Apple supplier Foxconn’s (2317.TW) founder Terry Gou had warned China that the government’s zero-COVID stance would threaten the position of the world’s second-largest economy in the global supply chain, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The appeal, sent by Gou in a letter more than a month ago, played a major role in convincing China’s leadership to quickly reopen the economy and move away from its zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy, the report said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Gou’s office said in a statement that it “sternly denies” the facts in the report. Foxconn, which is the biggest assembler of iPhones, declined to comment, while China’s State Council Information Office could not be immediately reached for comment.

Gou retired from Foxconn in 2019 and has no formal role within the company any more, though remains influential.

The Taiwan-based company’s Zhengzhou plant, which saw a month-long unrest in November, has lifted its “closed-loop” management curbs on Thursday.

The Zhengzhou plant had been grappling with strict COVID restrictions that fuelled discontent among workers over factory conditions, triggering an 11.4% year-on-year drop in November revenue.

Some Wall Street analysts cut their iPhone shipment targets for the all-important holiday quarter as a result of turmoil at the major iPhone factory.

Chinese health officials and government advisers seized on Gou’s letter to bolster the case that the government needed to speed up its efforts to ease its tough COVID-19 controls, the report added.

Today on Lawfare No Bull: On Dec. 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments in Blassigame v. Trump, regarding whether former President Donald Trump should receive absolute civil immunity for allegations related to his Jan. 6, 2021 “Save America” rally and his conduct surrounding the subsequent attack on the Capitol. Trump appealed the D.C. district court’s February ruling on this issue, which did not grant him immunity.

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The United States hopes to reach agreement on “top line” numbers for assistance to three Pacific island countries by the year end, a State Department official told Reuters on Thursday, part of negotiations critical to shoring up U.S. strategic interests in a region courted by China.

The Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and Palau are sovereign nations that agreed Compacts of Free Association, or COFAs, in the 1980s, under which the United States retained responsibility for their defense and exclusive access to huge swaths of the Pacific.

COFA provisions will expire in 2023 for the Marshall Islands and FSM, and in 2024 for Palau and though the island nations still enjoy close ties to Washington, critics warn that a failure to reach new terms for economic aid could spur them to look to China for funding or increased trade and tourism.

The nations have complained that assistance has not kept pace with U.S. obligations but President Joe Biden’s administration pledged at a summit in September to try to reach agreements by year end.

“We’re not talking about signing final agreement texts by the end of the year,” a U.S. State Department official told Reuters. “We’re aiming to get good consensus on what the top-line assistance would be, agreed by all sides.”

The official declined to say what dollar amounts were under discussion but said Washington hoped to reach deals with all three countries by the year-end or early next year.

One source familiar with the talks said the figures could include hundreds of millions of dollars a year in assistance spread across the three COFA countries, though the amounts could vary by year and by purpose.

This would be an increase from existing funding, although the islands’ strategic value given China’s growing influence has risen significantly since the COFAs were last amended nearly two decades ago.

Marshall Islanders are still plagued by the health and environmental effects of the 67 U.S. nuclear bomb tests there from 1946 to 1958, which included “Castle Bravo” at Bikini Atoll in 1954 – the largest U.S. bomb ever detonated.

Though the State Department says Washington already reached a full and final settlement for the nuclear legacy under past agreements, the official said Washington was “exploring a variety of areas in which the United States might provide broad assistance” to address ongoing needs.

Asked if Washington would consider a formal apology the Marshall Islands has requested for the impacts of the nuclear tests, the U.S. official said there had long been conversations about it within the U.S. government.

“I think it’s something that we think about regularly and discuss internally,” the official said, without elaborating.

Donald Trump helped cost his party the midterms, his numbers are uglier than ever, his company was convicted yesterday, and he’s being indicted soon. The GOP will dump Trump well before 2024 but it’ll be a gradual process. They won’t just send him through a trap door.

The kicker is that there is no trap door the GOP can send Trump through. They can’t just make him disappear. He’ll be trying to participate in Republican primary debates while under house arrest, and they’ll be stuck with his antics even as he fades from political relevance.

Even if the GOP woke up tomorrow and unanimously decided to dump Trump, what would that even look like? They all denounce him, and then what? He’s still there, a pimple on their backside, selfishly trying to screw up their 2024 primary race even as the criminal justice system dismantles him.

There’s really no way out for the GOP. They’re stuck with Donald Trump the whole way down. At this point they’re probably hoping he gets pretrial incarceration, as opposed to bail, so they won’t have to deal with his mouth and his fake 2024 candidacy while he awaits trial. But the Republicans made their bed with Trump a long time ago, and now they’re stuck with him.

The post All the way down… appeared first on Palmer Report.

(NewsNation) — Federal law enforcement officials warned about a potential infrastructure attack in August after a suspected white supremacist posted a file online showing the locations of power stations across North America, according to an internal memo obtained by NewsNation.

The correspondence suggests federal authorities were concerned about threats to American infrastructure posed by extremists just months before the substation attacks in Moore County, North Carolina, that left nearly 45,000 Duke Energy customers without power.

Officials called the recent power station shootings “targeted” but have not determined a motive.

NewsNation located the database authorities believe the online poster — who is described as a “suspected racially or ethnically motivated white supremacist” — shared with others. It uses public data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and shows the exact coordinates of more than 75,000 substations across the U.S. and its territories.

The database included multiple substations that have been targeted recently in North Carolina and, as NewsNation uncovered Wednesday, in Florida.

Addressing Security Threats

Experts say these physical security threats are not something most utility companies are used to preparing for.

“The power company is focused on safety, not necessarily security, not necessarily protecting against someone with the intent to go into a substation to disable that substation,” said Todd Keil, an associate managing director for security risk management at Kroll, who previously worked with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

In September, Duke Energy power stations in Florida experienced at least six “substation intrusion events,” according to an incident report obtained by NewsNation.

In an email to NewsNation, Duke Energy said it is “continuously assessing” and “evolving” its security measures to protect critical infrastructure.

Elsewhere, the electrical grid has been attacked at least four times in Oregon and western Washington since late November, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). Attackers used firearms in at least some of the incidents in each state, OPB found.

While authorities work to pin down motives in all of the recent attacks, those who track extremism are not surprised.

“We see attacks on various types of energy infrastructure being glorified across the ideological spectrum,” said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Levin said disrupting infrastructure can be an attractive option for those looking to cause chaos because it can have a great effect with minimal cost to the attacker.

In April 2013, gunmen in Coyote, California, fired on 17 electrical transformers causing $15 million worth of damage. The perpetrators were never found.

In response, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) committed $100 million to secure its highest-priority facilities.

It remains to be seen what additional long-term security measures, if any, power companies will put in place after the most recent incidents.

Peru’s former President Pedro Castillo faced a first court hearing on Thursday over his arrest on charges of rebellion and conspiracy, as his successor issued her first pronouncements from the presidential palace.

Castillo’s swift fall from power on Wednesday came after lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to remove the leader following his failed attempt to rule by decree and dissolve Congress to avoid a third impeachment vote.

The Andean country has suffered intense bouts of political instability in recent years, with five presidents in just the last five years all unable to complete their elected terms.

Castillo, a former teacher and union activist who won a narrow victory in 2021 buoyed by poor rural and indigenous voters, was arrested Wednesday on criminal charges of “rebellion and conspiracy,” according to prosecutors. He simultaneously faced separate corruption allegations.

Some Peruvians protested his arrest, shouting their lingering support for Castillo on Thursday. ‘The fight has begun! Free Castillo!’ said one placard held by a demonstrator in Lima. Other, small protests led to clashes as police fired tear gas.

Castillo was ordered to be detained for seven days as the investigation into the charge that he orchestrated a rebellion proceeds.

Castillo’s lawyer Victor Perez rejected the charge, arguing that such an act implies use of weapons and violence, which he said never occurred. He called his client’s detention “illegal” and “arbitrary.”

A constitutional court separately dismissed Castillo’s claim of arbitrary detention Thursday, ruling the police acted properly in arresting him.

The former president attended the hearing via teleconference from a penitentiary center in Lima where he is being detained. He was asked if he wanted to address the court, but declined.

He has requested asylum in Mexico and Mexican and Peruvian authorities are in consultation over the request, Mexico’s foreign minister said on Thursday. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has indicated he would be open to granting asylum to Castillo, a fellow leftist.

The 17-month tenure of the 53-year-old Castillo was marked by unprecedented turnover among his ministers, as well as multiple corruption scandals which he dismissed as politically motivated efforts by right-wing members of the opposition-controlled Congress set on undermining his government.

Dina Boluarte, Castillo’s vice president, was sworn in as the South American country’s new president on Wednesday, making her the sixth president in five years and the first woman to lead the nation of some 33 million.

Boluarte, 60, has said little so far but is expected to begin naming a new cabinet over the next few days, with expectations running high that she will opt for a unity government.

The world’s second-largest copper producer, Peru has held the title of Latin America’s fastest growing economy over the past decade despite the political turmoil, but there are now signs that economic growth is slowing.

In brief comments on Thursday morning to reporters at the presidential palace, Boluarte suggested that calling early elections could be “democratically respectable” but said she wanted to hold further talks first, without adding details.

Fresh elections could help Boluarte soothe pockets of public anger over democratically-elected Castillo’s removal and present detention.

“Boluarte is not our president! Let the people elect her, then I will recognize her,” said Sonia Castaneda at a street protest in the capital.

The new president also expressed hope that the regional Pacific Alliance summit originally scheduled to take place in Lima next week with Colombia, Chile and Mexico can still be salvaged.

“Relations with the countries of the region must continue,” she said, noting in particular her hope that Lopez Obrador would show up.

“We are going to wait for him here with open arms,” she said.

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The DOJ has asked a federal judge to hold Donald Trump’s team in contempt of court in his classified documents scandal. I had a hunch yesterday’s weird leak from Trump’s legal team about its supposed cooperation meant that the DOJ was about to take some kind of action against them – but this happened even more quickly than I would have expected.

It looks like the DOJ really is going to forcibly flip Trump’s team against him. History shows that the odds of getting a trial conviction against a crime boss increase greatly when the top underlings are witnesses against him. In Trump’s classified document crime spree, his lawyers are basically his only co-conspirators. So it makes sense that the DOJ is targeting them.

We’ll see if Trump’s lawyers now become cooperators against him in order to avoid being held in contempt of court. As we’ve seen, contempt of court is a no-win situation. A judge will hit you with escalating daily fines, and potentially even incarceration, in order to force you to swiftly fall in line. If the courts do hold Trump’s lawyers in contempt, they’ll quickly have to decide whether to help take him down or go down with him.

The post DOJ formally targets Donald Trump’s team for contempt of court appeared first on Palmer Report.

Russian forces shelled the entire front line of Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, part of what appeared to be the Kremlin’s scaled-back ambition to secure only the bulk of lands it has claimed.

The fiercest fighting was near the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, the region’s governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a TV interview. Artillery slammed into the town of Toretsk southwest of Bakhmut, killing one civilian and damaging 12 buildings, Kyrylenko said.

He said “the entire front line is being shelled” and Russian troops were also trying to advance near Lyman, which was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in November, one of a number of setbacks suffered by Russia since invading its neighbour in February.

In Bakhmut and other parts of the Donetsk region that neighbours Luhansk province, Ukrainian forces countered with barrages from rocket launchers, Reuters witnessed.

Ukraine’s military command said Russian artillery attacked civilian infrastructure in the towns of Kupiansk and Zolochiv in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, and Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region. Ukrainian anti-aircraft units downed several of the missiles trained on Kharkiv region on Thursday evening, governor Oleh Synehubov said on the Telegram messaging app.

Reuters was not able to verify battlefield reports.

In a reminder that, despite the hostilities, Russia maintains lines of communication with the West, Washington said Moscow had freed U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner in return for the release of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

The White House said the prisoner swap would not change its commitment to the people of Ukraine.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a defence bill on Thursday that provides Ukraine at least $800 million in additional security assistance next year.

Separately, a U.S. citizen ordered deported by a Russian court over a domestic dispute left Russia late on Thursday.

In Rome, Pope Francis broke down and cried as he mentioned the suffering of Ukrainians during a traditional prayer.

“Immaculate Virgin, today I would have wanted to bring you the thanks of the Ukrainian people (for peace),” he said before being overwhelmed by emotion and having to stop.

Francis, who was later able to continue speaking, has mentioned Ukraine in nearly all his public appearances since the invasion and has grown increasingly critical of Russia.

President Vladimir Putin has given conflicting statements on the goals of the war but is now clear the aims include some expansion of Russia’s borders, in contrast with comments made at the start of the “special military operation,” when he said Moscow’s plans did not include the occupation of Ukrainian land.

The Kremlin said on Thursday it was still set on securing at least the bulk of the territories in east and south Ukraine that Moscow has declared part of Russia, but appeared to give up on seizing other territory in the west and northeast that Ukraine has recaptured.

Moscow proclaimed in October that it had annexed four provinces – which it calls the “new territories” – shortly after holding so-called referendums that were rejected as bogus and illegal by Ukraine, the West and most countries at the United Nations.

While Moscow made clear it wanted to take full control of Donetsk and Luhansk – two largely Russian-speaking regions collectively known as the Donbas – it left unclear how much of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson it was annexing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says his troops will eventually drive Russia from all the captured territory, including the Crimea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 that sits between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

In the settlement of Posad-Pokrovske in the southern region of Kherson, retaken by Ukraine, some villagers have returned to homes damaged or reduced to rubble by Russian shells, set in a landscape of downed utility poles and spent munitions.

Zelenskiy in his Thursday night video address paid tribute to four policemen killed by landmines in Kherson province.

“This is perhaps even fiercer and more devious than missile terror,” said Zelenksiy, whose country has faced barrages of Russian missile and drone strikes. “For there is no system against mines that could destroy at least part of the threat as our anti-aircraft systems do.”

He accused Russian forces of deliberately leaving behind buried landmines, tripwire mines, mined buildings, cars and infrastructure in places they abandoned under Ukrainian military pressure.

On Thursday, Russian naval forces shot down a Ukrainian drone over the Black Sea, according to the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, an important port and the largest city in Crimea.

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Former senior White House officials and allies of Donald Trump are publicly expressing frustration about the former president’s refusal to disavow the antisemitic views of Kanye West and Nick Fuentes two weeks after having dinner with them. 

“I don’t understand what our former boss is doing,” Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business host and former White House chief economic adviser, said on his daily show on Wednesday. “Why hasn’t he apologized for it or corrected the record or something?” Kudlow, who is Jewish, asked his guest, Kellyanne Conway, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and went on to serve in the administration. “He’s got to make a statement.” 

To date, Trump hasn’t responded to calls to say he disagrees with West, the rapper who changed his name to Ye and who has spewed antisemitic conspiracies, and Fuentes, one of America’s most prominent young white supremacists and a Holocaust denier. 

Conway also criticized Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the closest Jewish family members to Trump, who also served in senior White House positions but are now staying away from politics. “I would like to hear more from his daughter who’s Jewish,” Conway said in the interview. “I would like to hear more from his son-in-law,” who, she said, benefited most financially from serving in the administration. 

“It’d be nice for them to weigh in when you and I are expected to” she added. “So let me just say that because no one else will.”

Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have three children, and their Jewishness has often been used to push back at criticism of Trump for trafficking in racist and antisemitic tropes. “I don’t believe Donald Trump is an antisemite. I don’t believe he’s a racist or a bigot,” former Vice President Mike Pence said in November. “People often forget that the president’s daughter converted to Judaism, his son-in-law is a devout Jew, his grandchildren are Jewish.”

Ivanka was notably absent from Trump’s 2024 kickoff at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida and released a statement saying she does “not plan to be involved in politics.” Kushner, who was behind several key initiatives during Trump’s presidency, including the Abraham Accords, has also indicated that he won’t be involved in the 2024 campaign or seek to return to the White House if Trump is elected again. 

Rolling Stone reported Wednesday that high-profile Trump supporters and pro-Israel donors have reached out to Kushner after their attempts to have an audience with Trump have been rebuffed and “their messages left unreturned.”

The post Trump officials call on Jared and Ivanka to weigh in on West, Fuentes dinner appeared first on The Forward.