

More:

"The US is committed to reinforcing our position, in coordination with our SDF partners, in northeast Syria with additional military assets to prevent those oilfields from falling back into the hands of ISIS or other destabilising actors," it added.

Earlier on Thursday, US President Donald Trump said on social media the US "will never let a reconstituted ISIS have those fields".

The latest announcement, however, contradicts Trump's controversial decision earlier this month to withdraw forces from northeast Syria, which paved the way for Turkey's military operation in the area.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Joshua Landis, a Middle East expert at the University of Oklahoma, said the announcement was "emblematic of the chaos that has set in in the American foreign policy process".

"It is in free-fall and the president is going back and forth," Landis said. "This doesn't really make much sense."

The new deployment could mean US forces would be like "sitting ducks" being stationed in an area, in which the borders are guarded by Russian and Syrian troops, he added.

"Who is going to safeguard them? The Kurds will have nothing to do with America. They have now made a deal with the Assad government. The whole thing makes no sense."

Marwan Kabalan from the Arab Center for Research told Al Jazeera the latest move to re-deploy forces to Syria reflects the contradictions in US foreign policy.

"US policy on Syria has been so inconsistent, it's very difficult to predict whether the United States will stay or leave," Kabalan said.

"The conflict is in Washington between President Trump and the foreign policy establishment, particularly the Pentagon. His eyes have always been on the upcoming election, he wants to boost support from his political base."   

'Shocking ignorance' 

Brett McGurk, the top US official leading Trump's anti-ISIL campaign until January, also criticised the latest shift in a social media post.

"The president of the United States of America appears to be calling for a mass migration of Kurds to the desert where they can resettle atop a tiny oilfield. Shocking ignorance of history, geography, law, American values, human decency, and honour."

Trump had justified his earlier decision to withdraw US forces from Syria, saying he sought to bring about 1,000 troops home and end American involvement there.

Trump said previously a "small number" of US troops would remain in Syria to secure the oilfields. An American official told the Washington Post earlier this week a proposal calls for 200 US troops to remain in the area. 

News reports from Newsweek and US broadcaster Fox said a new deployment may include dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers.

The Turkish assault on northeastern Syria and the US-allied Kurdish forces has been halted after the US brokered a ceasefire.

Ankara also brokered a deal with Russia that saw the evacuation of Kurdish forces from a vast area along Syria's border with Turkey.

Is Russia the new power broker in Middle East?

How about the oil?

The Kurdish forces seized control of small oil fields in northeastern Hassakeh province after Syrian government troops pulled out of most of the Kurdish-majority regions in 2012 to fight rebels elsewhere.

After expelling ISIL from southeastern Syria in 2018, the Kurds seized control of the more profitable oil fields in Deir Az Zor province.

A quiet arrangement has existed between the Kurds and the Syrian government, whereby Damascus buys the surplus through middlemen in a profitable smuggling operation that has continued despite political differences. The Kurdish-led administration sells crude oil to private refiners, who use primitive homemade refineries to process fuel and diesel and sell it back to the administration.

The SDF currently sells Syria's oil for about $30 per barrel.

The oil was expected to be a bargaining chip for the Kurds to negotiate a deal with the Syrian government, which unsuccessfully tried to reach the oil fields to retake them from ISIL. With Trump saying he plans to keep forces to secure the oil, it seems the oil will continue to be used for leverage - with Moscow and Damascus.

McGurk said on Monday: "Oil, like it or not, is owned by the Syrian state. Maybe there are new lawyers, but it was just illegal for an American company to go and seize and exploit these assets."

Before the war, Syria produced about 350,000 barrels per day, exporting more than half of it. Most of that oil came from eastern Syria. Foreign companies, including Total, Shell, and Conoco, all left Syria after the war began more than eight years ago.

US Senator Lindsey Graham said after meeting with Trump on Thursday that he urged him to stay engaged in Syria.

"If you can find a way to secure the oil fields from Iran and ISIS, that's in our national security interest," Graham said.

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2019-10-25 11:44:00Z
52780417512262

Lion Air crash investigators fault Boeing 737 Max’s flight-control system, regulatory lapses and pilot training - The Washington Post

Willy Kurniawan Reuters A Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 jet at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on March 15. Regulators grounded the model worldwide after two deadly crashes.

JAKARTA — Design flaws in Boeing’s 737 Max jet, regulatory lapses and false assumptions about pilots’ responses to new systems combined to cause last year’s fatal Lion Air crash, Indonesian investigators said Friday, as they released a final report that pinpointed faults in a flight-control feature intended to prevent the aircraft from stalling. 

The accident prompted Boeing to make changes to the 737 Max, the manufacturer said in a statement Friday as the report was released. The fixes included changing how the angle-of-attack sensors feed information to the cockpit and improving crew manuals and pilot training. 

“These software changes will prevent the flight control conditions that occurred in this accident from ever happening again,” Boeing said. 

 Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, shortly after taking off from Jakarta. All eight crew members and 181 passengers were killed.

The crash was soon tied to a new automated feature that Boeing had included on the 737 Max, a new version of its popular jet with larger, more fuel-efficient engines. Investigators say the feature was mistakenly triggered by faulty information from an external sensor.

Similar problems were blamed for the crash of an Ethio­pian Airlines flight in March that killed 157 people. The Max has been grounded worldwide since shortly after that crash.

On Friday, officials from Indonesia’s transportation safety regulator said nine factors worked together to doom the Lion Air jet. 

“These items were connected to each other. If one of them was not occurring on that day, the accident may not have happened,” said Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee.

[Widow of pilot on doomed Lion Air flight says direct appeals were made to ground Boeing model]

Those factors included incorrect assumptions by Boeing about how pilots would respond to the new flight-control system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. Investigators highlighted how the MCAS design relied on a single sensor and was therefore vulnerable to errors.

“One [angle of attack] affected the whole system,” Nurcahyo said. A false reading on that sensor redirected the plane’s nose downward, leaving the cockpit crew unable to override the auto­pilot commands.

Other fatal mistakes included a lack of training for pilots in the new system, a lack of documentation about problems in previous Lion Air flights involving the same jet and ineffective coordination between flight crews. Investigators concluded that the plane should have been grounded after an earlier fault.

The report called for improved oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. regulator, and included suggestions for Boeing as well as Lion Air. 

Indonesian investigators, however, stressed that their report was not aimed at pinpointing culpability but at ensuring passenger safety and preventing a similar accident. The report cannot be used for liability or compensation issues in court.

In a statement, Lion Air said it was essential to take “immediate corrective actions to ensure that an accident like this one never happens again.”

[NTSB cites competing pilot warnings and flawed safety assumptions on Boeing 737 Max]

Charles Herrmann, a Seattle attorney representing the families of 46 Lion Air crash victims, said the crash anniversary and the release of the report are “a double wounding” for his clients.

“This is a devastating experience for these people,” Herrmann said. “It involves not only tremendous sorrow and grief. There’s a lot of anger.”

Since the crashes, Boeing’s decision to adopt MCAS and the FAA’s role in certifying the plane have come under intense scrutiny from the Justice Department, congressional investigators and lawyers representing the families of dozens of those who died.

Ahead of Friday’s release of the crash investigation report, a review by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board found that Boeing underestimated the risk posed by MCAS and made bad assumptions about how pilots would respond to a barrage of alerts in the cockpit if something went wrong.

And an international group of aviation regulators and U.S. experts concluded that Boeing shared information with the FAA in a fragmented way, resulting in insufficient scrutiny of the new feature.

Tatan Syuflana

AP

Navy personnel in Jakarta on Nov. 1, 2018, removed recovered parts of the Lion Air jet that had crashed into the sea.

MCAS was designed to kick in when pilots were flying manually, repeatedly pushing the plane’s nose down if sensor data indicated that the aircraft was at risk of stalling. But the data that the system received in both the Lion Air and Ethio­pian Airlines flights was faulty, causing the feature to kick in repeatedly while the pilots struggled to regain control of the aircraft.

[Boeing and FAA faulted in oversight breakdowns that contributed to 737 Max failure]

The protracted grounding of the Max has battered Boeing’s finances and its stock price. This week, the company reported that its revenue fell to $20 billion in the third quarter, down 21 percent from a year earlier. Profits were down 51 percent to $1.17 billion.

The company also announced the resignation this week of Kevin McAllister, head of the Boeing division that made the Max.

The company’s fortunes rest on it winning approval from aviation regulators in the United States and abroad for the Max to resume flights.

Boeing has redesigned the MCAS feature in a way that it says is safer, and the changes are being reviewed by aviation authorities. FAA officials say they have several more weeks’ work to do, and airlines have said they are keeping the Max off their schedules into January and February.

Boeing’s chief executive Dennis Muilenberg, who was stripped of his role as chairman of the company’s board this month, is scheduled to testify about the Max before Senate and House committees next week. Lawmakers are weighing whether there ought to be changes to an FAA program that turns over to industry much of the responsibility for certifying that safety standards are being met.

[FAA discovers new safety concern during Boeing 737 Max test]

Lion Air is Indonesia’s largest budget airline, operating in a fast-growing industry across an archipelago where air travel is a necessity. But even before the crash a year ago, the country had a spotty safety record, and its carriers were banned from flying to the United States between 2007 and 2016.

The Max involved in the crash had entered service just months before. Lion Air was a major international customer for Boeing.

The pilot, 31-year-old Bhavye Suneja, was a native of India who had logged 6,000 flight hours. He was joined in the cockpit by a first officer who used only the single name Harvino and who had 5,000 hours of experience. 

Vini Wulandari, Harvino’s sister, said the investigation reinforced her family’s belief that her brother was not to blame for the crash, and she demanded that Boeing take more responsibility for the loss of life.

“From the beginning, I’m sure that Harvino was innocent because he had done everything according to procedure,” Vini said in an interview Friday. Her family is among those suing Boeing.

“Someone must be held responsible for what has happened,” she added.

Mahtani reported from Hong Kong.

Read more

American Airlines says it expects to resume flying Boeing’s 737 Max jet in January

FAA discovers new safety concern during Boeing 737 Max test

Long before the Max disasters, Boeing had a history of failing to fix safety problems

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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2019-10-25 10:54:00Z
52780418130025

Lion Air crash investigators fault Boeing 737 Max’s flight-control system, regulatory lapses and pilot training - The Washington Post

Willy Kurniawan Reuters A Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 at Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta International Airport on March 15, 2019. Regulators grounded the model worldwide after two deadly crashes.

JAKARTA — Design flaws in Boeing Co.’s 737 Max, false assumptions on pilots’ responses to new systems, and regulatory lapses combined to cause last year’s fatal Lion Air crash, Indonesian investigators said Friday, as they released a final report that pinpointed faults in a flight-control feature intended to prevent the aircraft from stalling. 

The accident prompted Boeing to make changes to the 737 Max, the manufacturer said in a statement Friday as the report was released, including redesigning the angle-of-attack sensors that feed information to the cockpit, improving crew manuals and pilot training. 

“These software changes will prevent the flight control conditions that occurred in this accident from ever happening again,” Boeing said. 

 Lion Air flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, shortly after taking off from Jakarta. All eight crew and 181 passengers were killed.

The crash was soon tied to a new automated feature Boeing had included on the 737 Max, a new version of its popular jet with larger, more fuel-efficient engines. Investigators say the feature was mistakenly triggered by faulty information from an external sensor.

Similar problems were blamed for the crash of an Ethio­pian Airlines flight in March that killed 157 people. The Max has been grounded worldwide since shortly after that crash.

On Friday, officials from Indonesia’s transportation-safety regular said nine factors worked together to doom the Lion Air jet. 

“These items were connected to each other. If one of them was not occurring on that day, the accident may not have happened,” said Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee.

[Widow of pilot on doomed Lion Air flight says direct appeals made to ground Boeing model]

Those factors included incorrect assumptions by Boeing about how pilots would respond to the new flight-control system, known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. Investigators highlighted how the MCAS design relied on a single sensor, and was therefore vulnerable to errors.

“One [angle of attack] affected the whole system,” Nurcahyo said. A false reading on that sensor redirected the plane’s nose downward, leaving the cockpit crew unable to override the auto­pilot commands.

Other fatal mistakes included a lack of training for pilots in the new system, a lack of documentation about problems in previous Lion Air flights involving the same jet, and ineffective coordination between flight crews. Investigators concluded that the plane should have been grounded after an earlier fault.

The report called for improved oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. regulator, and included suggestions for Boeing as well as Lion Air. 

Indonesian investigators, however, stressed that their report was not aimed at pinpointing culpability, but ensuring passenger safety and preventing a similar accident. The report cannot be used for liability or compensation issues in court.

In a statement, Lion Air said it was essential to take “immediate corrective actions to ensure that an accident like this one never happens again.”

[NTSB cites competing pilot warnings and flawed safety assumptions on Boeing 737 Max]

Charles Herrmann, a Seattle attorney representing the families of 46 Lion Air crash victims, said the crash anniversary and the release of the report are “a double wounding” for his clients.

“This is a devastating experience for these people,” Herrmann said. “It involves not only tremendous sorrow and grief. There’s a lot of anger.”

Since the crashes, Boeing’s decision to adopt MCAS, and the FAA’s role in certifying the plane have come under intense scrutiny from the Justice Department, congressional investigators and lawyers representing the families of dozens of those who died.

Ahead of Friday’s release of the crash investigation report, a review by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board found that Boeing underestimated the risk posed by MCAS and made bad assumptions about how pilots would respond to a barrage of alerts in the cockpit if something went wrong.

And an international group of aviation regulators and U.S. experts concluded that Boeing shared information with the FAA in a fragmented way, leading to the new feature not being subjected to sufficient scrutiny.

Tatan Syuflana

AP

Navy personnel in Jakarta removed recovered parts of the Lion Air jet that crashed into the sea last year, in a file photo from Nov. 1, 2018.

MCAS was designed to kick in when pilots were flying manually, repeatedly pushing the plane’s nose if sensor data indicated that it was at risk of stalling. But the data it received in both the Lion Air and Ethio­pian Airlines flights was faulty, causing the feature to kick in repeatedly while the pilots struggled to regain control of the aircraft.

[Boeing and FAA faulted in oversight breakdowns that contributed to 737 Max failure]

The protracted grounding of the Max has battered Boeing’s finances and its stock price. This week the company reported that its revenue fell to $20 billion in the third quarter, down 21 percent from a year earlier. Profits were down 51 percent to $1.17 billion.

The company also announced the resignation this week that Kevin McAllister, the head of the Boeing division that made the Max.

The company’s fortunes rest on it winning approval from aviation regulators in the United States and abroad for the Max to resume flights.

Boeing has redesigned the feature in a way that it says is safer and the changes are being reviewed by aviation authorities. FAA officials say they still have several more weeks’ work to do and airlines have said they’re keeping the Max off their schedules into January and February.

Boeing’s chief executive Dennis Muilenberg, who was stripped of his role as chairman of the company’s board this month, is scheduled to testify about the Max before Senate and House committees next week. Lawmakers are weighing whether there ought to be changes to a FAA program that turns over to industry much of the responsibility for certifying that safety standards are being met.

FAA discovers new safety concern during Boeing 737 Max test]

Lion Air is Indonesia’s largest budget airline, operating in a fast-growing industry across an archipelago where air travel is a necessity. But even before October’s crash the country had a spotty safety record and its carriers were banned from flying to the United States between 2007 and 2016.

The Max involved in the crash had entered service just months before. Lion Air was a major international customer for Boeing.

The pilot, 31-year-old Bhavye Suneja, was a native of India who had logged 6,000 flight hours. He was joined in the cockpit by a first officer who used only the single name Harvino and who had 5,000 hours of experience. 

Vini Wulandari, Harvino’s sister, said the investigation reinforced her family’s belief that her brother was not to blame for the crash, and demanded Boeing take more responsibility for the loss of life.

“From the beginning, I'm sure that Harvino was innocent because he had done everything according to procedure," Vini said in an interview Friday. Her family is among those suing Boeing.

“Someone must be held responsible for what has happened,” she added.  

Mahtani reported from Hong Kong.

            

         

            Read more         

   American Airlines says it expects to resume flying Boeing’s 737 Max jet in January  

   FAA discovers new safety concern during Boeing 737 Max test  

   Long before the Max disasters, Boeing had a history of failing to fix safety problems  

            Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world            

            Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news         

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2019-10-25 09:28:00Z
52780418130025

39 bodies were found in a truck in England. Here's what we know about the timeline - CNN

UK police appear to have established that the truck and its container followed two separate routes -- coming together towards the end of the journey shortly before the grisly discovery.

Here's what we know about the timeline so far, according to authorities in the UK and Belgium.

The truck itself is thought to have entered Great Britain through the Welsh port of Holyhead on Sunday after traveling over from Ireland, according to Essex Police. Investigators believe the truck -- which was registered in Bulgaria in 2017 -- originated in Northern Ireland.

The truck has not returned to Bulgaria since its registration, the country's prime minister, Boyko Borissov, said on local television channel bTV on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the container arrived at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge at 2:49 p.m. local time (1:49 p.m. UK time), before leaving for the UK that same afternoon, according to the preliminary findings of Belgian prosecutors.

The container entered the English port of Purfleet in the very early hours of Wednesday. Essex Police believe it arrived shortly after 12:30 a.m. Belgian officials said the container arrived from Zeebrugge at midnight.

This is where the truck picked up the container, according to Essex Police, who said the truck then left the port shortly after 1:05 a.m.

At around 1:40 a.m., ambulance workers called police to the Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays following the discovery of the 39 people. All were pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities arrested the driver of the truck, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, on suspicion of murder.

He was later identified by a local councilor as Mo Robinson. Paul Berry, the local councilor for Armagh (the area where Robinson resides in Northern Ireland) told CNN he learned of the arrest after speaking with Robinson's father. Police would not comment on the suspect's identify on Thursday.

On Wednesday evening, the truck and trailer were moved to a "secure location" in Tilbury Docks, about a 20-minute drive from where the bodies were discovered.

Later Wednesday, police in Northern Ireland raided multiple properties, one of which has been identified by local residents as the home of Robinson's parents. CNN was present at the parents' home in County Armagh, southwest of Belfast, and witnessed officers going in and out of the house.

Local residents have told CNN that the parents have since traveled to England to support their son.

Essex Police announced Thursday that the dead -- 31 men and nine women -- were all believed to be Chinese nationals. They also said that the truck driver would remain in custody for another 24 hours.

"This is an incredibly sensitive and high-profile investigation, and we are working swiftly to gather as full a picture as possible as to how these people lost their lives," deputy chief constable Pippa Mills said.

In Belgium, the Chinese embassy "demanded the Belgian police conduct a comprehensive investigation." Earlier in the day, China's embassy in the UK said it was sending personnel to the scene of the investigation "to verify relevant information."

On Thursday evening, Essex Police said the first 11 victims were transported to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford for postmortem examinations.

Nina Avramova, Duarte Mendonca, Lindsay Issac, and Peter Taggart contributed to this report.

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2019-10-25 09:22:00Z
52780417140138

US to deploy more troops to eastern Syria to secure oilfields - Al Jazeera English

The United States will station additional forces in eastern Syria to protect oilfields in another policy shift that one former senior American official called a "shocking ignorance" of history and geography.

The planned reinforcement will take place in coordination with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to prevent the oilfields from falling into the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), a Pentagon statement said.

No details were provided on how many or what kind of forces would be sent, or whether decisions on those details have been made.

More:

"The US is committed to reinforcing our position, in coordination with our SDF partners, in northeast Syria with additional military assets to prevent those oilfields from falling back into the hands of ISIS or other destabilising actors," it added.

Earlier on Thursday, US President Donald Trump said on social media the US "will never let a reconstituted ISIS have those fields".

The latest announcement, however, contradicts Trump's controversial decision earlier this month to withdraw forces from northeast Syria, which paved the way for Turkey's military operation in the area.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Joshua Landis, a Middle East expert at the University of Oklahoma, said the announcement was "emblematic of the chaos that has set in in the American foreign policy process".

"It is in free-fall and the president is going back and forth," Landis said. "This doesn't really make much sense."

The new deployment could mean US forces would be like "sitting ducks" being stationed in an area, in which the borders are guarded by Russian and Syrian troops, he added.

"Who is going to safeguard them? The Kurds will have nothing to do with America. They have now made a deal with the Assad government. The whole thing makes no sense."   

'Shocking ignorance' 

Brett McGurk, the top US official leading Trump's anti-ISIL campaign until January, also criticised the latest shift in a social media post.

"The president of the United States of America appears to be calling for a mass migration of Kurds to the desert where they can resettle atop a tiny oilfield. Shocking ignorance of history, geography, law, American values, human decency, and honour."

Trump had justified his earlier decision to withdraw US forces from Syria, saying he sought to bring about 1,000 troops home and end American involvement there.

Trump said previously a "small number" of US troops would remain in Syria to secure the oilfields. An American official told the Washington Post earlier this week a proposal calls for 200 US troops to remain in the area. 

News reports from Newsweek and US broadcaster Fox said a new deployment may include dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers.

The Turkish assault on northeastern Syria and the US-allied Kurdish forces has been halted after the US brokered a ceasefire.

Ankara also brokered a deal with Russia that saw the evacuation of Kurdish forces from a vast area along Syria's border with Turkey.

Is Russia the new power broker in Middle East?

How about the oil?

The Kurdish forces seized control of small oil fields in northeastern Hassakeh province after Syrian government troops pulled out of most of the Kurdish-majority regions in 2012 to fight rebels elsewhere.

After expelling ISIL from southeastern Syria in 2018, the Kurds seized control of the more profitable oil fields in Deir Az Zor province.

A quiet arrangement has existed between the Kurds and the Syrian government, whereby Damascus buys the surplus through middlemen in a profitable smuggling operation that has continued despite political differences. The Kurdish-led administration sells crude oil to private refiners, who use primitive homemade refineries to process fuel and diesel and sell it back to the administration.

The SDF currently sells Syria's oil for about $30 per barrel.

The oil was expected to be a bargaining chip for the Kurds to negotiate a deal with the Syrian government, which unsuccessfully tried to reach the oil fields to retake them from ISIL. With Trump saying he plans to keep forces to secure the oil, it seems the oil will continue to be used for leverage - with Moscow and Damascus.

McGurk said on Monday: "Oil, like it or not, is owned by the Syrian state. Maybe there are new lawyers, but it was just illegal for an American company to go and seize and exploit these assets."

Before the war, Syria produced about 350,000 barrels per day, exporting more than half of it. Most of that oil came from eastern Syria. Foreign companies, including Total, Shell, and Conoco, all left Syria after the war began more than eight years ago.

US Senator Lindsey Graham said after meeting with Trump on Thursday that he urged him to stay engaged in Syria.

"If you can find a way to secure the oil fields from Iran and ISIS, that's in our national security interest," Graham said.

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2019-10-25 07:38:00Z
52780417512262

Mueller report: Criminal probe into Russia inquiry begins - BBC News

The US Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the origins of the Mueller inquiry, US media report.

An administrative review into the Special Counsel's investigation began in May.

But the switch to a criminal probe means investigators can now issue subpoenas for testimony and documents.

President Trump has long alleged Robert Mueller's probe of reports of collusion with Russia was a "witch hunt".

• Eight new things in the Mueller report
• Mueller: Trump was not exonerated by my report

The investigation into the 2016 election did not establish any criminal conspiracy between Moscow and Donald Trump's campaign. But it did not clear the president of obstructing justice.

Reports on the criminal probe first appeared in the New York Times. It is unclear what potential crime is under investigation, the newspaper said.

Why is the Mueller report being investigated?

The administrative review of the Mueller investigation began in May. It is being overseen by the US Attorney-General William Barr and is run by US federal prosecutor John Durham.

Mr Durham was tasked with determining whether the collection of intelligence on the Trump campaign in 2016 was lawful. He is known for investigating links between FBI agents and organised crime, and investigating the destruction of CIA interrogation videos.

Last April, Mr Barr told members of Congress that he believed "spying did occur" on the Trump campaign in 2016, adding: "The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I'm not suggesting that it wasn't adequately predicated. But I need to explore that."

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Critics accused Mr Barr of launching an administrative review more in the interests of the president than the interests of justice.

President Trump said at the time he did not order Mr Barr to launch the administrative review, but added that he was "so proud of our attorney general" and it was "a great thing that he did".

Mr Trump has previously accused the FBI investigators who first launched the probe into his election campaign of treason.

What's the Mueller report?

The 448-page Mueller report did not conclude that there was a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

However, it did detail 10 instances where Mr Trump possibly attempted to impede the investigation.

The report concluded that Russia had interfered in the election "in sweeping and systematic fashion".

That interference took the form of an extensive social media campaign and hacking into Democratic Party servers by Russian military intelligence, the report said.

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2019-10-25 06:21:50Z
52780418647105

39 Found Dead in Truck Are Believed to Be Chinese, U.K. Police Say - The New York Times

LONDON — The 39 people found dead in a refrigerated truck trailer in southeastern England were believed to be Chinese citizens, the police said on Thursday, shedding new light on what appeared to be the latest case of human trafficking gone tragically wrong.

Eight of the dead are women and 31 are men, according to a statement from Essex Police. They said that each body would undergo a full coroner’s examination to identify the victim and establish the cause of death, a process that would take time.

“Our work continues today, and for the foreseeable future, to be focused on providing the victims and their loved ones with an investigation that is filled with dignity, compassion and respect for those who have died,” the statement said.

The tragedy bears striking similarities to a case in 2000 in which 58 Chinese migrants were found dead, also in a refrigerated truck, in Dover, Britain’s busiest port. Then as now, the container had been shipped across the English Channel from Zeebrugge, in Belgium.

In the 2000 case, men and women suffocated in sweltering heat after the truck’s refrigeration system was turned off and a vent closed. Amazingly, two men survived the ordeal. A Dutch driver was eventually sentenced to 14 years in prison for his involvement.

The driver of the truck found on Wednesday, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, was arrested on suspicion of murder.

Information about him began to emerge on Thursday, when he was identified by elected officials and the British news media as Morris Robinson, who also went by the name Mo.

A member of the Northern Ireland assembly, Paul Berry, who lives in the same village as Mr. Robinson’s family, confirmed the driver’s identity on Thursday and said he had spoken with the family shortly after the arrest.

“Something like this which has been thrust upon them at this stage is obviously very devastating for them,” Mr. Berry said, describing the Robinsons as “very well respected” and “a lovely family.”

But he also added that the thoughts of those in the community were focused on “the families of the 39 victims who have tragically lost their lives.”

The police have yet to say anything about who the victims were, how and when they died, how long they had been in the trailer, where it originated, or who was responsible.

The truck was found early Wednesday at an industrial site in Grays, in the county of Essex, about 25 miles east of London. The local ambulance service was called out first, then summoned the police at 1:40 a.m. All 39 victims were pronounced dead at the scene.

Attention has now turned to piecing together the movements of the refrigerated container and determining whether the dead fell victim to an operation that was illegally smuggling people into the country.

The tractor unit of the truck entered Britain through the Welsh port of Holyhead on Sunday, arriving on a ferry from Dublin, the police said. The container traveled on a ship from Zeebrugge, arriving after midnight on Wednesday at the Essex port of Purfleet, where it was hitched to a truck and driven away, officials have said.

Belgium’s Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Thursday that it had opened an investigation. The Belgian authorities laid out a further timeline for the movements of the container, noting it had arrived in Zeebrugge at 2:49 p.m. on Tuesday and left the port that same afternoon.

“It is not yet clear when the victims were placed in the container and whether this happened in Belgium,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Essex Police said the case was the largest murder investigation in its history. Britain’s National Crime Agency is also involved in the investigation and is working to “urgently identify and take action against any organized crime groups who have played a role in causing these deaths,” a spokesman for the agency said in a statement.

While the circumstances surrounding the deaths are still unclear, Britain has long been a destination for migrants, and smugglers have often used English Channel crossings to traffic people into the country. But migration patterns and smuggling techniques are constantly shifting, based on political developments and the changing nature of security at borders.

In recent months, Belgium has become a major center for smugglers attempting to covertly transport people into Britain, according to the National Crime Agency. The number of smugglers based there has increased since the closing of a nearby migrant camp in Dunkirk, France, in March 2017.

Most covert transport methods pose significant safety risks: Migrants often travel in shipping containers or commercial vehicles that are transported by truck, rail or ferry, or cross the channel on small boats.

Organized gangs frequently smuggle people in hard-sided trucks like the one in Essex, while small-time traffickers tend to use soft-sided trucks, the agency said.

The police searched three properties in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on Wednesday night, according to the police statement. But, according to Mr. Berry, the local politician, the searches were about 15 miles from Mr. Robinson’s home, which is in the village of Laurelvale, near the town of Portadown.

As of Thursday morning, Mr. Robinson was still being held by Essex Police. Mr. Robinson posted often about trucking on his Facebook page, where the tractor unit of the truck where the bodies were discovered can be seen in several photos.

A decal across the front of its windshield read “The Ultimate Dream.”

Mr. Berry described a feeling of numb shock in Laurelvale, a tightknit community of roughly 1,500 people.

“It’s a quiet, laid-back village and never has such media spotlight been brought upon it,” he said. “Its just a very, very sad story.”

But he cautioned that it was still unclear what knowledge or involvement Mr. Robinson had in the fatal journey.

“Clearly we need to allow the police time, the Essex police, to conduct their investigation to carry that out to ensure that whoever was responsible for this is brought before the courts and they receive that justice that is required,” Mr. Berry said.

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/world/europe/truck-bodies-uk-chinese.html

2019-10-24 10:56:00Z
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