Tag Archives: United States

U.S. readies Venezuela sanctions, Maduro defies threat

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (C) speaks during a meeting with members of the Defense Council of the Nation in Caracas, Venezuela July 18, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

By Matt Spetalnick and Andrew Cawthorne

WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) – The Trump administration is preparing sanctions against several senior Venezuelan government figures, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, to pressure President Nicolas Maduro to abort plans for a controversial congress foes say would cement dictatorship.

The punitive measures could come against Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello for alleged rights violations, the U.S. officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Their comments followed President Donald Trump’s vow on Monday to take “strong and swift economic actions” if Maduro went ahead with the new body that would have power to rewrite Venezuela’s constitution and supersede all institutions.

“All options are on the table,” including possible measures

against Venezuela’s vital oil sector such as banning its crude imports to the United States, a senior Trump administration official told reporters on a conference call.

Washington is seeking to head off the July 30 vote for a Constituent Assembly that it sees as Maduro’s effort to create a “full dictatorship,” the administration official said.

The heightened U.S. rhetoric against Venezuela’s ruling Socialist Party has infuriated Maduro but also provided him with a nationalist rallying cry.

Decrying “imperialism” still resonates for many in a region scarred by Washington’s support of coups during the Cold War.

“No one gives Venezuela orders, no foreign government,” Maduro told a specially convened state security council to analyze the U.S. threats.

“Donald Trump is not the boss of Venezuela.”

PROTESTS GROW

Maduro vowed that the July 30 election would go ahead despite a boycott and escalating protests from a majority-backed Venezuelan opposition, and growing foreign condemnation from the European Union to major Latin American countries.

“The Constituent Assembly should be abandoned … The whole world is asking for that,” said Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos. In his speech, Maduro condemned him and Brazil’s President Michel Temer as “lackeys” of Washington.

The Trump administration’s possible sanctions on Venezuelan officials would freeze their U.S. assets and prohibit anyone in the United States from doing business with them.

Individual sanctions could come within days or else be delayed until after the July 30 vote, but no final decisions have been made and such actions could still be put on hold, one U.S. official told Reuters.

Tough oil-related sanctions could bankrupt the Maduro government and worsen grave food shortages in the crisis-hit OPEC nation. Hitting Venezuela’s energy sector could also raise U.S. domestic gasoline prices.

Venezuela is the third largest foreign oil supplier to the United States, after Canada and Saudi Arabia, exporting about 780,000 barrels per day of crude.

Polls show the ruling Socialists would be thrashed in any conventional election in Venezuela. A majority of people oppose the Constituent Assembly, which critics have said is a sham election skewed to give Maduro a majority.

He insists it is the only way to bring peace after months of anti-government unrest that has killed 100 people and further crippled the economy.

Maduro’s opponents said they drew 7.5 million people onto the streets at the weekend to vote in a symbolic referendum where 98 percent disagreed with the assembly.

Protesters blockaded parts of Caracas on Tuesday and a national strike was called for Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore, Andreina Aponte, Corina Pons, Alexandra Ulmer and Girish Gupta in Caracas, Marianna Parraga in Houston, John Walcott, Patricia Zengerle and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Andrew Hay, Toni Reinhold)

Trump, Putin had previously undisclosed visit at G20 dinner

FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

By Steve Holland and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a previously undisclosed conversation during a dinner for G20 leaders at a summit earlier this month in Germany, a White House official said on Tuesday.

The two leaders held a formal two-hour bilateral meeting on July 7 in which Trump later said Putin denied allegations that he directed efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump’s interactions with the Russian leader were scrutinized closely because of those allegations, which have dominated his first six months in the White House, and Trump’s comments as a presidential candidate praising the former KGB spy.

Trump and Putin first met at the G20 during a gathering of other leaders, which was shown in a video. They later held the bilateral meeting, which was attended briefly by a pool of reporters.

In the evening, both men attended a dinner with G20 leaders. Putin was seated next to U.S. first lady Melania Trump. The U.S. president went over to them at the conclusion of the dinner and visited with Putin, the official said. That conversation had not been previously disclosed.

“There was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd,” the official said.

In a tweet late on Tuesday, Trump said: “Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is “sick.” All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!”

News of the conversation, first reported by Ian Bremmer, the president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, could raise renewed concern as Congress and a special counsel investigate allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered to help Trump, a Republican, win the presidency.

Trump says there was no collusion and Russia denies interference in the election.

Bremmer said Trump got up from his seat halfway through dinner and spent about an hour talking “privately and animatedly” with Putin, “joined only by Putin’s own translator.”

The lack of a U.S. translator raised eyebrows among other leaders at the dinner, said Bremmer, who called it a “breach of national security protocol.”

The White House official said the leaders and their spouses were only permitted to have one translator attend the dinner. Trump sat next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife. His translator spoke Japanese.

“When President Trump spoke to President Putin, the two leaders used the Russian translator, since the American translator did not speak Russian,” the official said.

A U.S. official who was briefed by some of his counterparts about the encounter said some of the leaders who attended the dinner were surprised to see Trump leave his seat and engage Putin in an extended private conversation with no one else from the U.S. side present.

“No one is sure what their discussion was about, and whether it was purely social or touched on bilateral or international issues,” the official said.

FOCUS ON DONALD JR.

As part of the investigations into allegations of Moscow’s meddling, a congressional panel said on Tuesday it wanted to interview Trump’s eldest son, his former campaign chairman and all others who were at a June 2016 meeting with Russian nationals.

The meeting in Trump Tower in New York has grabbed the spotlight in the saga of possible collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign as media reports of more participants than originally known have emerged.

Donald Trump Jr., who runs the Trump Organization family business, released emails last week in which he eagerly agreed to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father’s campaign.

“Any intelligence out there that suggests that somebody is of interest to us, we have to pursue it,” the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican Senator Richard Burr, told reporters.

Trump Jr.’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager from March to August, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On July 10, Trump Jr. posted on Twitter: “Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know.”

MOSCOW-BASED DEVELOPER

A man who works for a Moscow-based developer with ties to Trump was identified on Tuesday as the eighth person to attend the Trump Tower meeting.

Lawyer Scott Balber confirmed Ike Kaveladze’s name to Reuters after CNN reported that his client had been identified by special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors and was cooperating in their investigation.

Balber represented Trump in the New York businessman’s 2013 lawsuit against comedian and television host Bill Maher, demanding the $5 million Maher offered to give to charity if Trump could prove his father was not an orangutan.

Kaveladze’s LinkedIn profile identifies him as vice president of Crocus Group, a company run by Moscow-based developers Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, an Azerbaijani-Russian pop star. The two have ties to the Trump family and helped set up last year’s meeting between Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Kaveladze was asked to go to the meeting with the understanding he would be a translator for Veselnitskaya, only to find she had brought her own translator with her, Balber told CNN. Balber said he also represented the Agalarovs. Balber said Mueller’s investigators had not interviewed his client or made contact about the Agalarovs.

In addition to Trump Jr., lawyer Veselnitskaya, her translator, and Kaveladze, the meeting was attended by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Manafort, publicist Rob Goldstone and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin.

Separately, the White House said on Tuesday that Trump had nominated Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor and envoy to China under former Democratic President Barack Obama, as U.S. ambassador to Russia.

(Additional reporting by John Walcott, David Alexander, Julia Ainsley, Jonathan Landay, Doina Chiacu, Roberta Rampton, Eric Beech and Jeff Mason; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Jeff Mason; Editing by Peter Cooney)

California wildfire almost doubles in size as blazes torch U.S. West

Flames from the Detwiler fire burn on a hill near the John C. Fremont Hospital in Mariposa, California, U.S., July 18, 2017. Picture taken July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

By Stephen Lam

MARIPOSA, Calif. (Reuters) – A fast-growing California wildfire has forced about 5,000 residents from their homes and nearly doubled in size as about four dozen major blazes scorch the U.S. West, authorities said on Wednesday.

More than 2,000 firefighters have contained just 7 percent of the Detwiler fire, which is threatening tiny communities in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Cal Fire state agency said on its website.

The blaze has mushroomed to 46,000 acres (18,000 hectares) since Tuesday and is threatening 1,500 structures. Firefighters are facing “extreme and aggressive fire behavior” with solid walls of flame and sparks from the main blaze setting secondary fires, Cal Fire said.

Flames have destroyed eight structures and threaten 1,500 while homes and businesses were ordered evacuated southwest of Yosemite National Park. The fire is threatening power lines to the park, Cal Fire said.

Mariposa’s 2,000 residents were told to leave the town on Tuesday, after its power and water links were damaged, news reports said.

Dan Ostler, a Mariposa business owner, said he was staying behind to offer fire crews bathrooms and water. “It’s something I want to do, I can do. I’ve got my escape route planned,” he told Sacramento’s KOVR television.

Smoke pouring from the Detwiler fire has drifted as far northeast as Idaho, according to satellite photos from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

The California blaze was among 46 active large fires spread across 12 western states as of Tuesday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center’s website.

Around 4.4 million acres (1.8 million hectares) have been burned since the start of 2017, compared to 2.7 million acres (1.1 million hectares) in the same period last year, according to the website.

Dry and windy conditions have intensified the wildfires and thousands of people have been evacuated, including in neighboring Oregon and Nevada.

Cal Fire did not report any injuries from the Detwiler fire as of Wednesday morning.

Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for Mariposa County on Tuesday, dispatching resources to the area, as the fire was approaching.

(Additional reporting by Al Golub in Mariposa, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Tom Brown)

Australian government demands answers on Minneapolis police shooting

Justine Damond, also known as Justine Ruszczyk, from Sydney, is seen in this 2015 photo released by Stephen Govel Photography in New York, U.S., on July 17, 2017. Courtesy Stephen Govel/Stephen Govel Photography/Handout via REUTERS

(Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called the fatal shooting of an Australian woman by a Minneapolis police officer over the weekend “shocking” and “inexplicable” and said his diplomats were seeking answers from U.S. authorities.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on Tuesday confirmed details of the shooting of Sydney native Justine Damond that have been reported in media accounts and also confirmed the identities of the two police officers involved in the incident.

Damond died of a single gunshot wound to the abdomen, fired through an open window of the patrol car, after two police officers responded to a call she made of a possible assault in her neighborhood, the agency said.

Turnbull said in a television interview on Wednesday morning in Australia (Tuesday evening in the United States) that he and the Australian consul-general in Chicago were seeking answers.

“How can a woman out in the street in her pajamas seeking assistance be shot like that?” the prime minister said in the interview with Nine Network. “It is a shocking killing, and yes, we are demanding answers on behalf of her family.”

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which reviews shootings involving Minneapolis police, was seeking civilian video of the incident.

The incident unfolded as Officers Mohamed Noor and Matthew Harrity were driving through an alley near where the shooting occurred, searching for a suspect, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said.

At one point, Harrity told investigators, he was startled by a loud sound near the patrol car. Immediately afterward, Damond approached the driver’s side of the squad car and Noor, who was in the passenger seat, fired his weapon through the open driver’s-side window, striking Noor, the agency said.

The agency said Noor, with the police department for 21 months, and Harrity, a one-year veteran, have been placed on administrative leave.

State investigators said agents interviewed Harrity on Tuesday. They said Noor has declined to be interviewed, adding that Noor’s attorney did not provide information on when or if the officer would be available for questioning.

Noor’s lawyer, Tom Plunkett, did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement released earlier on Tuesday, Plunkett said that Noor extends his condolences to Damond’s family.

Damond’s family joined with friends and others in a silent dawn vigil on Sydney’s Freshwater Beach, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. A didgeridoo was played and a single rose thrown into the ocean.

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges and the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota have questioned why the officers did not have their body cameras and vehicle dashboard camera turned on at the time of the incident.

Keith Ellison, a Democratic member of Congress whose district includes Minneapolis, said Damond’s death stemmed from a “systemic problem.”

“We need to confront the reality of so many unarmed people killed by the same officers who swear an oath to protect us,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “Justine’s death shows no one should assume ‘officer-involved shootings’ only happen in a certain part of town or to certain kinds of people.”

Damond, who was also known as Justine Ruszczyk, had taken the name of her fiance, Don Damond, ahead of their wedding. They were due to be married in August, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper. She owned a meditation and life-coaching company, according to her personal website.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Jonathan Allen in New York, Jamie Freed in Sydney, and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Leslie Adler, Toni Reinhold)

U.S. puts new sanctions on Iran over ballistic missile program

FILE PHOTO: An Iranian national flag flutters during the opening ceremony of the 16th International Oil, Gas & Petrochemical Exhibition (IOGPE) in Tehran April 15, 2011. REUTERS/STR/File Photo

By Mohammad Zargham and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States unveiled new economic sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program on Tuesday and said it was deeply concerned about Tehran’s “malign activities” in the Middle East.

The measures signaled that the administration of President Donald Trump was seeking to put more pressure on Iran while keeping in place for now a 2015 agreement between Tehran and six world powers to curb its nuclear program in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.

The U.S. government said it was targeting 18 entities and people for supporting what is said was “illicit Iranian actors or transnational criminal activity.”

Those sanctioned had backed Iran’s military or Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps by developing drones and military equipment, producing and maintaining boats, and procuring electronic components, it said. Others had “orchestrated the theft of U.S. and Western software programs” sold to Iran’s government, the Treasury Department said.

On Monday, the Trump administration said that Iran was complying with the nuclear agreement but it was also in default of the spirit of the accord and Washington would look for ways to strengthen it.

It was the second time Trump certified Iranian compliance with the agreement since he took office in January, despite having described it as “the worst deal ever” during his 2016 election campaign, criticizing then-President Barack Obama whose administration negotiated the accord.

“The United States remains deeply concerned about Iran’s malign activities across the Middle East which undermine regional stability, security, and prosperity,” the State Department said in a statement.

It said the activities “undercut whatever ‘positive contributions’ to regional and international peace and security were intended to emerge” from the nuclear agreement.

The statement listed Iranian support for groups including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas movement, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Trump administration is reviewing policy on Iran, not only looking at Tehran’s compliance with the nuclear deal but also its behavior in the region which Washington says undermines U.S. interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

There was no immediate response from Iran to Tuesday’s sanctions announcement. On Saturday, Iran blamed Trump’s “arbitrary and conflicting policies” for global security threats.

Trump’s reservations about the nuclear deal held up the White House’s announcement on compliance, a U.S. official said. In the end, Trump agreed reluctantly to recertify the agreement after being advised repeatedly by his top national security aides to do so, another senior U.S. official said.

“He sometimes, when he has to do something that he doesn’t really want to do but he knows that he has to do, or it’s the least bad of all the alternatives, he can be very recalcitrant about it. He lets his opinion be known,” the senior U.S. official told Reuters.

Behind the scenes, advisers argued that there was no alternative but to recertify the deal for now because the past sanctions regime the United States had with European allies against Iran is no longer in place and unilateral sanctions are not as effective as multi-lateral ones.

“If we simply get out of the deal the Europeans will no longer be with us,” the senior official said.

The State Department also called on the Iranian government to release U.S. citizens Baquer Namazi, Siamak Namazi, Xiyue Wang and other “unjustly detained U.S. citizens” and said it was deeply concerned about reports of their declining health.

“Iran should immediately release all of these U.S. citizens on humanitarian grounds,” the State Department said.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Grant McCool)

U.S. Senate Republicans set repeal vote as healthcare overhaul sinks

FILE PHOTO - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to the media about plans to repeal and replace Obamacare on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell set a vote on a straight repeal of Obamacare after efforts to overhaul the healthcare law collapsed, but the new approach unraveled within hours on Tuesday in a sharp setback for President Donald Trump and his Republican Party.

The disarray in the Republican-controlled Senate rattled financial markets and cast doubt on the chances for getting Trump’s other domestic policy priorities, such as tax reform, through a divided Congress.

Repealing and replacing Obamacare has been a top Republican goal for seven years, and Trump made the promise a centerpiece of his White House campaign. The overhaul’s failure calls into question not only his ability to get his agenda through Congress but that of the Republican Party to govern effectively.

Saying he was disappointed, Trump told reporters at the White House that “we’re probably in that position where we’ll just let Obamacare fail.”

“We’re not going to own it, I’m not going to own it. … Republicans are not going to own it. We will let Obamacare fail, and then the Democrats are going to come to us,” he said.

McConnell gave up on efforts to overhaul the 2010 Affordable Care Act late on Monday after it became clear he did not have the votes. Instead, he announced plans to vote in coming days on a two-year transition to simply repeal the healthcare law with no replacement.

“We will now try a different way to bring the American people relief from Obamacare,” McConnell said on Tuesday as he opened the Senate, where the Republicans hold a razor-thin 52-48 majority. “I think we owe them at least that much.”

But Republican Senators Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska quickly announced they would not back repeal, dooming the fledgling effort. With Democrats united in opposition, Republicans can only afford to lose two votes to pass the measure in the Senate.

(Writing by John Whitesides; Additional reporting by Caroline Humer in New York and Ginger Gibson, Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Tom Brown, Nick Zieminski and Jonathan Oatis)

Trump threatens sanctions if Venezuela creates Constituent Assembly

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a "Made in America" products showcase event at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 17, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to take “strong and swift economic actions” if Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro goes ahead with plans to create a super-legislature known as a Constituent Assembly in a July 30 vote.

“Yesterday, the Venezuelan people again made clear that they stand for democracy, freedom and rule of law. Yet their strong and courageous actions continue to be ignored by a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator,” Trump said in a statement issued by the White House.

“The United States will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles. If the Maduro regime imposes its Constituent Assembly on July 30, the United States will take strong and swift economic actions,” Trump said.

Maduro’s foes are demanding a presidential election and want to stop the leftist leader’s plan to create the Constituent Assembly, which would have the power to rewrite the constitution and annul the opposition-led legislature.

On Sunday, 98 percent of opposition supporters in an unofficial vote rejected the proposed assembly.

Maduro insists opposition leaders are U.S. pawns intent on sabotaging the economy and bringing him down through violence as part of an international right-wing conspiracy led by Washington and fanned by private domestic and foreign media.

Senior White House officials told Reuters last month the Trump administration was considering sanctions on Venezuela’s vital energy sector, including state oil company PDVSA, a major escalation in U.S. efforts to pressure the country’s government amid a crackdown on the opposition.

The idea of striking at the core of Venezuela’s economy, which relies on oil for some 95 percent of export revenues, has been discussed at high levels of the administration as part of a wide-ranging review of U.S. options.

The White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the United States could hit PDVSA as part of a “sectoral” sanctions package that would take aim at the OPEC nation’s entire energy industry for the first time.

They made clear the administration was moving cautiously, mindful that if such an unprecedented step was taken, it could deepen the country’s economic and social crisis, in which millions suffer food shortages and soaring inflation.

Another complicating factor would be the potential impact on oil shipments to the United States, for which Venezuela is the third largest oil supplier after Canada and Saudi Arabia. It accounted for 8 percent of U.S. oil imports in March, according to U.S. government figures.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Additional reporting by Girish Gupta in Caracas and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Case of missing China scholar rattles compatriots at U.S. colleges

Chinese student Yingying Zhang is seen in a still image from security camera video taken outside an MTD Teal line bus in Urbana, Illinois, U.S. June 9, 2017. University of Illinois Police/Handout via REUTERS

By Julia Jacobs

CHICAGO(Reuters) – For many of the 300,000 Chinese students at U.S. colleges and their parents back home, the presumed kidnapping of a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois confirmed their worst fears about coming to America to study.

Xinyi Zhang, a 21-year-old student from China who is studying accounting at the same Illinois school that the missing woman was attending, said the case has stirred deep anxiety for her and her family in China.

She said she had tried to shield her parents from details of the disappearance of Yingying Zhang, 26, who came to Illinois several months ago to study photosynthesis and crop productivity. But the Chinese media had covered the story too closely to keep them in the dark.

“I just don’t want them to be panicked,” said Xinyi Zhang, who is not related to the missing woman. “I am the only child they have, and the risk of losing me is just too huge to handle.”

The business school student, who is home for the summer before returning to Illinois next month for her senior year, said her parents worry about her going back to her off-campus apartment. They have even suggested she apply to graduate school in a different country.

The case came to a head this month when a 28-year-old former Illinois graduate student, Brendt Christensen, was charged with kidnapping Zhang, who went missing on June 9. Authorities believe she is dead, though no body has been found.

Her misfortune has become a near-obsession with many of the 300,000 Chinese international students at U.S. colleges and their parents half a world away, lighting up social media and animating long-distance phone calls.

State-sponsored Chinese news media outlets have framed the case as emblematic of a security problem in the United States. The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, wrote earlier this month that the kidnapping shows that China is “much safer” than America.

On Weibo, a Chinese blogging site, commenters have repeatedly questioned the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s effectiveness in investigating the case, said Berlin Fang, a Chinese newspaper columnist based in the United States.

Xiaotong Gui, a 20-year-old math student at Pomona College outside Los Angeles, said reading about the case made her feel unsafe on her own campus nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the Illinois university, which draws thousands of students from China.

On Johns Hopkins University’s Baltimore campus, Luorongxin Yuan, a 20-year-old biology student from outside Nanjing, said the fact that the accused kidnapper was a graduate student has made her mother particularly anxious. “She doesn’t trust anyone here anymore,” Yuan said.

Before Christensen’s arrest, federal agents put him under surveillance and heard him say that he had kidnapped Zhang, court documents show. A search of the suspect’s cellphone revealed that he had visited a website that included threads on “perfect abduction fantasy.”

His attorney has said his client is still presumed innocent. If convicted, Christensen could face up to life in prison.

Shen Qiwen, a spokesman for the Chinese consulate in Chicago, said Chinese officials hoped the FBI would step up efforts to find the missing scholar. The FBI is involved in the case because kidnapping is a federal crime. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Illinois business student Xinyi Zhang said many Chinese students are hoping for a miracle.

“That could be me,” she said. “For some reason I’m still holding my hope, though, that there’s a tiny, tiny chance that she’s alive right now.”

(Reporting by Julia Jacobs; editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)

Russia, after U.S. meeting on diplomatic row, says ready to retaliate

The Russian Embassy's compound in Centreville, Maryland, U.S. is pictured in this still image taken December 30, 2016 from NBC4/WRC-TV helicopter video footage. MANDATORY CREDIT NBC4/WRC-TV/Handout via REUTERS

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday Moscow reserved the right to take retaliatory measures against the United States after a meeting in Washington ended without a deal on returning seized Russian diplomatic property.

Barack Obama, then U.S. president, ordered the seizure of two Russian diplomatic compounds and the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats in December over what he said was their involvement in hacking the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, something Russia flatly denies.

Moscow has said a lot would depend on the outcome of a meeting in Washington on Monday between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon who discussed the diplomatic row.

But the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday a resolution to the problem had not yet been found.

“The Russian side stressed (in the meeting) that if Washington does not remove this and other irritants, including continued obstacles to the work of our diplomatic institutions, we reserve the right to take retaliatory measures based on the principle of reciprocity,” the statement said.

Russia wanted to resume regular dialogue with the United States about strategic stability too, it said, saying it was up to Washington to make a move on the issue.

(Reporting by Anton Kolodyazhny; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Windy, dry weather forecast in U.S. West, threatens to stoke wildfires

A USFS bulldozer cuts a line through vegetation to create a safety line below West Camino Cielo while fighting the Whittier Fire near Santa Barbara, California, U.S. July 15, 2017. Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department/Handout via REUTERS

(Reuters) – More than 800,000 residents in the U.S. West were told to be ready to evacuate on Tuesday as windy, dry conditions threatened to stoke wildfires, forecasters said.

A red flag warning was issued for southern Oregon, northern California and northern Nevada as 35 mph (55 kph) wind gusts and humidity hovering around 10 percent were seen, the National Weather Service said in an advisory.

“Strong winds could rapidly push fire into close proximity of local communities Tuesday afternoon and evening. Heed any evacuation orders. React quickly, you may not have much time to leave,” the service said.

More than a half a dozen fires have started up over the last two days in California including the Detwiler Fire, which forced some residents in Mariposa County to evacuate on Monday.

The fire destroyed one structure and threatened 300 more after swelling to 11,200 acres since it began burning brush and tall grass on Sunday afternoon. Five percent of the fire was contained as of Monday night, the Cal Fire website reported.

“I haven’t seen these conditions in a long time, it’s a wind driven, slope driven, fuel-driven fire,” Jerry Fernandez with Cal Fire told an ABC affiliate in Fresno.

Ten new large blazes ignited on Monday as a total of 35 wildfires burned across the U.S. West, the National Interagency Coordination Center said.

Flames have charred more than twice as much land in California so far in 2017 compared with the same time last year, according to Cal Fire.

(This story has been refiled to delete extraneous word in headline.)

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Richard Balmforth)