The Jim Bakker Show

EU and Iran defend nuclear deal, under fire from Trump

By Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov

SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan (Reuters) – Senior officials from the European Union and Iran spoke up on Friday in defense of the agreement limiting Tehran’s nuclear program, as the pact comes under heavy pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump.

The nuclear deal was “a major achievement of European and international multilateral diplomacy”, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told a conference in Uzbekistan.

“The European Union will make sure it will continue to be fully implemented by all, in all its parts,” she said.

Trump on Oct. 13 dealt a blow to the pact by refusing to certify that Tehran was complying with the accord, under which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions. International inspectors said it was complying.

The U.S. Congress has until mid-December to decide whether to reimpose sanctions lifted by the deal.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also spoke on Friday at the United Nations-sponsored conference on Central Asian security and development in Samarkand.

“By clinching the nuclear deal and fulfilling all our commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we have in action proved our compliance with the principle of non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament,” he said, without mentioning Trump directly.

UZBEK THAW

Mogherini said the EU’s ties with ex-Soviet Central Asia were at an all-time high following moves by Uzbekistan’s new government to open up the previously isolated nation.

Mogherini, the first EU foreign policy chief to visit Uzbekistan in four years, met President Shavkat Mirziyoyev as well as foreign ministers of all five Central Asian nations.

Mirziyoyev was elected president last December after the death of his authoritarian predecessor Islam Karimov, who was accused of systematic human rights abuses and whose relations with the West were poor.

Seeking to modernize Uzbekistan’s economy, Mirziyoyev has moved to mend those relations and announced an ambitious reform program at home.

After a “very long and fruitful meeting” with Mirziyoyev, Mogherini said the reforms had the full support of Brussels.

Mirziyoyev has also improved ties with neighboring Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan after years of bitter standoffs over matters such as borders and water use, winning further praise from Mogherini.

“I would say that we are at the top of our historical experience of cooperation, but we want to use it not as a target point, but as a starting point,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Maria Kiselyova and Andrew Roche)

Democrats win bitter Virginia governor’s race in setback for Trump

By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Ralph Northam won a bitter race for Virginia governor on Tuesday, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump with a decisive victory over a Republican who had adopted some of the president’s combative tactics and issues.

Northam, the state’s lieutenant governor, overcame a barrage of attack ads by Republican Ed Gillespie that hit the soft-spoken Democrat on divisive issues such as immigration, gang crime and Confederate statues.

Trump, who endorsed Gillespie but did not campaign with him, had taken a break from his Asia trip to send tweets and record messages on Tuesday supporting the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

But after the outcome, Trump quickly distanced himself from Gillespie.

“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” Trump tweeted. “With the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!”

At his victory party, Northam told supporters the sweeping Democratic win in Virginia sent a message to the country.

“Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry, and to end the politics that have torn this country apart,” Northam said.

The Virginia race highlighted a slate of state and local elections that also included a governor’s race in New Jersey, where Democrat Phil Murphy, a former investment banker and ambassador to Germany, defeated Republican Kim Guadagno for the right to succeed Republican Chris Christie.

Murphy had promised to be a check on Trump in Democratic-leaning New Jersey. Guadagno, the lieutenant governor, was hampered by her association with the unpopular Christie.

BOOST FOR DEMOCRATS

Murphy’s win and the Northam victory in Virginia, a state Democrat Hillary Clinton won by 5 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election, provided a much-needed boost for national Democrats who were desperate to turn grassroots resistance to Trump into election victories.

Democrats had already lost four special congressional elections earlier this year.

But a strong turnout in the Democratic-leaning northern Virginia suburbs of Washington helped propel Northam, who in the end won relatively easily. With nearly all precincts reporting, he led by a 53 percent to 45 percent margin.

Exit polls in Virginia showed that one-third of the voters went to the polls to oppose Trump, and only 17 percent went to support him.

Democrats also swept the other top statewide Virginia races, winning the offices of lieutenant governor and attorney general, and gained seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. Democrat Danica Roem beat a long-time Republican incumbent to become the first transgender person to win a state legislative race.

“This is a comprehensive political victory from statehouse to courthouse. Thank you Donald Trump!” Democratic U.S. Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia told Northam’s supporters at a victory party in northern Virginia.

In Virginia, Democrats had worried that if Gillespie won, Republicans would see it as a green light to emphasize divisive cultural issues in their campaigns for next year’s elections, when all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 33 of the U.S. Senate’s 100 seats come up for election. Republicans now control both chambers.

Gillespie, speaking to crestfallen supporters in Richmond, Virginia, said he had run a “very policy-focused campaign.”

But voters in Arlington County – a suburban Democratic stronghold bordering Washington – said national politics were important to their votes.

“Trump talks about draining the swamp, but Gillespie kind of is the swamp,” said Nick Peacemaker, who works in marketing and considered himself a Republican until Trump won the party’s presidential nomination.

Peacemaker said Gillespie seemed to shift closer to Trump’s policies after securing the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

In local races across the country, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York and Marty Walsh in Boston both easily won re-election. Voters were also picking mayors in Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle and Charlotte, North Carolina.

(Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson and Gary Robertson; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Peter Cooney and Himani Sarkar)

Trump warns ‘rogue regime’ North Korea of grave danger

By Steve Holland

BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in China on Wednesday seeking help to rein in North Korea after warning the North’s leader that the nuclear weapons he is developing “are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger.”

Trump used some of his toughest language yet against North Korea in a wide-ranging address in Seoul that lodged specific accusations of chilling human rights abuses. He called on countries around the world to isolate Pyongyang by denying it “any form of support, supply or acceptance.”

“Do not underestimate us and do not try us,” Trump told North Korea as he wrapped up a visit to South Korea with a speech to the National Assembly before heading to Beijing, where he was making his first official visit.

Trump painted a dystopian picture of the reclusive North, saying people were suffering in “gulags” and some bribed government officials to work as “slaves” overseas rather than live under the government at home. He offered no evidence to support those accusations.

Trump’s return to harsh, uncompromising language came a day after he appeared to dial back the bellicose rhetoric that had fueled fears across east Asia of the risk of military conflict. On Tuesday, Trump had even offered a diplomatic opening to Pyongyang to “make a deal.”

He went mostly on the attack in Wednesday’s speech but did promise a “path to a much better future” if North Korea stopped developing ballistic missiles and agreed to “complete, verifiable and total denuclearization” – something Pyongyang has vowed never to do.

“We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be intimidated,” he told South Korean lawmakers. “And we will not let the worst atrocities in history be repeated here, on this ground we fought and died to secure.”

The North defends its nuclear weapons and missile programs as a necessary defense against what it says are U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention.

“The world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens it with nuclear devastation,” Trump said, speaking as three U.S. aircraft carrier groups sailed to the Western Pacific for exercises – a rare show of such U.S. naval force in the region.

‘STATE VISIT-PLUS’

In Beijing, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping resumed their “bromance” struck in April at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, making small talk as they toured the Forbidden City – which was shut down to tourists – with their wives before taking in a Chinese opera performance.

While the sprawling palace complex in the political and cultural heart of Beijing is a regular stop for visiting dignitaries, it is rare for a Chinese leader to act as a personal escort, confirmation of the “state visit-plus” treatment that China had promised for Trump.

Trump has threatened action over China’s wide trade surplus with the United States and called on Beijing to do more to rein in ally and neighbor North Korea, but has expressed admiration for Xi and held off on imposing trade measures.

During his two-day visit, Trump will ask China to abide by U.N. resolutions and cut financial links with North Korea, a senior White House official said on the plane from Seoul.

He also plans to discuss with Xi the long-contentious trade imbalance, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at a ceremony with U.S. business leaders where $9 billion worth of deals were signed.

Trump believes any talks with North Korea would require it to reduce threats, end provocations and move toward denuclearization, and that no deal can be achieved without denuclearization, the official added.

Trump and Xi were scheduled to hold formal talks on Thursday.

Before leaving for Beijing, Trump cited China as one of the countries that must fully enforce international sanctions against Pyongyang and downgrade diplomatic and commercial ties.

“To those nations that choose to ignore this threat or, worse still, to enable it, the weight of this crisis is on your conscience,” he said.

While Trump will try to convince Xi to squeeze North Korea further with steps such as limits on oil exports and financial transactions, it is not clear if Xi, who has just consolidated his power at a Communist Party congress, will agree to do more.

China has repeatedly said its leverage over Pyongyang is exaggerated by the West and that it is already doing all it can to enforce sanctions.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that China fully and strictly implements U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea, but will investigate if there have been any contraventions.

‘GRAVE DANGER’

During his speech in Seoul, Trump directed his words at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“The weapons that you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger,” he said. “Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.”

However Trump, whose strategy has stressed sanctions and military pressure instead of diplomacy, did not spell out any new approach.

North Korea has made clear it has little interest in negotiations at least until it develops a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, something U.S. intelligence officials say it may be just months away from achieving.

“North Korea is a country ruled by a cult,” Trump said in a speech that was interrupted several times by applause and ended with a standing ovation.

He stopped short of repeating the derisive nickname “little Rocket Man” that he has used to describe the young North Korean leader.

Kim, for his part, has called Trump “mentally deranged.”

The speech came after Trump’s attempt to make an unannounced visit to the heavily fortified border separating North and South Korea was aborted when dense fog prevented his helicopter from landing, officials said.

A visit to the DMZ, despite his aides’ earlier insistence he had no plans to go there, would have had the potential to further inflame tensions with North Korea.

Trump and his wife Melania were greeted at Beijing’s airport by a military band playing a festive tune and school children jumping up and down and waving American and Chinese flags.

They descended from a red-carpeted staircase rolled up to the main door of Air Force One. That was in contrast to a 2016 visit to China by his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was forced to exit his plane from a lower door in what was seen as a snub.

And while in China, Trump will not be deterred from using Twitter, his favored form of communication, despite its being banned there, according to an administration official.

“The president will tweet whatever he wants,” the official told reporters on Air Force One.

“I’m sure we’ve got the gear aboard this airplane to make it happen.”

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Christine Kim, Josh Smith and Soyoung Kim in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard, Benjamin Kang Lim and Tony Munroe in BEIJING, and Mike Stone in WASHINGTON; Editing by Paul Tait, Michael Perry and Nick Macfie)

Saudi mass arrests jolt markets, play to ire over corruption

By Katie Paul and Stephen Kalin

RIYADH (Reuters) – Most major Gulf stock markets slid early on Tuesday on jitters about Saudi Arabia’s sweeping anti-graft purge, a campaign seen by critics as a populist power grab but by ordinary Saudis as an overdue attack on the sleaze of a moneyed ultra-elite.

U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed the crackdown, saying some of those arrested “have been ‘milking’ their country for years”, but some Western officials expressed unease about the possible reaction in Riyadh’s opaque tribal and royal politics.

Authorities detained dozens of top Saudis including billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in a move widely seen as an attempt by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to neuter any opposition to his lightening ascent to the pinnacle of power.

Admirers see it as an assault on the endemic theft of public funds in the world’s top oil exporter, an absolute monarchy.

“Corruption should have been fought a long time ago, because it’s corruption that delays society’s development,” Riyadh resident Hussein al-Dosari told Reuters.

“God willing, everything that happened … is only the beginning of what is planned,” said Faisal bin Ali, adding he wanted to see “correcting mistakes, correcting ministries and correcting any injustices against the general population.”

But some analysts see the arrests as the latest in a string of moves shifting power from a consensus-based system dispersing authority among the ruling Al Saud to a governing structure centered around 32-year-old Prince Mohammed himself.

Investors worry that his campaign against corruption — involving the arrests of the kingdom’s most internationally-well known businessmen — could see the ownership of businesses and assets become vulnerable to unpredictable policy shifts.

INVESTOR NERVES

The Saudi stock index .TASI was down 1.6 percent after 75 minutes of trade. Shares linked to people detained in the investigation led falls. [L5N1ND2CR]

Among them, Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding plunged by its 10 percent daily limit, bringing its losses in the three days since the investigation was announced to 21 percent.

In Dubai, where Saudis have been significant investors, the index slipped 0.6 percent. The index in Abu Dhabi, less exposed to Saudi money, inched up 0.1 percent. But Kuwait continued to slide, with its index losing 3.8 percent.

The show of investor nerves coincided with sharply heightened strains between Riyadh and Tehran, reflected in a fresh denunciation of adversary Iran by Prince Mohammed over its role in Yemen, and by continuing mutual acrimony over political turmoil in Lebanon, another cockpit of Iranian-Saudi rivalry.

Displaying an apparently undimmed taste for navigating several challenges simultaneously, Prince Mohammed said Iran’s supply of rockets to militias in Yemen is an act of “direct military aggression” that could be an act of war.

He was speaking in a phone call with British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson after Saudi air defense forces intercepted a ballistic missile they said was fired toward Riyadh on Saturday by the Houthis.

Saudi-led forces, which back the internationally-recognized government, have been targeting the Houthis in a war which has killed more than 10,000 people and triggered a humanitarian disaster in one of the region’s poorest countries.

Iran has denied it was behind the missile launch, rejecting the Saudi and U.S. statements condemning Tehran as “destructive and provocative” and “slanders”.

The coincidence of heightened Saudi-Iranian tensions and Saudi domestic political upheaval has stirred unease among some Western governments and analysts about the emergence of an impromptu policy-making style under Prince Mohammed.

“He seems to be pushing the creation of a personalized system of rule without the checks and balances that have typically characterized the Saudi system of governance,” wrote Marc Lynch, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, in the Washington Post.

“In both domestic and foreign affairs, he has consistently undertaken sudden and wide-ranging campaigns for unclear reasons which shatter prevailing norms.”

PIVOTAL POWER BASE

Among those held in the anti-graft purge was Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, who was replaced as minister of the National Guard, a pivotal power base rooted in the kingdom’s tribes. That recalled a palace coup in June that ousted Mohammed bin Nayef as heir to the throne.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official cautioned that given the National Guard’s loyalties, Prince Mohammed, widely known as MbS, could face a backlash.

“I find it difficult to believe that it (National Guard) will simply roll over and accept the imposition of new leadership in such an arbitrary fashion.”

But the crackdown may go some way to soothing public disgust over financial abuses by the powerful, some Saudis say.

“There is no doubt that it (the detentions) soothes the anger of the regular citizen who felt that such names and senior leaders who appeared in the list were immune from legal accountability,” said a Saudi-based political analyst Mansour al-Ameer.

“Its spread to the general population is evidence that no one is excluded from legal accountability, and this will eventually benefit the citizen and (national) development.”

(Reporting by Gulf team, Writing by William Maclean,Editing by Jon Boyle)

Awaiting Trump’s coal comeback, miners reject career retraining

Loaded coal cars sit on the rail road tracks leading to the Emerald Coal mine facility in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 11, 2017.

By Valerie Volcovici

WAYNESBURG, Pa. (Reuters) – When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.

He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course.

“I think there is a coal comeback,” said the 33-year-old son of a miner.

Despite broad consensus about coal’s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.

Trump has promised to revive coal by rolling back environmental regulations and moved to repeal Obama-era curbs on carbon emissions from power plants.

“I have a lot of faith in President Trump,” Sylvester said.

But hundreds of coal-fired plants have closed in recent years, and cheap natural gas continues to erode domestic demand. The Appalachian region has lost about 33,500 mining jobs since 2011, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.

Although there have been small gains in coal output and hiring this year, driven by foreign demand, production levels remain near lows hit in 1978.

A White House official did not respond to requests for comment on coal policy and retraining for coal workers.

What many experts call false hopes for a coal resurgence have mired economic development efforts here in a catch-22: Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce. The stalled diversification push leaves some of the nation’s poorest areas with no clear path to prosperity.

Federal retraining programs have fared better, with some approaching full participation, in the parts of Appalachia where mining has been crushed in a way that leaves little hope for a comeback, according to county officials and recruiters. They include West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal resources have been depleted.

But in southern Pennsylvania, where the industry still has ample reserves and is showing flickers of life, federal jobs retraining programs see sign-up rates below 20 percent, the officials and recruiters said. In southern Virginia’s coal country, participation rates run about 50 percent, they said.

“Part of our problem is we still have coal,” said Robbie Matesic, executive director of Greene County’s economic development department.

Out-of-work miners cite many reasons beyond faith in Trump policy for their reluctance to train for new industries, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen former and prospective coal workers, career counselors and local economic development officials. They say mining pays well; other industries are unfamiliar; and there’s no income during training and no guarantee of a job afterward.

In Pennsylvania, Corsa Coal opened a mine in Somerset in June which will create about 70 jobs – one of the first mines to open here in years. And Consol Energy recently expanded its Bailey mine complex in Greene County.

But Consol also announced in January that it plans to sell its coal holdings to focus on natural gas. And it has commissioned a recruitment agency, GMS Mines and Repair, to find contract laborers for its coal expansion who will be paid about $13 an hour – half the hourly wage of a starting unionized coal worker. The program Sylvester signed up for was set up by GMS.

The new hiring in Pennsylvania is related mainly to an uptick in foreign demand for metallurgical coal, used in producing steel, rather than domestic demand for thermal coal from power plants, the industry’s main business. Some market analysts describe the foreign demand as a temporary blip driven by production problems in the coal hub of Australia.

Officials for U.S. coal companies operating in the region, including Consol and Corsa, declined requests for comment.

“The coal industry has stabilized, but it’s not going to come back,” said Blair Zimmerman, a 40-year veteran of the mines who is now the commissioner for Greene County, one of Pennsylvania’s oldest coal regions. “We need to look at the future.”

Career center representative Alison Hall works on the computer looking to place out of work coal miners at the Mining Technology and Training Center just outside of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk

EMPTY SEATS

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor has received about $2 million since 2015 from the federal POWER program, an initiative of former President Barack Obama to help retrain workers in coal-dependent areas. But the state is having trouble putting even that modest amount of money to good use.

In Greene and Washington counties, 120 people have signed up for jobs retraining outside the mines, far short of the target of 700, said Ami Gatts, director of the Washington-Greene County Job Training Agency. In Westmoreland and Fayette counties, participation in federal job retraining programs has been about 15 percent of capacity, officials said.

“I can’t even get them to show up for free food I set up in the office,” said Dave Serock, an ex-miner who recruits in Fayette County for Southwest Training Services.

Programs administered by the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal and state partnership to strengthen the region’s economy, have had similar struggles. One $1.4 million ARC project to teach laid-off miners in Greene County and in West Virginia computer coding has signed up only 20 people for 95 slots. Not a single worker has enrolled in another program launched this summer to prepare ex-miners to work in the natural gas sector, officials said.

Greene County Commissioner Zimmerman said he’d like to see a big company like Amazon or Toyota come to southwestern Pennsylvania to build a distribution or manufacturing plant that could employ thousands.

But he knows first the region needs a ready workforce.

Amazon spokeswoman Ashley Robinson said the company the company typically works with local organizations to evaluate whether locations have an appropriate workforce and has no current plans for distribution operations in Western Pennsylvania. Toyota spokesman Edward Lewis said the company considers local workforce training an “important consideration” when deciding where to locate facilities.

Students sit in a training class at the Pennsylvania Career Link office located in Waynesburg. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk

SIGNS OF LIFE

For Sean Moodie and his brother Steve spent the last two years working in the natural gas industry, but see coal as a good bet in the current political climate.

“I am optimistic that you can make a good career out of coal for the next 50 years,” said Sean Moodie.

Coal jobs are preferable to those in natural gas, they said, because the mines are close to home, while pipeline work requires travel. Like Sylvester, the Moodie brothers are taking mining courses offered by Consol’s recruiter, GMS.

Bob Levo, who runs a GMS training program, offered a measure of realism: The point of the training is to provide low-cost and potentially short-term labor to a struggling industry, he said.

“That’s a major part of the reason that coal mines have been able to survive,” he said. “They rely on us to provide labor at lower cost.”

Clemmy Allen, 63, a veteran miner and head of the United Mineworkers of America’s Career Centers, said miners are taking a big risk in holding out for a coal recovery.

He’s placing his hopes for the region’s future on retraining. UMWA’s 64-acre campus in Prosperity, Pennsylvania – which once trained coal miners – will use nearly $3 million in federal and state grants to retrofit classrooms to teach cybersecurity, truck driving and mechanical engineering.

“Unlike when I worked in the mines,” he said, “if you get laid off now, you are pretty much laid off.”

Follow Trump’s impact on energy, environment, healthcare, immigration and the economy at The Trump Effect – https://www.reuters.com/trump-effect

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot)

Russia’s Putin arrives in Iran to discuss Syria, nuclear deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani in Tehran, Iran November 1, 2017.

By Denis Pinchuk

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin began a visit to Iran on Wednesday designed to underpin closer ties between two countries at loggerheads with the United States as President Donald Trump threatens to pull out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

Putin and his Iranian hosts are expected to discuss the nuclear deal and regional crises such as the Syrian conflict, in which Moscow and Tehran are the main backers of President Bashar al-Assad, while Washington, Turkey and most Arab states support opposition groups seeking to overthrow him.

“We are very pleased that, apart from our bilateral relations, our two countries play an important role in securing peace and stability in the region,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Putin in his welcoming remarks.

Russian and Iranian help has proved crucial for Assad, allowing him to win a series of military victories since 2015 and to reestablish his control over most of Syria. Moscow is now trying to build on that success with a new diplomatic push, including a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi next month.

Moscow is also an important ally for Iran in its confrontation with the Trump administration, which on Oct. 13 refused to certify Tehran’s two-year-old nuclear deal with six major powers that include Russia and the United States.

Russia has criticized Trump’s move, which has opened a 60-day window for Congress to act to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran. These were lifted under the 2015 accord in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.

“This is a very important visit (by Putin) … It shows the determination of Tehran and Moscow to deepen their strategic alliance…. which will shape the future of the Middle East,” one Iranian official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

“Both Russia and Iran are under American pressure … Tehran has no other choice but to rely on Moscow to ease the U.S. pressure,” said the official.

Another Iranian official said Trump’s aggressive Iran policy had united Iran’s faction-ridden leadership in alignment with Russia.

During his visit, Putin will also discuss boosting bilateral economic ties, and will take part in a three-way summit between Russia, Iran and neighboring Azerbaijan, state TV said.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Two ex-Trump aides charged in Russia probe, third pleads guilty

By Sarah N. Lynch and Karen Freifeld

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election charged President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering on Monday.

A third former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI, it was announced on Monday.

It was a sharp escalation of U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s five-month-old investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the election in Trump’s favor and into potential collusion by Trump aides.

Manafort, 68, a longtime Republican operative, and Gates were arraigned at a federal courthouse in Washington.

Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges in a 12-count indictment, ranging from money laundering to acting as unregistered agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government.

The judge ordered house arrest for both men, and set a $10 million unsecured bond for Manafort and a $5 million unsecured bond for Gates. With unsecured bonds, they are released without having to pay but will owe money if they fail to appear in court. There will be another hearing on Thursday.

The developments in the Mueller probe weighed on the U.S. dollar, which slipped 0.5 percent against a basket of currencies.

Mueller’s investigation and others by congressional committees into alleged Russian efforts to influence the election have cast a shadow over Trump’s first nine months in office.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia interfered in the election by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Russia denies the allegations and Trump denies any collusion.

Neither Trump nor his campaign was mentioned in the indictment against Manafort and Gates. The charges, some going back more than a decade, center on Manafort’s work for Ukraine.

The indictment includes accusations of conspiracy against the United States, failure to report foreign bank accounts to the U.S. government and conspiracy to launder money, a count that carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence.

A White House spokeswoman said the indictment had nothing to do with Trump or his campaign and showed no evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.

“We’ve been saying from Day One there’s no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and nothing in the indictment today changes that at all,” spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a news briefing.

Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing said in a statement that there was no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Downing said Manafort’s work for the Ukrainians ended in 2014, two years before he joined the Trump campaign.

Downing accused Mueller of using a “novel” legal theory to prosecute Manafort under a law requiring lobbyists to register with the Department of Justice when they are doing work for a foreign government.

GUILTY PLEA

In a development directly related to Trump’s 2016 election campaign, it emerged on Monday that Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser, pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.

Mueller’s office said Papadopoulos lied to FBI agents about the timing of contact between him and a professor in London who claimed to have information that would hurt Clinton.

Papadopoulos, a little-known former foreign policy adviser in the campaign, made a plea bargain that stated he had since “met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions,” according to a court document.

Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, said Papadopoulos’ role in the campaign was “extremely limited” and that he was a volunteer.

“He asked to do things (and) he was basically pushed back or not responded to in any way,” she said.

In a May 4 email quoted in the Papadopoulos indictment, a Trump campaign employee forwarded a message from Papadopoulos proposing a meeting between Trump and the Russian government to another campaign official.

The employee included a note, according to the indictment, that read: “Let’s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

A source in Washington, who did not want to be identified and who has seen the email, said the sender was Manafort and the recipient was Gates.

Manafort ran the Trump campaign from June to August of 2016 before resigning amid reports he might have received millions of dollars in illegal payments from a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

FRUSTRATION

Trump reiterated his frustration on Monday with the Mueller probe, which he has called “a witch hunt.”

“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????,” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to Clinton.

Mueller has been investigating Manafort’s financial and real estate dealings and his prior work for a political group, the Party of Regions, which backed former pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.

Both Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars of income from Ukraine work and laundered money through scores of U.S. and foreign entities to hide payments from American authorities, the indictment said.

They concealed from the United States their work and revenue as agents of Ukrainian political parties and used their wealth to lead a “lavish lifestyle” without paying taxes on the income, it said.

The indictment said Manafort owned properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Hamptons, Arlington, Virginia, and elsewhere.

Prosecutors said Manafort spent almost $1 million on eight rugs in two years and more than $1.3 million on clothes from shops in Beverly Hills, California, and New York City. They also said he had been making payments on four Range Rovers and a Mercedes-Benz.

Gates was a longtime business partner of Manafort and has ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. He also served as deputy to Manafort during his brief tenure as Trump’s campaign chairman.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Karen Freifeld; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Jan Wolfe, Megan Davies and Emily Flitter in New York.; Writing by Alistair Bell and Caren Bohan; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)

Iran fulfilling nuclear deal commitments: IAEA chief

ABU DHABI (Reuters) – Iran is fulfilling its commitments under the nuclear deal with world powers and U.N. inspectors are facing no problems in their verification efforts, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general said on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this month that he would not continue to certify the multinational 2015 agreement, reached under his predecessor Barack Obama, and warned that he might ultimately terminate it.

Iran would abandon the agreement if it were deemed not be serving its national interests, President Hassan Rouhani said in reaction to Trump’s decision. But he also said, “No president can revoke an international deal…(and) Iran will continue to honour its commitments under the deal.”

The other parties to the accord – Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China and the European Union have all reaffirmed their commitment to it and urged the United States not to back out.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, whose inspectors are tasked with monitoring compliance with the deal, reiterated that Iran was adhering to it.

“The IAEA can state that such nuclear-related commitments are being implemented,” Amano told a news conference in Abu Dhabi following a trip to Iran on Sunday where he met with Rouhani and other officials.

“I requested that Iran … fully implement the nuclear-related commitments. This (was) the main thrust of the meeting in Iran … Regarding the activities of our inspectors, they are discharging their responsibility without problem,” he said.

Under the agreement, Iran undertook to restrict its nuclear programme to help ensure it could not be put to developing atomic bombs in exchange for the lifting of trade and financial sanctions that had hobbled its oil-based economy.

Amano added that he had told Iranian officials the nuclear deal was a “significant gain for verification”.

Speaking on the sidelines of an international conference on nuclear power in the United Arab Emirates, Amano declined comment on U.S. policy towards Iran and on Iran’s absence from the meeting, which draws together IAEA member states.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall and Stanley Carvalho; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Democrats want a law to stop Trump from bombing North Korea

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. senators introduced a bill on Tuesday they said would prevent President Donald Trump from launching a nuclear first strike on North Korea on his own, highlighting the issue days before the Republican’s first presidential trip to Asia.

The measure would stop Trump, or any U.S. president, from launching an attack on North Korea, or spending any money on a military strike, without congressional approval, unless North Korea has first attacked the United States.

Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang have been building after a series of nuclear and missile tests by North Korea and bellicose verbal exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The CIA has said North Korea could be only months away from developing the ability to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon, a scenario Trump has vowed to prevent.

“I worry that the president’s enthusiasm will not be checked by the advisers around him,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, the legislation’s lead sponsor, told reporters on a conference call.

Some Republicans have also expressed concern about Trump’s rhetoric, but none co-sponsored the bill, which is backed by seven Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent.

Republicans control majorities in both the Senate and House, and there has been no indication that congressional leaders would allow a vote. Similar measures introduced earlier this year have also failed to advance.

However, backers said they might try to pass it later this year by introducing it as an amendment to legislation such as a as a must-pass spending bill.

“I have confidence that if this came to a vote on the floor of the Senate, it would prevail,” Murphy said.

Lawmakers have been trying to take back more control over foreign policy from the White House.

Congress passed a bill in July barring the president from lifting sanctions on Russia without lawmakers’ approval, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Monday held a hearing on a new authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, to exert some authority over the campaign against Islamic State and other militant groups.

At that hearing, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Trump does not have the authority to use force against North Korea without an imminent threat, but they did not define what such a threat would be.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. judge extends deadline for bank records of firm behind Trump dossier

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge has given an unnamed bank more time to respond to a congressional subpoena for financial records of the Washington research firm that hired a former British spy to compile a dossier on presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Russians paid Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, for research on their own dealings with Trump and his campaign. The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has sought Fusion’s bank records in an effort to pursue those allegations.

In a closed-door hearing with Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson said there was no connection between the firm’s work on the dossier and its legal research on a lawsuit involving Russians who attended a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law and close aide, Jared Kusher, and former campaign chief Paul Manafort, sources familiar with the hearing said.

It has been widely reported that supporters of Republican Jeb Bush, a primary opponent of Trump, initially paid for the firm’s research, and the law firm Perkins Coie, which represented Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, confirmed on Tuesday that it hired Fusion GPS in April 2016.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan had set a Thursday evening deadline for the unnamed bank to give the committee its last two years of records on Fusion GPS. But in an order posted on the court docket late on Thursday, she extended the deadline until Monday morning.

The decision indicates that lawyers for Fusion and the House committee are negotiating in an effort to settle their dispute out of court, sources familiar with the matter said.

Joshua Levy, a lawyer for Fusion, declined to comment, and the House of Representatives lawyer on the case did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Tom Brown)

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