Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed Tuesday to demolish three years of stalemate over Brexit, as Britain's political leaders geared up for a frantic final day of general election campaigning. Johnson ploughed a British flag-themed digger, marked "Get Brexit done", through a styrofoam wall with "gridlock" written on it, in a bid to ram home his core message in time for Thursday's snap vote. Johnson's centre-right Conservatives have been consistently ahead in the opinion polls but YouGov's final survey of the campaign predicted they were set only for a narrow majority -- with the race tightening.

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 17:49:12 -0500

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday against interference in U.S. elections, the White House said in a statement after an Oval Office meeting between the two men.The meeting came hours after House Democrats unveiled articles of impeachment alleging the president sought to coerce a foreign leader to help his bid for re-election, and it was the first encounter between Trump and Lavrov May 2017, when the U.S. president boasted to the Russian about firing then-FBI Director James Comey and reportedly shared classified information.Tuesday’s meeting, in which Secretary of State Michael Pompeo also participated, was even more loaded with tension. Earlier in the day, House Democrats announced articles of impeachment that include a finding Trump damaged U.S. national security by withholding military aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russia-backed separatists, in hopes of forcing its government to undertake an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.Immediately before the White House meeting, Pompeo and Lavrov sparred in front of reporters over U.S. findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.In a summary of the meeting, the White House said Trump also urged Russia to resolve the conflict with Ukraine. Trump expressed support for an arms control agreement that would include both Russia and China, and asked for Russian support in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and ensuring that North Korea reduces its own stockpile.Biden and other Democrats routinely criticize the U.S. president for showing deference to Vladimir Putin. They frequently reference a news conference in Helsinki in which Trump said he believed the Russian leader’s claims more than the findings of his own intelligence services.Separately, the Justice Department inspector general released a report on Monday finding no political bias in the FBI investigation into allegations of Russian collusion, a conclusion that counters Trump’s contention that he and his campaign had been unfairly targeted. The report, however, cited significant missteps by the bureau as it sought a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.And just last week, Trump attended a NATO summit in London, where other leaders expressed concern about Russia -- not just its annexation of Crimea but also its tightening grip on Syria after Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops.Revealing Intel SourceThe 2017 meeting came just a day after Trump fired Comey over frustration with the probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia. It darkened the cloud of controversy related to Russia that still looms over Trump’s presidency, even after federal investigators found no evidence he was involved in Moscow’s efforts to influence the U.S. elections.Lavrov arrived at the White House at about 2:20 p.m. in Washington and left about an hour later. The meeting was closed to reporters and none of the participants made any public remarks.After their first meeting, the Russian state news agency Tass released pictures of Trump and Lavrov laughing in the Oval Office. White House officials then rushed members of the American media into the room, but the Russian delegation had already departed.Only official U.S. government photographers were allowed into Tuesday’s meeting, according to a White House official who asked not to be identified because it was private.The White House said after the 2017 meeting that it had been misled by Russian officials and believed the Tass photographer was there on behalf of the Kremlin.In the following days, the Washington Post reported that Trump revealed highly classified information during the meeting and may have jeopardized a source considered crucial to the battle against Islamic State. Subsequent reports identified the source of that intelligence as Israel. Trump denied ever explicitly revealing the source to Russia, but concerns remained that he had given the Russian officials enough information to determine it for themselves.“Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name Israel,” Trump said during a 2017 trip to Jerusalem. “Never mentioned it during that conversation. They’re all saying I did, so you have another story wrong. Never mentioned the word Israel.”Putin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Paris on Monday. That summit led to an agreement to exchange prisoners and the withdrawal of some troops, but no permanent resolution to the ongoing conflict in the disputed Donbas region. More than 13,000 people have died in the conflict over the 500-kilometer (310-mile) contact line over the past four years.North Korea, VenezuelaTrump is also eager to enlist Russia to help pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program amid worrying signs that his efforts may be failing.Kim Yong Chol, Chairman of the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, called Trump a “heedless and erratic old man” in a statement to the state-run Korean Central News Agency earlier this week. On Sunday, Trump warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un risked voiding “his special relationship with the President of the United States” amid reports that North Korea had conducted a key test at a missile site.“Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way,” Trump tweeted.Trump has also said he wants to broker a replacement deal for the New START treaty, which limits the production of nuclear weapons and expires in February 2021. Trump said last week he’s eager to expand the deal to include other nations like China, and want to see “a cessation on nuclear and nuclear creation.”“It’s -- in my opinion -- the biggest problem the world has today,” Trump said.The White House didn’t say whether Trump raised concerns over Russia’s backing of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Vice President Mike Pence led a meeting last week with other White House officials to re-examine the administration’s push to empower Juan Guaido, the National Assembly leader and Maduro opponent who declared himself interim president of Venezuela with American backing earlier this year.But Guaido has failed to push out Maduro, and Trump is losing confidence that the opposition leader will ever topple the regime. The administration officials have instead discussed a possible partnership with Russia to ease the leader out of power.\--With assistance from Jordan Fabian.To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua GalluFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 17:32:40 -0500

(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lead in Britain’s general election was slashed by more than half in a hotly anticipated opinion poll released two days before the country votes. The pound fell as much 0.2% on the news.The Tories will win 339 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, Labour 231, the Scottish National Party 41, and the Liberal Democrats 15, according to a YouGov forecast on Tuesday. If the research is accurate, it suggests the race for Number 10 is tightening significantly ahead of Thursday’s election. Johnson gambled on an early vote in an attempt to win a majority so he can force his Brexit deal into law and take the U.K. out of the European Union by the end of January. If Labour continues to close in on the Conservatives, he could fall short of a majority, throwing British politics and the country’s future relations with the EU into fresh turmoil. The YouGov research used a technique that more closely predicted the result of the U.K.’s previous election in 2017 than other standard surveys. When smaller parties are included, the result would give the Conservatives a majority of 28 seats. That’s smaller than in the previous iteration of the poll two weeks ago, which projected a majority of 68 for Johnson’s side.Earlier on Tuesday, Johnson warned activists against complacency. “This is a very, very close-fought election, and we need every vote,” Johnson said at a campaign event in Uttoxeter, central England, saying his party is “absolutely not” home and dry.Through a process called Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification, or MRP for short, YouGov aims to identify different types of voters, and predict their behavior. Then the company works out how many of each of these voter types there are in each electoral district to produce a forecast.In the 2017 election, YouGov’s MRP poll correctly predicted that Theresa May would lose her majority, at a time other polls were suggesting her Conservatives would secure a big win.Johnson’s Tories, as his party is also known, have led in the polls throughout the election campaign and most surveys still give the prime minister an advantage of about 10 points over the main opposition Labour Party. The YouGov projection gave him a share of 43%, compared to 34% for Labour.Johnson will spend the final day of campaigning before Thursday’s vote pressing his message that the U.K. can “get Brexit done” only if he wins a majority. To contact the reporters on this story: Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.net;Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Edward EvansFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 17:28:50 -0500

Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes in the Supreme Court of British Columbia agreed with Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's legal team that there is an "air of reality" to their assertion. Meng, 47, was arrested at the Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 1, 2018, at the request of the United States, where she is charged with bank fraud and accused of misleading the bank HSBC about Huawei Technologies' business in Iran.

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 16:49:49 -0500

House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, setting up a historic vote in the days before Christmas. After internal debate in their caucus, Democrats opted to focus narrowly on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, leaving out any direct mention of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 16:30:48 -0500