Trump defends 'innocent' son Donald Jr over Russia meeting

Donald Trump has defended his son over a meeting with a Russian lawyer during his presidential campaign, calling him "open, transparent and innocent".
He tweeted hours after Donald Trump Jr spoke to Fox News about the meeting he was told would offer Kremlin-linked information about Hillary Clinton.
Critics accuse Mr Trump Jr of intent to collude with the Russians, and believe he may have broken federal laws.
Mr Trump Jr told Fox News the meeting was "such a nothing".
However, he accepted he should have handled it differently.
Earlier in the day Mr Trump Jr had released the email exchange that brought about the meeting, after being informed the New York Times was about to publish it.
US officials are investigating alleged Russian meddling in the US election.
Since he was elected, President Trump has been dogged by allegations that Russia tried to sabotage Mrs Clinton's campaign.
He has denied any knowledge of this and Russia has also repeatedly denied interfering.

What do the emails reveal?

Mr Trump Jr received an email from an intermediary, British music publicist Rob Goldstone, promising documents from Russia that would incriminate Mrs Clinton.
At that time, his father was the presumptive Republican nominee and heading towards an election fight against his Democratic rival.
The meeting was reportedly arranged by Russian businessman Aras Agalarov and his son Emin, a pop star who was managed for a time by Mr Goldstone.
One email from Mr Goldstone said the information they had been promised was "obviously very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump".
Mr Trump Jr's response to it was: "If it's what you say I love it."
Mr Trump Jr, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then campaign chairman Paul Manafort met Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York in June 2016.
It became apparent, Mr Trump Jr later said, that Ms Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss a suspended programme for Americans to adopt Russian children.

What did Trump Jr say about the meeting?

Donald Trump Jr told Fox News' Sean Hannity that he did not tell his father about last year's meeting: "It was such a nothing. There was nothing to tell.
"I mean, I wouldn't have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame."
In retrospect, he would have done things a little differently, Mr Trump Jr told Fox News, but he defended his actions.
"This is before the Russia mania, this is before they were building this up in the press. For me this was opposition research, they had something you know maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I'd been hearing about."
But the meeting went nowhere, he said, and it was apparent Mrs Clinton was not the subject.
He could not vouch for the information he was sent, he said.
"Someone sent me an email. I can't help what someone sends me. I read it, I responded accordingly, and if there was something interesting there, I think that's pretty common."
But his father promised to give a "major speech" about Mrs Clinton just hours after Mr Trump Jr set up the meeting with Ms Veselnitskaya.
In a speech on 7 June, 2016 - the same day Mr Trump Jr offered a meeting with the Russian lawyer - the then-Republican candidate said he would discuss "all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons" on the following Monday.
"I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting," Mr Trump added.
A day before the meeting, the website DCLeaks, which US intelligence officials say Russians used in their election interference, began publishing documents related to Clinton donors.
A week later, DCLeaks released internal Clinton campaign documents.
In July the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks would publish thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

What has the other reaction been?

President Trump has defended his son twice now in tweets. His most recent says Donald Trump Jr did a "good job" on Fox News and called it "the great Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!"
On Tuesday, he described his son as a "high quality person", something that spawned a number of memes on social media.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any link to the Russian lawyer, and Ms Veselnitskaya herself has said she was never in possession of information that could have damaged Mrs Clinton.
Mr Goldstone has also denied any knowledge of involvement in the election by the Russian government.

Could a prosecution follow?

Legal experts say that Mr Trump Jr could fall foul of campaign finance laws, which prohibit accepting anything of value from a foreign government or foreign national.
His apparently enthusiastic response to the offer of information about Mrs Clinton could also breach conspiracy laws.
But journalist and USA Today contributor Michael Wolff told the BBC's Newsnighton Tuesday that that there was no evidence of criminal activity.
"There's no crime that we know of yet," he said. "But we certainly are a big step forward to the circumstance in which there could be collusion in the commission of a crime. And that's important because just to establish collusion, as the Trump people are desperately saying today, is not a crime."
The idea that Mr Trump Jr could fall foul of electoral law was also downplayed by Mr Wolff.
"I think that's a kind of a sideshow at this point. One of the other aspects... is the media response to this which is a paroxysm of glee and delight and I-told-you-so and game over."
Few Republicans have yet responded to the latest developments, although one Trump loyalist, Lee Zeldin, tweeted that though he wanted the president to succeed "that meeting... is a big no-no".
The highest-ranked Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, called the revelations a "very serious development" and said he wanted everyone involved in it to testify to the panel.
There are several congressional committees looking into Russian interference and whether anyone on the Trump team helped, as well as a special counsel.

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Birmingham pub bombings: IRA suspect Hayes issues apology

A self-confessed IRA bomb maker who has said he was part of the group responsible for the Birmingham pub bombings has issued an apology.
Twenty-one people were killed on 21 November 1974 when bombs exploded in two city centre pubs.
Six innocent men were wrongfully convicted. No-one has ever been brought to justice for one of the worst single losses of life in the Troubles.
Michael Christopher Hayes said he was sorry innocent people were killed.
The 69-year-old, who now lives in south Dublin, refused to say who planted the bombs in the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town, but said he was speaking out to give "the point of view of a participant".
The bombs had not been intended to kill people, he said, adding that there had been a crucial eight-minute delay before police were warned of the bombs' location.
Once he became aware of the death toll from the two bombs, he personally defused a third bomb left on Birmingham's Hagley Road, said Mr Hayes.
Relatives of those killed have rejected the apology as "gutless and spineless".
An inquest into the bombings has been re-opened following a campaign by victims' families, who feel they have been denied justice and that their loved ones have been forgotten.
Victims' relatives have always wanted the names of the suspects to be disclosed at the inquest.
But just last week the coroner ruled that suspects' identities would not be discussed - a ruling denounced by the families as a "whitewash".
West Midlands Police said their investigation remained open and they would respond to "any new significant information to bring those responsible to justice".
"An inquest is due to start and we will not be providing any further comment until the proceedings have concluded," said a police spokesperson.

'Collective responsibility'

In 1990, Michael Hayes was named in a landmark Granada TV programme as one of the men who placed the bombs in the two pubs.
He said he was arrested and questioned by West Midlands Police about the bombings in 1974, but was released.
When asked last week if he planted the bombs, he told BBC News NI: "No comment. No comment.
"I've been accused of a lot of things, without one shred of forensic evidence, without one statement made, without one witness coming out against me."
He said the bombs were made of gelignite, and were planted by two individuals.
Asked if he was one of the two, he replied: "I'm not telling you."


However, he said he took what he called "collective responsibility" for all the IRA's actions in England - including the Birmingham pub bombings.
He said he was in the IRA for more than 30 years in both Ireland and England, adding that he was "a participant in the IRA's activities in Birmingham".
He said: "We were horrified when we heard because it was not intended. I personally defused the third bomb."
Asked what expertise he had that allowed him to do that, he said: "Quite a lot. I specialised in explosives. I knew what I was doing."
He said: "We were horrified when we heard because it was not intended. I personally defused the third bomb."
Asked what expertise he had that allowed him to do that, he said: "Quite a lot. I specialised in explosives. I knew what I was doing."
Michael Hayes said the IRA unit in Birmingham had been shocked by the scale of the death toll.
"It was not the intention of the IRA to kill innocent people," he told BBC News NI.
"That wasn't meant. It wouldn't have been done if that was the case."

'Eight priceless minutes'

He said he thought they had given sufficient time for the police to evacuate the buildings.
"We believed that we gave adequate warnings," he said.
"It was only later on that we realised there was eight valuable minutes missed. We were going to give them a half-hour warning.
"Out of that half hour, eight minutes elapsed - eight priceless minutes."
He said that as he understood it one of the phone boxes used for the telephone warnings was broken and another one was being used.
The former IRA man said he was sorry for the hurt caused to the relatives of those killed.
"My apologies and my heartfelt sympathy to all of you for a terrible tragic loss that you have been put through," he said.
"In all these years that you have been trying to find closure, I hope at last God will be merciful and bring you closure.
"I apologise not only for myself, I apologise for all active republicans who had no intention of hurting anybody and sympathise with you."

'Offensive' apology

Julie Hambleton, whose 18-year-old sister Maxine was killed in the explosions, said an apology from the IRA would be offensive.
"He's a coward, as simple as that," she told the BBC.
"He'll take collective responsibility for those unarmed, innocent people, but won't say who done it?
"He's gutless and spineless," she added. "He's told us nothing, he's admitted nothing."
Michael Hayes has said he would not be attending the inquest into the bombings.
"I would not go along to it. Why should I? What reason would I have to go there? I am just kind of giving this interview.
"That is sufficient. I'm not going back to England."
Meanwhile, the former IRA man insists he has a clear conscience.
"Very much so," he said. "I can sleep at night. Because I am not a murderer."
He said he would rather die than become an informer by naming the real bombers to help free the Birmingham Six, who served 16 years in prison before their sentences were quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1991.
He said: "You would want me to go in and give the name of other men, to become an informer? I'd sooner die in front of you than become an informer."
There will be a BBC News NI special programme on the Michael Hayes interview on BBC 1 Northern Ireland at 22:40 and on the BBC News Channel at 23:30


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Liu Xiaobo: German anger at video taken of visit


Germany has accused Chinese authorities of controlling the cancer treatment of ailing dissident Liu Xiaobo, instead of his doctors.
The criticism comes after a video of a German doctor visiting Mr Liu appeared on Chinese media, according to the German embassy in Beijing.
German authorities had requested that no recordings be made of the visit.
Mr Liu was moved from prison to a hospital last month to receive treatment for terminal liver cancer.
The German embassy in Beijing said in a statement "security organs are steering the process, not medical experts".
In 2009, the pro-democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner was given an 11-year sentence for subversion.
Following international pressure, Beijing allowed Western doctors to examine the dissident.
Chinese medical experts have said he is too ill to travel, but over the weekend the doctors from the US and Germany said he could go abroad for palliative care.

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Man charged with murdering sleeping boy in Sydney


An Australian man has been charged with the "execution-style" killing of a 15-year-old boy who was shot in his bed.
Brayden Dillon was sleeping on Good Friday in April when a masked gunman entered his family's Sydney home and shot him in the head, police said.
On Monday, heavily armed officers arrested a 26-year-old man and charged him with murder.
It came hours after police released images of a car being driven in the area around the time of the shooting.
In April, police said the gunman had threatened Brayden's mother before entering his room and shooting him at close range.
His stepfather and young step-siblings were also in the house at the time.
"Brayden's murder was particularly callous," Detective Chief Inspector Mark Henney said on Monday.
He would have celebrated his 16th birthday on Wednesday, police said.
The man will appear in a Sydney court on Tuesday.

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